The Pedophile Next Door: The struggle to prevent re-offenders

“The only way you can absolutely guarantee I won’t re-offend, is to kill me”

Bob (not his real name) is a repeat pedophile. He’s been convicted three times for his acts against children — he’s gone to jail and rehabilitation, he’s seen psychiatrists and psychologists and now he polices himself through group therapy.

“There are only two sides — reduce victimization or re-victimize.” He chose the former, and hasn’t offended in two decades.  He says he learned to feel while serving a sentence at Ontario Correctional Institute and taking part in their sex offender relapse prevention program; but the work he’s done since has kept him on the right path.

“If you’re doing anything that is contributing to disconnection, you’re on a slippery slope (to re-offending),” he explains. “The group keeps me connected and accountable.”

That group is a secret therapy group for sex offenders, started by the Bridge Prison Ministry, in Brampton, ON.

“When our guys are out and they are working and drug free, they are not creating more victims. We are preventing victims, which is maybe even harder,’ explains the Bridge’s executive director, Garry Glowacki.

He helps offenders of all crimes become law abiding citizens, but he thinks his work with sex offenders is particularly important.  “Do all of our guys do well? No. Do I expect them to? No.”

But there’s an overwhelming amount of evidence showing that sex offenders who stay in programs after they are released from prison have a much lower chance of re-offending.

“When offenders took park in a correctional program their rates or re-admission and general re-offending were reduced by as much as 45%,” says Corrections spokesperson JP Surette. Last year, the federal government spent nearly $7 million on programs geared primarily to sex offenders on probation and parole — 865 offenders took part.

Reyhan Yazar, a psychometrist who helps rehabilitate sex offenders at federal prisons like the Bath Institute, says success rates like that are hard to replicate — even with chemical castration. “There’s no medication that’s 100 per cent effective. 40-50 per cent is considered good. Even the anti-androgen medications don’t work all the time. Our programs are more effective, and medication only solves half the problem, and even then only if they have high sexual drives.”

She believes the best way to treat those who want to be cured is through therapy, support and supervision.

“It’s really crucial to put people on day parole because this is where they start to actually see their risk factors in the community,” she explains. “Gradual release with support and supervision is ideal,” not only for the offender, but also for the community.

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The Pedophile Next Door

Part I: Life behind bars

Part II: How many are in your community?

Part III: The long road to rehabilitation

Check the database: How many registered sex offenders live in your area?

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But sometimes those programs aren’t available — even to offenders on probation and parole.  “There are such long (wait)lists for counselling that it’s hard for us to get somebody in for counselling during their one year period of probation, or even two years,” says Gord Longhi, a probation and parole officer with the Ontario government.

“They’ve been cutting back so bad over the past few years, they’ve just been cutting back on all those agencies.”

Data obtained from the Ministry of Correctional Services doesn’t show cutbacks, but it doesn’t show increases either. Funding for rehabilitation programs for offenders serving their sentences in the community has remained stable over the past three years, at $3.7 million annually. That’s for all offenders under Probation and Parole’s supervision — 45,644 as of January 31st — not just the 3,000 sex offenders. Over the past three years, only 1200 sex offenders have accessed these programs — that’s less than half of the sex offenders currently under supervision.

“There’s always things that can be done better,” Yasir Naqvi, the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services says. “ We are looking at better ways to tailor make rehabilitation for offenders.”

But no government is prepared to offer additional funding for pedophiles and sex offenders after their sentence is complete. “I can’t imagine a reason not to fund these programs,” says Circle of Support and Accountability’s David Byrne. “Ninety-five percent of people in jail come out — whose responsibility are they? They’re ours. It’s our responsibility to find innovative ways to reduce re-offending and victimization.”

Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) is a national organization which used to have 18 centres. They received $7.5 million from the federal government for a 5-year pilot project. Their goal? Hold sex offenders and pedophiles whose sentences had totally expired accountable in a supportive environment. Byrne says in those five years, the groups were able to reduce re-offend rates by 78-90 percent (depending on the circle’s location). “It makes a community demonstratively safer to live.”

Check the database: How many registered sex offenders live in your area?

But once the pilot was done, no more funding came their way. “A significant portion of CoSA activity is directed to individuals who have passed their warrant expiry day, which falls outside of CSC’s formal mandate,” explained Surette in an email statement.

The Ministry is, however, upholding its existing contract with the Mennonite Centre Committee of Ontario for the “provision of CoSA services in southern Ontario to March 31, 2018.”

Several have been forced to close or cutback. “I’m not accepting new clients because I can’t predict future funding,” says Byrne of the CoSA in Peterborough.

Sam – a repeat pedophile who hasn’t offended in over a decade, says just because his sentence is up doesn’t mean he’s cured. “Its not like I’m going to be rehabilitated. Period. It will be a constant life-long process.”

He says even with therapy and support there’s no absolute guarantee that he won’t re-offend. “There’s no guarantee for anything, including that.”

But he also says he would have re-offended without the post-institutional help he gets from the Bridge. “I’m going to be honest and say “yeah,” without these programs I would have been a much unhealthier person in society.”

Bob says if programs aren’t maintained and expanded, “Society is going to pay for it. Innocent people will pay.”