Predicting Recidivism In Violent Sex Offenders
By Brent Turvey
Note: Brent E. Turvey, MS is a full partner of Knowledge
Solutions, LLC.
He can be reached for comment or consultation by contacting:
Knowledge Solutions; 61535 S Hwy 97, #9-148; Bend, OR 97702
Phone 541-318-8293; Email: bturvey@corpus-delicti.com
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INTRODUCTION
When a violent sex offender has been tried and convicted of
his crime(s), he may be proffered to a mental health facility
of some variable nature for assessment and treatment. The
mission statements and treatment goals of North American
facilities vary widely. However, due to the fact that
bed-space and funds are finite, all such institutions are
compelled to make reviews and evaluations of patients for
release back into society. All institutions treating violent
sex offenders will eventually release a percentage of their
sex offender population. Therefore all such institutions
invariably tender themselves to the considerations of sex
offender dangerousness. Definitions vary widely. The operant
definition of dangerousness in this work will be: the
likelihood that the sex offender will recidivate.
When a deciding body releases a convicted violent sex offender
from a mental health institute back into society, it has
potentially put the wolf back into the sheep pen. The reality
is that the sex offender could do it again, possibly
escalating. That is precisely why good tools for dangerousness
assessment are necessary.
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Case Example:
By the time Jerry Brudos was sixteen, in 1955, his fantasies
had already developed into strong and complex motivations for
his behavior. He had an extensive collection of lingerie that
he had stolen from the girls in his neighborhood. He
masturbated frequently, using the stolen garments to fuel and
develop his fantasies.
Eventually Jerry asked one of the neighbor girls whom he had
stolen lingerie from to come over to his home on a night that
he knew the house would be empty. She was eighteen years old.
He had promised to give her private belongings back. She was
met in his house by a masked individual with a knife who
forced her into Jerry's bedroom. He then forced her to remove
her clothing and pose while he took photographs. Later, her
statement to the police was specific in mentioning that she
believed the masked individual was actually Jerry Brudos.
When the masked individual left, she put her clothes back on.
As she was leaving, Jerry appeared and claimed he had been in
the barn and that someone had locked him in. She left quickly,
quite terrified, she later told the police.
Jerry developed the pictures he had taken of her and kept
them.
In 1956, Jerry got a seventeen year-old girl into his car,
offering her a short ride. He drove her to a secluded,
abandoned farmhouse. He dragged her screaming from the car and
then beat her face and breasts. He then ordered her to removed
her clothing. A couple from a nearby farm happened by and
interrupted the incident.
Jerry was turned over to the State Police, who proceeded with
an investigation. A search was made of his room and several
years worth of photographs of frightened young girls and
stolen women's lingerie were discovered. Jerry maintained that
none of this material belonged to him.
In April of 1956, Jerry Brudos was committed to the Oregon
State Hospital in Salem. On April 16th, one Psychiatrist wrote
of Jerry "There is no evidence of suicide, homicide, or
destructive urges,". Jerry Brudos was released before the end
of the year. His official diagnosis had been "Adjustment
Reaction of Adolescence with sexual deviation, fetishism."
Jerry Brudos would later abduct, pose, mutilate, kill, then
rape Linda Slawson, Jan Whitney, Karen Sprinker and Linda
Salee before his second capture and incarceration. All of the
deaths involved extreme acts of sexual sadism. Despite his
confessions and subsequent denials, the events are recorded in
detail by Jerry's own camera, as he photographed his victims
moment by moment. He kept those photos hidden in a secret
compartment in his workbench at home, along with nude photos
of his wife. Some of the photos include Jerry himself,
interacting with the victims(Ressler[14]).
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The question begged by the Brudos case is very basic: Could
Jerry Brudos's later crimes have been predicted by any known
factors and then subsequently any recidivism prevented by
continued incarceration?
The Goal
The objective of this work is to present the best tools and
research available for predicting sex offender dangerousness.
The goal behind these tools is to provide for prediction and
prevention of sex offender recidivism; to effectively screen
any offenders who are likely to recidivate from re-entering
society. This would result in a reduction of those sex crimes
specifically targeted by the dangerousness assessment
techniques to be mentioned.
The techniques for predicting future dangerousness to be
suggested in this paper are inappropriate age selection of
victim by the offender, and offender pattern analysis. Hence,
this paper will review the findings of Dr.Vernon Quinsey of
Queens University, and the findings of the National Center for
the Analysis of Violent Crime.
