I came across an article about a man charged with molesting an underage girl. This part really stood out to me–
It sounds as if he was trying to stop, and was seeking professional help to that end. Instead of getting help, he gets a jail sentence that does no good whatsoever (regardless of how you view it), and an astoundingly small fine. It’s the worst of both worlds–no help and quite likely no deterrence, either.
I think that counselors and therapists should be prohibited from reporting such clients, at least in most cases. There might be a few exceptions for unusual cases, but we should be encouraging people with such urges to do whatever they can to avoid acting on them or at least to stop acting on them.
I agree that a person seeking help should not be deterred, but encouraged. I also think that the admission of a terrible crime puts a heavy burden on the therapist, in terms of keeping a lid on it.
So I’ll be over here, on the fence, with this one.
What happens when I take my kid to the psychiatrist because she’s been acting so different for the last year and she reveals to him that a relative/teacher/friend’s parent has been doing something to her? A mandatory reporter takes everything out of the equation. The kid speaks up and the police get a call (or whoever they call). No one has to ‘think about it’ or ‘decide what to do with that information’ or say ‘but Jim is so nice, I just don’t believe it’, I don’t have to ‘ask Jim about it’ or just not go over to Jim’s house with my kid anymore etc etc etc. As soon as the kid speaks up, the wheels are in motion.
I’ve never given the mandatory reporting thing a whole lot of thought, but to prohibit it…I can’t see a single positive in that.
Maybe something should be taken into account when the client is the person you’d be reporting. So the client says “I like do diddle little kids”, instead of running off to the phone, try to help them with their urges (that’s why they came to you). Next week, when they come back, you can continue to work on these urges, but if they say they acted on them again, then you might have to report this. It’s one thing to report an old crime that happened in the past and that you, as a doctor can prevent, but if it’s still ongoing…maybe getting help from jail would be better for the community. I dunno, like I said, mandatory reporting isn’t a system I’ve ever really thought too hard about.
Yes, I assume he’ll get no help in prison because there is very little mental health treatment actually provided in prison. More likely he’d be warehoused with the “special” prisoners for protection from the general population, then released with no treatment and a scarlet letter on him for the rest of his life.
The truth is, we don’t really have a treatment for pedophilia and any with those urges who seeks help risks either loosing their freedom or having it sharply curtailed for life.
There’s a big distinction here between “has impulses” and “has acted on impulses”. If he hasn’t actually molested little kids yet then no, he shouldn’t be imprisoned and the counselor should be helping him resist those urges. If he has committed a crime then he should be tried for that crime, not for crimes he might commit in the future.
The right of a victim to not be molested supersedes his right to psychiatric treatment. He should have gotten help for his pedophilia before he started molesting children, not after. Mandatory reporting only applies when a crime has occurred. *Being *a pedophile is not a crime. Having sex with a child is.
Well, you have to think carefully about exactly what mandatory reporting is to apply to. Are therapists only required to report incidents of abuse which have actually happened, or are they required to report things which suggest that a child may be in danger? Because, if the latter, then obviously people who have struggled with their urges, so far successfully, still cannot seek a therapist’s help. Which strikes me as, on the whole, not a good thing.
When the victim is the client in therapy, then reporting laws make sense. When the client is somebody who is trying to control an urge to do something illegal, then reporting laws are vastly counterproductive.
As for getting help in jail–the case that I linked to is certainly an anomaly in terms of jail sentence, but do you really think that a few months is sufficient for therapy in such cases?
If we take that line of reasoning to the extreme, we could say that EVERY criminal, no matter how minor the crime, should be either jailed for life or else executed, in order to protect their potential victims.
As a therapist, I disagree with your OP most strongly. It is not my job to assist this man to help him get away with his crimes, it is my job to help him to find the integrity to face up to them, and to protect other possible victims. Reporting himself and doing the time would be the best of doing that (Denzel Washington’s character in "Flight’, anyone?) As also noted, we don’t have a reliable tx for pedophiles. This guy got off lightly.
Finally, there is not infrequently a chain of abuse: some guy molests a kid, that kid starts inappropriate sex contact with a peer (or something similar), a reporter becomes aware of the ‘borderline’ behavior between the kids, but if they make the decision not to report we may well miss a chance to trace the problem back to the pedophile. I can’t say for sure, but I’d bet this girl was damaged by the conduct, even if she and her mother cannot identify that right now. I don’t want discretion for reporters, even myself.
As for : “When the client is somebody who is trying to control an urge to do something illegal, then reporting laws are vastly counterproductive.” The issue wasn’t his trying to control his urges, it is the actions he had already committed. Also, not counterproductive because, again, there is no effective treatment for pedophiles. It’s not like pedophiles show up at therapists’ offices all the time wanting help to stop, for a large number of them the behavior is ego-syntonic (see NAMBLA).
Actually, we do have treatments that will significantly reduce likelihood of future crimes. They don’t work for everyone, but a number of states and studies have found recidivism rates for sex offenders dramatically lower following treatment.
Of course, “sex offender” and “pedophile” are not synonymous. For that matter, ‘child molester’ and ‘pedophile’ are not either; not every child molester is primarily or exclusively attracted to kids.
Of course not; in the current climate and with the mandatory reporting laws, any pedophile showing up at a therapist’s office is going to prison, and anybody seeking treatment knows that up-front.
Would you say we have reliable treatments for alcoholism, or schizophrenia, or kleptomania? We have treatments that work for some people, but no treatment works for everybody.
In fact, if your criterion is “works for everyone,” I’m not sure there’s a reliable treatment for any condition in the DSM-5.
Should we also forbid hospitals from reporting gunshot victims to the police ands fouled school nurses be forbidden from reporting injuries which they suspect were caused by child abuse.
What if they deny, or at least refuse to discuss, any previous crimes and ask for help controlling urges that might, or might not have resulted in actual crime? They could then get treatment for those urges and the therapist not only has plausible deniability, they don’t really have evidence of anything. After all, nearly everyone at some point in their life has been tempted to kill someone. Very few actually act on that and actually kill.
How soon is an effective treatment expected? E.g. are there very promising treatments mired up in FDA reviews and other regulatory hurdles and whatnot or is this like the “cure for cancer” thing that’s been inspiring a 30+ year “race for the cure” that is turning out to be a race to nowhere?
How can ordinary people help find a cure for pedophilia?
OK, let’s grant that for sake of argument. And then you’re the therapist, working with the alcoholic, and s/he comes into tx with booze on their breath, and drove to their appointment. Do you let it go because they are “working on it”?
If you are treating Dexter, and he makes friends with your child?
I’ve known a few ex-cons, and I can’t think of any where “doing time” seemed to help them in a long-lasting way. Sure, it kept them off the streets for a while and made it difficult to commit more crimes for a while, but it seems to me that the lasting solutions to crime are education and friendship, stuff that’s easier to find out here. Sort the old “teach a man to fish” argument. Put someone in prison for 3-5, they don’t commit any crimes for the next 3-5 years. Become friends with that person, treat them like a human being, and help them with their troubles, and they will give up crime.