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Vahakyla posted:gently caress that. Slapping years onto the sentence and hailing it as justice is messed up and holding that other dude's 66 year sentence up as a good example is horrendous. Plus there are plenty of similar rulings for similar offences. I spent 9 months in jail with the guy who got 66 years, Donald Hausen. As in we were in the same "pod" and I got to know him pretty well. Just from being locked in the same 124 x 24 ft room (I measured!) as him as much as for personal reasons (he was a fairly decent and intelligent guy). Not terribly sure that this subsequently means I have much to say that will be productive of greater insight, but it was surprising to see his name brought up in a context other than the local news. I'm willing to go further into my thoughts about Hausen or my own experience with incarceration and the legal system if there are any takers, with what I assume are the usual caveats about protecting identities and whatnot.
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Mar 30, 2015 05:29
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A.S.H. posted:Ever since HidingfromGoro went into well, hiding, this thread has been lacking in accounts from people who have been inside the machine. I think everyone reading this thread would be grateful and benefit from what you can share. I'm a bit hesitant because I'm increasingly realizing that discussing my thoughts about Hausen, much less describing my experience, will be confusing without the context of my own crime and conviction. Well gently caress it, this is a throw-away account anyways. I'll give a brief summary, but please note that this summary will utterly fail to convey the full emotional punch of what it has been like to go through discovery, charge, conviction, and post-incarceration recovery and rehabilitation, including victim empathy. I responded to the above story about Hausen thinking I could convey my appreciation of Hausen and his case and perhaps to expound a bit on my own experience with the justice system, but by giving the context of my own crime, I know there will be at the very least be questions about my crime, and despite my anxiety at the thought, I think it's important that I fully address whatever questions arise before/during/after I talk about Hausen and my experience of incarceration. Two final notes: I'm in grad school and have a work-study job, it's getting towards the end of the semester, and I'm in the middle of final paper research. It's going to be tough for me to devote both time and mental energy to this. Apologies in advance if I'm slow in updating/responding. Also, I'm still in therapy and though I've gained incredible insight, I recognize that I'm still learning about myself and that this is a lifelong process. So the below isn't Truth, it's "the closest thing to Truth that I've learned so far and can convey to you guys in writing while also trying to write a couple research papers). I have a serious sexual compulsion and sexual impulsive problem. This problem, originating since I was about 10 and tied up with feelings of self-hatred towards my sexuality (not just homosexuality, but self-hate in the sense that I felt deeply uncomfortable with the thought of people knowing I was a sexual being), led to me making increasingly stupid and risky sexual choices, based on an intense desire to be a sexual being (because middle school taught me that proclaiming your "sexualness" in public was necessary for social acceptance) while dealing with intense shame at being a sexual being (thanks Catholic Church! thanks parents too awkward to have the sex talk with me! thanks sex-negative sex education!). This behaviors eventually crossed the line into illegality. Luckily I was caught. I say luckily: I mean luckily in the sense that it halted my downward spiral, prevented anyone else from being hurt or put at risk of being hurt, and delivered the slap in the face I needed that woke me up to: "What the gently caress this is not loving okay, look at what the gently caress you've done." To the extent that behavior disorders can be analogized as an addiction, my "drug" of choice is casual sex/hooking up and pornography; I get to be sexually active and feel good about myself superficially while, relatively speaking, keeping everyone from knowing that I'm sexual (including my partners; if I knew more than your first name it was rare). I was arrested, put in the county jail, wherein I met Hausen, and charged with one count of *legalese ahead* "Illegal Use of a Communication System in Facilitating Certain Offenses with a Child." In shorthand, I put out an ad on Craigslist looking to hookup, got a response from someone who in the second e-mail said he were 14, and I proceeded to send him a dick pic. I simultaneously tried to see if he was a cop, because something was definitely throwing up red flags. My sex compulsion being what it is, I was also dealing with an intense voice saying "gently caress it, maybe it's not a cop," which led to me sending the pics, talking explicitly about sex, and trying to set up a meeting place that I felt comfortable about. Eventually I got paranoid it was a cop and ended the conversation. It was an undercover. The next day I got picked up by the cops. So there was my experience in jail