The Victims
Recent statistics generated by the BJS point to an alarming
shift in victim population of choice in reported rapes since
1987. For the years 1973 through 1987, the average number of
all rapes to females reported annually to the police in the
U.S. was 154,000, with a 53% estimated reporting
rate(Harlow[6]).
This data shows 54,400 rapes to females within the 12-19 year
old range, representing roughly 35% of the total number of
reported rape victims.
During 1992, only 109,000 rapes to females were reported to
law enforcement agencies in the U.S. That's well below the
154,000 average rapes of females per year for the sample in
Table 1. However, one half of the females raped in 1992 were
juveniles under the age of eighteen years old(Half of
Women...[4]). Furthermore, 17,000(16%) of the females raped in
1992 were under the age of twelve[4]. The average age of
female victims of rape continues to fall.
This data represents a fundamental shift in the way law
enforcement and mental health must view the population female
rape victims. Subsequently, it must also represent a
fundamental shift in the way law enforcement and mental health
view sex offenders. The known female rape victim of choice,
after a fashion, is white more than 50% of the time, and she
is a juvenile more than 50% of the time[4].
While overall rape is down over the past ten years, the number
of rapes to girls under the age of eighteen years old has
almost doubled. That increase is significant to the relevance
of the first method proposed for the prediction of
dangerousness, as will be discussed in METHOD #1.
METHOD #1
Inappropriate Age Selection
Dr. Vernon Quinsey has been doing clinical research on sex
offender dangerousness for the past decade and a half. He
currently holds the Psychology Chair at Queen's University in
Kingston, Ontario. He does most of his research sampling out
of the sex offender population from the Penetanguishene Mental
Health Centre, a maximum security psychiatric hospital right
across the street from the University.
One of his findings regarding dangerousness, in 1986,
concerned a group of 360 such offenders. That study showed a
lack of relation between clinical diagnosis of dangerousness
and actual recidivism(Quinsey[13]). One factor he pointed to
was the general disagreement between psychiatrists as to a
method for predicting dangerousness.
Another factor Dr. Quinsey pointed to was objectivity. He
published a quality control study in December of 1986 which
data showed that, "Perceptions of treatability, however, may
be more like moral judgments or judgments of likeability than
they appear to be. If perceptions of treatability are moral
judgments, then the negative correlation of dangerousness and
treatability makes sense,"(Quinsey[10]).
In 1990, Quinsey published another study, providing some basic
points of interest for those interested in assessing
dangerousness. He collected recidivism and readmission data on
an average of 46 month follow-up periods on 54 rapists. Sexual
recidivism and violent recidivism were well predicted by
phallometrically measured sexual interest in nonsexual
violence and degree of psychopathy (Quinsey[11], Hare[5]).
Using the same method to gauge the range of the offenders'
sexual preferences (measurement of penile tumescence before,
during, and after audio descriptions of an array of sexual
encounters, with a baseline tumescence recovered between each
description), Quinsey published an earlier study with
associated results. This time with a sample of child
molesters, he demonstrated that "...sex with children was the
most highly related to victim damage...compared to others,
subjects who had injured their victims engaged in violence or
sadism during the rape, showed little sexual interest in
adults and a lot of interest in coercive sex with
children"(Quinsey[9]).
It is possible to list dozens more such published studies
conducted by Dr. Quinsey and his associates, that indicate the
following are excellent phallometric predictors of recidivism:
1) The preference for violence or sadism during rape
2) Degree of Psychopathy of an offender[5]
3) The inappropriate sexual age preferences as measured
phallometrically
In 1991, Dr. Quinsey published a study which data supported,
vehemently, a specific predicting element of a sample of child
molesters (Quinsey[12]). The recidivism of 136 extrafamilial
child molesters was determined on an average of a 6.3 year
follow-up. 43% of those in the study committed a new violent
or sexual offense. 58% were arrested for an offense of some
kind or were returned to the institution. Inappropriate sexual
age preferences as measured phallometrically were related to
new convictions for sexual offenses. Inappropriate age choice
is operationally defined by Quinsey [12] as either a juvenile
the age of 15 or under, or as a juvenile at least 5 years
younger than the offender. Also of note is the result that
behavioral treatment was shown to have no effect on
recidivism. Patient self reports were not related to
recidivism at all.
