Working Towards a ‘Future Us’
By Stephanie Baker
A violent sex offender lives in my apartment building. I know this because one evening, a neighbor drew my attention to an online sex offender registry and showed me the map of the intersection where we live in the city, dotted in the crosshairs like some kind of strange fish finding device. All of these dots represent men who have committed some kind of sexual offense and they live on my street, in my building, on my floor. When I state this, the reality seems stark and threatening. I now have a face to attach to the name, but now my fear is increased so I want either to stay fixed in my apartment and never leave… or to move somewhere else—far far away from the dots.
In some ways, the dots are good. They help me ask the difficult questions: Who are these people? Where do these offenses take place? How are they caught? Is there a cure? Is mine the only neighborhood that looks like this?
I speak with a detective and a deputy probation officer and learn that sex offenders are as varied as the types of people in the world in terms of preferences, offenses, and fetishes. I learn that few are ever identified or caught (less than 10% of all sex crimes are reported), and that most crimes are perpetrated by family, friends and acquaintances (90%). I learn that teachers, family members or friends are often the ones to report the crimes. I learn that an online surveillant can never actually mention sex so as to not “entrap” the offender. I learn that online sex offenders are caught when they cross the line from fantasy to offense (setting up a time and place to meet with their victim) and that state budget cuts have made it nearly impossible for these officers to follow up on the demands made by recent legislation like Megan’s Law. “Our unit is down to two people,” says Detective Raffaelli, head of the Sex Crimes Unit for San Mateo County. Before the cuts, he worked with 3 other detectives, 3 probation officers and 2 other agents.
Initially, I believe the bleakest statement of all is that there is “no cure”—that some people are just “hardwired” this way. And when I see Stephen Brown’s new play, Future Me, I am forced to confront a whole new set of questions which both frighten and enlighten.
Peter Marsh, the central character (he could be diagnosed as a single incident child molester, not necessarily a predatory pedophile), is a successful and ambitious lawyer who defies the sex offender stereotype. He is young, attractive, socialized and skilled in the use of language—to argue, convince and charm—skills with which he seduces his victim and which are used against him within the legal system he once manipulated. He is restrained in manners and has a dry, ironic sense of humor. He understands and wields the subtleties of language and wit.
But he doesn’t change much in the course of the 5 years we spend with him. He takes small steps towards re-establishing what appears to be a normal life. The key word here is “appears” where pretending to be normal can mean the difference between imprisonment and freedom.
Defining the “pretend normal” and discerning boundaries in a world where the electronically fluid network of the Internet has made “crossing the line” seem almost superfluous is a central theme of this play. Brown’s use of water as a recurring motif underscores the difficulty of navigating the Heraclitean flux that is sex, time, the Internet, relationships. Peter describes himself “swimming through rivers of pornography”; Dawn’s body is “one smooth surface”; and he can’t discern the one moment when he “crossed the line”.
In the attempt to understand her own blindness to Peter’s history, his ex-girlfriend, Jenny, forces him to confront that line. As a journalist, she too wields a superb ability with language, but when she begins to comprehend the nature of Peter’s crime, she is left traumatized by her own over-simplification: “Yes and No. Good and Evil. Love, Not Love. The World is so simple it’s terrifying.”
In contrast to Jenny’s statement is the subtle use of puns throughout the play. Brown utilizes language play, irony and double entendre to signify the contradictions and absurdities of our culture. For example, Peter was once a “good boy” and others earnestly urge him to be “good.” Peter, in turn, tells Harry, his cellmate the same thing. (This language, reflective of much of what we tell our own children, is used similarly in a key scene of the recent film Little Children where we see a mother urge her sex offender adult child to “be good”. ) Harry, a pedophile with a decades-long history of offense, imprisonment and probation, is the center of much of the play’s irony. He is caught between the force of his temptation and what he understands to be “good,” but at the end we’re left with the question of how much those he lives with will accept him as the “Future Me” he has begun to envision.
More language play is exemplified by Brown’s use of the language of the racetrack. These sex offenders could be considered animals by many or simply the “good bets” or “longshots” Ellen the Probation Officer has labeled them. This use of language is a casual betrayal by society—it shows what we really do think of them; for after all, the betting may be on to see who will re-offend and return to prison first.
Future Me brings us not only into the realm of the perpetrators (besides Peter and Harry, we also meet Tim Piers, an activist and journalist who rallies around the cause of Man-Boy love), but into the realm of those who are ultimately handed the responsibility for living with the sex offender once he is re-released into society.
How we, as the ones who are related to or live with the sex offender decide to respond is another question we are given to wrestle with from the viewpoint of different characters. Do we cut this person out of our lives? How do we include them? Is there a possibility for healing? This engenders a deeper question: what makes a healthy relationship– between lovers, between parents and children, between siblings, between prison mates, between therapists and clients, and between survivors and offenders.
Jenny is a survivor of sorts because she was deceived by Peter all throughout their relationship. She changes more than any other character in the play because she is finally willing to confront his betrayal and her own dark thoughts. When she says, “like everything else, I suppose there’s the ideal and the reality,” she ferrets out an important truth for herself and for every other character.
Both the ideal and the reality are multi-layered and Brown brings us within scope of both. The “ideal” is that sexual offenders are people that we as parents, children, siblings, family friends and lovers never have to deal with, but the reality is sexual abuse is rampant and mostly un-reported (for children, the estimates on the low end are 1 out of 5 girls and 2 out of 7 boys are sexually abused and less than 10% of all sex crimes result in a criminal conviction).