and the court system. Then there was the 1st year out of jail (including a polygraph wherein I admitted to past victims in the mode of the above offense and which is part of the court record). Then there's been the past year where I moved out of state to start grad school. All three phases (not to mention how I got to my arrest) could fill pages and pages (my "when an interesting thought hits me" journal I started post-incarceration is almost full). My therapist has told me over and over again that this line of thought is not helpful, but I can't help but feel like I'm never sorry enough for what I did, that my empathy is, compared to the hurt I've caused, so minuscule as to be a slap in the face to my victims. I've learned through therapy and at least partially have inculcated that the only way to move past that thought of worthlessness is to work on myself holistically, to take ownership of what I did and by so doing put it into a scale that I can deal with, examine, and figure out how best to grow from it. And there has been some amazing growth. I was in my first loving (loving in no small part because I told him about my past and my problems), committed relationship with another man thanks to therapy. I was 26 when that relationship started, and it was the first relationship of my life. I feel more clearheaded then I ever have before, I feel stronger. It's quite possible therapy had a positive effect on me getting into the grad program that I did. I mean key to my growth as a person, and which has the added effect of being the best long-term thing to prevent a relapse, is basically to develop a work-out regime for my prefrontal cortex. My compulsion/impulsive behavior basically weakened my prefrontal cortex's ability to say "hey wait a minute this is dumb, dangerous, and despicable" when a sexual impulse (either external stimuli or thought) arose, so it's critical that I increase that part of me able to say "hold on, this is part of the impulse/compulsive cycle, we need to put a stop to this" and put that into effect on my behavior. But I'll stop here and see where you all would like this to go, especially since this was ~90% about my behavioral issues/disorder. Questions? A word of caution: psychology is a fascinating subject, but when I try to put my own thoughts down on paper, it tends to become stream-of-consciousness very quickly and sometimes, to me, seems unintelligible. So please let me know if I sound like a babbling lunatic.
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Apr 3, 2015 04:09
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dethkon posted:I'll rock with you, gently caress it. What was your prison experience like having an offense of that nature? Were you immediately separated from other inmates? Did everyone know? PrBacterio posted:Doesn't a conviction of that type automatically get you registered as a sex offender? Because I would imagine the kind of restrictions that come with that would be likely to put a serious damper on your ability to rehabilitate and get on with your life, no matter how much you've improved as a person, in the "setting people up for failure" sense. GreyjoyBastard posted:Sounds to me like this is a case of the system working. Surprisingly, given that part of the system involved was American prison. Sorry for the huge delay all. Trying to contribute to this thread whilst simultaneously doing my work-study gig and grad school necessitated that this thread took lower precedence. Dethkon: After my arrest I was pretty much in medical-grade shock for about 3-5 days afterwards. No hysterics, no crying (at first), just sitting and staring off into space. I took as a certainty that life was over. That's the common refrain about sex offenders; leading a 'normal' life post-conviction is essentially impossible. That was assuming I would even make it out of prison. I was expecting decades behind bars (mind you this was before I met with my lawyer and had any real knowledge of the charge(s) and its/their severity/ies), and that I'd likely be shanked or raped. From the very beginning I was trying to psych myself up for the inevitable self-defense fights I would have to have. I arrived, changed into a red two-piece jail garb, got my jail manual and toiletries, talked to medical/psych, was told that there would be no bail/bond due to my charge and was placed in a windowless, one-man cell in intake. I sat there and just laid down with a towel over my eyes as they never turned off the lights there. I was there for I think 3 days. I managed maybe half a slice of bread during this period due to the shock. As horrible as intake was (nothing to do or read beyond the jail manual, no showers, no human interaction), I figured this was way better than general population. I met with my lawyer and she laid down what I could be facing based on the charge. 