Client Evaluations of Sex-Offender Therapy
Most research dealing with the effectiveness of sex-offender therapy has been quantitative, mainly looking at the sexual recidivism rates “as the primary measure of successful outcomes in criminal rehabilitation, while other indicators of client improvement and well-being have been ignored” (Levenson et al., 2020; National Academies of Sciences & Medicine, 2022). Much of the qualitative research on sex-offender treatment appears to be conducted outside of the Unite States.
In Learning from Consumers of Mandated Sex-Offending Programs: “It’s Not Treatment, I Wish It Was.”, by Jill S. Levenson, Melissa D. Grady, Heike Lasoski, and Kyle T. Collins, a qualitative study was done to “explore clients’ perceptions of sex-offending treatment.”
“People required to register as sex offenders and their family members were recruited with assistance from several registry reform advocacy groups in the United States.” The survey was anonymous and confidential.
Individuals felt their treatment was a positive experience when the following objectives were met by the therapist:
- Helped to gain insight about themselves
- Peer support and interaction in group sessions
- Positive experience with the therapist
- Learning ways to manage problematic behavior
Individuals felt their therapy was more of a negative experience when the following techniques were used:
- Felt coerced to make certain statements, whether true or not
- Being treated disrespectfully by therapist
- Feeling their particular therapist was unqualified
- Use of outdated methods that were not research based or individualized
This study should be read by all therapists and clients, along with other stakeholders. Hopefully the findings of this study will be incorporated into future sex-offender therapy programs everywhere.
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Queensland police are struggling to keep tabs on the rising number of sex offenders on the child protection register, a report into the scheme suggests.
About 3,163 sex offenders were required to report to police across the state last year – a figure authorities say increases by at least 100 every year.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/volume-of-sex-offenders-poses-monitoring-challenge-for-queensland-police-report-suggests/ar-AA1cTVEO
Multiple studies have found that those who commit child sex abuse are at a higher risk of suicide than other types of offenders.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/child-sex-offender-eats-poisoned-snickers-bar-to-try-and-kill-himself-in-the-dock/ar-AA1cSGJ9
I think the suicide risk is also true for those who are required to register (esp. in Florida), whether they actually committed a crime or not.
Pre trial I had, on the advice of my attorney, voluntarily attended the county approved group sex offender therapy. I found it to be completely non-therapeutic. To me the goal seemed to lye in adding shame and guilt to the client more so than actually helping or healing. After my short sentence in county jail I was forced to return to this group. There were men who had been going there 1-15 years. I knew they would never “graduate” me from their program. I asked my attorney to arrange a private therapist to “treat” me. The court agreed and I was given over to the care of a gentle soul who spoke more about my favorite restaurants and family and my music. In a year of sessions with him, rarely did we discuss anything involving sexual offending. He treated me like a person and when I felt it was time I asked him if he would write my PO and tell her I was rehabilitated. He agreed and shortly thereafter I was discharged from probation. I have no doubt that had I remained in that group therapy I would still be there. On a side note, when the court informed them I would be leaving the main therapist had a hissy fit of gargantuan proportions, lashing out at me calling me treacherous for pulling something so “underhanded”. I definitely feel like I was lucky getting away from them.
After many months of ‘counseling’, I asked my court-ordered group therapist (at ITM) to refer me to another general therapist outside of ITM. While continuing my regular ITM sessions, I also saw and paid that new therapist, more than several times, and my ITM therapist then graduated me. Maybe I finally paid enough money into the Psychological Industrial Complex (PIC) to justify my release.
RayO, my bet is that ITM was afraid of being contradicted in court records (which are also public records) by the treatment provider you paid. I base this on my own experience because I hired three different medical and psychological/psychiatric professionals to prove in court that the ITM provider was incompetent. This cost me more than $25,000 but was worth every penny.
Reading this article then the comments I realize that me here in California and my other fellow brethren in Florida go thru similar not-punishments.
I too graduated three times. I too have bad poly experiences.
This madness needs to end.
Grr Arr
Like most i think its just another way for the courts to take more and more money from people that don’t make that much to start with because of the restrictions. I am sure that it will help some, but sitting in a room with 10-15 other people that have done in some cases very horrible things compared to what you have been charged with can damage people in the long run. Like the offender/predator verbiage the state uses the therapy should be set up the same way offenders in with offenders and predators in with predators or even better one on one with individuals, Funny thing is even if you get nothing out of it and want to leave early the people running it don’t want to lose their income so they tell you that you need it or that you need to participate more in the conversation before they even start to think of releasing you. The courts don’t take it seriously of you have completed it when it comes to reducing your sentence or getting off the registry all together so why should we take it seriously when forced to go?
For those who have posted so many complaints about ITM, I had similar complaints about my treatment provider here in Georgia. What I did was raise formal ethics complaints against them with every private organization they belonged to – ATSA (they’re a joke, btw), the APA, AMA, et al. The short version is that they fast-tracked me through their stupid program afterward; I suspect their accreditations from those organizations were more important to them than one single cash cow. I don’t know what changes to their program, if any, were made later.
Find out what organizations ITM belongs to and read those Codes of Ethics and/or Professional Conduct. Thoroughly detail your allegations and what explain why you think it violates whatever rules in those codes. Make copies and complain first to the provider (if you don’t your complaints won’t even be looked at). When they blow you off (and they will), forward your complaints to those organizations, adding that you took your complaints to the provider first and their response (especially if they threaten to go to your POs about it).
No matter what the POs tell you, complaining about a treatment provider to a private organization to which they belong is not and can never be a violation of parole or probation. At most, they can only try to violate you on something trumped up. If they do that, get your written complaints to the court somehow and get it in the record.