CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE SEX OFFENCE: ADMISSION OR DENIAL OF GUILT
The offender in each of the 2,274 cases of offenses in the present study “has been legally convicted as the result of an overt act, committed by him for his own immediate sexual gratification, which is contrary to the prevailing sexual mores of the vicinity in which he lives and/or is legally punishable.” Some of the subjects steadfastly denied to the police, the courts, the prison officials, and to the present interviewers that they had committed the offenses of which they were found guilty. These constitute 13 per cent of the total sample of sex offenses. Inasmuch as the above definition of sex offenders is a behavioral one (that is, the person must, in fact, have committed an overt act for his own immediate sexual gratification), a dilemma arose about whether to include in the final sample of offenders and offenses cases of complete and consistent denial. If after a consideration of the convicted offender’s account of the event and of his record of sexual behavior up to that time, and an examination of the official records of the case, there appeared to be a strong doubt about his guilt, the offense was not included in the group of sex offenses studied here. Fortunately, such decisions had to be made only infrequently, chiefly in connection with exhibition offenses.
We have come to the conclusion that there are in general very few persons who are falsely convicted of sex offenses, and the experience of therapists in certain prisons has strengthened this belief. The prison therapists consistently report that for most persons who deny their offense, a few months in therapy makes it possible for them to admit it. Nevertheless, there does undoubtedly remain a small hard core of persons who have been falsely convicted of sex offenses, just as there have been persons who have been falsely convicted of murder, robbery, and other crimes. However, it came as a surprise to the interviewing staff on the current project that the percentage of potentially false convictions is as low as it seems to be. In addition to the possibility that some of the men who denied their guilt may have been falsely convicted, it is also possible that some official admissions of guilt may have been false. Sometimes personal circumstances, which may include a history of earlier similar offenses that were not detected, may lead an individual to admit guilt in an offense that he in fact did not commit. In some 2 per cent of the present offenses the men claimed that they had admitted guilt for convenience or under pressure, sometimes with a promise of a lighter sentence, but that they actually had not committed the offense in question. In these cases, in spite of their claims, the writers were not convinced of their innocence. There is then this small group of offenses in which there was not a consistent denial to us and to the authorities.
Next in grade to denial-of the offense is partial admission. In these cases the offender admitted the general behavior with which he was charged but not to its full extent. For example, he may have admitted touching the genitalia of a small girl but denied that he had used force against her, A third category is offenses which the man stated that he was unable to deny or admit since he could not recall the event. This was usually based on drunken amnesia or a fugue state of emotion. Comprising a final group are the offenses that were fully admitted. The fact that a greater number of the offenders admitted to us than to the legal or prison authorities that they had committed the act of which they were convicted is explained by various factors. Foremost is probably the fact that the offenders felt they could rely on the secrecy of the interview records with their impersonal coding, as well as other guarantees of confidence. The offender was sometimes much relieved to be finally telling his story “straight” to an interested outside interviewer who had plenty of time to listen and whose attitude was non-condemnatory. Also, many of these men had been in prison for some months or even years, and had had plenty of time to think about and to try to face up to their own problems. In some instances, particularly in certain institutions, they had been helped in this reassessment by prison psychologists, doctors, or chaplains.
The offense was most often fully admitted by the heterosexual and homosexual offenders against minors and adults. Least likely to give full admission are the three aggression groups and the two older incest-offense groups. In these five only about half of the offenses were admitted fully. Because of the two intermediate classifications of qualified admission and inability to admit or deny, the findings on denial of guilt do not entirely complement those on admission. Either qualified admission or inability to report due to memory failure is claimed for such a large proportion of aggression cases (as high as 36 per cent) that only from a quarter to a sixth of them denied the offense to the authorities. But whether one examines the figures on full admission or on denial of guilt, it is fairly clear that the more taboo offenses tend to be most often denied: aggression, incest, and pedophilia. This reaches a peak in the incest offenses vs. daughters over sixteen years of age. Here a high of over 40 per cent denial to the police or courts is recorded. To be sure, there is some evidence that there may be a higher percentage of false convictions in incest than in other types of sex offenses, since an older daughter in a mood of spite or revenge may be led to claim, as a means to gain certain ends for herself, that her father had sexual contact with her. It is also true that a wife will sometimes join in making such an accusation, using it as a weapon for what she considers her own advantage. But these factors cannot be taken as an explanation for the large percentage of denials to the authorities, since the figure is cut considerably by the admissions of complicity to our interviewer. These latter confessions reduce the denials to six cases (25 per cent). But this is also the high point of denials to the interviewer among the 14 groups. The small sample of 25 offenses, with only 24 providing data on this point, may in part account for this finding.
Yet, assuming these convictions to be valid, and assuming further that the small size of the sample is not too distorting in its effect at this point, a contrasting trend of some significance in denial rates can be traced between the incest and two other major groups: heterosexual and homosexual offenses. Both of the latter show somewhat higher denial rates where younger persons are concerned than where adults are involved. In the incest offenses the reverse is true. If one reads denial of offense as an index of the difficulty of admitting an act because of the weight of social guilt, it would imply relatively more stringent taboos against pedophilia in nonincest and homosexual offenses.
Within the incest framework, on the other hand, the greatest inability to admit one’s own behavior appears to be in the offenses committed with daughters over sixteen. Since over 90 per cent of the sexual contact in incest with younger daughters was short of vaginal coitus, and since petting and affectionate physical contacts up to a certain point are openly acceptable with younger daughters, the interpretation would seem a valid one. But it is a reversal of the general notion that the younger the object, the more heinous the offense. There are possibly many men who would not regard sexual behavior short of coitus as “real incest,” but as just “fooling around,” and hence would not be so guilt-laden. Such behavior is clearly near the borderline of permissibility within a family, but it is not in the case of neighborhood children or those that are strangers. In the common meaning of the term, full coitus with a daughter is “true incest,” and this was actually what did take place with more than 90 per cent of the daughters over sixteen for whom there were definite data on the sexual techniques used. It is also the category that showed the highest per cent of denial both to officials and to our investigators. We found earlier that the older males who committed this offense were generally not a delinquent type. They lived largely within a framework of conventional values and held restrictive sexual attitudes. For these reasons they may have found it exceptionally difficult to admit the full facts of their incest behavior, even to themselves.
It is notable that the aggressors vs. children used the “not able to report” response both to us and to the authorities much more often than any other group. This is partly because they tended to be an alcoholic, deteriorated group, many of whom in fact did not honestly know whether they had committed the act or not. Also, because of the double-barreled taboo nature of the offense they doubtless felt the need to retreat to a nolo contendere position, even in the light of overwhelming positive evidence.
To summarize, the great majority of offenders admitted their guilt, more of them to our interviewers than to the authorities by ranges of from about 1 to 10 per cent. Differences in the difficulty of admission can be inferred from the findings in regard to the levels of denials among the age-of-object groups and types of sex offenses. Pedophilic offenses and even more distinctively incest offenses against adult or minor daughters show up strongly here.
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