This post is about my arrest and conviction for CP and the treatment I underwent as part of that event in my life.

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When I was 26 I discovered CP on the internet, specifically on newsgroups. I don’t remember how I found out about it. I think I saw something in a newspaper or something of that nature targeting it. At that point in my life I was doing fairly well on the surface. I had a nice car, house, and a successful business. I had some financial stress. I also felt a tremendous amount of turmoil about my pedosexuality.

My discovery destroyed my life. I had some very good things in my life at that point. I became completely consumed by it like nothing has ever done. I was an alcoholic through my twenties. I had been drinking about a fifth a day of vodka or whiskey since my Army days but I wasn’t noticeably inebriated from that. A fifth was two strong drinks in the evening and the last tumbler straight before bed. After my discovery I was drinking half a gallon a day and went back to drugs.

It lasted three months. When I first became consumed with it I knew I would be caught. It was so completely overpowering in my life. My fantasy life before being exposed to CP was pleasurable to me. It never involved serious sexual acts such as penetration or having oral sex performed on me. It was very much more focused on the person and the experience than the body parts or acts. After I became obsessed with the images my fantasy life horrified me and filled me with deep shame afterwards. That’s why my drinking became uncontrollable, to stuff down those emotions.

I no longer had fantasies about people, but rather sexual objects. This is very unhealthy for me. I masturbated compulsively. I had constant pains with injury to my genitals from doing this so much. I thought about nothing else – completely consumed by it. Everything else I pushed out of my life as best I could. I have said before, it took me down a black hole. I became more frightened by what was happening to me and more certain that the end was near.

And then it was all over. My partner (in business) had gone through the computer in my office. I was very careless towards the end and at some point I didn’t care any more. He called the police and they arrested me. I was so desperate at the end that I told them everything that had been going on, which to wit was downloading pictures from Usenet. They arrested me and I bonded out. I retained an attorney.

In a short period of time I saw it all wash away. My partner’s motivation had not been to do good for the world; he stole my equity interest in our business. That is a long story in itself. It destroyed my career in the particular field I was in. It was an expensive discovery in my life – I lost everything I had over it because all of the events paralyzed me and I was overextended with the business beforehand.

The worst of it was fear about what would happen to me in prison. I had heard stories about child molestors being killed there by other inmates. When I was fourteen one of the older kids in my gang picked up his second armed robbery and it was adjudicated in adult court. He called me from my city’s lockup while they were beating a child molestor to death in his block and he was in a lot of fear of them attacking him for being young. I had heard that a few times over the years.

I came to believe that I would be killed in prison. I asked people who had not learned of my legal grief and had served time, and they all told me similar stories. I felt very hopeless about the future and living with pedosexuality. I made the second suicide attempt in my life; it was not as serious as the first time. I didn’t want to die but felt like it was the only solution.

That suicide attempt I checked into a motel so that it wouldn’t be friends finding me. I overdosed on a bottle of narcotic pills. I called my long-time girlfriend (broke up by then) to have someone to talk to but didn’t say anything about what I planned or feeling hopeless. At the end of the conversation I said “well, see ya around” and she thought that was strange. I had gotten a Colt 45 ACP and put it in my mouth. I laid on the bed losing tears, tasting the metal of the gun’s barrel and trying to summon the courage to pull the trigger. I passed out from the pills before doing it, after hours of being up close and personal with the end of my life. My girlfriend hit the automatic redial and got the motel’s front desk after she had laid thinking about it, called an ambulance, so they pumped my stomach. I said nothing to cause her to do that or think that I was suicidal and that is again a miracle that happened in my life.

I knew after that I couldn’t bring myself to end my life. It wasn’t that I had any hope just couldn’t do it. I was scared of it too. I pretty much had a lot of fear back then. Court day came and went and they incarcerated me. It was nothing like what I expected. I inprocessed with a lot of other prisoners and we were all separated out to go to different facilities. Quitting alcohol cold turkey threw me into severe dt’s at first. I was as miserable as I’ve been.

