Moore Center Sex Abuse Symposium: Part Five: "Untouchable" Panel Discussion and Founder Comments

In case you missed the other parts for this series, please see part one, two, three, or four.

As a refresher...

So, What Is This Symposium?

The Moore Center Symposium is a "meeting of the minds" on the prevention of child sexual abuse. It  offers professionals (and advocates) an opportunity to learn more about the issue of child sexual abuse and how it can be prevented. The Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse is a subset of Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health, which is a major educational institution in Maryland that is well-known for its work in the public health sector (as its name should indicate). The Moore Center is currently being directed by Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau, who used to be the president of The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA), and is a researcher that studies a myriad of topics within the realm of sexual abuse prevention. I am watching these admittedly dry and boring speeches to pull the essential parts out and communicate them to you. If you want to view them yourself, by all means, just be forewarned that they are dry and can be triggering. 

Beginning Introductions

The symposium starts with an introduction by Johns Hopkins' President, Ronald Daniels, regarding some of the reasons for the symposium and the keynote speaker at the symposium, Patrick McCarthy, who is the president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, an organization that focuses on improving the lives of children in a variety of ways.  Other speakers at the symposium were Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau, Dr. Bruce Taylor (an expert in criminology), and Jill Levenson (expert in sociology and social work), followed by a showing of the film Untouchable, which I have talked about on this blog before. Following the film, there is a panel discussion about the film and closing remarks by Stephen and Julia Moore, the founding donors of the Moore Center.

Untouchable Panel Discussion (Dr. Fred Berlin, Dr. Ryan Shields, Dr. Jill Levenson, Director David Feige)

The first few minutes of the video are introductions of the moderator, Fred Berlin, and the panelists. In short, David Feige (pronounced FAI-GUH) being the exception, all involved are extremely smart and extremely relied on for their expertise in this area, both in the media, and with numerous other organizations, including the White House.

Note: If you have not yet seen Untouchable, this may not make much sense. So go see it! Find a non-profit that is hosting it, see it at a film festival, or host a screening. You can also request a personal screening at that link as well.

Questions from Moderator:

