Chapter 30: Compared to what?
This is part of a series. For more please go to the Table of Contents.
I returned home from Jail to find that my roommate had done an admirable job of taking care of my house while I was gone — paid all the utility bills, collected the mail, cleaned the house, even watered my plants and mowed the lawn! I thanked him profusely.
My life on sex offender probation certainly had its frustrations, but I have to admit that I was really very fortunate and atypical compared to most other sex offenders I’d met up to that point, whether my roommates at the Dump or the guys in my therapy group.
Take for example the matter of employment. Few of the guys in my therapy group had jobs because nobody will hire a convicted sex offender. The one woman in the group was fortunate to have a job working night shift at a recycling center separating garbage. She helped one of the guys get a job there too. Others had been looking for work without success for the time I’d been at therapy, and each week rumors about places that might consider hiring sex offenders was a topic of conversation.
One thing preventing guys from getting jobs was transportation. If you can’t get a job you can’t afford to own a car or pay for gas or insurance or repairs, and if you can’t afford a car you are dependent on Brown County’s utterly pitiful transit system which means any job you can find has to be near one of the meager bus routes and on a work schedule when the busses are operating. This employment/transportation problem became a vicious cycle the guys couldn’t get out of.
Then there was housing. Most of the guys in my therapy group lived in sex offender dumps. Those were all on Reevestown’s crappy west side and far enough out in the boondocks to meet my state’s very harsh but not at all unusual residency restrictions, just like the dump I’d lived in, but close enough to a bus line so these guys could get where they needed to go every day since they didn’t own cars because they didn’t have jobs. Still, every day was a succession of long, slow bus rides to search for non-existent jobs or some other way to get the money they needed to pay the rent for their sex offender dumps. And so the vicious cycle continued.
Naturally, guys living this kind of marginalized life found themselves depressed and angry about life. Weekly group therapy was a place where they could unload their problems. Their families were frustrated having to support them since they couldn’t get jobs. They frequently needed rides to get somewhere and nobody wanted to help them. They couldn’t eat healthy food because any money they did get from their families had to pay for their dump, otherwise they’d be living in the woods homeless. They couldn’t make friends or build relationships out of fear of being dumped, for example, as soon as any woman they struck up a conversation with found out they were a sex offender. In short, the life of a convicted sex offender on probation sucks big time.
Now compare that to my situation. I didn’t have to constantly search for a non-existent job because I was retired and had Social Security and retirement account income which together were sufficient to provide for my daily needs. I also had Medicare and a Part D supplement. I had this income because I’d had a successful career with an employer that had good health care and retirement plans. I had also been “fortunate” enough to have gotten caught possessing illegal pornography at age 62, just when I was eligible to immediately retire and get on Social Security and thereby escape getting fired and losing everything.
I’m not expecting society in general to feel any sympathy at all for me. Most people would probably think I deserved to lose everything and that would’ve been a just punishment in addition to two years in prison, three years on probation and a lifetime as a registered sex offender. They may even be right. Yet the fact remains that there I was, retired and financially stable.
I had also been able to use my resources, my knowledge of the local real estate market and the advice of my accountant and financial advisor to escape from the Dump and set myself up in a comfortable double-wide mobile home in a decent neighborhood. I had a car and could afford insurance and maintenance. I had been very fortunate to remain on good terms with my siblings, ex-wife and children. I was frustrated with my probation restrictions and inability to visit my grandchildren, but these were not enough to make me depressed or angry with life.
I also had my rental properties to keep me busy. I’d made a plan for myself while still in prison to use my time on probation to do every renovation project I’d ever dreamed up at every property I owned, and so far I was carrying out that plan. This kept me busy almost every day — I wasn’t sitting around the trailer eating cheese doodles and watching soap operas.
Therefore if you are reading this story of my life on sex offender probation you should keep in mind that as opposed to prison where I believe my experience was more typical, my time on sex offender probation was not at all typical compared to other sex offenders I came into contact with.
Moving the psychological goal posts, again
I described what sex offender group therapy was like back in Chapter 27. I ended with my shrink Shane telling me that before I could go to court and ask to be allowed to visit my grandchildren I still faced months of therapy, a costly “risk assessment,” a favorable recommendation from an independent qualified professional and a “risk reduction plan” to show to the judge. Shane had also handed me a pile of psycho-babble to read.