5 year mandatory minimum, maximum 20 year, fines, probation, potential lifetime sex offender registry, etc. We talked my legal defense, then her time was up. As she was leaving she said, "Oh and don't tell anyone about your charge. If you have to, say it's a drug thing". She was an excellent lawyer really but this was so insufficient in my mind. Ultimately what more could she have said? but I knew I wouldn't be able to fake having a drug charge or anything else. I'd never been through the justice system before and was about to be housed with a bunch of people who know exactly how it works having a drug charge. drat this is getting long. Okay I'm going to shorten things to highlights. I got to general population, got along okay at first. I thought I might be okay, but my plan of just saying "My lawyer says I shouldn't talk about my case" backfired. People started screaming "sex offender!" and "221 (my cell number) is a sex offender!" all times of day and night, making jokes like "$10 if you can guess whether it was a boy or girl". I didn't know how the gently caress they had figured it out. Then the table of guys I had been sitting with threw this piece of paper at me. It was a printout of the sheriff department's page with my charge information. My guess is that one of the inmates asked someone on the outside to look up the info (we have bracelets with our full names and DOB). I felt the attention of the guys who were on my case about it the most. It was like, having a target at your back or being a sheep and being surrounded by wolves. It was horrible, my heartrate was 24/7 elevated and all my muscles were constantly tensed, waiting for the initial hit or the next round of verbal abuse. That takes a real toll. I know it's only speculative but I noticed a much faster rate of hair loss and a sudden burst of grey hairs after that. I talked with my lawyer about it and she suggested that I tell the deputies that I felt physically threatened so that I could be moved to a different pod. I did that, they took me out of the pod, and had a talk. "There's a few options, we can put you back in there and after a few weeks or months they'll either lose interest or move on to a new victim. We can move you to a new pod but its quite likely that the knowledge of your offense will follow you there eventually. We can put you in protective custody, but you'll lose a lot of your freedoms and it will only prevent physical abuse. You'll still probably get verbally harassed, at least initially after they figure out your crime." I was terrified enough that protective custody sounded good to me. "By the way, protective custody is full indefinitely, so we'll have you house you in administrative segregation." I made the mistake of choosing ad seg. After five days I begged to be let out and take my chances in a new pod. Luckily (I mean that literally, by an extremely lucky combination of factors) I managed, one week aside, to complete my sentence without any further verbal harassment. I'm happy to go into further detail about the rest of my sentence or about anything written above but for now I have to stop. PrBacterio: I used up most of my energy on my response to dethkon but I'd like to answer your questions more thoroughly. I promise to do that in my next response. Very briefly though: It depends on the state, potentially the county. If it's a state charge, there are 50+ different regimes of post-incarceration sex offender rules and regulations to follow. In Virginia I had to register by law. In Virginia, this meant 25 years of registering, with my information posted online. Probation-wise, this meant home visits, mandatory group therapy (though I got individual therapy as we were able to prove in court that group therapy wouldn't be the best of mode of treatment and might actually increase my risk of recidivism), bi-annual lie detector screenings (at $300 a session, paid by the offender if he/she wasn't demonstrably poor), curfews, restriction on internet access to public terminals, no contact with minors, no friendships with anyone who was the parent/guardian of anyone under 18, no drugs or alcohol, 50 mile limit to free movement. After I moved to NY (by transferring my probation, an extremely stressful ordeal), NY said I had to register in their state because I had to register in Virginia. NY has a Board of Examination of Sex Offenders who, in addition to determining sex offender duties for NY state offenders, also evaluates transfers. Despite being a 'low-risk' offender in Virginia, NY BOESO said I should be made a level 2 offender. After hiring a lawyer and challenging that, the judge said the state had not made a sufficient case for departure to level 2 and that level 1 was sufficient. The ADA literally apologized to my lawyer after the rather pro forma hearing and said "We just needed to get the DA's position on record". In NY, thank god, level 1 sex offenders information does not appear online. You have to go to the police officer and, if I remember correctly, provide all my information and ask "Is this man on your registry?". I think there's a 15 year period I have to register. Probation is far less intrusive and my PO treats me like an actual human being as opposed to my PO in VA, who my therapist really disliked for making her clients' lives unnecessarily difficult ("I'm sorry I can only let you spend the night at your boyfriend's house once a month, but this is what he signed up for when he started dating you"). Even though my information does not appear on VA or NY's sex offender registries, my information is still online, thanks to homefacts.com. Despite the fact that I've moved, they still list there being a sex offender living at my parent's address, which makes me uneasy for their safety and security. Unfortunately, to contact homefacts.com