1. Moderator Comment: Invitation to make whatever comments they wish/opening comments
1. Dr. Shields (2nd time seeing film): No lack of strong opinions, varying perspectives harnessing energy to react to sexual abuse... what if we harnessed the energy seen in the film and directed it towards prevention? Still in a reactive frame, however.
2. Dr. Levenson (6th time seeing film): Film does not hit you over the head, it lets you come to your own conclusions. Powerful to see screening with homeless registrants. 
3. Director Feige : Deeply saddened by irrelevance of limitations of film ("just a movie") where people are hungry and need basic things like a place to pee, place to shower, etc. Need to change policy in a way that is evidence-based and responsive to reality... and find port-a-potties for homeless sex offenders. Film was designed to start a conversation and stay balanced so that the film can appeal to everyone: Victims, registrants, families of registrants, policymakers, etc. Value in creating solutions to the problem. 
2. Moderator comment: Not just a movie, about life, perceptions, caring about human beings we need to know about, disagrees with Director Feige in saying it was just a movie.
1. Director Feige: Most audiences do not turn on Ron Book until much later in the film, cites screening at MSPIFF. People are far more empathetic towards Ron and Lauren Book until much deeper in the film. 
2. Dr. Levenson: Film forces us to look at big picture and ripple effects, you cannot solve problem of sex crimes by creating more trauma on sex offenders and family/friends of sex offenders. Film drills home that having a home is fundamental, and not having one impacts the stability of every other area of life. 
3. Dr. Shields: Imagine a world where registration policies were effective and inexpensive... the fatal flaw is that we are waiting for harm to occur and then react to it. Unacceptable policy position, because it does not effectively reduce child sexual abuse. Lots of energy towards ineffective policy.
3. Moderator Question: How do we go beyond preaching to the choir? Challenge of multiple perceptions/perspectives, how do we reach people at a personal level? How do we get public perceptions to change?
1. Director Feige: Central conundrum, taking on THE least popular, THE most difficult, THE most marginalized subject... and go beyond just looking at a young female sex offender in an unfortunate situation. People empathize with faces, stories, so storytelling is important. Hoping that film is a way to open people up and wrestle with the subject in a way that is ultimately grounded in science and fact. Open invitation to show the film to legislators, invitation to non-profits for screenings (has real human being whose only job is to set up non-profit screenings). Tells story of how Ron Book hated the comic at the initial screening, Ron Book says that the comic makes fun of the issue.
4. Moderator Question: Are there things you wish you could have put in the film that you struggled with including/not including in the film? Are there things that the panel would have wanted to see in the film?
1. Director Feige: Civil commitment, overview of what civil commitment of sex offenders and the case in Minnesota. Also penile plethysmograph and overview a few deleted scenes and lots of compelling stories from other people. Lots of issues, lots of characters that were all compelling, but he had to pick an issue to keep the film within reason.
2. Dr. Levenson: She states she is sure she will think of them when she is driving home.
3. Dr. Shields: When the director asks of Ron Book, "Which of these laws would have protected your daughter?" Was there additional pushback?
4. Director Feige: Ron likes to talk, very successful at convincing people of his point of view, very smart, very cagey. He liked the question. Ron Book stated multiple times an intent to murder Waldina, the abuser of Lauren Book. 
5. Dr. Levenson: Lots of guilt and pain for Ron Book, and the only way to deal with that is by doing what she is doing with legislation. 
6. Director Feige: Talked about trying for two years to get Patty Wetterling to interview for the film, constantly refused... film was slated for the Tribeca Film Festival, and the producer asked director Feige to try again, calls, hands Mr. Feige the phone... and she said yes. Including Patty Wetterling adds a great aspect to the film, captures Ron Book being trapped in his anger and drive to push changes much better.
5. Question from audience: Please share thoughts on 1) if a child molester lived next door to you, and 2) if your child got molested and the offender got to live and work near children?
1. Director Feige: You can have an emotional reaction, but that is separate from creating policy. We do not just let one lone individual express their anger in policy. Knowing what he knows now, he would probably not be angry, but it is crucial to understand that our society needs to aspire to be greater than its base instincts to do better collectively than we do as individuals. Anyone would be angry enough to kill the abuser. Personally, knowing what he knows now, director Feige would not be worried, but without that knowledge there is still the distinction between policy reaction and personal reaction. 
2. Moderator comment: False question, there are already those who have molested living in our communities and of course everyone wants to protect children. The issue is how to make that protection happen.
3. Dr. Levenson: People have to live somewhere and those with prior sex crimes are already living around us. Her daughter was victimized as a young adult, and everyone has faced that to some degree. Children just want the abuse to stop, and to feel safe and normal. Adults who are victimized want an acknowledgment of accountability and harmfulness. Trying to view things with compassion and empathy can help figure out healing without vengeance.
6. Moderator comment: Do we as adults sometimes not allow children to really express what they're actually feeling when they are abused?
1. Director Feige: Super-draconian laws inhibit reporting because there is no opportunity to solve issue of an abuser without totally breaking up the family unity and community.
2. Dr. Levenson: The pain and damage done to children and families by policies like the requirement of parents to give up their parental rights if they are convicted of a sex offense adds a different aspect/dimension to reporting. 
7. Moderator comment: Comment about prevention, people are coming forward out of worry that they or a loved one is accessing sexual abuse imagery, but there are new mandatory reporting laws to require these people to be reported to police, and these mandatory reporting laws can depress reporting.
1. Dr. Shields: Help Wanted project in line with the idea of when we provide help: When someone has been hurt, or before that point? We need to confront this question, and the Help Wanted project is aimed at getting help to adolescents with pedophilia before anything happens. 
2. Dr. Levenson: New mandatory reporting laws regarding sexual abuse imagery, but these laws damage the therapeutic relationship and hurts a caregiver's ability to provide confidentiality and trust in their office. Another area is helping counselors respond to those with sex abuse imagery concerns help these clients effectively without freaking out, without overreacting, and without shaming... that being able to help these people is what prevention is about.
8. Audience question: What can everyday people do to try to do more about prevention? 
1. Dr. Levenson: Take any opportunity you can to be a role model in the life of a child, whenever we come across children, like a child being berated by a parent at the store, to treat them with kindness so that they feel special, important, and worthy so they feel adults can be trusted. Every instance helps the child understand the world, which builds empathy and helps them avoid becoming people who harm others. 
2. Director Feige: Be a champion of truth. Be courageous in dispelling myths that are so pervasive and commonplace. Be an advocate for truth, be an advocate for science, and be an advocate for challenging myths.