I was reading and trying to get Shane to schedule individual sessions for me in addition to group therapy so I could speed up progress when I got hauled off to jail. Naturally I had to start fresh when I got out. Shane was not anxious to let me have individual therapy even though I was willing to pay the much higher fees it required. After all, he had about 10 groups in a four county area to do every week, each with about a dozen guys. He didn’t have much time left over for individual sessions.
I felt like Shane was dragging things out but if I bitched about it at group therapy I got no sympathy. This was partly because the other guys — the ones who were making an effort anyway — were sincerely trying to change their thought processes and make themselves have normal sex fantasies — or at least they were telling themselves that was their goal.
After a lifetime of having abnormal fantasies I could hardly blame a guy for wanting to be normal. I wished I was normal. Yet as I listened to these guys I couldn’t help thinking at least some of them were in a state of self-denial. Take Phil, for example, the guy who in Chapter 27 got five days in jail for going onto a computer at a job fair and looking at children’s underwear ads. That job fair had been in November. By this time (i.e. June) Phil had had his next periodic polygraph exam and when Shane was going over the results in group Phil pointed out strenuously that he’d “only had deviant sex fantasies four times in the last five months. I’ve been hyper-vigilant about it,” he said, “I don’t think about it, and I always look away whenever I see a boy in a supermarket or department store. In fact I try to never go to those places, or to the mall either, so I won’t have those temptations.” He also said “I pray often about this. I don’t know what would happen to me if I didn’t have Jesus in my life.”
Now dear reader, let’s discuss these statements. Yes I’m glad Phil was making this kind of effort, and I expect you are too. Yet in my opinion, the very fact that Phil had to point out so strenuously that he was being “hyper-vigilant” just means that in fact he was having deviant thoughts all the time and trying to chase them out of his mind. The fact that he’d so scrupulously kept count of the number of times he’d had deviant sex fantasies is also telling. The fact that he was so consciously turning away and avoiding the mall means this stuff was on his mind all the time. And if he didn’t know what would become of him if he didn’t have Jesus, in what way was he not using his religion as a crutch?
Nevertheless, Phil passed a polygraph question about how often he had deviant fantasies by saying only four times in five months. Which means he sincerely believed it. Which means he was lying to himself.
Of course, when I pointed this out at group I was roundly condemned. My answer was simple: I’d been thru all that trying to change myself and trying to make it all go away stuff over and over in my life, and I was just tired of arguing with myself about it. I had a spotless lifetime record of self control as verified by my polygraph test, having never done any deviant thing to anybody, and at this point I was content with that.
Each time Shane scheduled an individual session for me I tried to focus on the risk assessment and risk reduction plan I knew were coming. Unfortunately I took the unhelpful position that it should be clear to Shane and to the independent qualified professional who’d do the risk assessment that since I’ve always exercised self-control (well, aside from the whole internet child porn problem) I represented no risk to society or to my grandchildren. “There’s no such thing as zero risk,” Shane said. I’m sure that was his experience and what he’d been taught in college psych class. Then he’d hand me another treatment module to read or questionnaire to fill out. I was no closer to seeing my grandchildren than I’d ever been.
My brother is hospitalized, close to death
At the very end of June my sister-in-law called me and everybody else in the family to tell us that my eldest brother had been rushed to the hospital unconscious and seemingly close to death.
As I mentioned back in Chapter 25, I have two brothers, both older than me, and both of whom live over a thousand miles from me in the Northeast. The one I am talking about here is the older of the two — he was not the one who came to visit me often while I was in prison, but he did come pick me up from prison (see Chapter 25) and stay for a few days. My eldest brother had had health problems for a long time on account of exposure to Agent Orange during his service in the Vietnam War and had recently been in declining health, but being rushed to the hospital came as a great shock. The doctors could not say what was wrong with him, and no one knew if my brother would live or die.
My immediate reaction was that I wanted to rush to his bedside. However, since I was a sex offender on probation wearing an ankle bracelet and a GPS monitor, I had to petition a judge to obtain a travel permit. There would be no rushing this. My attorney assured me this would be a fairly routine matter, but I’d have to submit documentation showing that I wasn’t lying about my brother’s condition (a letter from the hospital sufficed), an itinerary (departure & return dates for a one week visit, location of hospital and of my brother & sister-in-law’s house where I’d be staying, mode of travel which meant purchasing non-refundable airplane tickets) and recommendations of approval from both my probation officer and the prosecutor assigned to my case. I decided to set my departure date two weeks out to make sure I had enough time to get all the paperwork together & go to court, not knowing whether I’d be visiting my brother on the mend at home, still unconscious in the hospital, or going to his funeral.
