Don't Bar Offenders" Stories of Abuse

By Meg Perkins
The Courier-Mail
November 30, 2012

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/dont-bar-offenders-stories-of-abuse/story-e6frerc6-1226526962103

Source: The Courier-Mail

THE royal commission into child sexual abuse will miss very important evidence if it does not include a mechanism for convicted offenders, especially those in prison, to tell their stories.

Contrary to popular belief, most prisoners do not tell sob stories about being abused in childhood to attract sympathy.

Most keep the secret to themselves and are terrified somebody will find out.

The reason for this is plain and simple. If it becomes known in the prison population that you have been a victim of sexual abuse, you will become prey for sexual predators.

Prisoners are like most people in that they do not understand the dynamics of child sexual abuse.

They tend to blame themselves.

Even if they were five years old at the time, they think they should have fought back, somehow refused, that they should have been smarter or stronger, that they were a wimp, a wuss and that they deserved to be abused then and deserve to be abused now.

Many people who have been abused in childhood develop a post-traumatic stress disorder and use alcohol and other drugs to escape from their overwhelming feelings of anxiety, depression and self-loathing.

The war on drugs has put many abuse survivors behind bars.

One young armed robber told me he believed 90 per cent of prisoners were the victims of pedophiles.

As illicit drug use can lead to stealing, breaking and entering and armed robbery and alcohol abuse can lead to violence, this scenario is quite plausible.

In the 20 years I have spent working with people who have committed offences, I have heard many stories of child sexual abuse. Often it was the first time the person had disclosed the abuse.

I asked direct questions and the initial reaction was often shock, silence or tears.

A man who had murdered his wife in a fit of depression told me his primary school teacher had kept him in after school to abuse him and had threatened to assault him with an electric power tool if he told anyone.

A man who had murdered a stranger while he was drunk told me he had been repeatedly gang-raped in a boys' home.

A violent rapist told me he had been raped by two of his uncles.

A man convicted of a serious violent offence told me about the Catholic priest who had abused groups of children at a Brisbane primary school, including him and his sister.

A man convicted of the rape and murder of a child told me he had been gang-raped in a boys' home at the age of eight.

Another man convicted of rape told me a Salvation Army officer had abused him in a boys' home.

I heard so many of these stories that I began to study the diagnosis and treatment of adults who had been victims of child sexual abuse.

I learned about the dangers of suggesting repressed memories and never became involved in that controversy.

If I was doing a psychological assessment, I asked if the person had ever been sexually abused and watched as they hesitated and then, eventually, began to talk about the abuse.

Some had not had that experience, of course, but it is thought that about 90 per cent of women prisoners have been sexually abused.

One survey by a social worker at Westbrook in the late 1980s suggested 67 per cent of young male prisoners had been sexually abused, too.

So sex offenders must also be allowed to tell their stories.

Some of the most violent and dangerous sex offenders that I have ever met have suffered the most shocking child sexual abuse.

Of course, all victims do not become perpetrators but the research is ongoing and there is a correlation.

Some victims act out their abuse with younger children, creating more victims. This is recognised and accepted with children and adolescent sexual abusers, but adults are expected to know better.

There are major problems with obtaining evidence of child sexual abuse from serving prisoners. They cannot write letters about this subject as the letters would be read by prison officers.

Even if the letters were sealed, the fact that they are writing to the royal commission would be proof of their victim status.

It would certainly put them at risk to be seen to be talking to a representative of the royal commission.

The only way to gather evidence would be to issue a questionnaire to every prisoner, to allow him or her to seal the envelope after completing it and to place it in a sealed box under supervision of prison staff.

If every single prisoner in Australia filled in such a questionnaire, no one could be victimised.

It must be done and this way or we will never know the true prevalence of child sexual abuse in our society or the true story of its terrible effect on the lives of so many.

Meg Perkins is a registered psychologist.