Sex crimes that shock most are rare 

Karen Rivedal, Madison.com, 608-252-6106, March 4, 2007

Two horrible crimes against children focused national attention on sex
offenders starting in the mid-1990s.

Jacob Wetterling, 11, was kidnapped while riding his bike with his
brother and a friend in October 1989 near his home in St. Joseph, Minn.
They were stopped by a man with a gun who let the other boys go. Jacob
has never been found.

Megan Kanka, 7, was raped and murdered by a twice- convicted child
molester in her New Jersey neighborhood in July 1994. She was lured into
the offender's house with a promise of seeing his puppy.

In response, a federal act in 1994 required all states to create
registries of sex offenders. The law was amended in 1996 to require
community notification provisions.

But federal statistics show such crimes, especially involving children,
are very rare.

Less than 1 percent of all sex crimes involve murder, and the vast
majority of sexually abused children - 60 percent to 80 percent - are
molested by family members or close friends and acquaintances. Nearly 90
percent of adult victims know their assailants, according to the U.S.
Bureau of Justice Statistics.

So why do such cases tend to drive public perception about sex offenders?

"It's the vulnerability of the victims, the tragic harm done in a few,
unusual cases," said John La Fond, a law professor and author of a 2005
book about sexual violence. "It's the magnitude of the horror vs. the
probability of the risk. For most of us, it will never occur in our
neighborhood."

Another common belief is that sex offenders can't be successfully
treated, a conviction reinforced by studies in the 1980s that found no
difference in re-offense rates between those who received treatment and
those who didn't. 

"Once a sex offender, always a sex offender," said Pam Guilfoil, a
mother of four who objected to the recent placement of two sex offenders
in her Madison neighborhood on the Near West Side. 

But the relapse rate and treatment prospects of sex offenders is a gray
and controversial area.

Most studies suggest that how likely a sex offender is to re-offend
depends to a large extent on the type of crime committed.

A frequently cited, large study by the U.S. and Canadian governments in
1998 found that people who molest children not related to them and
rapists of adults had reconviction rates of 13 percent and 19 percent,
respectively, for sexual offenses after five years. A 1995 study of
incest offenders showed a reconviction rate of about 9 percent after
five years.

Re-offense rates for the general criminal population tend to be much
higher. A 1983 study of more than 100,000 non-sex prisoners released
from 11 states found a 47 percent reconviction rate after three years,
according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

But the damage done by a sexual offense can far outweigh that of many
other kinds of crimes such as burglary or robbery.

And studies of recidivism, or re-offense, rates among sex offenders are
far from unanimous. Results vary - and even contradict one another -
depending on many factors, including how recidivism is defined and
measured, the length of follow-up and the specific offender populations
studied.

For example, a 1998 study of sex offenders showed considerably higher
re-offense rates - 32 percent for molesters of unrelated children and 26
percent for rapists. But that study also followed offenders for 25 years
and used a high-risk sample of 251 men who had been committed as sexual
predators in a Massachusetts facility. 

When it comes to treatment, there has been little rigorous study of what
works and what doesn't, according to the non- profit Center for Sex
Offender Management in Silver Spring, Md., and the few studies that do
exist have shown mixed results.

But newer practices that treat sexual offenses like a chemical addiction
may show the most promise, according to the Association for the
Treatment of Sexual Abusers in Beaverton, Ore.

Offenders are taught to control their behavior through a tailored
approach focused on changing their thoughts, taking responsibility and
avoiding triggers that cause them to re- offend, such as certain people,
places or things.

With such an approach - coupled with the certainty of consequences for
re-offending - it may be possible for motivated individuals to control
their behavior, even if their underlying sexual perversion never goes
away, experts said.

"I've been around sex offenders long enough to know that generally
whatever they are attracted to, that feeling remains there," said
Charles Onley, a research associate with CSOM. "But a lot of them like
their freedom, too. They know acting on their deviant arousal will lead
to prison."