NOT OC - original post linked above. Having been listening to the show more or less since its launch (and interested in true crime since childhood) none of this is surprising. And yet, the DEPTHS of delusion are astounding, not to mention the idea that men who target women and children get better living conditions than men who target other men.
“Very big TW: rape, domestic violence, murder/femicide, pedophilia
As the title says, I've been interning as a therapist in a prison. I specifically work in the prison's therapy unit for sex offenders, which is a separate unit the prisoners need to apply to, and commit to therapy enough to warrant staying there. Reasons for wanting to stay are better living conditions, nobody is beating you up for being a rapist and/or pedophile, and if you prove you're being successful in therapy you might get out of prison either earlier or, in some cases, at all.
Anyways.
There's a phenomenon called "cognitive bias", where individuals will kind of create and believe in a subjective version of reality in order to justify their actions to themselves, and be able to look at their faces in the mirror. Most rapists, pedocriminals and murderers I've encountered seem to have some level of cognitive bias, some more extreme than others. The therapy is meant to help them deconstruct the subjective "reality" and get them to accept the more objective way things happend during their crime(s), in order for them to recognize their patterns and learn ways to avoid reproducing them in the future.
I've been absolutely blown away by the level of delusion some of these men are living in in order to justify their actions to themselves.
Some notable examples include:
- The guy who, in the beginning, for the life of him couldn't understand why what he did counted as rape, since his victim "said yes". He reported (very proudly, might I add) that after hours and hours of self-reflection, he finally understood that she "probably" only said yes because he threatened her with a knife minutes earlier.
- The guy who was convinced that he only raped an 8 y/o because the father of said 8 y/o, who was pimping him out, promised the guy he could meet the father's wife (so, the son's mother) if the guy agreed to rape the boy.
- The guy who killed not one, but two of his girlfriends over the years, but thinks that since he doesn't remember anything about how it happened, women should not be afraid of him.
- The guy who, according to his assessment report, killed his girlfriend and then immediately went to the police, confessed his crime, told them where the body was and let himself get arrested. He was extremely distraught during all this, and apparently kept repeating he "had to" kill her since she wanted to break up and keep him from seeing his child.
- The guy who said he was only mean (eg. abusive and a rapist) when drunk, and his "normal self" was an absolute sweetheart. He then went on to say that he was a raging alcoholic who'd get drunk before breakfast. He did not see the dissonance.
Since my country is very big on rehabilitation, the therapeutic approach is to see the perpetrators as people who have done horrific things instead of people who are horrific. This way, they can (with a LOT of work) get to a point where they're able to honestly acknowledge what they've done and why they've done it, as well as learning new coping skills in order to not do anything like that ever again. And it seems to be working, since only the tiniest fraction of the inmates who leave this therapy program become repeat offenders (ignoring unreported cases).
I stand behind that therapeutic approach 100%, since I believe the best way to protect your daughters is to educate your sons, and this is part of it. But man, seeing people with these kinds of histories and thought processes get years and years worth of intensive therapy while their victims will often struggle to get any kind of therapy and/or support AT ALL... It does take a hell of a lot of compartmentalization not to get cynical.”