So Vernon Quinsey's contribution to dangerousness in the last
15 or twenty years has been supportive of these results,
consistently:
Pyschopathy is positively correlated to recidivism
Violence/sadism are positively correlated with recidivism
Inappropriate age choice of victim is a consistent predictor
of recidivism
Patient self reports of sexual preferences have no bearing on
recidivism
Psychiatrists tend not to be very objective about
dangerousness assessment
The tools provided for by Vern Quinsey don't require a lot of
guesswork. They are all excellent predictors with good data to
back them up. They provide a solid foundation for any
multivariate approach to dangerousness assessment.
The most objective assessment tool is of course the offenders
inappropriate age choice of the victim. The juvenile
population of female victims of rape accounts for more than
half of all reported rapes. The relevancy of the victim age
indicator of dangerousness for extrafamilial child molesters,
in light of the growing number of victims in that age range,
should not be ignored. Simply put, Quinsey provides a tool
that could have applications to the offenders who are
responsible for 50% or better of the female victim population.
That is seriously significant.
A problem with this methodology is pointed out by Dr. William
Marshall who shows clearly that sexual arousal, i.e., erectile
responses, is not always a functional part of sexual offenses
committed against women(Marshall[8]). He makes an extremely
valid point. Sexual assaults take many forms. The lack of an
erect penis on the part of a male offender is no true sign of
a lack of male sexual arousal during such an incident. Nor
does such an assault have to be the product of arousal at all.
That's why you could never rely on just one indicator when
assessing dangerousness.
Quinsey has given us three things to look at. Psychopathy, for
which there is a checklist designed very carefully and
thoughtfully by Dr. Robert Hare[5]. A preference of the sex
offender for sadism and violence, which can both be estimated
by victim damage and measured in phallometric studies. Lastly,
inappropriate age choice, which has been measured by
phallometric studies. Each by itself makes a fairly convincing
argument for predicting recidivism. Together they are terribly
convincing.
METHOD #2
Offender Type
This model of thinking is not biological. It rates the
offender's behavior from the victim's point of view and from
the offenders point of view. On the subject of recidivism,
Robert Ressler puts it very well indeed when he states, "I
prefer to reason from the facts...in which a man whose violent
fantasies had been developing since early childhood eventually
realized those fantasies..."(Ressler[14]). There is a pattern
to the violent sex offender's crime that makes it likely he
will offend again. The first part is the fantasy, which
develops and grows within the offender over time. The second
part is an increase in violence or sadism, which agrees with
Quinsey. The overall pattern is one of tandem fantasy/behavior
escalation.
Groth[3] defines sadism as a single psychological experience
that fuses sexuality and aggression. Violence is damage done
to the victim without sexuality in the mind of the offender.
So sadism is done for the pleasure of the offender; to feel
sexual pleasure from knowing the pain he is giving the victim.
Violence is just meant to hurt the victim, with the offender
no feeling any specific sexual pleasure from it.
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Case Example:
Let's think about Jerry Brudos when he was 16: He'd been
collecting women's panties and shoes and underthings from a
very early age. He had an enormous collection; looked through
it all the time, felt the fabric on his arms and face.
Smelling those private things all the time. Putting them on.
Touching them to himself. Masturbating chronically.
Then the rush of going out at night and sneaking into
neighbor's houses. Into rooms of girls he watched during the
day. Older girls with developing bodies. Seeing them around
town. Imagining what they wore underneath their dresses and
skirts. Feeling powerful once he had their panties and their
bras and shoes. Seeing them in the neighborhood later. Knowing
he had their private things, with their private smells still
on them. He had them. He knew the secret of the underthings
against their skin, and against his own.
After a while, Jerry's fantasy gets more involved. He wants a
participant. He wants to know up close the secret that the
panties and the bras hide. He wants to see those private
places that make those private scents that he has held for so
long. So Jerry plans very carefully: invite an older girl
over, one whose items he'd stolen. Promise to give her things
back. Make sure it's an evening when the house will be empty.