My attorney’s fee to handle all this was $500, about which the guys in my therapy group said “Wow that’s really cheap!” It turned out he had to do some real work for that money too because (a) the judge decided he wanted to hold a hearing about this, which nobody was expecting, and (b) somebody at the probation office put a wrong date on their form, so my attorney had to scurry around at the last minute to get that corrected. In the end the judge issued his approval order the day before my non-refundable morning flight, and I had to run over to the probation office to pick up my travel permit just 30 minutes before the office closed!
My travel permit allowed me to make no side trips and do no sight-seeing while on my trip. The purpose of this trip was to visit my ailing brother. I was allowed to go to my brother & sister-in-law’s house, to the hospital and that was it — except that within 48 hours of my arrival I had to go to the local police department and register as a visiting out-of-state sex offender. The cops there inspected all the paperwork very closely but they were the only officials on the whole trip who cared about my permit or my judge’s order or my ankle bracelet & GPS monitor. You would think the TSA guys at the airport would care, right? “What’s this?” the TSA officer said when I offered my paperwork to him.
“I’m on probation and that’s my travel permit & judge’s order,” I said sheepishly.
“I don’t need this,” he said gruffly, “I just need your boarding pass & driver’s license.” And guess what? My ankle bracelet didn’t even set off the metal detector! So on the return flight I just sailed thru security, said nothing and nobody gave me a second look. One of the guys in my therapy group said, “So if I strap some C-4 around my ankle I can get it thru airport security?” Just goes to show how these guys think.
The reality of my trip was that I could have at least a little fun while I was traveling. For example I’d decided not to get a rental car, instead relying on my family to take me back & forth to the hospital, but that meant I could take a train ride from the airport to the place where my sister-in-law was to pick me up on her way from home to the hospital. I love trains and my brother’s state in the northeast has some of the best commuter train service in the entire United States. The town where my sister-in-law picked me up was my old childhood home town, so we had a chance to swing by and at least take a look at my old house & neighborhood. I always enjoy doing that whenever I travel to the northeast. Also on the way between the house and the hospital was the church cemetery where my parents are buried, and as you can imagine I wanted to stop to visit them too, although I wouldn’t exactly describe that as “fun.”
Two weeks after being rushed to the hospital my brother was still unconscious & unresponsive, hooked up to a bunch of machines & not breathing on his own. When my other brother and sister and their spouses came to the hospital on the second day of my visit we all sat there and wondered whether he would live or die, and if he lived would he ever regain consciousness, and if he never regained consciousness would keeping him alive be in line with his expressed wishes as contained in his living will and DNR order? That’s how bad things looked at the time. The doctors still couldn’t say what was really wrong with him.
My family all stayed overnight at my brother’s house but my sister & her husband left first thing the following morning. My other brother stayed another day & night and we visited the hospital together both of those days before he too headed home. That whole time we asked ourselves what was the right thing to do, and couldn’t come up with a good answer.
My visit was to last four more days and I went with my sister-in-law to the hospital each of those days. On the last two days my brother opened his eyes a few times. He looked around and even seemed to be looking in our direction when we talked to him but he couldn’t or didn’t speak (although at that point he didn’t have any tubes down his throat that would’ve prevented it). I asked myself, did he recognize me? Did he understand me when I spoke? I wanted to believe it, but I didn’t know.
Then it was time to go home. My sister-in-law took me back to my home town train station and I took the trains back to the airport, sailed thru security and flew home. I asked myself, if my brother died would I go thru all this rigmarole again to go to the funeral? My answer — which I told my family — was no I wouldn’t. If this was the last time I’d ever see my eldest brother I was happy to have seen him while he was still alive. I didn’t want to see him dead. I don’t know how you’d feel in a similar situation, but that’s how I felt.
For about a week after I got home my brother made little progress, but then gradually he improved. One day my sister-in-law called me from the hospital. My brother was talking! although only in a hoarse whisper. She put the phone to his face and we talked for a few minutes! Did he remember me having visited? This was an important question, at least to me. Yes! Later on he couldn’t remember it.
It took several more weeks for my brother to improve enough to be transferred to a VA rehabilitation center, but improve he did and he did get transferred. I sure hoped he’d still be alive when I completed my probation and would be “free” to go visit him again.
Projects
The month of May which I spent in the Brown County Jail was supposed to have been the month when I was to renovate my house on Pine Street. Instead the house had sat empty for that month, so I started on the renovation project as soon as I got out.
