Recidivism of CP offences.

Great post but 1) a rant and 2) a request

He actually said he had no doubt I would offend against a "child" bearing in mind you are classed as a child until your 18 in the UK.

1) The age of consent is 16 in the UK. 16 yr old boys are on the gay scene and have always been on the gay scene. As have 15 year old and 14 year old ones. I was on it from 13, I was far from the only one. The AoC is 14 in many places in Europe and no one is offended. The reason gays are more tolerated in the UK now is because of Queer As Folk which was about a 15 yr old boy sleeping with 20-somethings. This was never unusual.

Outrage at one point and Peter Tatchel at several points have begun to make demands for the AoC to be lowered to 14, because most every gay guy of my generation and the two generations after it and the generations before it know damn well 14/15 yr olds were sexually active, often with older men in the gay world. David Cameron when responding to a 'paedo' question about the now disproven story that some MP's went with teenage boys said "we don't want to start a gay witch hunt" - even he knows the truth of the matter!. The porn laws in the UK only went up to 16 until 2003, by this point there was a wealth of 'twink' porn of 16 yr olds available. They put the AoC down to 16, then hiked the porn laws up to 18. This is structural homophobia. It is to be opposed.

2) With that out the way would you be able to explain the SOTP, what happens, what it involves, how personal/invasive it is etc.? That would be a really helpful thing.

I totally get where you are coming from James and I agree wholeheartedly. In my early twenties I would have thought nothing of sleeping with someone who was say 15-16 if It had felt like the right thing, also when I was younger as you were had I been approached by older guys if I like them then I probably would not have thought twice about having sex with them and thought it was OK.

But the law treats you as a child until you are 18 in this country and that is unlikely to ever change no matter how much people or teenagers want it to change.

As for the SOTP.

You will go to a probation office for a 2 week induction session. There will be two facilitators and you and 9 other men convicted of various offences, from people who have offended online with images to people who have groomed children online, to people who have physically had sex with children, to people who have used underage prostitutes, to people who have violently assaulted a person over the AoC and possibly everything else in between.

The hardest part is disclosing to a group of strangers what your offence is, mine was making indecent images of children and I really struggled to say it out loud to 11 other men. But there were people who had offended against children or adults on my induction. Remember they are all there for much the same reason so they have no more right to judge than you do of them. In all everyone was very supportive, I was more supportive of others who I would have previously thought was a disgusting person for having sex with a young girl for example.

They do various exercises which I can't list them all but for example the finkel-hor model using 4 chairs, explaining how you justify your actions to yourself and how you overcome internal barriers and external barriers to offend, how you might overcome a physical resistance for example a person and how each of those chairs allow you to get closer to offending against an actual person.

There were a number of bits of "in focus" work and also group and individual pieces of work during that 2 weeks, each day lasted for most of the day.

When you are "in focus" you usually sit in a chair at the front, the exercise you are doing is set by the facilitators, the group is encouraged to listen to you and then the facilitators will ask you questions about yourself and the offence or what ever you are talking about. They will encourage the group to ask you questions about whatever it is or how they perceive the situation or to offer a different perspective. It can feel like people are asking too much and you may agree or not agree with questions put to you. However for the most part the guys were great on my course and we really gelled as a group and none of us were judgmental of each other.

People do handle it very differently, one guy just sat there and barely said a word and did not engage with anything, after a few days he just stopped coming to the group, but he would have to do the induction all over again with a new group and possibly even be in breach of his court order and sent to prison for not attending.

Once the 2 week induction is over you will then be waiting to go onto either the long term SO program or the shorter better lives program. This will depend on how long you have on licence or supervision order, whether you have been sent to prison for your crime, how you engage on the induction with the facilitators and group etc.

I waited for probably 6 months to get on my better lives course and it lasted about a year with occasional breaks when we could not attend the group due to new induction sessions for others or staff shortages.

I expected to be on the course with the same guys I did my induction with but in reality there was only 1 guy there from my induction the rest were all new strangers to me.

During the course what will be worked on in the "in focus" sessions will depend upon you and your personal issues. The sessions run for about 4 hours on the better lives program once a week.
It will be a mixture of "in focus" sessions for everyone and some practical sessions doing different activities in small groups or pairs or as a large group.

As an example one would be putting different thoughts or beliefs into a corresponding category, as an idea you would have pieces of paper with thoughts or feelings or behaviors and as group you have to put them in the category you think they will fit into.

Example "children like to have sex with adults" the categories are
Pro sexual thinking?
General public opinion?
Is it a belief?
Is it a thought?

So you would put that piece of paper in the category you most think it fits into. Not quite a correct example but gives you an idea of how things are structured. The correct one would be in that basic example, general public opinion as most of the general public would not believe or even think children would like to have sex with adults.

When you are "in focus" you will be asked to complete a piece of work of whatever it might be to the group, the group will then ask you questions about it, for example ask you why you felt the way you did, what cause you to offend was there other reasons that helped you offend like lifestyle of family or anxiety etc.