No interruptions. Get a mask, a knife, and a camera. The
camera is the only way to preserve what he will see, so that
he can see it again and again, whenever he wants. And she
comes over, and he takes out the knife, and she does whatever
he wants in his room. The knife keeps him in control. And
she's afraid and he is very excited. And he burns a roll of
film. When she's gone, he doesn't care. He's gotten the
pictures; a frightened, naked girl. She is crying and begging
to be let go. And only he can do that because he has the
knife. He develops the pictures himself and keeps them with
the lingerie, masturbating often, fantasizing about events
over and over again. And he gets more victims, and takes more
photos. It felt so good to have that control, and to keep
reliving it.
But it doesn't last long enough. So his fantasy develops to
make it last longer, with more interaction with the victim.
Not just pictures. Eight months later he gets a girl into the
car with him, but he doesn't have his knife. He drives her
someplace secluded and uses his hands, beating her to make her
feel his control. Later, after his release, his fantasy would
escalate further. His behavior would come to include a pistol,
pre-mortem bondage, and the forced posing of victims in
lingerie he had stolen from other women, often after or during
the moment of death.
Of note is the fact that Jerry Brudos strangled his victims.
He did not kill them with the knife or the gun. Those props
were just to gain and keep control. They would have made his
victims too messy for potential lingerie photographs later,
ruining the fantasy.
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Jerry Brudos's clear escalation of fantasy and behavior, which
included sadism, was a prime indicator of dangerousness. His
fantasy was a long time in the brewing. His behavior was
deliberate, fueled by the fantasy. He liked what the fantasy
made him feel, and he wanted to feel more.
As Ressler points out[14], this kind of pattern is indicative
of someone who is going to do it again when they are released.
The sexual sadist is one who has established an enduring
pattern of sexual arousal in response to sadistic imagery
(Ressler[15]). And sadism is an inextricable part of the
anger-excitation rapist classification. Quinsey would agree,
saying of an offender with sadistic fantasies that behavioral
treatment does not seem to affect recidivism[12].
According to the rapists classification scheme, designed by
the National Center for the Analysis of Violent
Crime(Hazelwood[7]), from the work done by Groth[3], and more
thoroughly published in The Crime Classification
Manual(Ressler et al[15]), there is one general type of rapist
that will be more likely to repeat their crimes after release
and is generally resistant to treatment. This is the
anger-excitation rapist.
The classification of an anger-excitation rapist in this
scheme involves both offender data and victim data. As a note,
Hazelwood reports a more accurate classification rate from the
victim's report of the rape(mid 90%)[7]. Essentially it
involves extensive interviews with both offender and victim,
and a significant time investment by the attending
psychiatrist. Below are the things that the psychiatrist
should be look for to discern an anger excitation rapist.
The likely profile of the anger-excitation rapist [15].
Uses a con to gain victim confidence
Sexually stimulated by victim's responses to the infliction of
physical and emotional pain.
Seeks total fear and submission from victim
Well planned, executed methodically
Rehearsed
Offender brings his own weapons, bindings, props
Offender is sexually and verbally selfish
Offense lasts for an extended period of time
Sadism may be muted with little physical injury to victim, but
may include eroticized aggression, often focused on genital
areas, as:
sexual bondage
biting
likely record the event
The victim is susceptible to a con
The victim is almost always a stranger
These are the sex offenders who are most likely to do it
again. They are offenders who can sustain violence and sexual
arousal in tandem. They have an above average intelligence,
they have a desire to cause the victim pain for their own
sexual pleasure, they have a rich, deeply developed fantasy
life[15], and they are most often resistant to treatment of
any kind[12]. When they are released from their perspective
institutions, as was Jerry Brudos at age 17, they are the most
likely to do it again. By applying this classification to such
individuals, it is possible to screen them from re-entry into
society. The subsequent reduction of recidivism would
represent a significant decrease in those kinds of crimes.
SELF REPORTING v. HISTORY
Self reporting tends to be a heavily relied upon staple for
most psychiatrists when assessing offender progress. This
method assumes that the offender wants to get well. That is
rarely the case with a violent sex offender.
As Quinsey has already demonstrated, Dangerousness often
becomes a likeability test for the offender. A moral judgment
rather than an empirical one made by the psychiatrist. This is
not a problem for the violent sex offender. He is a master of
impression management [2], [5]. He knows just what to say to
appear healthy and likable. "Virtuelessness paints a more
convincing picture of virtue than virtue can of itself,"[5].
