Unwelcome Images

A Sex Offender’s Story of Prison, Probation and … Redemption?

Atwo Zee
The Rabbit Is In
Published in
10 min readJan 21, 2018

Note: This is a true story. The names of people, places, and even things have been changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapters titles listed below in boldface contain links and are available now.

My Manifesto (see below)

Notes on Transcription

A Glossary of Prison Slang

Book 1: Prison

An Introduction to My “Mental Defect”

Chapter 1: Ready or Not I’m Going to Prison

Chapter 2: A Prison Appetizer — Brown County Jail

Chapter 3: “Relax, Said The Night Man, We Are Programmed to Receive”- Northern State Reception Center (NSRC)

Chapter 4: Prison Reality — It’s Not What You Think

Chapter 5: Prison Life Gets Scary — Swift CI Annex, Dorm N1

Essay: Making Friends in Prison

Essay: Yes It’s True — Prison Food Really Sucks!

Chapter 6: I Am Threatened, Extorted & Forced to Flee

Essay: Toochie (Sometimes Known As K-2) In America’s Prisons

Chapter 7: Protective Custody #1 — The Box

Inmate Profiles: Peter, Randy & Wilbur

Chapter 8: Passing Go … But Without Collecting $200 — NSRC & Hayes CI

Chapter 9: Trayvon — Sex, Love, and Like in Prison

Chapter 10: I Am A Stupid Idiot! — Rutherford B. Hayes CI, Dorm G1

Chapter 11: Administrative Detention

Chapter 12: No cigar, but close! Rutherford B. Hayes CI, Dorm F1

Chapter 13: Go Directly to Jail. River CI Annex, Dorm I1

Chapter 14: Protective Custody #2

Chapter 15: Star Extreme

Chapter 16: Will this ever end??

Chapter 17: So close — and then, so far!

Chapter 18: Would I like to just stay here for a while?

Chapter 19: Rick — Here we go again!

Chapter 20: Yes — there is such a thing as being “too helpful”

Chapter 21: “Welcome to Disneyland!”

Chapter 22: Re-integration into society?

Chapter 23: Hurricane Zelda — the big one

Chapter 24: Stumbling toward the finish line

Book 2: Probation

Chapter 25: The Hard Reality of Sex offender Probation

Chapter 26: Probation — different than I expected

Chapter 27: Life is Good — Until It’s Not!

Chapter 28: Violated! Part 1

Chapter 29: Violated! Part 2

Chapter 30: Compared to What?

Chapter 30A: Adding a little something

Chapter 31: Changing my mind

Chapter 32: ¡Sí pero no!

Chapter 33: You can’t always git what you want

Chapter 34: Yeah, well, ackshully, NO!

Chapter 35: Becoming an activist

Chapter 36: Ready, Set, STOP!

Chapter 37: Coronavirus!

Chapter 38: To everything there is a season

Chapter 39: Doing jail time during a pandemic!

Chapter 40: Taking advantage

Atwo Zee, Registered Traveler

My post-probation travel blog

Before I wrecked my life and ended up on my state’s sex offender registry I always intended to travel in my retirement. Now, after prison and probation, I am in fact retired, and “free,” and have not given up my dream of seeing natural wonders and historic sites, visiting great cities, traveling to as many places as possible within the restrictions placed on me as a registered citizen.

I have also created what as far as I know is America’s only travel blog specifically for registered citizens. If you want to check it out, here’s a link: https://a2twozee.blogspot.com/

My Manifesto:

An Open Letter Both to the “Virtuous Pedophiles” and to Those Who Despise Them

I am Atwo Zee, better known as A2Z, the author of Unwelcome Images: A Sex Offender’s Prison Story which I began publishing in installments with the assistance of an editor out in the free world while I served a 2-year prison sentence for possession of 10 photos deemed by my local district attorney to be child porn. I am now serving three years of sex offender probation to be followed by a lifetime as a registered sex offender. I wrote this open letter from a two-man cell on 24-hour per day lock-down while in protective custody because, due to my charges, my life was threatened by a fellow inmate.

In telling my story on Medium I seek no “platform for pedophiles”, whether “virtuous” or not, nor do I advocate for consideration of pedophilia as a “sexual orientation”. I was unaware of the so-called “Virtuous Pedophiles” web site until my editor brought it to my attention an online post by one of their opponents. It is always hard to get a clear idea of what any on-line “support group” might be like by reading just one post by an opponent, but one thing is very clear to me: The participants at that web site are the closest thing to myself that I am likely to find anywhere — guys who are aware of their pedophilia, aware that acting on their fantasies would be morally wrong, and have never acted on their fantasies, but find themselves seduced by the virtual world of on-line child porn or “near-porn” with all its seeming anonymity and easy access. They are, in fact, the target audience for my story — I need to warn them to stop doing what they are doing before they get caught and become the next occupant of this very prison cell.

However, I also need to start a conversation with the most bitter critics of the “Virtuous Pedophiles.” I need to tell them there is a right way and a wrong way to deal with men who have what the American Psychiatric Association call “pedophilic disorder” (DSM-5) and which in my story I simply call my “mental defect.” Ostracizing them, blocking them from Medium, blocking their on-line comments, locking them up and throwing away the key are the wrong way.

To the so-called “Virtuous Pedophiles” I say, “Wake up and get your head out of your ass!” And I mean that in the nicest possible way since I freely admit I was one of you. I surely wish there had been someone to slap me around and warn me of what was coming! Instead I continued to fool myself into thinking, oh, these photos aren’t really even pornographic, how could I possibly get in trouble for them? — right up until the cops came to my door!

