By Tom Blackwell
National Post
November 3, 2011
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/11/03/health-care-approach-better-at-curbing-sex-abuse-than-jail-expert/
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As North America’s top experts on sex abuse gather in Toronto this week, a philosophical debate about how to treat some of society’s most reviled criminals is coming into stark focus.
The U.S. and Canadian specialists converging for their annual meeting say evidence is mounting that a “public health” approach centred on treatment, rather than lengthy incarceration, stands the best chance of curbing the sex offenders’ fearful urges and protecting the public.
Victims groups and the current federal government worried about what they consider lenient courts are pushing a more punitive approach, embodied by proposed new legislation that would force many sexual “predators” to spend at least five years in prison.
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| Stockwell Day announces changes to the National Sex Offender Registry and DNA Bank during a press conference in Vancouver June 1, 2009. |
Delegates to the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abuse conference say Canada has been among the world leaders in championing an evidence-based, balanced treatment of the sexual-abuse problem, though they worry its progressive reputation among treatment professions is becoming “tarnished.”
Countless studies show that therapies including a Canadian-developed “circle of support” to ease offenders back into society will reduce repeat offences, said Dr. James Cantor, a Toronto psychologist who works with abusers. New MRI-imaging research he is pursuing even suggests pedophiles have unique brain abnormalities, pointing to the potential for diagnosing them and preventing abuse before it ever happens.
“The research overwhelmingly supports a health-care approach and a community-safety approach as opposed to a punitive approach,” said Dr. Cantor, with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. “It’s the prevention and public education that seems to have a … less direct but stronger ability to prevent sexual abuse.”
Some supporters of a law-and-order direction, though, say judges swayed by the testimony of such treatment professionals are handing out too many conditional or otherwise lenient sentences, and question the repeat-offending statistics that underpin the whole treatment model.
“The … system we have in Canada, often leaves [accused abusers] feeling that they’ve won, even if they were convicted,” said Roz Prober, whose group Beyond Borders raises awareness about child sexual exploitation. “Some way you have to get a message through to people that what they are doing is entirely wrong and hugely damaging.”
She said her group wholeheartedly supports treatment, coupled with stiff sentences, but complained that the data on repeat offences touted by Canadian professionals as proof their techniques work are often based on criminal-conviction statistics and underestimate the problem. Government “victimization” surveys suggest that much sexual abuse goes unreported or does not lead to charges and convictions, said the Winnipeg-based victim advocate.
Canadians lose confidence in the justice system if the punishment fails to match the crime, said Julie DiMambro, press secretary to Rob Nicholson, the Justice Minister.
“Sexual exploitation of children causes irreparable harm to the youngest and most vulnerable members of our society,” she said in an emailed response to questions. “This means putting the rights of victims before the rights of criminals.”
The more correctional-oriented philosophy is getting a significant prod with the Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act, a government bill that would impose mandatory minimum sentences for several existing offences, as well as creating two new crimes. Judges, for instance, would have to mete out a penalty of at least five years to those found guilty of incest, aggravated sexual assault or sexual assault with a weapon involving a child under 16.
Ironically, Dr. Cantor said, many of the American treatment specialists coming here for the association’s annual meeting would like to see the States move to the less-correctional stance that has been the Canadian tradition in the past.
“For probably the last 15 or 20 years, the system in Canada has been the envy of the rest of the civilized world,” said Dr. Robin Wilson, a prominent Toronto psychologist who relocated to Florida. “[Now] our friends in the U.S. are saying ‘What’s up with Canada? Why are you trying to fix a system that is not broken?’ ”
Lengthy, automatic prison terms for sex offenders only create hardened criminals who are beyond being fixed by treatment, making them more dangerous when they get out, he charged.
Dr. Cantor said the public’s image of sexual offenders has been skewed by television crime shows that tend to depict extremely rare stranger abductions and torture, while the vast majority of abusers are related to or know their victims, often teenagers part of a generally “chaotic” family.
The $85,000 a year spent on each additional sex offender held behind bars could be better invested in treatment and research that will ultimately make society safer, he argued.
A Canadian innovation that Dr. Wilson helped develop — the circles of support and accountability — are proving effective by giving abusers motivation and help to stay on the straight and narrow, the psychologists said. One study compared a group of offenders who took part in a circle with a group who did not, suggesting that the program shrunk re-offence rates by 70%.
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| Deepak Obhrai announcing planned amendments to laws regarding sex offenders at Calgary police headquarters in Calgary in 2009. |
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