Forum on Sex Offenders:

Experts Answer Star Readers' Questions

The complex problem of sex criminality is revealed by the answers to Star Readers' questions at the Toronto Star Citizens' Forum on "Sex Offenders" at Massey Hall.

Chairman Edson L. Haines: How is the sex deviate discovered? Is it necessary that he must misconduct in display Is there any sexual matters? means known to science by which he might be discovered before it is known to himself?

Dr. Alfred Nostrand, Van director neurological services, Ontario Dept. Reform Institutions: Most sex deviates are not discovered. Only a small proportion tend to appear in the courts. A few are brought to physicians and to psychiatrists and a few are brought to the family court and the juvenile court on pressure from their families, but we have to admit that the great mass of sexual offenders are only discovered when they are charged with their first sex crime.

Chairman: Some seem to think that doctors or psychiatrists by examining a man should be able to say whether or not he is a sex deviate. Is that so?

Dr. Van Nostrand: In my opinion, no. Many can be diagnosed as having psychopathic personalities but we have way of determining what type of anti-social activity he will display.

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Dr. Ralph Brancale, director of New Jersey State diagnostic centre, Menlo Park, N.J.: I think I would like to work with delinquents for a period of weeks and months and, in addition to our usual physical examination, employ the deeper technique, the

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drug technique, the analytical technique. Now, with the drug technique, some of these unconscious feelings have come up with explosive quality, and we feel we are able to determine those that are potentially dangerous. We have been doing that at the penal level in all instances where a person has been committed, either a homicide or a display of violence, and they are making a good prison adjustment even before they are released. We use amytal, which is an acid test, better than alcohol.

As you know, many of these crimes of violence come to the surface under an alcoholic condition, and amytal gives a very good test and we feel much safer. I hope as time goes on, using some of these deeper techniques and trying to work at the delinquent level, at the earliest point, with personalities that begin to show symptoms of nonadjustment, would be a very good policy.

Chairman: I think the thing we want to get in mind as far as the subject is concerned-would you recommend going to a high school and examining every student there?

Dr. Brancale: No.

Chairman: If a man is a sex deviate, then is it probable that he will commit a sexual attack on women and children? Dr. Gray, what is your view?

Dr. Kenneth Gray, Toronto Psychiatric hospital: No. Only a small proportion of sexual

deviates will commit attacks on women and children. I think that is borne out in the information given to us by Dr. Brancale, Dr. Manfred Guttmacher, and to a lesser extent by the experience we have had through our clinic in Toronto.

Chairman: Call a man be a sex deviate and otherwise perform the duties of a normal citizen?

Dr. Van Nostrand: Yes, sex deviates are found in all walks of life. It is often a great surprise to their friends and their neighbors when they are brought to court and the evidence reveals years of sexual misbehavior of very disgusting types.

Chairman: Yet that man has been able to carry on in the community and apparently discharge his obligations?

Dr. Van Nostrand: Yes, and some have been prominent in the community.

Chairman: Can a sex deviate be cured? If so, how?

Dr. Brancale: As I have said before, I don't like that word "cure." In psychiatry, it is helping people to adjust to their responsibilities and their problems. There are several ways in which we do treat. One is the direct, psychotherapeutic approach where we probe, we go deeper into their feelings, bring their feelings to the surface and let the patient get a deeper view of himself.

The second approach which we unfortunately have to depend

upon because we haven't got enough specialists, is the group treatment, where these people that believe they are the only ones that suffer from this condition are able to ventilate their feelings in a group situation. And finally, we have all sorts of support treatment to help the individual sublimate some of his problems into constructive activity. We feel much more optimistic about the major portion of our sex deviates and I think that the more we work with them the greater and more promising will the result be.

Chairman: In what percentage of cases is the offence of the sex deviate his first offence?

Dr. Brancale: I was just looking over my figures here, and I find that 48 per cent. of all sex offenders show no previous record. Now examining some of the major categories of sex crimes, I find that also holds true. In some of the exhibitionists, and those who will molest children. there is a tendency to have a previous record. But generally speaking, one half of all sex offenders have no previous record of any kind.

Chairman: If all known sex deviates were locked up and we recognize that just can't be done -would it materially reduce the number of serious attacks on women and children?

Dr. Gray: No. It would not be a realistic solution to this problem.

Dr. Guttmacher, chief medical officer of the supreme bench, Baltimore; psychiatrist to Johns Hopkins hospital: No. I don't think it would help. It would help to such a minor degree that you would do much more violence than you would accomplish. Of course, you wouldn't have enough jails to hold them anyway.

Chairman: Here's a question, and I direct your attention to the use of the word "severity." So many people are saying, let us increase the penalty, let us use the lash, put them in jail for life does the severity of the punishment materially inhibit the sex deviate?

Dr. Van Nostrand: If they are considering more serious crimes, such as rape and attacks on children, I would say no. If you consider the over-all picture, I think that the effect of discovery and possible severe punishment is a deterrent but not a serious deterrent.

Dr. Brancale: My feeling is, the more disturbed and pathological the personality, the less does the penalty, whatever its severity, have any effect on the offender. I think that is almost axiomatic with all these cases.

Dr. Guttmacher: I think the effect of punishment on normal people or the threat of punishment is very different from the threat or effect of punishment on the abnormal people with whom we are dealing. I think we make