and tell them I no longer live in VA will cost me $300. I refuse to pay that. In VA I was required to disclose my offense to anyone I had a "significant relationship" with, which after asking my PO, basically meant any future boyfriends, employers, landlords, etc. I had already told all my closest friends and family. I lost about half of my close friends, but I'm incredibly grateful for the ones who've stuck by me as well as my family, I know it has been tough for them at times. Even though it was mandated in VA, I absolutely believe I need to disclose this part of my history to anyone I start dating and it looks like things might get serious. It would be incredibly unfair to develop a romantic bond with someone and then spring this on them unawares. I'm dating someone now and I'm planning on disclosing this when we next meet, because I really really like him. I also told all of the grad school programs I was accepted to. This ranged from being no problem at all (which was obviously the case for the program I'm in now) to my acceptance being rescinded (due to a snafu, they originally thought i had applied to a PhD program, and I guess in the process of moving me over to a MA application they missed where I had checked the "Have you ever been convicted..." box. When I got accepted, I casually mentioned my offense in an e-mail and was told after several more emails that my acceptance was being withdrawn). I've told my landlord, along with all the other landlords/owners of places I looked at when I was moving up (which, thanks to the probation transfer process, wasn't a sure thing when I was looking, long story). That also ranged from totally not a problem to one woman screaming at me to stay away from her and her daughter over the phone. I've come to realize that the reason I have had a relatively easy time readjusting to society is intimately tied to my position of privilege as a white man of a typically white upper/middle class background. If I was born poor or as a person of color and had committed the same offense, I'm fairly sure the horror stories about sex offenders living as permanent pariahs would be far more applicable. I have, almost entirely due to my privilege, have a good 'story' I can tell people I meet. I have a solid work history, education, professional references, personal references, etc etc. Thanks to having a car and no drug problems, I have a squeaky clean probation record. The connection is less immediate but I think it would also be fair to say my privilege has contributed to my success at therapy, though I have also just found therapy to be such an incredibly fulfilling experience. With any luck I'll be able to get an early release from probation this winter, but I have zero intention of stopping therapy along with probation. It's like having a personal trainer for my emotions, compulsions and impulses (my Id?). I have to put in the leg work, but I'm getting the absolute most benefit from that leg work thanks to my relationship with my therapist. This isn't so much the case in NY, I wasn't able to get the therapist to agree to see me individually so I'm stuck in group therapy, but it's still beneficial (there's a lot more about my disappointment with group therapy but I can't get into it now, this post is already too long). This ties into your question, GreyjoyBastard. "Did the system work" is a difficult one to answer. If your belief is that the criminal justice system is at least partially about rehabilitation, then the system didn't do any of that while I was in jail. I received no therapy of any sort for the 10 months I was in jail. Save for medical emergencies (i.e. "I'm thinking about hurting myself or others"), seeing a mental health counselor took me several months. During our talk, she said she couldn't provide any tailored support, asked me if I had tried breathing exercises to deal with the stress, and then basically implied that they don't have the capacity to deal with anything other than medical-grade mental health issues and suicide risks. Maybe I'm just biased, but I think you could make the argument that being shoved back out with no therapeutic cushioning maybe played a role in my suicide attempt 3 months later. The system worked at this point in that it mandated that I go into treatment. My suicide attempt happened while I was in therapy, mind you, which is a shame, kind of a waste of therapy being so distraught that life is over and you're a disgusting sex offender and oh woe is me (which is selfish and self-hating thinking, of course) that you can't get down to wrestling with your past actions. That was a pretty dark time. I had a wonderful relationship with my therapist, but I basically lied to her about feeling suicidal because...I dunno, because I was so depressed and self-hating, I suppose. I don't know though, however. Being in jail, having a record, being a registered sex offender. I don't think the justice system should forego punitive measures, but these things haven't done anything to rehabilitate me. I'm aware that if I recidivate I'm looking at a much steeper sentence thanks to my record. But its like, it's not a motivating factor, it's more of a vague awareness at the back of my mind. My "here-and-now" motivation to remain in recovery and to push myself to be the best man I can be has been absolutely forged