[英]《禽獸心理學》作者Anna Salter：防止兒童性侵害，從你我做起（圖靈訪談）

安娜•索爾特（Anna C. Salter, Ph.D.）是性犯罪研究專家，她先後在塔夫茨大學和哈佛大學獲得兒童研究碩士學位（1973）和心理學與公共執業博士學位（1977）。之後作為心理治療師，她長期在新罕布什爾州執業。1996年移居威斯康星州麥迪遜市後，除了為威斯康星矯治局提供諮詢，她還在美國各州和世界各地就性侵害者和受害者開設講座、提供諮詢。從1978年至今，她的足跡已遍及美國50個州和十個國家。此外，她也受邀為性侵害者進行評估，並作為專家證人在性虐待的民事和刑事案件中出庭作證。1997年她獲得了美國性犯罪者治療協會頒發的傑出成就獎。她拍攝了多部相關主題的教育影片，並著有《禽獸心理學》、《超越創傷陰影》、《性侵害者和受害者治療操作指南》等書。

What was the opportunity for you to enter this field and do research in this special direction?

When I got out of graduate school, I began working in a community mental health center. None of my training prepared me for what I saw. It seemed two out of three children I saw in the small mental health center where I worked were sexually or physically abused or both. That struck me as very odd indeed. At the time, official estimates suggested incest affected one child in a million. My small New England town had 15,000 people in it, yet it had a stunning number of incest cases, not to mention out-of-home sexual abuse, rape, physical abuse, neglect, and domestic violence.

So many of the children were sexually, physically or emotionally abused, and I have had no training in my Ph.D. program at Harvard on abuse. The courts also began sending sex offenders to the center, and I knew I had no idea how to treat them. So I wrote a grant to the State of Vermont that allowed me to visit sex offender treatment programs around the US. I found one called Northwest Treatment Associates in Seattle, WA that was ahead of its time. I began to write the grant report, and it just kept growing and growing. It became my first book on sex offenders.

Can behaviors of sex offenders be corrected? What are the general measures implemented? How did it come out?

I am a clinician, not a researcher. When I look at the research on treatment, I think it very likely that treatment reduces the likelihood of recidivism in some offenders, but not all.

Twenty years ago, treatment for the offender at the time was mostly psychoanalytically based despite the fact that such therapy was designed for people with very different problems. I had my doubts about the efficacy of such general therapy for sex offenders, and later research would confirm my fears. Insight therapy produces sex offenders with insight, but they’re still sex offenders, and they continue offending.

Thus, I began to look around the country for more effective therapies, for better ways that treatment providers could work with the criminal justice system. And I began to study sex offenders, to talk to them and to listen. It struck me that many of the books I was reading sounded as though the authors had never spoken to a sex offender. So I began to interview offenders, and eventually I wrote books and made educational films of them talking about their crimes and their ways of getting access to victims. It’s now more than twenty years later, and I know a little more than I knew in the beginning. Also, there is now an entire field of study about sex offenders whereas before there wasn’t much of anything.

How do you intervew these offenders and make them talk?

I am often talking to them after the conviction and sentencing, and they know nothing they say will hurt them legally. As a condition of their talking, I agree to report what they say anonymously. In any case, they know better than to give me the kinds of details needed to prosecute. The truth is that many sex offenders like to talk about their exploits—if it can be done in some way that doesn’t hurt them in court. They are proud of what clever fellows they are. Narcissism is their Achilles’heel.

Do you have any suggestions about building an institution to decrease and prevent sex crimes? Is it possible to guide people before they commit sex crimes? Are there signs and symptoms for people to identify?

I would like to see more focus on middle school and high school. At least in the US, surveys show that there is little training in healthy sexuality in our schools. The sex education programs often focus on plumbing, whereas issues of consent, for example, are ignored. None of the programs I have ever seen discuss what a young male should do if he finds himself attracted to children (seek treatment). They pretend such attractions don’t exist. I have treated adolescent sex offenders before and they often think that small children can consent to sexual activity, or that raping someone while they are drunk or passed out, is acceptable. We have a tremendous problem with this latter issue on college campuses as well.

Is it possible to guide people before they commitsex crimes? Are there signs and symptoms for people to identify?

Often budding sex offenders use sex as a coping mechanism for everything. Whereas a healthy young male will have a variety of ways of coping with disappointment — playing sports, playing video games, spending time with friends, etc. — budding sex offenders often use sex for everything. If they get a bad grade, masturbate. If someone rejects them, masturbate. There is nothing wrong with masturbation in and of itself, but it should not be a coping mechanism for everything. If a person suspects compulsive masturbation and the child is not using any other means of coping with stress, this is one warning sign. Of course, always wanting to babysit or play with younger children and ignoring their own age group would be worrisome as well.

Besides, you and me and people like us everywhere are so trusting, which we are as long as the offender isn’t poor and toothless and/or of a different ethnic group, as long as he looks like us and talks like us—most certainly if he’s a priest or pediatrician or teacher. Sex offenders only very rarely sneak into a house in the middle of the night. More often they come through the front door in the day, as friends and neighbors.

Those who had been violated during childhood may possibly become perpetrators after they grow up, how does this transition happen? Is this some kind of repetition of authority behavior to gain sense of security? How to prevent a victim to convert to a sociopath?

I think it is not true that victims frequently become perpetrators. Research which has used the polygraph to make sure offenders are telling the truth has found that the majority of sex offenders were not sexually molested as children. In my experience, neglect is a more common precursor to rape than childhood hood sexual abuse. Neglect casts a long shadow. Victims of neglect often do not know how to connect with others, and thus have little empathy for them.

How to help the sex victims who were offended by their relatives (such as step father or brother)? Is it possible for these victims to completely recover from mental trauma?

I think it is possible for victims of incest to recover. However, it is a special kind of betrayal and the victim needs support, and sometimes therapy, in order to heal. The attitude of the family and community are crucial. Many victims are blamed for incest. Non-offending spouses sometimes side with the offender, and often siblings do also. The victim needs to hear from everyone that incest is the responsibility of the adult offender, that they are not to blame, and that everyone supports their telling.

It is also possible for the legal system, at least in the states, to either traumatize the victim, or conversely to help her or him heal. I don’t know your legal system, but here sometimes the victims are attacked in court, as though they are the ones on trial. This is injurious to their mental health and just another blow to a child already outrageously violated.

Men can also be victims of sex crimes, but their situations do not draw as much concerns as women. Imperfection of relevant laws in some countries ignores this kind of crimes, how to help male victims going out of shadow?

Male victims have some special issues. If the offenders are female, young males are often told how lucky they are - as though premature sexualization and an imbalance of power were a good thing. If the offenders are male, heterosexual male victims worry about whether they are gay or not, and gay victims worry that somehow their being gay was the reason they were molested. Either way it is confusing and they are being victimized. I think one of the thing that has helped most is adult victims coming out and telling their stories. This has helped may male children and teens.

How to get along with victims of sex crimes? Is pretending nothing happened a good way to communicate with them?

I think getting along with sexual abuse victims involves taking cues from how the victim wants the matter to be treated. If you are not close family, the victim may not want to talk about it. Adolescents, particularly, don’t usually want their peers to know about it, and they live in fear that it will spread to their schools. However, if you are family, I think it is important to give victims every opportunity to talk about it. Some of the research indicates that victims who have PTSD are harmed by avoidance and that those who talk about it in depth in the first year of disclosure do better in the long run.

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