Pundits and politicians “tough on crime” would have us believe that since there is no “cure,” the only solution is to “lock them up” or “shoot them” or make sex offenders carry fluorescent license plates on their cars. But since the reality is that the overwhelming majority of sex crimes occur within a close circle of friends, family or community members, we have to accept that these measures are only effective in the realm of the ideal, where the offense takes place outside of our homes and families and friendships or not at all.
The more difficult, but realistic truth, is that we have to summon the courage to understand for ourselves and for our families and friends why and how this happens. First, we have to understand what the term sex offender means: we cannot lump all sex offenders together as the 1% that are predatory and violent (and which get the most media coverage). And second, we have to understand that therapeutic treatment and rehabilitation is effective. Recent studies have found that contemporary cognitive-behavioral treatment reduces the recidivism rate by 40%. Some sex offenders need to be “managed’ more than others, but in all cases, a one size fits all approach is not an effective or efficient approach.
Dr. Caprice Haverty, a psychologist who has worked with sexual offenders and survivors for over 20 years, says, “we have to hold sex offenders accountable and talk to them when they re-enter a community—and not in a blaming or shameful way. Prevention and healing will come when we are all confronting this issue openly through treatment and understanding on both sides of the offense.” She does not minimize anyone’s pain or trauma, but holds the sex offender responsible in a way that does not isolate or shame, and, in fact, re-integrates him into the society and/or family unit. “We all have to work,” she says, “to accept and care about this issue to help stop it.” In truth, she has facilitated many reunifications between sex offender fathers and their victim children right here in the Bay Area.
Another piece of the larger solution is having the courage to examine, understand and accept our own propensities to self-destruct through addiction or obsession or compulsion or whatever our poison. The desire to escape into a protected bubble, to create comfort for ourselves through a fantasy world is a desire shared by ALL humans. “Our sexual drives have nothing to do with being bad or good,” says Kristin Callahan, a sex offender and survivor therapist, “it’s our failure to accept the fluidity of our humanity that puts us at risk.”
As humans we have a dark side—the propensity to yield to temptation, to commit evil—and some of us end up crossing the line from the ideal or “fantasy” into the reality. Peter doesn’t know when he’s crossed that line because he has been in various stages of denial most of his life—denial that extends to the rigidity of his family life, the absence of a mother, and likelihood of sexual abuse within his family circle. His character makes a small but crucial shift when, through group and individual therapy with Ellen, he begins to own the reality of his offense, to narrate and name and describe.
Pundits and politicians would also have us believe that to acknowledge the subtleties of such a difficult and loaded issue, to actually empathize with the “monsters” and perpetrators is to cross the line into the boundary-less realm of irresponsibility. But when I spoke with law officers who work with directly with sex offenders, they felt that this play or recent films like The Woodsman or Little Children, which show the humanity of the sex offender, are very important for informing people of the complexity of the issue.
Our recent societal response of voting sex offender registries (and now, perhaps, sex offender license plates) into existence may serve to hinder more than help. “Shame and compassion are on opposite sides of the solution,” says Dr. Haverty. Fourteen states, including California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa, have enacted buffer zones which prohibit sex offenders from residing within close proximity to a school, park, day care center, or school bus stop. But still, there is no research to support that residence restrictions prevent repeat sex crimes. In fact, they may actually contribute to the communal isolation of sex offenders which puts them at a risk for re-offense.
I come full circle to the reality of the sex offender registry and those “dots” on my neighborhood map, which represent only a tiny portion of those who have crossed the line and committed horrible acts. Danger lurks everywhere and all times–but most of all when misunderstood.
Where do I decide to situate myself? What position, what response do I offer between the ideal and the reality? Law enforcement helps to hold responsible, to protect, to hold up the boundary line. Therapists help to name, to understand, to treat, to accept and to care. Perhaps law enforcement in some ways upholds the ideal by protecting the sense that there is such a thing as innocence. Perhaps therapists uphold the reality by confronting the darkness with the perpetrators and with the survivors. Perhaps, as mothers and fathers and siblings and families, and perhaps because of the rampant high heat this issue creates, in some way, we are all survivors and/or perpetrators.
So is there hope for a “future me”? Because we see Peter make the small but important step of naming his crime and becoming aware of his denial and, because we see how Ellen helps him begin to draw the line between the ideal and the reality, I believe there is a small portion of hope assigned to his character.
But, having looked the reality in the face, “hope” seems like too weak a word. When Harry, out of prison and struggling with the force of his desire to re-offend, tells Peter, “I have hope,” I scarcely believe him. This statement feels ironic, as if he’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t really believe.
Derrick Jensen, a writer and teacher who works with inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California, has redefined hope as “a belief in a future condition over which we have no agency.” Having an informed understanding of the state of the world, we should instead “cultivate a relationship with despair.” This new definition signifies a different take on the idea of a “future me” for the sex offender. In the accepted way of thinking, hope allows us to hold on to the fantasy and not name the reality–which then leads to helplessness and, in turn, more despair. Naming the reality means we have to confront our deepest and darkest fears of the present and what has been unnamed in our past. Cultivating a relationship with despair means we find a way to understand the “future me” of the sex offender in treatment as part of our world, as a “future us”.
The first step is not privileging our own darkness above anyone else’s. “You’re no better than me,” Harry tells Peter. The difficult and messy truth is none of us are.
For questions or comments, please email the writer at sbaker@jchsofthebay.org