In my state any offense having to do with sex and children means that you are given a tag of public safety hazard and your security level is high, meaning you go to penitentiary. Within a few days I was out on the yard of the pen and in general population. That was a blessing in disguise. Most of the guys were serving long sentences or were lifers. I fit in pretty easily. Someone early on told me the rules to making it in prison:

1. Don’t fuck with the girls. There are a lot of female-appearing
men that have boyfriends and jealousy, etc. causes fights.

2. Don’t fuck with dope. You can get into debt heavily and fast.

3. Don’t fuck with gambling. That one I didn’t follow and I ended
up thirty days in the hole a number of times for it because
disagreements ended in fights.

4. Destroy any papers that identified what you had done. Lockers
were broken into just to get that stuff. Don’t tell anyone what
you’re there for. Have a reason that’s plausible with the time
you’re serving.

It’s a bleak life. You never see any color, everything is grey and khaki. It’s loveless. The CO’s (correctional officers) were very professional and not what I had expected. They could find out your charge if they wanted to but some didn’t care. They had probably seen it all. The ones who did would make comments to me in private but not hateful ones. They didn’t tell other inmates what I was there for and after getting to know them can’t imagine they would. Doing their job well meant violence was as minimal as possible and they knew what it would mean to someone like me in terms of danger. They treated us humanly. They were also unarmed and outnumbered.

My first week a guy in my cell block was murdered. I thought, here it starts. In truth he had violated one of the rules and brought about his own drama. Everything that happened, that you associate with prison, was always because someone had broken one of those rules in my observation.

After six months I was transferred to the facility that housed the Sex Offender Treatment Program (SOT).

And thus what this post is primarily about.

Which is what I learned of benefit from being in two different sex offender treatment programs, and suggestions if a person reading this has influence in such a way over a SOT program.

Both programs (1 ½ years while incarcerated, 3 years while on probation) were comprised overwhelmingly of NON pedophiles. I would guess that I became very familiar with about 200 sex offenders, 100 in each program. I knew them well enough to know their life stories and a lot of deep things about them. I had close friendships with other participants. Of those two hundred men (and several women in the outpatient program) I would guess that a dozen or so were pedophiles. Which begs a clarification of what a pedophile is: at a basic level, someone who has sexual attraction to children.

In these programs we were privy to a lot of details of each other’s lives. Both programs used the polygraph as a therapeutic tool. When someone said they did not have feelings of sexual attraction to children, I would learn they were being truthful by passing the polygraphs devoted to that. We all also had plythysmographs (sp.?) which screened for sexual arousal to various stimuli by a measuring device that went on your penis and the other polygraph tools (galvanic response for sweat, respiratory rate, heart rate and pulse).

The overwhelming majority of men – 95% - that I was in treatment with showed NO response to images of children coupled with audio monologues suggesting different sexual contact scenarios.

All of us who were pedos though showed strong response to these same stimuli. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could lie about your response to. This group of a dozen or so all identified themselves as pedophiles. They were identified by the treatment staff as “fixated pedophiles”. :

“The penile plehtysmograph is a standardized measure of male physiological arousal to a variety of stimuli. Remo demonstrated significant physiological arousal to 3 ot 5 (with one scenario approaching significance) pedophilic scenarios featuring female victims. He demonstrated no other significant deviant arousal.” (the scenario I did not respond to was a rape scenario involving a child)

The first issue dealt with by new members in the SOT program was denial. This was very striking to observe. All of the pedophiles fully admitted all of the crimes they had committed or expressed fear of doing so. The bulk of participants were in very deep denial about things they had done. Their histories frequently involved many other sexual offenses such as voyeurism. It generally took three to six months in a program to break someone’s denial.

