The Pedophile Next Door: The long road to rehabilitation
Posted September 16, 2015 6:18 pm.
Last Updated September 16, 2015 7:42 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
“I’m a pedophile,” Bob says in a blunt, startling, unemotional way. “I can’t change my attraction. I’ve cursed God for my attraction. My sex offending was my whole life.”
Bob – not his real name – has been convicted three times for molesting children. Each time he was sentenced to jail, most recently at Ontario Correctional Institute (OCI). He’s been free for over fifteen years, and hasn’t reoffended in over twenty years. “I came to realize it wasn’t my whole life.”
Bob struggled with his attraction to children since he was a child. He knew it was wrong. He was ashamed and, for the past 30 years, suicidal every day.
“If you are in a position of shame, you can only feel your pain – not somebody else’s.” It’s part of what allowed him to continue to hurt children.
But at OCI, he says he “learned to feel,” and that made all the difference. “Once you’ve learned to feel, you can’t go back.”
“I’ve seen miracles in prison,” says Harriett, a social worker who recently retired from OCI. She’s been working with Bob for two decades. “That’s where you meet God – in prison.” She says Bob is one of those miracles. Bob is a registered sex offender, and will be for the rest of his life. He doesn’t have any conditions or restrictions on him. He can go to a park or beach or walk by schools – but he chooses not to.
“I am to blame. I’m the only one to blame,” Bob says of his crimes. “But once you reach that stage, what are you going to do about it?”
For Bob, and many other pedophiles and sexual offenders who want to stop hurting others, the answer is intensive counselling and therapy.
“I would be dead without the group,” Bob says, referring to an exclusive, secret group of sex offenders who meet twice a month in an undisclosed location in downtown Toronto. “It really is offenders treating offenders, with social workers there to make sure nobody gets killed.”
It’s raw group therapy. There is a core membership of fifteen that show up biweekly, another twenty stop by when they need the help. All are convicted sex offenders and pedophiles, all have completed their sentences and probation, and all of them want to make sure they never reoffend. There’s an interview process before being allowed in the group.
“We don’t have anybody in the group that likes what they did. They were law-abiding citizens for everything but that.”
Since its inception thirteen years ago, none of the members has reoffended.
The Pedophile Next Door:
Part II: How many are in your community?
Check the database: How many registered sex offenders live in your area?
“The group we have is risky and nasty and harsh and hateful and I don’t know any other way to make sure there are no more victims,” says Garry Glowacki, the Bridge Prison Ministry’s executive director. “You can not say they they won’t change – there are some that won’t, some that are wired so, but there are some that will.”
He runs similar groups for offenders of non-sexual crimes, where men try to keep each other honest, accountable and law-abiding. That’s where the idea for a specific sex-offender group was born.
“How do we keep the community safe? That’s the motivation,” he says. “The group in Toronto has been going for thirteen years, continually. I’ve had twenty men who have never reoffended sexually for thirteen years. We’ve heard people say ‘sex offenders hurt ten people a year.’ Well, I don’t buy that but I’ll go with that. So that’s what? (2600) victims? What’s that worth? What would you pay for your own safety?’
Sam and David – not their real names – are pedophiles and members of the group. Neither have reoffended since being released from jail, but they’ve both been going to the group since it started. “I believe I can never be cured for what I have, and the way I”m wired,” explains David. “But therapy helps me keep it under control.”
Sam says without the group, and other programs he takes part in, he would have reoffended, creating new victims. “Without the programs, I would have been a much unhealthier person in society.”
Charmaine Loverin, a victim of childhood sexual abuse herself, works with victims and pedophiles. “Its easier to say ‘I am an alcoholic,’ but imagine saying ‘I’m a pedophile.’ Wow. That’s hard to hear. And yet, we have to support them. We just have to.”
“There are good pedophiles out there – taking accountability and being responsible and keeping themselves addressed to their sensitivities,” she says. But not all. Part of the problem, she says, is a lack of programming in institutions.
“We need to get more people in the prison programs,” she says, referring to the sex offender relapse prevention programs offered at OCI and some federal institutions like Warkworth and Bath. Of the 1500 sex offenders currently serving time in Ontario’s jails, only about 50 are in intensive, sex offender rehabilitation programs.
Day Parole: Inmates return to a half-way house every night
Full Parole: Supervised in the community but lives in home)
Statutory Release: Released after 2/3 of their sentence, some monitoring in the community
Warrant Expiry: Discharged from prison at very end of sentence, no longer under Corrections’ watch
These are the programs that helped drive many of the sex offenders in the Bridge’s group to seek help voluntarily. “You can’t ever let go and say, ‘I’m fine, I’m fixed.’ You can’t have that mentality as a sex offender,” explains Sam. “You always have to work on it. It’s not something you can just forget about.” After his release from OCI, Sam attended mandated programs, before choosing to continue, voluntarily. “I don’t have to go to any of these programs and I still do, because they’re good for me”.
It’s the kind of success story psychometrists like Reyhan Yazar want to hear. She’s worked with Corrections Services Canada for 17 years and works with sex offenders undergoing rehabilitation. Although she says their programs can reduce a sex offender’s reoffending rate by 30-40 per cent, “when they’re released we try to get the offender into a community maintenance program.”
“Its still going to take a while for our guys to reduce (their urges) and practice to use their skills in the community,” Yazar explains.
Maintenance programs are typically only available to offenders on probation or parole.
“If people don’t change, we’re going to have more victims. Change is a process and you need time and help for that process.”
“We try to get most of our guys out on day or full parole and definitely not warrant expiry (the absolute end of the sentence) or statutory release, but its not our decision.”
It’s the parole board’s decision. And over the past two years, more sex offenders were released on statutory release, where they have little supervision, than on full and day parole, combined.
Glowecki says its a major problem when it comes to sex offenders. “He’s still getting out. Now he’s getting out older and sicker and with less resources,” and nobody to watch him. “It might be tough on crime, but its not particularly smart.”
“If people don’t change, we’re going to have more victims,” he says. “Change is a process and you need time and help for that process.”
Bob agrees. “I would be dead without the group,” he says, knowing many people wish he was. “I can’t change what I’ve done in my life. I can only make sure there isn’t another one of those victims.”