The most sadistic and prolific violent serial sex offenders
fool their respective psychiatrists quite easily. Many such
offenders have been under the care psychiatrists, who
coincidentally believed them to be making excellent progress,
and all the while they killing and raping human beings[2].
Well-known examples of this eventuality include Arthur
Shawcross, Monte Rissel, and Edmund Kemper.
An extreme example of this is an instance related by S.A. John
Douglas of the NCAVC[5]. In his most recent work, S.A. Douglas
tells of an inmate named Thomas Vanda in Joliet Penitentiary
who was convicted then incarcerated for the homicide of a
young lady. S.A. Douglas approached the prison psychiatrist
about Mr. Vanda, who stated that Mr.Vanda was responding very
nicely to medication and treatment. Bible study was mentioned
as having a positive effect on Vanda. The prison psychiatrist
also stated with affirmity that Vanda was an excellent
candidate for parole if his progress continued.
As it turned out, the prison psychiatrist made it policy not
to learn the details of offenses committed by particular
inmates. It is his feeling that such details unfairly
influence his judgment against his clients, in this case,
Mr.Vanda. But S.A. Douglas was not dissuaded and proceeded to
recount the details of Mr. Vanda's crime.
Thomas Vanda had joined a church group. After everyone had
gone home, he propositioned the young lady who had hosted the
meeting. The young lady turned him down and Mr. Vanda became
violent. He got a knife from her kitchen, and proceeded to
inflict multiple sharp force injuries to her arms, hands,
chest, and abdomen. Her wounds were fatal. As she was on the
floor, hemorrhaging, Mr. Vanda inserted his penis into an open
wound in her abdomen and masturbated until he ejaculated into
that wound.
The psychiatrist became very upset at S.A. Douglas, and asked
him to leave.
The arousal associated directly with the element violent
sadism is key to the pattern of the recidivent violent sex
offender. Mr. Vanda's behavior at that crime scene suggests
that he will re-offend if released. Furthermore, his continued
interest in bible study suggests a refinement of his previous
con.
The violent sex offender is a manipulator. He uses
self-reporting to his advantage. He knows how to get people to
like him. He is a model inmate. He is a model patient. His
specialty is impression management[5]; getting you to buy into
his con. His words, therefore, cannot be believed. Self
reporting is unreliable.
Only offender behavior can be assessed with any near sense of
objectivity. The lesson from the Vanda case, and others much
like it, is clear; without knowing the offender's history, and
his previous patterns of behavior, current behavior can not
accurately be assessed for progress in a treatment program of
any kind.
CONCLUSIONS
The NCAVC and Dr.Vernon Quinsey have each provided the mental
health community with some very timely and useful tools and
guidelines for the prediction of violent sex offender
dangerousness. Their research is sound and ongoing.
Dr. Quinsey's biological method of phallometric measurements
is, as mentioned, not to be used without other criteria, and
is specific only to sex offenders from a maximum security
psychiatric facility. The NCAVC's classification method is
more organic, based on a broader range of reported personality
and behavioral markers. A combination of the two approaches
would likely yield the best results.
Just a side note on the psychopathy checklist. It is an
excellent tool, the only problem being that each individual
psychiatrist has his or her own individual interpretation of
it. That is its greatest weakness. More discussion on
psychopathy is definitely warranted. On the question of
recidivism of psychopaths, the author recalls a course as a
Psychology undergraduate taught by a retired psychotherapist.
In a lecture on the necessity of strong positive regard for
the client at all times, he said, quite sternly, that if you
ever come in contact with a psychopath, don't walk; run. And
if they're a sadistic psychopath, see to it that they get
locked up forever.
The ideal assessment regiment for sex offenders who are
candidates for release from a psychiatric facility would
include the following;
Degree of Psychopathy(Groth[3], Hare[5])
Inappropriate age choice of victim measurement(Quinsey[12])
Classification of rapist type(Ressler[14],[15])
With these tools of dangerousness assessment at their
disposal, those who would unlock the doors and set free the
likes of Jerry Brudos and Thomas Vanda may be better
dissuaded. If those individuals who are most likely to
recidivate can be more easily identified and screened by the
mental health community, then there will be a reduction in the
most violent and dangerous types of sex offenses in our
society. We will subsequently have fewer juvenile girls who
are dead or in therapy because they happened to be found by a
monster that the mental health community failed to keep out of
society.
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