It was really amazing to watch. I had people who I believed when they said they hadn’t done anything, that it was innocuous and they were falsely accused. I’d get to know them and it just seemed so improbable. And then they would confess it at some point. My observation is that non-pedophiles who offend against children are generally in very deep denial about their behavior. They tended to not relate to children the same way I do, judged from listening to them talk. They do not perceive children as equals or friends and are cognizant of the power differential between them and the child, even during the course of the sexual act.

Non-pedophile child sex offenders tended to respond strongly to adult female physiological arousal and have no arousal to pedophilic scenarios. Their victims were usually in proximity to them for reasons that the offender did not bring about. Such as, a step daughter or staying with a friend who had a child. For the offenders this was not something they sought out where for pedophiles they would seek it out.

Therapy occurred in group sessions and individual therapy sessions. I had group three times a week while incarcerated and weekly with mandatory 12-step groups while on probation. Treatment providers have the power of almighty God over you once you become involved in them, and the saying about power held true for the men who directed the two programs. It corrupted them absolutely. And they had the perfect justification for being dictatorial: their job required them to break intense denial. And they had the perfect rationalization: both directors reminded me of how much professional ostracization (sp.) they experienced and what a sacrifice it was to work with sex offenders.

Both men were egotistical, overbearing, inconsiderate. They found me personally disgusting and let me know that. Both told me that there was no cure for pedophilia and it was inevitable that I would offend against children again. Both had policies of discharging pedophiles a week before they would graduate the program so that if the pedophile reoffended they would have been “discharged for treatment failure” and not the liability of the SOT program. There was some good basis for this I suppose, when I first started treatment there was a pedophile graduated from the SOT program. He reoffended within months against teenage boys.

Both held total dictatorial power over you in a number of ways. The primary one was that there were severe consequences to being discharged. If you had much sentence left while incarcerated, you would be moved to a high security penitentiary. You were safe when no one knew what you were charged with. However, the prison that housed the SOT program also housed the drug abuse program and there would be other inmates being transferred with you who would know you were a sex offender and tell everyone. This was almost a life or death sort of power over someone else. The outpatient program would violate your probation if they discharged you, and you would be returned to prison for a period of perhaps years.

We are hated. This gives people power over us. Kristallnacht is a good illustration of this power. They had the polygraph which is a wonderful tool for manipulating someone’s mind. It was not used in a “I Love You” sense of caring about someone. I have endured mind fucks early in my life that would twist most people. Having someone privy to your innermost thoughts is a mind fuck beyond magnitude.

I did not get a lot out of the first program. It may be that what I got out of it are not the things that make you feel like you had really progressed, but rather that it was laying a foundation. The big thing I got was going through all of my sexual history and sharing it with that group. It was painful and no one was inclined to see any of it in its proper light because all adult-child sexual contact is harmful in the SOT viewpoint. We were given instructions to relay all sexual events in our life in a way that would not be specific enough to require reporting or get us in trouble if it was investigated.

I nearly hanged myself during that program. It dragged up all kinds of shit in my life. One of my lifelong emotional problems has been disconnecting from my emotions. In my childhood it was necessary for me to learn to do this. Events over my life bolstered it and it used to be very easy for me to be emotionally disconnected form everyone and everything for long stretches of time. It would lead to weird perversions of emotion, like not feeling anything when a friend died but being intensely overwhelmed by a favorite fish dying.

And so in that program I really started feeling a lot and it was intensely unpleasant. I heard a lot of negative things about myself and I still scratch my head if they were so on the money it was scary or if they were way off the mark. Such as: “Remo spoke in a pseudo-intellectual manner, clearly knowledgeable in a number of areas, but the knowledge was generally superficial”, “Remo’s suspicions extended beyond the mental health system and appeared to encompass nearly every established institution as well as many individuals, particularly those who were not recognized pedophiles”.

Some of their testing revealed:

“Remo is similar to individuals who are excitement-seeking, do not feel compelled to conform to society’s norms, and are manipulative. Such people may engage in rule-breaking or criminal behavior and perceive their conflicts with authorities and society as simply “differences of opinion”

“Remo tends to be irresponsible, immature, impulsive, easily irritated. He has a low frustration tolerance and usually blames others for his problems. He has an extreme need for attention and affection, but is uncomfortable with his degree of dependence on others. Remo is likely to build resentment over the course of time and withdraw from others in a brooking or pouting manner."

