http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,441199,00.html
October 6, 2006
THERAPY FOR PEDOPHILIA
"I Hate My Desires - They Make Me Sick"
By Bruno Schrep
Ralf P. is plagued by sexual fantasies of the kind he would rather not
have -- he's pedophile and struggling to resist his own impulses.
Berlin's Charité hospital now offers a new program combining counseling
and hormone therapy for men in his situation.
When the girl dressed in skimpy summer clothes sits down across from him
and smiles, Ralf P. goes into a panic. His heartbeat speeds up and he
begins to breathe heavily and unsteadily. He breaks into a sweat.
He tries to look the other way, but he can't. He stares at the girl for
minutes at a time. Then he gets up abruptly and steps off the public bus
at the next stop. Never mind that he's still a long way from his
destination. P. spends an hour wandering aimlessly through the city.
He's a man on the run from himself.
Ralf P. finds himself in this kind of situation all the time -- in
restaurants, on the escalator at the shopping mall, on elevators, at the
supermarket. "Why me?" is the question he asks himself every time it
happens. "Damn it, why me of all people?"
The girls that plunge him into this restless and confused state, making
him forget everything that goes on around him, are young -- much too
young. They're 10 or 11 years old -- 12 years at best.
Ralf P. is a pedophile.
"I hate my desires," he says brusquely. "They make me sick." Then, after
a brief pause, he adds: "But I've never abused a child."
Ralf is a stocky man in his mid-50s, with dark blonde hair that is
turning gray at the sides. He seems a friendly enough and looks
perfectly normal, as he sits in a room in Berlin's Charité hospital. No
unusual features distinguish him from other people.
A questionnaire lies on the table in front of him. Ralf P. is making an
effort to answer all the tedious or embarrassing questions honestly.
"How old are the sexual partners you fantasize about?" reads one
question. "How do you think of your own sexuality? Do you think of
yourself as normal or as a pervert?" the questionnaire continues.
Another question asks: "What do you think about when you masturbate?"
Ralf P. is participating in a therapy program called "Prevention of
Unrecorded Sexual Child Abuse." It's conducted by the Institute for
Sexology and Sexual Medicine at the Charité Hospital. Behind the
project's awkward name lies a simple intention -- that of preventing
pedophile men from ever putting their sexual fantasies about small boys
and girls into practice.
"Do you love children more than you would like?"
A campaign of posters and TV ads ("Do you love children more than you
would like?") has been started to encourage pedophile men to get in
touch with the scientists at the program: "We can help -- free of charge
and confidentially."
The offer is directed at a minority, but the minority is a large one:
About one percent of all men aged between 17 and 80 are considered
pedophiles, according to the calculations of sexologists and the
estimates of international medical panels. That's 290,000 men in Germany
alone -- almost as many as suffer from Parkinson's disease.
The program at Charité is designed to prevent lives from being ruined.
Child abuse provokes more disgust than almost any other crime. The
perpetrator's reputation is quickly destroyed and few crimes have
similarly severe consequences for the victims. Child abuse victims often
think they've put their traumatic childhood experiences behind them,
only to find that those experiences still cause them to distrust or fear
their sexual partners years later. They may suffer from impotence or
frigidity. Often child abuse victims are unable to enter into sexual
relations when they grow up.
The statistics are shocking. German police files register about 14,000
cases of child abuse every year; the total number of cases is much
higher. Reliable surveys indicate that 8.6 percent of all girls and 2.8
percent of all boys are sexually abused.
The only cases that make it into the headlines are those that involve
dramatic murders -- about eight a year -- or spooky kidnapping cases
like that of the Viennese girl Natascha Kampusch or the 14-year-old
German child abuse victim Stephanie Rudolph. But such cases are
exceptions. Most cases are never reported.
Complete candor
Much is being asked of the men participating in the Charité's therapy
program. Because when they show up in old part of the hospital in
Berlin's city center -- a brownstone building where Robert Koch
discovered the tuberculosis virus 124 years ago -- there's one
commitment they can't shirk: They have to be completely candid.
People who have kept their sexual preference secret for years, hiding it
from their parents, siblings and colleagues -- sometimes even from their
wives -- now have to acknowledge that preference in front of others, as
part of their group therapy. "Yes," they have to say. "I am a
pedophile."
"It's a nightmare for all of them," says Christoph Joseph Ahlers, the
psychologist who is coordinating the project in addition to running two
of the therapy groups. The sexologist is a tall, reserved and yet
friendly man. He knows from countless conversations that pedophile men
want nothing more than to hide their urge from the world and from
themselves. But he also knows that if those men don't acknowledge who
they are, no progress can be made: "If I accept something as a part of
me, I can control it in a reliable way," Ahlers says.
And control is what it's all about. There is one question at the heart
of the therapy program: What should I do when my urges overpower me?
Many of the answers to that question are simple -- at least in theory.
One answer is not to drink alcohol, not to use drugs and to avoid
everything that weakens your inhibitions. Another answer is not to get
close to children and to categorically refuse requests for helping them
with their homework or giving them a ride. A third answer is to avoid
pornography.
It's not easy putting the theory into practice. Ahlers regularly makes
his patients practice techniques for resisting their urge -- and also
the temptation to blame difficult situations on the children. The
therapist often hears telling remarks such as: "The girl wasn't wearing
anything except a really short T-shirt. And she was giving me seductive
looks the whole time." Or: "It's not my fault if this boy sits down
right next to me in the cinema."
Role-playing games are one technique Ahlers uses in order to get the men
to put themselves in the situation of the children. Ahlers wants the men
to see themselves from the point of view of their potential victims. He
wants to make them understand that children are sexual beings but would
never, under any circumstances, desire sexual contact with adults.