Founder Comments

Those interested in hearing the Moore couple talk about their story, and the founding of the Moore Center, should absolutely watch this couple talk for themselves. It is 17 minutes, and is well worth your time. I am not going to butcher their presentation by summarizing it.

Filling In The Gaps Of "Untouchable"

Say What?

In case you have not yet heard, the documentary Untouchable is screening with the MSP International Film Festival. Last night's showing was sold out, and audience members asked a number of great questions of the panel composed of director David Feige, child advocate Patty Wetterling, and local legal powerhouse Eric Janus. However, the film does not cover the entire issue- only a few small facets of it, like sex offender registration, sex offender notification, and residency restrictions.

And just how do you cover a nationwide hodgepodge of laws that were originally designed to protect children, and have since become a quagmire of punitive nonsense? The laws that apply in one state are different in another, civil commitment is left untouched, and only the briefest mention of International Megan's Law is made. In the interest of brevity, and in sparking a conversation about this topic nationwide, the director chose to limit the scope of the documentary (and its length, since we have "shorter and shorter attention spans" these days).

Untouchable In A Nutshell

If you have not yet seen the film (and you should, whether you are already allied in the fight to protect children or not, because you might get to meet Patty Wetterling as I did last night), let me summarize it (spoiler alert!).  Bearing in mind that I am abbreviating a 104-minute movie into two paragraphs, the movie starts out discussing the victimization of Lauren Book, daughter of Ron Book, at the hands of their nanny Waldina. Following this revelation, Ron Book pursues and passes many different laws that have wide-ranging and unpredictable effects on sex offenders. While Lauren Book champions Lauren's Kids, sex offenders are getting more and more fed up with how the laws are impacting them and their families.

The movie is peppered with facts and studies, and you learn (as you have seen many times on this blog) that recidivism is very, very low. You also learn what the basis is for many of these laws in terms of facts: Nothing. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that sex offender registration and other laws are constitutional because the recidivism rate for sex offenders is "frightening and high", which as it turns out comes from a single unsupported line in a 1986 Psychology Today article from someone with no research background. While it may be difficult to feel bad for sex offenders, the movie reveals that many of the laws that were originally intended to keep children safe have instead become a quagmire of draconian and punitive nonsense that has little to no impact on new sex crime.

More Information About Civil Rights, Laws, And Civil Commitment

By far the best place to find more information about sex offender laws, civil commitment, and current court cases is the National Association for Rational Sex Offense Laws. If you want to lose yourself in finding out more information, or wish to advocate against the laws that are failing to protect our children, you can find a ton of great information at NARSOL.

There is also, as was mentioned in the film, Women Against Registry. They cover the issue of how these laws impact the relatives of sex offenders. They are very similar to NARSOL in many respects, but they focus on the damage that sex offender laws have caused to completely innocent people: The mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, and families of sex offenders.

Questions Asked And Answered

The questions asked by the audience were appropriately varied on a range of topics:

