Synopses & Reviews
There is no more seemingly incorrigible criminal type than the child sex offender. Said to suffer from a deeply rooted paraphilia, he is often considered as outside the moral limits of the human, profoundly resistant to change. Despite these assessments, in much of the West an increasing focus on rehabilitation through therapy provides hope that psychological transformation is possible. Examining the experiences of child sex offenders undergoing therapy in Germanyand#151;where such treatments are both a legal right and dutyand#151;John Borneman, in
Cruel Attachments, offers a fine-grained account of rehabilitation for this reviled criminal type.
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Carefully exploring different cases of the attempt to rehabilitate child sex offenders, Borneman details a secular ritual process aimed not only at preventing future acts of molestation but also at fundamentally transforming the offender, who is ultimately charged with creating an almost entirely new self. Acknowledging the powerful repulsion felt by a public that is often extremely skeptical about the success of rehabilitation, he challenges readers to confront the contemporary contexts and conundrums that lie at the heart of regulating intimacy between children and adults.
Review
andldquo;Cruel Attachmentsand#160;is wholly absorbing, in the sense that it is un-put-down-able, but also in the sense that it provides numerous occasions for what can feel like utterly contaminating, destabilizing emotional identifications: with victims, family members, therapists, prison guards, the anthropologist himselfandmdash;and, however unnervingly, also perpetrators. It is no small feat to bring readers inside the emotional worlds of all these players. To have done so, and with such subtlety and nuance, is remarkable and unprecedented.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;An unflinching and unsettling look at the limits of empathy, Bornemanandrsquo;s important ethnography carefully traces the complex pathways of desire, attachment, harm, violation, and care made visible in the context of rehabilitation.andrdquo;
Synopsis
What motivates sexual abusers? Why are so few caught? Drawing on the stories of abusers, Anna C. Salter shows that sexual predators use sophisticated deception techniques and rely on misconceptions surrounding them to evade discovery. Arguing that even the most knowledgeable among us can be fooled, Salter dispels the myths about sexual predators and gives us the tools to protect our families and ourselves.
Synopsis
A world-renowned expert provides a psychological profile of serial sex offenders-how they think, how they deceive their victims, and how they elude the law
About the Author
Anna C. Salter, Ph.D., lectures and consults throughout the U.S. and abroad, and in 1997 won the Significant Achievement Award from the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. She is the author of Treating Child Sex Offenders and Victims, Transforming Trauma, and several forensic mysteries. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Prolegomenon
One / The Phenomenon of Child Molestation
Two / Incest, the Child, and the Despotic Father
Three / Rehabilitation of Pedophiles
Four / Knowledgeability and the Materiality of Child Sex Abuse
Five / Seduction and Empathy
Six / New Germans
Seven / Loose End
Notes
References
Index