The challenge of acknowledging harm caused and developing empathy

As described in the previous chapter, for many of the sex offenders interviewed, acknowledging the harm caused by their anti-social behaviour and developing victim empathy was the most important part of their rehabilitation journey.

Although, as noted in the previous chapter (Section 5.6), there is uncertainty surrounding the relationship between empathy issues and risk, developing victim empathy, as Brown (2005) points out, is still a staple of most treatment programmes for sex offenders. For most offenders, dealing with the pain which resulted from truly engaging with the harm they had caused, was the most challenging part of their rehabilitative journey. Offender 1 described taking part in a hypothetical role-play exercise on the prison groupwork programme.

I had to take a role-play of this Mum whose little 7-year-old girl had been murdered. I tell you, it really ripped me to bits, that did (Offender 1).

The same offender provided a graphic account of his distress in acknowledging the harm he had caused.

Many people told me then, once you’re punished for it you feel better.

That’s a load of rubbish, you don’t ... No; it’s with you until you bloody die.

You know the hate you feel for yourself. Well the disgust, you know what I mean ... Well, when I was on the course, they kept telling me ‘don’t keep on beating yourself up about it.’ I felt alright then, when there’s a big group. Then when they go away, then, you know, it’s bloody back. It don’t go away, like. I mean, urn, you wake up in the morning it’s there, so you just got to bloody live with it, like (Offender 1).

Like Offender 1, Offenders 5 and 9 described their pain in facing up to the suffering they had caused.

It’s the hardest. It was painful. It was massively painful ... Sometimes I would drive home, and I had to sometimes stop in the lay-by for 20 minutes to collect my thoughts (Offender 5).

You sit back and think ‘Phew!’ All of the sudden you go from just being well, ah well, get over it, to being ... saying to yourself, ‘you horrible, evil, vindictive bastard!’ (Offender 9)

Offender 8 similarly commented:

I think the self-esteem during the actual therapeutic process was still fairly low; the whole sense of devastation, shame, having - you know, particularly for a person from my background and opportunities and kind of professional standing - having acted in this appalling way, was very difficult (Offender 8).

Offender 10 had undergone a uniquely (for the UK) therapeutic prison regime for high risk offenders, where offenders are continually challenged about their

behaviour, including about the harm caused by past conduct. He described the emotional cost of this inner journey.

I expressed emotions there that I never thought were within me. Accepting that you’ve done some truly wicked things ...When you are in bits and when you are sobbing in front of 40 or 50 people (Offender 10).

A number of criminological theorists have commented on the sort of painful rehabilitative journey described in the sex offenders’ accounts. Tangney and Dearing (2002) argue that when people feel ashamed over a particular transgression (i.e. sexual abuse), shame reflects globally on who they are as a person, resulting in defensive hostility and shifting blame onto others. In the next chapter (Section 7.4), probation officers provide accounts of the challenges they face as supervising officers, in dealing with such denial and blame shifting.

According to Tangney and Dearing (2002), guilt is less “ego threatening” than shame as it involves a focus on some specific behaviour, rather than on a person’s global sense of self. Hence guilt is more liable to “facilitate feelings of other orientated empathy” (p.110).

A number of attempts have been made to apply the concepts of guilt and shame to sex offenders. Firstly, as Gilbert (1998) points out, some sex offenders who fail to value social norms or share the view of others that coercive or illegal sexually activity is wrong, may not be affected by either shame or guilt. However, with regards to offenders displaying varying degrees of remorse, Hudson et al. (1992)

found that sex offenders who responded to a lapse in their relapse prevention plan with a sense of controllable internal attribution (i.e. I’ve made one mistake, but I can build upon my overall progress) are likely to suffer a guilt reaction.

However, sex offenders who deploy uncontrollable internal attribution to a lapse (i.e. I have no will power; I’m disgusting) are likely to experience a shame reaction. Roys (1997) associated shame in sex offenders with fear of contempt, a focus on self, preventing a focus on the welfare of others. Hanson (1997) similarly found that encouraging sex offenders to identify with the suffering of victims could provoke a shame reaction, resulting in an increase in self-defensive victim blaming and cognitive distortions. Bumby (2000) also found that shame impedes sex offenders’ emotional recognition and perspective taking with regard to victims.

However, unlike the above authors, Braithwaite (1989) argues that shame, or

‘reintegrative shaming’, as he terms it, can be a socially cohesive force, which does not necessarily lead to defensive hostility and blame shifting, if social bonds are strengthened. However, Braithwaite (1989) does point out that if an offender is shamed in a stigmatising and socially rejecting way, this will probably lead to association with other offenders by whom the offender does not feel rejected, with such anti-social contact likely to result in further offending. Ahmed et al.

(2001), writing with Braithwaite about integrative shaming in relation to drink driving and bullying, explores how shame management can occur if an institutional space can be made for it. Restorative justice initiatives, such as groups and conferences in which criminals meet their victims, constitute one