The goal of the project was to make that house shine so it could fetch a higher rent and, if I wanted or needed to sell, it would go for top dollar. The kitchen was biggest problem; it was in such bad shape that it would’ve been tough to re-rent the house. It had to be gutted to the bare walls and rebuilt, and that had to happen fast so I could get the house back on the rental market and hopefully occupied by the first of the following month (July).
Of course the kitchen wasn’t the only thing that had to be done. There were several other repairs and upgrades and the whole place had to be painted. This house had hardwood floors in the living room, dining room, hall and two out of three bedrooms that all had to be sanded & re-polished. I made fast enough progress to schedule the flooring guy for June 21 and three days later I was ready for my property manager to start showing the house to potential tenants. We didn’t get it rented by the first of the month, but we did get it occupied at the new higher rent by July 20 and that was pretty good.
Almost as soon as I was done with the house on Pine Street I had to turn my attention to Duplex #1. The rear unit there had been 2 bedrooms & 2 baths, but just a few months before I got arrested 2 1/2 years before I’d cut off the master bedroom & bath to do a major remodeling project I knew would take a while, leaving a 1 bedroom 1 bath unit to rent. Then I got arrested and my life blew up but the project was mostly done when I went to prison. When I got out my property manager referred me to her favorite handyman, Rick, to rip out the old bathtub and install a new modular shower, a project which was a bit beyond my capabilities.
As soon as the tenant was out on August 1 I re-attached the master suite to the rest of the apartment and made a few more finishing touches (new ceiling fans, dining room carpet, etc.) which took only a few days. The nicely renovated 2 bedroom 2 bath unit was ready to go back on the market for a much higher rent, and occupied before the end of that month.
The shifting sands of psychological counseling
I wanted very much to be allowed to see my grandchildren, so I pestered Shane to schedule individual sessions for me as often as possible. Some of the material Shane gave me he’d also handed out to the rest of the group. I’d been filling everything out and handing it back with the expectation of discussing it at my next individual session, but around the beginning of July Shane asked everybody to turn everything in and by the middle of the month he handed it all back with a bunch of comments, some of which (but not mine) he reviewed with the group. At least now I had his thoughts about my progress on paper to discuss with him later.
In the course of the group discussion about these hand-outs Shane alluded to the fact that anybody who hoped to get “early termination” of their probation would have to have made enough progress toward successfully completing their therapy so that he could make a favorable recommendation to the judge. My attorney had never mentioned a psychologist’s recommendation. He’d made it sound as though early termination was a fairly routine matter in my state once you completed at least half of your probation. However, now that Shane brought it up I understood clearly that any judge would want to hear that, especially for a sex offender who’d been going to therapy every week of his probation.
My probation was three years. Half of that was 18 months, so by early August that was less than a year away. Wow — I’d better make as much progress as I could as fast as I could so I’d be ready to go to court with a favorable recommendation for early termination!
There was another way to look at this too. Shane pointed out (and my lawyer later confirmed) that once I was off probation I’d be free of the restriction against being in the presence of children under the age of 18. No risk assessment, no risk reduction plan. At the rate I was going in therapy it might take me almost another year to get through those things and get to court anyway, not to mention the fact that these assessments, plans & court appearances were all going to cost a bunch of money. On the other hand my attorney had said that he’d do one early termination hearing for free, a fairly routine matter in my state and part of his services that I’d already paid for.
Therefore my psychological goal post moved again. Maybe I’d make enough progress fast enough to make going to court with a risk assessment and risk reduction plan worthwhile, but my real goal was now very clear: I wanted my shrink to say great things about me at my early termination hearing.
On the other hand, what did “making as much progress as I could” really mean in my situation? What would Shane the Shrink view as “progress” when I’d been taking the position that I’d had this mental defect my whole adult life and no amount of therapy could change it? That my spotless lifetime record of self control as verified by my polygraph test should be enough to satisfy any judge or psychologist that I’m not a threat to society? Even if it’s true, by saying these things I was essentially saying “I don’t need to change; I don’t need to make progress.”
If I stuck with that I certainly couldn’t expect Shane to say great things about me at my early termination hearing. I was going to have to change my tune, and I was going to have to be sincere about it because I knew I couldn’t cheat and then try to lie my way thru my next polygraph test.
If you liked this article or any in this series, or if it spoke to you, or if you think others could benefit from it please recommend it or comment on it, or both.