through therapy. This is where personal responsibility comes in. Again I think the personal trainer metaphor works best. My therapist and I can work together to get into the nitty-gritty of my sense of empathy, my acknowledgement of my responsibility for victimizing someone, and how best to work on my compulsions and impulses to ensure I never hurt someone again. But it's on me to do the actual mental digging, and most of it happens after I leave the therapists office. When I had individual sessions I genuinely looked forward to them, they were sometimes the highlight of the week and I mean that as a positive thing. Especially after I had some breakthroughs about my problems, going to therapy was like getting a good mental workout, where I could really wrestle with whatever had been on my mind through the week with someone who can really direct me to the core of the issue. It's fabulous, and really I recommend it to everyone, people who believe they have problems and people who feel perfectly content with themselves. Okay I've written enough, time to do some research. I'm hoping I can be a bit more on the uptake with responding to questions, so feel free to ask away. I've left out a ton of stuff and thoughts. Al Kiyan fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Sep 8, 2015 |
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Sep 8, 2015 00:42
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the great deceiver posted:HOLY gently caress they put you in GP with a sex charge? The first 10 months of my sentence I was in county and they had a policy of automatically putting anyone with anything that could even be remotely construed as a sex charge in PC. I'm sorry. I've been on the other side of your situation and it's really 1 or 2 sociopaths who want to get at you and the rest of the people are joining in just so they don't get accused of anything themselves but you already know that. Socially jail/prison is middle school on ultra-steroids. I was lucky in that I actually had a drug charge and I was able to navigate the politics and social situations prison presented fairly easily. Also my entire sentence I was separated from sex offenders so I honestly can't say how I would have reacted if I was in with them. I hope I would have had the courage not to be a degenerate bully. The more I think about it the more I was incredibly lucky to have it so easy after I moved to the second pod. The only thing I had to do on my part was to constantly be on guard and to check my actions and what I said to ensure I didn't bring any suspicion or interest to my case. I had to be "on guard" about it because it's really tricky to find the right balance: you basically have to avoid talking about your case without looking like you're avoiding talking about your case. Some things I learned: NEVER ask about another person's case. In general, never remind people that they have legal cases they're dealing with. If it's brought up independently of yourself, offer the minimum amount of input to keep the conversation going and look for a natural point to change the topic of conversation. Don't ask too much about people's personal life, especially unprovoked. If you get caught having to make up a charge, be prepared to do the legwork to work out the FULL story of the case, practice practice practice till you can recite the whole thing in your sleep, and if you're lucky it will pass the bullshit detector. Are you fighting the case or pleading guilty? Is it a relatively minor charge you made up? Better have a lengthy history of small felonies that will explain why your rich white rear end isn't out on bail. You will not be able to hide being a middle class white boy if you are a middle class white boy. I never fully relaxed until I was outside of the jail house, I just subconsciously got used to the constantly heightened state of anxiety.
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Sep 8, 2015 02:31
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Vahakyla posted:Al Kiyan, how did the deputies treat you? Did you get treated decently? As far as I was paying attention the deputies, I have to say, seemed entirely decent and professional to me and the other sex offenders in the pod (This is part of why I think I was so lucky, I was moved into a pod with 3 other people accused/convicted of sex crimes and who had kind of already done the leg-work of being harassed and having everyone lose interest in harassing them or believed they were innocent or were taking pity on the fact their crime occurred when they were 13. This was how I met Donald Hausen. It's a long story but my main harasser was moved into my pod for fighting and after the abuse started I confessed to the others charged with sex crimes that I was in the same boat as them and we wrote to the deputies to have the harasser removed. After this I really developed my ability to not raise interest in my case, but with the others charged with sex crimes I made up a story about how I was basically framed and was fighting the charges in court.) Some of the deputies were dicks on a power trip but they were dicks to everyone, I didn't feel singled out. Some were honestly friendly. Most if not all knew what my charges were, one deputy admitted that they get to know the "old-timers" and are curious just like everyone else.