I don’t care what you call pedophilia — a sexual orientation, a mental defect or whatever. It is a condition you and I have for which there is no cure. The important thing is that most of us have made a positive moral decision never to act on our fantasies. Each of us must hold to that, but we must also do more. We must resist the temptations of the internet including not just its porn and “near-porn”, but also its support groups and web sites full of soothing talk and rationalizations about how society should be more accepting and blah blah blah — Wake up! That’s never going to happen! Nor should it happen — you admit so yourself every time you say you will never act on your fantasies because they are morally wrong.

Pedophilia is not itself an addiction, but cruising the internet for photos and, worse yet, videos and file sharing is an addictive behavior. Any “Virtuous Pedophile” reading this open letter has likely been cruising the internet for a while, which means you are already hooked. You are an addict, and any addiction therapist will tell you the first step to recovery is to look yourself in the mirror and admit you have a problem. I suggest that the next time you look at your favorite photos — which I suspect based on my own past behavior will be soon enough — you should look at those children and say out loud, “I can never forget, nor should I ever be allowed to forget, that each of these children is a victim of the international child porn trade, and that I have participated in that trade by downloading these photos. Who knows what terrible things may have happened to these children beyond being photographed?” Then each of you must make your own decision to stop your addictive behavior and delete your photos. If you need a therapist’s help to do that, get it. It will never make your pedophilia go away — nothing can do that — but it will keep you from being arrested for child porn, and that’s very important. I wouldn’t wish my fate on anyone. Read my story for a cautionary tale — this could happen to you.

To the most bitter critics of the “Virtuous Pedophiles” I say, “Wake up and get your head out of your ass!” And I mean that in the nicest possible say since I truly want my response — and yours — to be constructive and not destructive, which it is now.

I never asked to be a pedophile. Anyone who would make pedophilia their “lifestyle choice” is obviously insane. I was never sexually abused as a child. Instead I was brought up with all Christian moral values. When I began to have these fantasies as early as my teens and twenties I was horrified at myself and stayed in a state of denial for years. When I did admit these things to myself I vowed never to act on them. I also knew that if my secret was ever revealed I faced society’s utter rejection and contempt. And when I was finally exposed it turned out my worst fears were entirely correct — I was fired from my job, divorced by my wife, rejected by almost every friend I had, and sent to prison where I was when I wrote this. I face a lifetime as a registered sex offender.

What benefit has society obtained from all this? Is it protected from a dangerous sexual predator? No. I never have and never will molest any child. Is my behavior being corrected through my prison sentence? Remember, that’s supposedly the purpose of a “correctional institution” — correction. Answer — no. I received no mental health services whatsoever there. My behavior was “corrected” the minute the arraignment judge took away my internet privileges a year before I went to prison. I admit it was tough at first, just as it is for any addict to get clean. But the longer I was off the internet the easier it became. I have been clean for three years now and will be required to remain clean for the rest of my life. I am happy to comply. That much is justice. Even my two-year prison sentence was justice of a sort. The rest is punishment for the crime of having a mental disorder. After surviving my incarceration in I face 3 years of my state’s extremely harsh (but not unusual) sex offender probation, to be followed by a lifetime of my state’s extremely harsh (but not unusual) sex offender registration requirements which make no distinction at all between one who possessed 10 photos and a serial child rapist. If you are one of those bitter opponents of the so-called “Virtuous Pedophiles” maybe you’re fine with that. Maybe you agree with the author who says “that difference means little” in the context of what he already thinks about pedophiles anyway. Maybe you agree with the corrections officer who escorted me to protective custody who said “You’re just one step away from a child molester. It’s all I can do to keep myself from killing you right now!” This while I was handcuffed behind my back and he was in possession of at lest one deadly weapon.

The author above says that “Virtuous Pedophiles” is “akin to people in recovery talking about and glamorizing drug abuse.” This is a false equivalency. From what I can tell reading his one post, “Virtuous Pedophiles” makes no claim to be an addiction recovery support group. Instead, it is an advocacy group for men who have “Pedophilic Disorder” (which they claim is a sexual orientation). One unfortunate side effect of this advocacy is that their website is bound to attract those under the addictive spell of internet child porn. Having been free of that addiction for three years I can readily see how repulsive that is to the opponents of “Virtuous Pedophiles”. Still, I hope they won’t be banned from Medium or have their web site shut down because these are my target audience — the very men I want to shake out of their addictive stupor.

I wish there was a medication or therapy that would make me normal — I’d sign up in a heartbeat. I’ll bet most of my target audience would too. Since there is not, suppose by some miracle I am successful in freeing at least some of these guys from their internet addiction. They are still pedophiles — nothing can change that. What say you: do recovered internet porn addicts deserve a second chance in life? I predict that your answer will be, “of course they do.” But I also firmly believe that society’s true response will be — NEVER!

Will I get a second chance in life now that my most humiliating secret is exposed for all the world to see? Will I, who received an Employee of the Year award just months before my arrest, ever be able to get a job again? Never. Will I ever get my civil rights back and be allowed to become a contributing member of society again? Never.

I know what you’re thinking right now: I should have thought about all that way ahead of time and stopped myself before I got into trouble. And I admit — that’s all true. But I was caught in the spell of addiction with no one to help me find a way out.

So my final piece of advice to the “Virtuous Pedophile” who may learn from my experience and break himself of his addiction is this: Stop believing that you have a right to be accepted. That path goes nowhere. Instead, go back in the closet. Go further back in the closet. Take your secret to your grave because if you are expecting any help or understanding I can tell you when that’s going to happen — Never.

· Z

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Written by Atwo Zee

Better known as A2Z. Served three years of sex offender probation after having served a two year state prison sentence.

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