The worst:

“While people similar to Remo can be charming and gregarious, they may come across as arrogant and self-righteous and engage in power struggles with others. Such people generally do not learn from their experiences. The treatment prognosis for someone similar to Remo is poor”

more:

“People with similar scores tend to be extremely manipulative and deceitful with little regard for authority or the rules of society. They are exploitative, glib, and demonstrate little concern for the impact of their actions on others. They tend to not experience deep emotion or an emotional connection with others and experience little to no empathy for others. However, because of their deceitful and manipulative nature, they are able to convince others that they do feel empathy and experience remorse for the harm that they have caused. These behaviors continue for most, if not all, of their lifespan. Remo views himself as superior, he can present himself in a positive light, he lies with ease and demonstrates no concern when caught in a lie, he cons and manipulates others without remose, and he fails to accept responsibility for his actions”

So you see I’m a scum bag. I will at least convey the negative opinions of myself and negative actions as well as the positive.

During my inpatient treatment I became emotionally connected with one of the other participants. Soon after I started really feeling close to him I started having sexual feelings towards him. That is a common thread in my life and has kept me from getting close to people earlier in my life. I have overcome it now for the most part, but who knows? Maybe it still drives me.

That first year and a half my issues were: dealing with emotional disconnectedness and disclosing my sexual history. Plus dealing with the suicidal feelings that emotional feelings caused me to run to.

The next three years of outpatient therapy I made a lot of progress in my life. Even though the program director was a tyrant. He told me at the start of his program that he didn’t want me and that he was going to set the bar high enough that I would likely fail. He required me to attend both of his two hour group sessions a week in addition to three AA meetings and four sexual addiction twelve-step groups. Plus bus time, each meeting was a 3-4 hour time commitment multiplied by 9 meetings = 30 hour time commitment a week.

I had difficult probation rules to comply with. It was difficult to find an employer who would work around my time commitments and with all my grief – frequent random inspections of the workplace. Pedophile offenders were required to submit to a depoprovera regime of weekly injections. I did that for three years. Along with frequent polygraph examinations, weekly probation office visits, and the financial burden of the depo and therapy ($200 a week USD).

The result of all of it was that I worked really hard at treatment and got a lot out of it. So in my life that was a good thing. I don’t think it’s fair to intentionally set someone up for failure though and I am unusual in making it through that ordeal.

The depo is a “chemical castration” drug and is evil and vile. The problem with the drug – past the obvious of being inhumane – is that to achieve no sexual response it would kill you. It’s a leveraging effect of how much drug vs. how bad it raises your blood pressure. I injected myself with it under supervision because I don’t like other people touching me with needles, I always give myself my own shots or draw my own blood. It was intensely painful after a while to inject because your muscle mass becomes very sensitive to it. You have to shoot it with a horse needle because it is a thick milky substance and clogs small needles.

The MD maintained my blood pressure at around, I think, 180 over 120. High blood pressure runs in my family and I have been concerned about it most of my life. Three years it ran very much high due to that drug. I ended up in the hospital several times because something would get out of whack and my blood pressure would stay over 200. My normal is 140/90 and is the very high end of the moderate risk range.

So it didn’t work. Every week I stuck that fucking needle in my leg and it was poison I was shooting in under duress. I am not happy with that and I believe that it has shortened my life span. I still have problems with my blood pressure racing high at periods and causing pain in my neck and headaches.

After my initial six months in the denial phase of outpatient treatment I was moved to a new group and this is where I made a lot of progress. My group therapist was empathetic to us and did not condemn or judge us, only the harmful effects of behavior. She was the first therapist I had that did not give me the feeling that they secretly disliked me for my pedophilia (or openly in some cases) but genuinely liked us. That made a huge difference to me. She no longer does therapy but stays home with a new child.

