PROGRAM TARGETS HELP FOR SEX OFFENDERS

The prevailing wisdom is that, like alcoholics, people with a propensity to commit sex crimes can't be cured, but they can learn to live normal lives and not be a threat to the community.

"We don't believe sexual offenders can be cured. We believe they can change their behavior if they choose to," said Melva Seyer Tucker, associate psychologist with the Missouri Department of Corrections Board of Probation and Parole office based in Cape Girardeau.

All sex offenders in Missouri -- those in prison as well as those on probation -- must go through the Missouri Sex Offender Program. It's successful completion is mandatory in order to gain early release and is also a condition of probation.

Tucker, one of three sex offender specialists who works with the state's probation and parole office, handles the program for an eight-district region in the southern part of the state.

MOSOP members meet in group sessions for two hours weekly for a year.

There are eight to 12 people ranging from teenagers to senior citizens in the program locally at any given time.

People are referred for a variety of offenses: child molestation, forcible rape, exhibitionism, making obscene phone calls, bestiality, providing pornography to children and many others. Members in the program are taught to learn control over contributing factors such as anger or stress.

Numerous writing assignments are part of the curriculum. For example, offenders must write a full description of their crime and why they committed it. Sometimes it takes them three of four tries before getting it right.

"The bottom line is they have to take full responsibility for their offense and tell the group about it," Tucker said.

Other assignments involve describing the crime from the victim's point of view and identifying the indirect victims of the crime. That group includes the families of both victim and offender, residents of the neighborhood where the crime occurred and society in general.

The majority of offenses, according to Tucker, are committed against children. She said child molesters often are insecure and have problems forging relationship with adults, which leads them to children, whom tend to trust adults.

Many molesters were themselves molested as children and their behavior marks a continuance of a vicious cycle.

Child molesters under supervision are ordered not to live near areas such as schools or playgrounds or take jobs that put them in contact with children such as driving a school bus. Unsupervised contact with children is to be avoided.

Other offenders have similar requirements. Rapists, for example, are discouraged from jobs where they will be supervising women. Rape, like many other sex offenses, is about control, Tucker said.

"Sex is not the turn on; it's domination, the total control over another person," she said.

Failure to comply with the rules earn offenders a one-way ticket back to prison.

In the year and a half Tucker has supervised the program in this area, none of the group members have every been re-arrested for a sex offense. A high rate of sex offenders in general, she said, repeat their crimes.

Those successful in the program can continue participating even after the conditions of their probation no longer require it.