Testing Limits of What We Know and Can Do About Sex Offenders

Noted psychiatrist Gene Abel was telling a group of professional people at a seminar in Orange Friday about once treating a priest accused of molesting a young boy 20 years ago.

The priest vehemently denied it. But Abel put the man through a series of tests known internationally today as the Abel Screening. It showed that the priest was not only lying--or in denial--but that he still had such deviant interests. When confronted with the results, the priest immediately confessed.

It wasn’t lost on me as I listened that an Orange County Episcopal priest has been in the news lately, accused of molesting a young man 15 years ago. Abel’s anecdote has no bearing at all, of course, on whether the Orange County priest is telling the truth when he strongly denies it. But the similarity was a vivid reminder to me that this seminar was about real-life situations, not just hypothetical ones.

Abel, based in Atlanta, Ga., was guest lecturer at a conference on sex offenders sponsored by a group of Orange County independent forensic psychologists called Interface.

I attended part of it and left with mixed feelings: Most of it was over my head. Abel’s audience was made up of therapists and psychologists and lawyers who deal with sex offenders, mostly in the legal system. And most of them seemed to clearly understand all his charts and graphs, many of which were a lot of alphabet soup to me.

But I also left the seminar feeling exhilarated. Because these folks truly are excited about doing something about sex offenders.

“We have to do something,” Abel explained to me during a break. “About 10% of the young men in this country are molested by someone by the time they are 18. That rate is even higher for young women. We have to focus on doing something to change the sex offender’s behavior. Because just locking them up isn’t going to address the problem.”

It was interesting to me that Abel seems so optimistic that most sex offenders are treatable. “The public generally thinks that once you’re a sex offender, you will always be that way,” Abel said. “We’ve shown that’s just not true.” The successful cases, he says, usually result from a combination of intense therapy and medication.

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“Most offenders really have no idea the impact their actions have on their victims,” he said. “So we hit them over the head with that right away.”

Martha Rogers of Tustin, one of the forensic psychologists who hosted the conference, told me that she would rate herself as “cautiously optimistic” when compared to Abel.

“There are violent, hard-core types who are just not going to respond to treatment,” said Rogers, who interviews potential sex offenders by court order. “With those, we usually have to recommend state prison.”

But Rogers made an interesting argument for probation as opposed to state prison for many sex offenders, even when the victim’s family is demanding prison sentences.

“We need a long umbilical cord for some of these folks,” she said. “We send them to prison, they’re out in a short while and then get just one year on parole. After that, we’ve lost them. But if you can keep them on five years’ probation, then you can require that they either undergo treatment or it’s off to prison. We’ve got a chance of helping them then.”

Confounded by 18: Let me tell you about a huge mistake I made last year, when I first started this column--and why I’m determined to take a chance on possibly making the same one again.

I wrote a column about a little booklet I found interesting called “When You Become 18.” It has some good advice for young people on their transition from high school to a more adult lifestyle. A judicial support group here in the county had lots of copies of the booklet.

With agreement in advance from its spokeswoman, Jo Hicks (no relation), I suggested in the column that the booklets were meant for teachers to pass out to graduating students. But I wrote that if any readers wanted one--especially teachers--they could call me and I’d pass their names and phone numbers along to Jo Hicks.

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I thought maybe six or seven people might call or write in for a copy. What I hadn’t counted on was 600 to 700. I wasn’t prepared for such an avalanche. I passed most of the names on to Jo Hicks. (Remember, many of these were teachers or counselors seeking several dozen copies. Jo Hicks was faced with sending out thousands of copies.) But some people, I’m sure, didn’t get copies because I either lost their names or their names came in after Jo Hicks ran out of booklets.

I bring all this up because I’m still getting new requests for that booklet, more than a year later. So I called Jo Hicks. She now has more copies and has agreed to give me some to simplify distribution.

So, here’s a new offer: If you were one of those who called or wrote before--but you did not get any booklets--call me back to let me know. Sorry, I promised Jo Hicks I would only take new inquiries from teachers.

Wrap-Up: Therapy groups nationwide--including two in Orange County--are using the Abel Screening method to determine whether someone has deviant sexual interests. It’s too complicated to describe here, but one of its tests is to monitor not the subject’s reaction to pictures of, say young boys, but how long he looks at the pictures before moving on to the next group of pictures of, for example, adult women.

Someone asked Abel what he does with the fellow who has caught on to the testing method. No problem, Abel said; in fact, he sometimes tells them upfront what he’s looking for. Then you simply reverse your measurements. For example, the pedophile will then quickly thumb through the pictures of young boys, then take an inordinate amount of time looking at adult women.

I might not have understood all of Abel’s charts, or his explanations, but one statement he made hit home to all of us present: “No system [for identifying sex offenders] is perfect. All we can do is the best we can.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com