Al Kiyan posted:

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.