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	From the Editor: Monsters Are Made, Not Born By Bob Unger Standard Times February 3, 2008 http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080203/OPINION/802030310/-1/NEWS01 Billy M. was his name, but in prison he was called Sidewinder. He got the nickname because his jaw had been broken so many times that he was permanently disfigured by the inmates at various Massachusetts prisons and at the Hampshire County House of Correction, which is where I met him nearly 20 years ago. Billy M. was a "skinner," the lowest of the low in prison, a serial child molester who was finishing up a long stint in the state system. I got to know him through a prison ministry loosely affiliated with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield. I wasn't a Catholic, but I was a Christian with a story and a belief that we were meant to shelter the homeless, comfort the afflicted, feed the hungry and visit those who were sick or imprisoned. You went in for three days at a time, got to know a bunch of guys who had been judged and punished — appropriately — by the courts and decent society, and there were no deals for early release as a result. Our business was redemption, not rehabilitation. I always wondered why Billy M. even came. The other inmates hated him, and whenever the group brought their chairs together into small circles to pray or talk, he was always on the outside looking in, that perpetual scowl accompanied by a sneer, and he never took part. Not that anyone would have let him, understand. Even among killers, armed robbers, run-of-the-mill rapists, the druggies and the clueless 19-year-old gang bangers who were just spending a few months inside and getting fed, there was a pecking order, and skinners like Billy M. were at the bottom of it. So one weekend when a young woman who was a member of the group of outsiders like me who went in to talk about sin and forgiveness, grace and redemption, told her story about how years of childhood rape at the hands of her grandfather and brothers had led her to a life of sexual promiscuity, self-loathing, therapy and, finally, faith, it had a profound effect on Billy M. He paced the room as she spoke, then retreated to a dark corner of the prison gymnasium where the young woman sought him out a little later. They spoke intently for about a half hour. At the end of the three-day prison retreat, each of the prisoners had a chance to come up one by one and speak their minds. Some said a simple thank you. Some said it had changed their lives. Some weren't ready. Billy M. slinked to the small podium and clutched the metal cross left there by a previous speaker. And then he broke in a way I have never seen another man break, beyond tears and beyond sobs; he released his pain in howls that started in his stomach and clawed their way into the air. And he spoke of his sins, horrible sins committed against children. Sins that took place over long periods. And then he thanked the 40 or so inmates who were there, thanked them for beating him with their fists and burning him with their cigarettes, because the hell he was in demanded more punishment than simple prison could provide. He told his own story, and it is what you would expect it to be. It was a story of the nightmare of abuse and torture at the hands of a father and a grandfather, and it had occurred for a long time, and it had made Billy M. into the monster he was. In the back of the room stood a tattooed 19-year-old biker/meth dealer called Red. "Billy," he said, and everyone turned because no one used Sidewinder's Christian name. "You know the things I have done to you in here, right?" Billy nodded. "You know that I have hurt you with my fists, kicked you while you were down, burned you and cut you." Billy nodded again. "I wanted to tell you that I was sorry," Red said. And then he told his own story, and it was not much different from Billy's, except that he took his rage out against grownups instead of children. Then he walked to the front of the room and he faced Billy M. The two men embraced, and one by one, the 40 inmates at the Hampshire County House of Corrections joined them in the front of the room, and I along with everyone else there knew that something was happening that defied everything we thought we knew about who we were and why we had come. I do not know what happened to those men, just two of the hundreds I met in those days, but then, I'm not sure I really want to know. Because it wouldn't have changed my mind. Despite whatever healing Billy M. found that day, he should have forever been kept away from children because he knew what he would do to them, couldn't help himself, and he hated that part of himself the way that a cancer sufferer hates the tumor within. He knew he was a monster, I am certain, and monsters know no other way, so they are best kept forever where they cannot hurt others. But we should also know that such monsters tend to be made and not born, and the things that they suffered, horrors that found men like Billy M. or Cory Deen Saunders — the 26-year-old child rapist who attacked a young boy at the library on Wednesday — and made them too dangerous to walk among us were often inflicted systematically and remorselessly by those who were supposed to cared for them. And is there grace enough or punishment enough to rewire a human being who has become such a one as they? The evidence would seem to suggest not, which is why we have Megan's Law and sex offender registries and forensic hospitals filled with sexual predators sent there after their prison terms expired. Too many times, we have seen such men released from prisons where they had good records — perhaps because there were no children about — and then get out and do terrible things to innocents. I am glad I do not have to judge the hearts of such men, to determine whether they can ever be released. I would hope that there are those far wiser than I who can do so and that they put the safety of innocents first in a way that probably nobody ever did for Billy M. or Cory Deen Saunders when they were innocents themselves. And I hope those with that power remember that, as grownups, we have an obligation to spare our children from monsters who come in the night, or even in the day at a downtown New Bedford library among the stacks of Dr. Seuss books. Bob Unger is editor of The Standard-Times. He can be reached by e-mail at runger@s-t.com or by phone at (508) 979-4430.
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