Nick Jimenez

One family has forgiven sex offender

A mother called me last week and said she was deeply worried about Judge J. Manuel Bañales' order instructing sex offenders to put warning signs in their yards. So were her daughters, who were victims of a sex offender, someone they still loved.
   "The offender has been forgiven by myself, the victim, and his family, just as God has asked us to do," she wrote later. "He has spent many years of grueling therapy and prayer, and years of making it up to us. (But) we all now have to relive this nightmare all over again."
   The anguish of this mother is one of the unintended consequences of Bañales' order that was primarily intended to serve as protection to the innocent.
   But, to his surprise, the judge touched off a wide-ranging debate about the purpose of punishment and the level of danger from sex offenders.
   And because the signs serve as a label, Bañales' decision even calls into discussion the nature of sexual deviancy itself: Can such offenders ever be rehabilitated? Is embarrassment or shame a useful tool?
   The research on pedophiles says that rehabilitation prospects are bleak, says Bilaye Benibo, associate professor of sociology at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Benibo is an an expert on deviancy.
   "Once the habit is formed," he said, "it tends not to go away that easily."
   Sexual offenses involving children are reprehensible. As so many have rightly said, pedophilia robs a child of his or her very childhood. But, unlike with other kinds of crime, society hasn't figured out what to do in response.
   However, the assumption behind the signs - that kids who don't know the offender will wander into the offender's clutches - is mostly wrong, Benibo says.
   Most cases involve family
   The overwhelming number of child molestation cases involve adults and kids who already know each other. Many times they involve family members. Signs are useless in such a situation.
   Random incidents as the two recent well-publicized local cases of child molestation involving strangers are rare, Benibo said.
   It was the outrage over Megan Kanka, the 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was killed by a twice-convicted pedophile, that prompted sex offender registries.
   In the limited sense that some offenders are criminals of opportunity, then, the signs do serve as a deterrent.
   If one were to continue building a case for the signs, there is another benefit: to deter potential pedophiles. The signs, Benibo says, would make it clear that this is not just a private matter, that molesting children can result in a very public stain that will not go away quickly.
   But the signs obscure the complexity of the subject. Benibo and the local Child Advocacy Center are working toward funding a study on the victims of child offenders. Because the preponderance of child molesters were victims of pedophiles, the goal of the study is to determine at just what point victims become perpetrators.
   "That is what makes the signs doubly unfair," Benibo says. "The perpetrators are also victims."
   Unintended consequences
   And as in the case of the worried mother and her daughters, there are unintended consequences. Will the warning signs serve as more coercion on victims to keep their experiences hidden; why put Uncle Harry in that position? Or are the signs so cruel a punishment that a perpetrator would go to any lengths to hide his crime, even homicide?
   But the major strike against the signs, Benibo says, is that they "say there is no redemption." No matter how small the chance for rehabilitation, the signs remove even that small opportunity.
   Every person is responsible for his or her own actions. Not even the worst abuse as a child excuses the adult's crime.
   But in assigning responsibility, we must also be prepared to leave the door open to redemption, however unlikely that may appear.
  
  
  

 
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