In a Denver Post article on a sex offender who was convicted of victimizing his own children, the sentence, The big word is that public safety comes first, stands out as one of the most blatant “lies” that we can find betraying the unconscious society that America has become. Innocent victims become invisible in our concern to protect mentally ill rapists who can be seen only as violent felons or a clergy that includes pedophiles engaged in activities that we cannot allow ourselves to think about. There is a tragic insanity operating when we allow violent and sick predators the freedom to prey on innocent women and children again and again even though we know that they have a disease for which there is at the present time no cure.
Why does society allow a mentally ill predator who cannot help himself from having multiple victims or in other words repeating the crime as they are released into society again and again; and in a sense also to victimize his own soul over and over again? (Even though they can be either male or female, predators are predominantly male, and for our purposes we will focus on the problem as it exists in our male-dominated society.)
Why is the focus on the rights of the predator at the expense of innocent and helpless victims? And the unthinkable question has to be asked. If the victims were adult males would the male power structure have been as indifferent to the suffering victims?
Ellen Goodman in a Rocky Mountain News column reported (2002) on an unfolding scandal in the Catholic Church. In her column entitled “Scandal of pedophile priests has Catholic Church reeling,” we find a very revealing phrase: …the scandal has exposed a hierarchy that worried more about sin than crime, more about the sinner than the victims. No more blatant and shocking evidence of a male-dominated unconscious institution can be found. Cardinal Bernard Law, the “CEO” of the archdiocese that has settled molestation claims against 70 priests in the last ten years paying out millions of dollars in hush money is guilty of either callous negligence or cowardly denial. The male church hierarchy protects its own and in a twisted dance of rationalization, sentences its most innocent, vulnerable children to a hell they cannot identify with and hence choose to ignore, hoping that church members will continue to join them in the conspiracy of denial.
The problem, of course, also exists not only in the church but in society at large. The following is an example of what we’re talking about. A key question being asked Sunday (January 20, 2002) was why Gerald DeWayne Lewis, 34—suspected of sexually assaulting three teenage girls in Denver, Aurora and Greenwood Village this month—wasn’t behind bars. His criminal record dates back to at least 1985 and includes a stint in prison in Oklahoma and an arrest last year in Denver for sexual assault on a child.
Why can’t our criminal justice system protect our women and children? Can it be that the criminals are male, the law enforcement officers, judges, and legislators who pass the laws are predominantly male? The answer may not lie in that direction but something is woefully wrong when it is as if we release a wild, uncontrollable animal into our communities. Why is our criminal justice system not focused on the next innocent woman or child whom we know full well has just been condemned to some of the most vicious acts of violence occurring in our society? One thing is for certain, the worldview that is the foundation for this tragic reality must be fundamentally and forever changed—NOW, not tomorrow.
Not many years ago and it’s probably true even today in many instances, the victim was blamed for the crime of rape. For example, jurors are not as likely to believe the victims of acquaintance rape because they are apt to believe that they weren’t really “innocent,” weren’t really “victims,” or weren’t really “raped.” The victim herself is also likely to believe this when she realizes that few or no people believe her story. The reason for this is that the victim believes that if I make it my fault, then I was in control and I can prevent this from happening again. If I make the offender accountable, it means that I was not in control and it can happen again. This is why we find ways to blame victims for what happened, because if it’s their fault, it can’t happen to us.
This analysis in Tina Griego’s column in The Denver Post explains how in the context of P-B, the thinking of the innocent victim is twisted so that she is victimized twice, once by the rapist and then again by the unconscious society that cannot “see” her as she truly is, defenseless, brutalized and shamed. What is her crime? It is being a female in an America that is asleep.
How would a more aware and compassionate society respond to this sickness that victimizes both the women and the children, both the pedophile and the rapist? The simple facts, which are known but remain off the screen of our awareness due to the dysfunctional nature of our society, would dictate the solution. First, the rapist or pedophile has a disease that causes him to prey on innocent members of the society. Secondly, the disease is not controllable by him nor can it currently be treated successfully by the mental health profession. These facts dictate a compassionate solution.
Once an offender commits his first offense, this predator can be identified and removed from the population. At this point a glaring reality must be faced. If that predator is released back into the community for whatever reason, we have condemned an as yet unknown but innocent victim to a certain predictable fate. Does this society put the victims’ rights first or the predators?
The only rational and just thing to do is to lock up all identified and incurable predators in a closed community with an indeterminate sentence. The members of that community deserving of society’s compassion, would be furnished with all the support possible as professionals join them in a joint effort in finding effective treatment strategies for their disease. If we really care about the welfare of our women and children, it makes no more sense to release a predator into the general population than it would to release an East Indian tiger who has tasted human blood back into the jungle surrounding defenseless villagers.
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References and notes are available for this article.
For a much more in-depth discussion on Simple Reality, read Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival, by Roy Charles Henry, published in 2011.