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Sep 8, 2015 12:53
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My therapist in Virginia hated to admit it, but she thought the polygraph actually was a bit helpful in ensuring her clients were telling her the whole truth (because of the fear factor of a polygraph coming back as registering a lie, not because of any actual ability to detect lies). About a month before my initial polygraph, my therapist and I went over an ~30 document in which I was supposed to record my entire sexual history, from pre-pubescent "playing doctor" type stuff to normal sexual relations to fetishes, pornography usage, and criminal or destructive sexual behavior. My therapist warned me to absolutely wrack my brain, even half-remembered memories should be put down. There were categories too. Not sure if that one incident counts as "public masturbation"? Put it in that category anyway. It was about covering your rear end. In effect, the polygraph administrator went through each section, asked "Is there anything that you're leaving out of this category? Have you told me everything you can think of?" and if you said "yes" when you had an incident in your mind, the polygraph would register your deceit. I think. Remember this is approximately 30 pages (because for your illegal/questionable sexual behaviors you're supposed to write out, in detail, what happened, when/where/with who/what was the relation etc (My therapist implored me not to use proper names, specific places or times. The PO reviews the sexual history workbook and absolutely will refer any identifying information to the authorities for prosecution). It was a thoroughly humiliating experience, though the polygraph taker was very nice and humane about it. This came back to bite me in the rear end in NY, because the NY Board of Examining Sex Offenders and DA's office had access to that worksheet and went through and pulled two incidents from my past I had put in like, the public masturbation and use of prostitutes sections as evidence that I was a higher-risk offender, but which, when I was going through it with my therapist, we were both like "We're not sure this really counts or fits here but best to cover your rear end and put it down just in case". (Again, to be fair to the DA's office, the ADA at my risk assessment hearing clearly wasn't interesting in gunning for me, apologized and told my lawyer he just needed to get the DA's position on record). Even though I was already totally open and honest with my therapist (including times I relapsed a bit in therapy and, for instance, watched one of the gay & lesbian movies on netflix specifically for the sex scenes, yes that's a relapse for me!) I admit that, if nothing else, wracking my brain so thoroughly to detail every sexual experience at least got us to look at stuff I hadn't considered particularly noteworthy before.
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Sep 9, 2015 14:54
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I actually wasn't thinking of the fact that it violates terms of probation (side story: I got my probation terms changed to allow me access to a laptop, which came with the stipulation of having a content-blocking filter installed. I was totally okay with this, I recognized the need, at least at that early part in my recovery. I also had an "accountability" program installed that sent reports to my PO about the sites I had visited, with any questionable/sexual material noted. Maybe it was reckless or stupid considering, but I wanted to check up on the somethingawful.com forums, as I've always liked the debates and discourses here. Photoshop/Atma/Everdraed threads on GBS of course are also totally worth a visit. My next visit with the PO he says something along the lines of "You don't need to be visiting sites like that, it's not wholesome or productive and you shouldn't be using the computer for entertainment." So that was the end of that. Luckily my PO in NY has no such interest in babysitting my internet usage; a huge part of therapy is to get me to a point where I can monitor my usage myself, along with the content blocker I still have and am comfortable keeping installed for the foreseeable future. That's good enough for her.) Anyways, its a relapse for me from a therapeutic, cognitive-behavioral cycle angle. Very briefly, the more casual sex/pornographic material I expose myself to, the more 'primed' my brain is to respond impulsively to sexual stimuli. It's like a ratcheting effect; my mind gets increasingly, but subconsciously attuned and sensitized to stimuli, and it takes a longer time and greater amount of effort to ratchet back down than to get even more primed. As a corollary I increasingly dehumanize the men I have sex with; they're just a piece of meat there to gratify my sexual urge. When I was deep in my casual sex habit, I rarely knew more than your first name, if that. This obviously plays a key role in being able to have sex with underage boys. In essence, I didn't see them as boys, just another piece of meat, albeit one that grants a heightened sense of eroticism due to the "taboo" nature of the encounter. I also recognize that I think I'm just naturally attracted to slimmer, smoother, more androgynous body types. But I could go from that to having sex with someone my age or older the next day. The reason I have to take relatively mild stuff like watching netflix movies for their sex scenes seriously is that the deeper into this cycle of increasingly primed sexual urges and impulses I get, the harder it is both to be aware of how deep in I am and to break out of the cycle. At some point, a line (usually one of personal danger, i.e. unsafe sex, or illicitness) is crossed and for me, at least, I have a 'gently caress it, i'm already screwed' moment which makes things even more difficult to ratchet back. So it's crucial to find, recognize, and correct whatever impulsive/compulsive sexual behavior I have at the earliest possible stage. (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 10, 2015 15:56
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