Not so simple
Studies have shown that children who receive too little love and care
frequently become victims of child abuse -- partly because they feel
they're not being perceived at all, and try desperately to remedy this.
Ahlers knows from the stories his patients tell him that it's very easy
to win the trust of such children: "Many of them are glad that someone
is even just calling them by their first name."
Only those men are admitted to the Charité therapy program who have
either successfully checked their urge until now or who have been
prosecuted and have served their sentence.
The expectations these men bring to the therapy program are enormous.
"At first I thought I was starting a new life," Ralf P. remembers. He
dreamt of never being exposed to his sexual urges again, of escaping his
vivid daydreams and fantasies, perhaps even becoming just like most men:
someone who desires and loves an adult woman -- someone perfectly
normal.
But that dream ended during the very first therapy session. When the
therapist explained to Ralf that his sexual inclination itself cannot be
treated, and that all he can be taught is how to handle that
inclination, he wanted to get up and leave right away, withdrawing from
the program then and there. He wanted to spare himself the weekly train
trip to Berlin, which takes several hours -- not to mention the tortuous
exchanges during the group sessions. Three words imprinted themselves on
his mind: "No possible cure."
"Many of the participants are shocked when we tell them this," Ahlers
point out. Most of his patients react bitterly when he provides them
with the relevant background information on how human sexuality
develops, telling them that a person's sexual inclination is fixed for
good after puberty, without any possibility of future change, and that
no one has the option of choosing their sexual desires -- by deciding,
for example, whether they want to be heterosexual or homosexual. He
tells them there's no choice.
"It's just fate," the psychologist explains, "one of nature's whims."
Then he continues, as if he wanted to offer his listener consolation:
"It's got nothing to do with good and evil, or with guilt." After all,
he knows that almost all his patients are constantly plagued by intense
feelings of guilt.
"You pervert!"
When Ralf P. first noticed that the bodies of pre-pubescent girls
fascinate him -- he was 16 and working as an assistant at a holiday camp
-- he tried desperately to banish his fantasies from his mind. They kept
coming back, keeping him awake at night, and he became angry at himself.
"You pervert!" he said to himself. "You pervert, you disgusting
pervert." He could already see himself standing in court -- spat on,
threatened and despised by all: Ralf, the child molester.
Later he tried to distract himself by seeking contact with girls his own
age. But some of them had already developed breasts, and he was repulsed
by their curves. The same images kept dominating his fantasies: Images
of pre-pubescent girls who want to cuddle him, girls he caresses and
kisses -- but without violence and without penetration, as he insists on
emphasizing.
Afraid his self-control might slip one day, Ralf P. became more and more
reclusive. He avoided swimming pools, sports fields, cinemas -- every
place where people gather in large numbers and where he might meet small
children. Ralph has no friends that he could confess his problems to.
He's completely alone with the images in his head, left to his own
devices. The images return several times a day, like an obsession.
He abandoned his training as a teacher -- the risk of actually becoming
a teacher and being exposed constantly to children would be much too
great. He looks for jobs in places where he won't be tempted to give in
to his urges. He works high up in the sky, as a crane operator, or
cruises along the Rhine and Elbe rivers as a ship steersman. Often he
speaks to no one for days.
After hesitating for a long time, he finally confessed to his doctor,
who reacted helplessly. The doctor gave Ralf a prescription for a drug
that lowers blood pressure, explaining that this will help to curb his
sexual desire. Then he sent him to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist
fiddled nervously as he listens to Ralf's confession and then gives him
a disgusted look. "I can't help you," he said. "All I can say is: The
poor children."
Ralf P. tried to force himself to be normal. When he met a woman that he
knew and was attracted to years earlier, when she was a 10-year-old
girl, he made his first attempt at a relationship with an adult woman.
He imagined she were still a girl in order to be able to be physically
close to her. That didn't work out for very long.
Trying to be normal
Ralf P. tried repeatedly to confess to his partner. When he finally
succeeded, she reacts understandingly -- at first. "Sex isn't
everything," she tells him. But she never touches him again, just as he
never touches her again. The relationship ends.
Ralf P. then has two suicide attempts. At age 18, he overdoses on
sleeping pills. He's discovered purely by accident. At age 52, following
the break-up with his partner, he wants to jump off a bridge. Policemen
restrain him at the very last moment. He's placed in a psychiatric
hospital.
Ralf's story isn't unique. "Almost all patients have fantasies of
suicide," says Ahlers, the therapist at Charité hospital. The life-long
necessity of repressing something that seems perfectly natural to most
people -- your own sexuality -- and the fact of never being able to have
a fulfilled sex life combine to produce depression and auto-aggression.
Ahlers uses medical jargon and speaks of "clinically relevant
psychological strain."
Sexual abstinence isn't made any easier by the fact that behind the
sexual urge there lies a desperate urge for love, tenderness and
recognition. Ralf P. has resigned himself to accepting what this means
for him: "I know I will never be able to experience any of those
things," he says.
The pressure on Ralf and others like him is intense. That's why the
treatment they get as part of the Charité's therapy program isn't
restricted to talk.
Every 14 days, Ralf P. receives injections of Androcur, an
antiandrogenic hormone preparation that is also used to treat prostrate
cancer. The drug curbs the production of male sex hormones. Ever since
he started taking the injections, P. feels he is no longer being
overwhelmed as vehemently by the images in his head. He feels in control
of his own sexuality. It's the first time in his life. Ralf says he's
now able to experience something like joy at being alive.
There is a caveat, however: He has sworn himself that if he gives in to
his pedophile impulses even once, he will sentence himself to death.
The unusual pact is Ralf P.'s attempt to force himself to remain
sexually abstinent. He's making his own survival dependent on his sexual
behavior: "If I ever lay hands on a child," he says, "I'll kill myself.
No one will save me then."
/end
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
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