Groups of you are also asked to bring a "community challenge" to each session of something you have struggled with since the last session, to discuss it with the group and to be asked questions about your challenge and to respond and to analyze it.

You will also likely have to do role play exercises in whatever you are struggling with in your life, for example it might "asking someone out on a date" or "telling a future partner about your offence", you will do it once with the help of a group member who may volunteer or usually you will chose someone to help you.

It is basically around talking about why you offended and recognizing your triggers for re-offending,it is about accepting responsibility for your actions and not always trying to blame something else or someone else.

It will likely vary depending on region on how things are done and depend upon your group of offenders.

At times I did feel like I just wanted to run out of the room and not go back in, but I got through it and the group were amazing I was on, each one of us felt for the others and didn't treat each other with anything but respect at least inside the group. But I also doubt any of the group actually disliked any of us for our crimes. Some of us really bonded and really helped each other and there were some guys I was not so keen on not because of their crime but just I did not like the kind of person they cam across as, but there were only a couple like that I didn't like as a person.

I could go on and on and try and remember everything but we got through so much stuff it is hard to remember everything.

I found it overall a daunting time but also a friendly situation and a great place to talk to strangers about stuff I had never talked to anyone about. It did get easier as time went on, I even miss not being able to just have a chat with some of the guys I was on the group with about life in general during the breaks, we even had some laughs with the facilitators as well.

I have to say wholeheartedly the facilitators were brilliant with how they handled it, yes they asked difficult questions and made no bones about situations, but they also showed true compassion for each one of us, it must be a hard job for them to do.

In all I would say the experience was mostly positive, since then I have been able to tell my best female friend everything, without turning into a blubbering wreck, I have learn't to be more open and honest with people I really care about, in turn they have been more supportive of me than I ever imagined they would be.

This is just my experience with the group I was on within my area but I would hope others get the same kind of supportive experience I did.

Sounds ######6 horrible.

cumulusjames wrote:Sounds ######6 horrible.

It probably does and I probably a lot of the time felt the same but it got easier and in the end I found it mostly positive.

I can only state it the way it was.

I got a lot more out of it than I ever imagined I would.

I don't like the sound of it.

And how did they cure you of your attractions and desires?

cumulusjames wrote:I don't like the sound of it.

And how did they cure you of your attractions and desires?

I wasn't aware I said they cured my attractions or thoughts or desires.

I am more aware of me as a person, I am more aware of what could trigger me in the future to offend again, I understand myself and my life more than I did, I am more open with people I care about myself, I can talk much easier to people about personal stuff.

They can't cure someone who is homosexual or straight or bi or attracted to children or animals or dead people or whatever, there is no cure it's who we are, what we do with those attractions is what is important and how we manage them.

airwolffan wrote:They can't cure someone who is homosexual or straight or bi or attracted to children or animals or dead people or whatever, there is no cure it's who we are, what we do with those attractions is what is important and how we manage them.

Very well said!

What would happen if you said you didn't have any 'triggers'? I genuinely don't believe I have - I did it because I could and because I thought there was no consequences, just another branch of porn as far as I was concerned at the time. There's no way I would risk it again and I prefer adult women, anyway.

hatemyself35 wrote:What would happen if you said you didn't have any 'triggers'? I genuinely don't believe I have - I did it because I could and because I thought there was no consequences, just another branch of porn as far as I was concerned at the time. There's no way I would risk it again and I prefer adult women, anyway.

What caused you to return to looking at those images in particular? If it's just 'another branch of porn' and you knew it was illegal - why didn't you just stick to the legal stuff if all you were after was porn?

In my case I'd say I developed a learned behaviour from happening upon this stuff at a young impressionable age. I learned to associate orgasm with those images. Mixed with my shyness and low self esteem, when i needed sexual relieve I turned to those images. So for me the trigger might be being alone, with access to the internet, and feeling a little horny.

I read 'The Porn Trap', a recommended book on the subject, and that's pretty much the conclusion I got to. Hence the relapse signature I've been including in all my posts, below.

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(1 week and 1 day since last relapse)

I used to ask myself that a lot. I think it was when I had worn out all the amateur porn I could find (wasn't interested in acted stuff). I used the pre-pubescent stuff to trade with others for the stuff I did like, which was teenage girls around 12-15. I think that's because I was continuously aroused at that age and for some reason I find the sexual thoughts and impulses of girls that age attractive. That's why I used to sext with girls that age - I was more interested in their fantasies and thoughts than the pictures they sometimes sent. But, ultimately, I would nearly always masturbate to adult stuff afterwards and not to the pictures or conversations I had with them. In a nutshell I think I liked the bodies of women but the thoughts of that age of sexual discovery, which you can never really replicate.

I'm a bit worried that I will be conscripted into 'finding' triggers and admitting I have a sexual attraction to children, which I don't. I do have a sexual attraction to teenage girls who have womanly bodies but I believe that's normal. I would never act on that in the real world.