Predators Quotes

“We mute the realization of malevolence- which is too threatening to bear - by turning offenders into victims themselves and by describing their behavior as the result of forces beyond their control.”
― Anna Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“Recently I interviewed a psychopath. This is always a humbling experience because it teaches over and over how much of human motivation and experience is outside my narrow range. Despite the psychopath's lack of conscience and lack of empathy for others, he is inevitably better at fooling people than any other type of offender. I suppose conscience just slows you down. A child convicted molester, this particular one made friends with a correctional officer who invited him to live in his home after he was released - despite the fact the officer had a nine-year-old daughter.
The officer and his wife were so taken with the offender that, after the offender lived with them for a few months, they initiated adoption proceedings- adoption for a man almost their age. Of course, he was a child molester living in the same house as a child. Not surprisingly, he molested the daughter the entire time he lived there. [...]
What these experiences taught have me is that even when people are warned of a previously founded case of even a conviction, they still routinely underestimate the pathology with which they are dealing.”
― Anna Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“Oddly then, in our search for meaning, we often assign victims too much blame for their assaults, and offenders too little. Our inconsistencies do not seem to trouble us, but they are truly puzzling. After all, if the offender is not to blame for his behavior, why would the victim be, no matter what she did our didn't do? Our views make sense, however, if you think that we are trying to reassure ourselves that we are not helpless and, that, in any case, no one is out to get us.”
― Anna Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“Malevolence takes a bite out off your spirit. Just sitting with it, just talking with people who consciously and deliberately exploit others, feels like being beaten. Over the years, l have seen many therapists burn out and leave the field entirely. [Refers to treating sex offenders, p6]”
― Anna Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“I should meet many people who do not know anyone personally who has been raped or molested as a child. But I can't remember seeing a newspaper without a rape or molestation charge in it somewhere, and when I ask groups how many people know someone personally with a history of molestation, almost always, every hand in the room goes up.”
― Anna Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“In all the interviews I have done, I cannot remember one offender who did not admit privately to more victims than those for whom he had been caught. On the contrary, most offenders had been charged with and/or convicted of from one to three victims. In the interviews I have done, they have admitted to roughly 10 to 1,250 victims. What was truly frightening was that all the offenders had been reported before by children, and the reports had been ignored.”
― Anna Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“over and over victims are blamed for their assaults. and when we imply that victims bring on their own fates - whether to make ourselves feel more efficacious or to make the world seem just - we prevent ourselves from taking the necessary precautions to protect ourselves. Why take precautions? We deny the trauma could easily have happened to us. And we also hurt the people already traumatized. Victims are often already full of self-doubt, and we make recovery harder by laying inspectors blame on them.”
― Anna Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“But in any case, validity, offender self-reports have dubious validity, especially when the offender's self-interest is at stake. The only rule for deception in sex offenders I have ever found is this: If it is in the offender's best interests to lie, and if he can do it and not get caught, he will lie.

Being victimized as a child has become a ready excuse for perpetrating child molestation. The offender who claims he himself was victimized gets seen as less of a "monster" than one who wasn't a victim, and he gains much more empathy and support. It is hard to trust self-reports of sex offenders about abuse in their past when such reports are in their best interest.
Only a few studies on this topic have used objective measures, and they have found very different results.[102]”
― Anna C. Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“Once, in a three-day taping that included several sadists, the material was so overwhelming that both the film crew and I got sick - I with a sinus infection, and the entire film crew with a flu so severe they had to delay their departure from the motel. Our immune systems had weakened, I believe, from the beating out souls had taken.”
― Anna Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“In a series of three studies, the offenders who claimed they were abused as a child were 67 percent, 65 percent, and 61 percent without the threat of a polygraph. With polygraph (and conditional immunity), the offenders who claimed they were abused as children were 29 percent, 32 percent, and 30 percent, respectively. The polygraph groups reported approximately half the amount of victimization as children as the nonpolygraph groups did.

Nonetheless, the notion that most offenders were victims has spread throughout the field of sexual abuse and is strangely comforting for most professionals.”
― Anna C. Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“Are Child Molesters Really Just Victims Themselves?
"All victims are offenders," one professional challenged me at a conference, "and all offenders are victims. How does your work address that?"

My work doesn't address that because I don't believe there's any evidence for that assertion. Obviously, not all victims are offenders, but it is also likely that most offenders weren't victims. The studies that find a high proportion of child molesters who were victims of child sexual abuse themselves are almost always based on self-report, and even there, study results differ dramatically. Studies show the number of child molesters who were themselves molested as children ranges from 22 percent in some studies to 82 percent in others.[101]”
― Anna C. Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“Jan Hindman knows all too well that people who have lied for decades about their offending would lie to her about being victimized as a child, so she compared the reports of abuse by child molesters who were not being polygraphed on their answers with a later group who was informed that they would have to take a polygraph after the interview. The group that was being polygraphed was also given immunity from prosecution for crimes previously unknown in order to take away one of the many reasons that offenders lie.[103]

The study is not about how good the polygraph is — although it appears to be highly accurate[104] and better than people are at detecting deception in any case. Rather, this study is about how good the offenders thought the polygraph was because the answers of the group who was going to take the polygraph turned out very different from the group who wasn't going.

In a series of three studies, the offenders who claimed they were abused as a child were 67 percent, 65 percent, and 61 percent without the threat of a polygraph. With polygraph (and conditional immunity), the offenders who claimed they were abused as children were 29 percent, 32 percent, and 30 percent, respectively. The polygraph groups reported approximately half the amount of victimization as children as the nonpolygraph groups did.

Nonetheless, the notion that most offenders were victims has spread throughout the field of sexual abuse and is strangely comforting for most professionals.”
― Anna C. Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“Jan Hindman knows all too well that people who have lied for decades about their offending would lie to her about being victimized as a child, so she compared the reports of abuse by child molesters who were not being polygraphed on their answers with a later group who was informed that they would have to take a polygraph after the interview. The group that was being polygraphed was also given immunity from prosecution for crimes previously unknown in order to take away one of the many reasons that offenders lie.[103]

The study is not about how good the polygraph is — although it appears to be highly accurate[104] and better than people are at detecting deception in any case. Rather, this study is about how good the offenders thought the polygraph was because the answers of the group who was going to take the polygraph turned out to be very different from the group who was going to take the polygraph turned out very different from the group who wasn't going.

In a series of three studies, the offenders who claimed they were abused as a child were 67 percent, 65 percent, and 61 percent without the threat of a polygraph. With polygraph (and conditional immunity), the offenders who claimed they were abused as children were 29 percent, 32 percent, and 30 percent, respectively. The polygraph groups reported approximately half the amount of victimization as children as the nonpolygraph groups did.

Nonetheless, the notion that most offenders were victims has spread throughout the field of sexual abuse and is strangely comforting for most professionals. For one thing, it gives meaning to the behavior of offenders and at the same time allows people to feel badly for them. I remember a cartoon in which a man is lying in a gutter, badly beaten. Two social workers stand over him, and one says to the other, "The man who did this really needs help." If offenders are just victims, then no one has to face the reality of malevolence, the fact that there are people out there who prey on other for reasons we simply don't understand.”
― Anna C. Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders