wCHAP.23

(8/25/03)

Currently, nearly all U.S. treatment programs for law breakers have as a fundamental assumption the idea that the best way to produce change is through punishment. Other change -- for example in the case of alcoholism -- requires divine intervention. Almost all current citizens agree that changing a person who has done a "bad" thing without punishing them is not acceptable.

I do not accept the foregoing assumptions. I say any change produced as a result of punishment is more likely to be negative than positive. Change is actually very easy. All it takes is the proper ingredients. Primarily these right ingredients involve organizations, structures guided by persons with the proper world-view.

It is critical that those who recognize the value of the SBLIHM (Sustainable Belief that one's LIfe Has Meaning) concept and want to promote it work to develop alternative approaches that provide the right ingredients. Social programs that are consistent with the SBLIHM assumptions do exist, even at this time. Two of them are discussed below. These are the Child Sexual Abuse Treatment Program of Santa Clara County, California; and S.M.A.R.T. Recovery from Substance Abuse.

THE CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE TREATMENT PROGRAM (CSATP)[1]

It seems to me that the CSATP model could serve as a guide for how to treat all, or nearly all, criminal justice cases. Persons, committing criminal acts would be recognized as lacking some essential social experiences which must be provided and developed in order to help the person move in the direction of their own best interests. Therapeutic communities would need to be established to provide this treatment.

The CSATP of Santa Clara County was developed by Dr. Henry Giarretto in the early 1970s. Later it was called the Institute for Community as Extended Family and then the Giarretto Institute. Incest was almost totally ignored until Dr. Giarretto became involved in efforts to treat it. Because of his efforts attention has been focused on an area that had long been ignored. These events caused a host of new social programs set up to deal with this new awareness. His efforts began in 1971 when 26 incest cases were referred to him. In the treatment of these individuals based on humanistic psychology he developed a program that has been internationally recognized. Prior to the rise in power of reactionary forces in recent decades it was the most widely followed model for effective treatment of incest in the world. Prior to the power gains of U.S. reactionary religious/political forces it regularly conducted training sessions which resulted in the establishment of over 150 community based CSATP-type centers in the United States, Canada, England, and Australia [2]. Sadly, it appears most of these groups no longer exist and even the organization he founded has been emasculated.

However, historically it proved the value of Dr. Giarretto's approach. By 1989 it had provided services to over 20,000 clients. It is now recognized that at least ten percent of females have been sexually abused by a parent, family member, or close relative. In almost all cases these experiences are extremely damaging to the victim, the offender, and the entire family, both during the sexual phase and after it ends. The girl suffers emotional trauma which often leads to self-abusive behavior that may last a lifetime; the father's life goes into sharp decline; and the marriage, weak to begin with, becomes intolerable and often ends in divorce or dissolution. If the situation is reported to the authorities of a typical American community, their reactions aggravate the family's troubled state even more. The victim's accusations are often ignored by law enforcement officials if the evidence is weak and the parents deny the charges, thus leaving the child feeling betrayed both by her parents and by the community. On the other hand, the officials become harshly punitive if they have a court provable case. They separate the child from her mother and family and incarcerate the father, often for several years. This way of coping with father-daughter incest prevails in most communities in the United States and is the way officials react in Santa Clara County, California except for a brief period of time during the period Dr. Giarretto led the Child Sexual Abuse Treatment Program and proved his approach was effective.

The CSATP had three components: 1) A professional component that includes all the officially responsible members of the community: police, social workers, mental health workers, probation officers, defense and prosecuting attorneys, judges, and rehabilitation officers. 2) A Volunteer component: administrative interns, usually undergraduate students; graduate students working towards licenses in marriage, family, and child counseling; and, members of Parents United (parents involved in treatment). 3) The Self-Help Component: Parents United and its adjunct, Daughters and Sons United.

The foregoing provided a therapeutic community in which guilty individuals can come to understand the consequence of their behavior on their daughter, themselves, and their family in general. Its model is that persons who form abusive relationships with their mates, children, and other important people in their lives do so because they are incapable of developing trusting and mutually beneficial relations. Abusive parents typically were raised by punitive and generally uncaring parents. They are incapable of leading self-fulfilling lives. They exist in a state of chronic resentment which can be discharged only through hostile acts unconsciously intended to be self-punishing.

When clients came into the program they frequently required help to understand the need to admit their guilt which allows them to begin the treatment they need to improve their mental health. The victim must have their fears dealt with by recognizing that there is a sympathetic and responsible team working for them. The mother needs help to deal with her distraught state and be convinced that she will receive the help she needs to work through the current crises and put the family back together again if this is what she wants. Mother-daughter counseling is the key first step towards re-establishing a sound mother-daughter relationship.

  The CSATP was an outstanding approach and existed because of its own merit. However, I see it as a first step in the development of a model for the way our whole criminal justice system should function. It seems to me that criminal behavior exists because of archaic models about the purpose of human life. The success of the Child Sexual Abuse Treatment Program demonstrates the truth of the foregoing statement. However, it is clear why we are unable to see the obvious failure of our current models. Every day we are brainwashed by the news media, "experts," religious leaders, and politicians to believe that there truly are bad/evil people in the world. And really the only thing we can do with them is to kill them. It's actually even best for them. They can't change and life in prison is hell. But if current values prevent killing them, a life in prison is the next best thing.

Most citizens believe these individuals can't change because persons with similar problems have been given many opportunities, and still they failed. After all -- over and over -- they have been isolated in jails and prisons, even solitary confinement. They have been beaten (in the hidden places every jail and prison reserves for such things). They have been demeaned in every way our system is aware of. They have been denied jobs, any opportunity of any kind, education -- even learning how to read in many cases. They have been given the chance to learn to be obedient by permitting their parents to beat them, lock them in closests, deny them food, strike, burn, whip. As they -- against all odds -- survived to grow older efforts were expanded to teach them to be obedient. They were turned over to police, jail and prison guards, and all the other bullies such cesspools create, and still they remain law breakers. Can you believe! We taught them and taught them and they just haven't gotten the message. They truly are beyond hope. If we can't kill them, then there is no other way but to put them away for the rest of their life (at a greater annual cost than sending someone's child to Harvard). After all it's only 50 to 100 years. Small cost to have order in society and to sleep at night knowing all the law breakers are safely tucked away!

But wait! Wasn't there a crime reported just in yesterday's news? Didn't a recent survey show that fear of crime is one of the top items of worry? Aren't there areas of every modern U.S. city where even the police don't go alone at night? Is it possible that the decision makers and voters are stupid? Could it be that all of our threats, cruelty, de-humanizing treatment have actually promoted crime and brutality rather than producing gentleness, love, kindness -- model citizens?

How come a program that had an almost 100% success rate (as the CSATP did) in dealing with the most depraved human beings -- those who sexually violate their own children -- that actively existed for some 30 years is not held up as an example for what is possible whenever crime is mentioned, but rather is essentially ignored by all who should be touting it from the rooftops? There are many answers, but they all lead -- in my mind -- to the need for a Science of Ethics. I hope you agree.

Below are remarks I shared at Hank’s memorial service, 7/6/03, Palo Alto, CA:

He understood that the core need of every human being is to be socially connected—to support and be supported by good and honest friends. But Hank did more than dream about such a world and argue that such a world is possible. He showed that it could be achieved. He built a model demonstrating proof of principle with The Institute for Community as Extended Family which became the Giarretto Institute.

I have often said that in a more perfect world he would have been awarded a Nobel Prize because his insights were so profound and when properly applied, their effects so far reaching.

However, we do not live in a more perfect world. We live in a world only struggling in that direction with some movement forward often followed by movement back. As a result I think we have to recognize that Hank’s findings ended up opening a Pandora’s box. He found that sex between parents and their children is not a statistically insignificant event. Rather -- though rare -- it is common enough to pose a serious problem for many children and their families. He showed us how to deal with this phenomenon in a positive way that left a family and each of its members stronger and more effective than the normal family.

Unfortunately, society only learned half of his message. It learned that incest is a significant problem. Because most of society has been deluded by their prophets, teachers, and authority figures they have misused his insights and ended up adding another domain in which laws exploit the vulnerable and leave taxpayers spending more to fund prisons than to fund education.

So at this time Hank’s vision, his insights, and his model have been basically ignored by the current larger society. This has happened, I believe, because his ideas conflict with a basic American assumption that people who do bad things are bad and the only acceptable response to badness is punishment, preferably by locking law breakers in a cage for the rest of their life.

Hank realized that the sins of the individual are primarily reflections of the sins of society. Unless a society can recognize its share of the guilt there is little chance for improvement.

What he has provided us if correctly used would affect the future of humanity and every individual in a very positive way. He demonstrated in a practical way that there is no conflict between what is good for the individual and what is good for society. It is only when we misunderstand the nature of good that irresolvable conflicts exist.

But Hank is no longer among the living. If we believe a better world is possible -- and Heaven is not – then making that better world must now depend on us. However, I think we can’t do better than to follow in the path that Hank pointed out. I believe it will lead us toward the light at the end of the tunnel toward which humanity has been moving since the evolution of symbolic language.

The sad thing about this area of child sexual abuse is that society has gone from one extreme to the other without yet getting it right. In previous time a child’s claims of having been sexually abused by a parent (or any adult) was ignored and the parent’s word was taken to be the fact. Now that has totally been reversed. If a child claims sexual abuse no matter how ill supported, or best understood as part of the dynamics of an ugly divorce, the parent is automatically judged guilty and a long period in prison is the only response considered. Dr. Giarretto showed us a totally different way. But it was free of blame, guilt, and punishment. What it aimed for was to permanently interrupt patterns of behavior that harmed all those involved whether as perpetrators, or victims. It worked, but it didn't fit American models of justice.

So discarding Dr. Giarretto’s wisdom and falling back on our “tribal wisdom” is just one more example of the evil done by supernatural beliefs. Our current system of laws, courts, and prisons is a broken system based on a flawed model of reality. As a result repair will be difficult if not impossible until tribal “wisdom” is replaced by science-based wisdom.

If you or anyone you know has been falsely accused of sexual abuse I recommend you check out, “WHAT TO DO: False accusations of Sexual or Physical Abuse in Custody Cases.”[3], or Allen Cowling of Cowling Investigations, Inc.[4].

Here is how Cowling introduces what he does:

"False allegations of sexual abuse, child abuse, incest, rape or child molesting are lies, but those lies can quickly and easily result in convictions and lengthy prison terms for the innocent. This website was designed to assist anyone who is being falsely accused or who has been wrongfully convicted because of a false allegation. A key element to the survival of anyone being falsely accused is to assure that their legal defense is proper and adequate. If there is any doubt whatsoever, consulting with an outside expert should be considered.

"Allen Cowling, with more than 33 years of experience as a private investigator, has, for more than a decade, devoted his practice to the specialization of defending false allegations of child abuse, criminal defense preparation, overturning convictions for the innocent and legal malpractice cases for clients, worldwide. We make the impossible possible by providing a 'defense strategy' that is designed to expose the lie."

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S.M.A.R.T. RECOVERY FROM SUBSTANCE ABUSE

The SMART Recovery program grew out of Rational Recovery developed by Jack Trimpey and his book, THE SMALL BOOK. This approach utilizes Dr. Albert Ellis' ideas on rational emotive behavioral therapy. It is based on the idea that one can change their own behavior to the degree that they can come to understand the irrational basis for their behavior and replace it with more rational ideas. It recognizes that feelings come out of our interpretations not out of the events themselves.

Alcoholism and drug abuse are seen as examples of behavior that can be changed as one gains control over the processes leading to this behavior. Part of this recognizes the fact that there are internal forces that lead one to engage in these behaviors, and that they are destructive to one's best interests.

This program started in 1988 with the first group in Sacramento, California and today has groups in some 500 cities in the U.S. It is growing dramatically and has been responsible for forcing courts and other government agencies to provide recognition for other approaches than the "higher power" model of the 12-step programs.

2. For further information on this training program see: INTEGRATED TREATMENT OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE: A Treatment and Training Manual, Henry Giarretto, Science and Behavior Books, Palo Alto, CA., 1982.

3. “WHAT TO DO: False accusations of Sexual or Physical Abuse in Custody Cases." (http://www.menweb.org/throop/falsereport/resources/whattodo-custody.html)

4. Allen Cowling of Cowling Investigations, Inc. (http://www.allencowling.com/)