That first year I closed the disassociation with my emotions and I started feeling all the time. Where it used to be something that I’d feel every once in a while, it became unusual not to feel. It was very overwhelming at first and I was consumed with grief. I became very suicidal at one point and spend an evening sit on the top ledge of a parking garage, ready to jump fifteen stories down.

I started attending an incest survivors group and it helped immensely. In therapy the attitude was always sort of: You molest children and screw them up, and you (meaning anyone not specifically me) use your own sexual contact with adults as an excuse for it, and it’s dangerous for you to resolve your own shit. So talking about what I was doing in the incest group was a little taboo but it helped a lot. I also formed some deep and close friendships in my twelve-step sexual addiction group.

I worked on the practical things in my life. I quit self-mutilating and it took a lot of work to accomplish that. Clean for about three years now. I worked on getting along with other people, not being shallow and having emotional connections to them. I worked hard on the disassociative stuff. I forced myself to feel. I made amends to the people I had injured in my life. I developed some hobbies other than working.

What brought me to this board is the other part of what I did: I completely shut children out of my life. I was never able to control my sexual fantasies involving children, which was a big thing in the SOT programs. I can’t shut it off. So I avoided children completely. It made it easier to deal with probation doing that as well. I bought into the complete negative view of my sexuality presented by the SOT. This is as completely out of balance with my life as the times I’ve tried to convince myself it’s okay to have sex with children. What I am discovering is that I can live in neither extreme.

Having the intense therapy for so long has trained me to see things in other people that they are not cognizant of in themselves. Everyone who had been around it for a long time developed that. It was an interesting education in psychology. I see things in people’s posts on GC that remind me of patterns I saw over and over in SOT.

One of the observations that was significant to me in thinking about the aetiology of my pedosexuality is that everyone who identified as gay had some history of exposure to a penis as an early teen, like 11-12 yo. I watched for years and it was always true. It would be something like: I went to boy scout camp, and the boys went skinny dipping and I was interested in their penises. I believe my pedosexuality is genetic but who knows? Jd420 has some interesting observations about that.

I reached a crisis where I could no longer just push away my pedophilia and say yeah, I know it’s a part of me, but I can control this beast – I can go to meetings and not think about it and avoid shopping at stores in the day. It was ceasing to work. The truth is the professionals do not have the answers for us on how to live with pedophilia. Their treatment modalities work very well for hetero or homosexuals who offend with children. They feel hopelessness for us. My thought has always been that pedophiles are not hopeless.

So my suggestions to start with are: the saying about catching flies with honey is truer with pedophiles than just about anyone. Being in treatment with therapists who judge us and feel negative emotions towards us is beneficial to no one. Therapists who see us as people and treat us as such will have successes.

A therapeutic environment needs to feel completely open to its participants. I always held back knowing the therapist didn’t approve of me. There is nothing wrong with non-judgmentalness. Give us somewhere to escape to.

Pedosexuality is my sexual identify, unlike MOST of the sexual offenders you are working with. There are some similarities between us but there are more differences to make it dubious treating us the same. We have very different issues. I happened to have other sexual compulsiveness so I benefited, but what about someone who JUST happens to be pedophile? What’s the treatment?

I printed the list of rules for living with pedosexuality that I am forming for myself. One to add is:

5. Do not let pedophilia rule your life. Give it its place, no more no less. Have hobbies and other interests.

When I fell deep in with the CP pedophilia dominated my life. My recent crisis, pedophilia dominated my life. It is not healthy. I need new hobbies. My wife suggested I take back up my cross-stitch which I really love. I don’t think it’ll be the hobby I go back to because my son would probably have none of it – my thread would be pulled everywhere and he wouldn’t leave me in peace to work on it. I have a piece I’m working on right now that has two years and about 500 hours in it.

God bless you and take care. Be well, do good work, and see ya soon.

Remo