• How many children are harmed by family vs friends vs strangers? What are the proportions?
• Patty Wetterling and Eric Janus pointed out that strangers account for less than 10% of cases, Patty mentioned that 2% of non-family child abductions are perpetrated by strangers. Both stated that stranger danger is not working.
• What is the realistic recidivism rate for sex offenders with underreporting in mind? 
• Eric Janus pointed out that recidivism is a very small part of violent crimes and most violent crimes are committed by first-time offenders, not those with prior records. Patty Wetterling pointed out that what we are doing in looking at recidivism is not working, and Eric Janus closed by saying that underreporting would likely inflate recidivism rates by 25-30%. Many of the recidivism rates mentioned in the movie were 2-4%.
• Are there any states on a remarkably different path from the national norm in punishing sex offenders?
• Short answer: No, most states are still focusing on punishment.
• David Feige pointed out that each state handles the issue differently, and that each state carries over whatever restrictions were more punitive so that someone could not move to a different state to ease the restrictions placed on them. Both Eric Janus and David Feige pointed out that there is a nationwide "hodgepodge of laws and restrictions," and that mandatory reporting does not help because people are afraid of being turned into the police. 
• David Feige mentioned Prevention Project Dunkelfeld in Germany, which promises confidential help without reporting to the police, and that the project is seeing great success. 
• How many offenders are victims of child sexual abuse? (asked by a psychologist)
• Eric Janus said not the majority and that the studies vary, and Patty Wetterling said that the thought of being considered an offender in the making keeps male victims of child sexual abuse from disclosing their abuse. They speculated on the problems that mandatory reporting causes, and that the fear of being considered a risk to children scares many victims, as was hinted at in the film.
• How did Patty Wetterling's advocacy evolve to be defensive of sex offenders?
• Over time, and by meeting sex offenders and seeing people in varying situations that were not the original intent of the laws she helped create. She used the word "hijacked" as she did in the movie to refer to how the registry has evolved to become punitive. She emphasized that the point was to create an investigative tool for law enforcement, not a public list. 
• How do you short circuit the focus of being tough and punitive on crime?
• David Feige suggested that laws be evidence and fact based, focusing on the fact that risk is a part of life. He admitted that nuanced arguments are harder to make than simple ones, because people buy the simple arguments more readily. 
• Eric Janus suggested storytelling and humanizing people to get people to empathize, while changing the question to "How can we prevent this from happening?"
• Patty Wetterling suggested early interventions like comprehensive sexual education and treatment over punishment, and by starting the focus on one demographic, like juvenile sex offenders, so that people can see the complexity of one single group of sex offenders. 
• Did the evolution of Lauren Book's views on the issue happen during the movie? Did Ron and Lauren Book see the film, and what did they think?
• To the first question, no. To the second, yes, they saw the movie and were very enthusiastic, save for the comedian at the beginning of the film. David Feige pointed out that they were less enthusiastic after seeing the reaction of the screenings since its release. 
• How did all sex offenders get thrown into one pot?
• David Feige very quickly said something to the effect of "bad politicians and badly written laws", and Patty Wetterling pointed to the media, which reports about "sex offenders" rather than differentiating the nuanced information that is valuable.
• Does Ron Book regret his threatening to kill Waldina?
• No, he does not, though David Feige speculated that he may rethink his threat to kill Waldina when she gets out of prison in 2025. 

Two Questions Left Partially Answered

One of the answers to the question about the proportion of abusers (first bullet point above) indicated that stranger sexual abuse is very, very rare. Patty cited the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in saying that only 2% of non-family abductions are perpetrated by strangers, but admitted she did not know that specific statistic. That answer is incomplete. The exact figure is that around 4-5% of child sex abuse cases are perpetrated by strangers, while around 5% remains unknown, and the remaining 90% breaks down into 30% family, 60% friends of the family. The overarching point that was made in the film, which you have heard me mention time and time again, is that abuse is not perpetrated by monsters, but by people we know, trust, and care about.

The answer to the question about how many offenders are victims was: It depends. We have no idea what proportion of victims go on to become abusers (certainly a very small minority at most), but we do know from these studies what percentage of abusers have been victims. Eric Janus said a variety of studies have mixed results. While that is true, there are two sets of studies that have been done: Studies that use polygraph, and studies that do not.  Studies that use polygraph generally find between 30-40% of abusers have been victimized, and studies that do not use polygraph generally find between 50-60% of abusers have been victimized.

How You Can Get Involved

One of the points David Feige made was that there is little information available from him and the film's website on how to get involved. His purpose in making the film was more to start the conversation around this hard and complex topic. He and the film make the case that sex offenders are not being treated fairly by these laws.

I take a different approach, and I can tell you why you need to get involved: The longer these laws are in effect, the more victims we have. We must form fact-based policies so that we can stop sexual violence before it happens. How do you get involved in making that happen?

I propose three areas you can get involved:

1. Contact legislators and city leaders: Email with a phone call to follow-up works well, mailing, emailing, and calling works very, very well. Be respectful.
2. Become an advocate: Learn the facts by heart, and speak up whenever you get the chance. Contact journalists and reporters, write editorials, comment online, etc. 
3. Donate money: No one wants to fund research into helping pedophiles (those with an attraction to children, not those who have already hurt them) or helping sex offenders, but that research is badly needed. 

WAR and NARSOL both have opportunities for you to get involved, and there are many victim advocacy groups that take a fact-based primary prevention approach. The biggest thing you can do is be a voice, and tell people what you think.