Ray Wyre is the outspoken co-founder of the Gracewell Clinic in Birmingham, a residential unit for the assessment and treatment of male sex offenders. The Gracewell Clinic was established in 1988 with the financial backing of a local property developer but was born with missionary zeal from Wyre's previous experience of working with sex offenders as a Probation Officer at HMP Albany.
Wyre was disillusioned with the treatment of sex offenders from the outset and he quickly saw the value of seeing offenders in groups.
Wyre: "I never understood why an offender should see a probation officer on a one to one. I always felt that on a one to one they [the probation officers] had all the power. What I did was give people with the same offence the same appointment so they came together. I had four sex offenders on my caseload. I gave them the same appointment. It wasn't a group. I didn't negotiate about groups. I didn't ask them "Do you want to take part?" I just did it. I didn't know that I couldn't.
He feels that as a result of his navy background, he had a more robust attitude towards offenders.
It was just rubbish they were talking. And I saw then that we needed to start to challenge some of that. And that was obviously what I was attempting to do.
Wyre continued his groupwork approach during his time spent in Albany Prison. His work was viewed with suspicion and some hostility by prison officers.
The POA (Prison Officers' Association) weren't very happy in those days. You couldn't have groups but you could have men reporting at the same time, the same appointment. It was all to do with issues of discipline and control. They thought it would get prisoners upset... The prison officers were going to the Home Office for more staff because of the dangerousness of the prisoners, whereas I was working in groups where half of them were killers. I think that's the difference between treatment and control. I believe that you can control through treatment. And that's why I believe that Gracewell actually works. When I look back to those days, they were the foundation of everything happening now.
He was awarded the Churchill Fellowship in 1984 to study sex offenders.
By that time I had had some very traumatic and tragic experiences of seeing men leave Albany and killing again. Out of the 76 men I worked with, 63 had previous convictions for sex and violence. I just had the sense that we weren't protecting women and children. Or, perhaps, I'd rather say we weren't protecting children and making society a safer place for women... I had seen men kill on home leave from prison, when I had done everything I could to stop them being released. That type of experience. I was having to place paedophiles, sex offenders, in bed and breakfast accommodation when I knew the other occupants were going to be single parents with children because there were no hostels available for them and they couldn't go back to their families. It was as though society just wanted to pretend that this problem just didn't exist.
Although Wyre has been involved in "profiling" work with various police forces, deriving from his experiences with the FBI in New York in the early 1980's, and The Gracewell Institute boasts the ability to "assist police investigations as to types and characteristics of sex offenders and their cycles of behaviour", convincing explanations for this aspect of male behaviour remains elusive.
| At the moment you can beat your kid half to death if they ask for a packet of fruit gums and we won't take your child into care |
The motives of most sex offenders are very varied obviously. If you wanted to break it down into categories you'd end up with sex, power, anger, control and fear. These are influential in most offenders, in different ratios. Some are much more sexually motivated at one end, to the others who are much more motivated by fear. It depends upon what we call "arousal associate" as well. Some of them have arousal to certain things because of what they experienced. So, those men who abuse with a very fearful concept, a lot more of their motivations are about causing fear. Then you move into misogyny, and the problem of rejection in the life of so many men. One of the interesting things in questionnaires has been around how men see women having sexual power, in that it is the woman who decides "yes" or "no".
And are these attitudes around in all men?
I don't want to minimise sex attack and rape by putting every man in the same boat. I don't want to do that, what I want to say is, if we have a continuum of attitudes and beliefs, sex offenders are on that continuum as you and I are. If you start looking at sexual harassment, sexual innuendo or inappropriate sexual gesture, role modelling and all the other issues, then we are all on it.
What sets sexual abuse apart from other forms of abuse?
At the moment you can beat your kid half to death if they ask for a packet of fruit gums in a supermarket because you're pissed off and we won't take your child into care but somehow society determines how and at what level one can displace one's own pain and frustration on other people. And that level changes all the time.
At one level I have been concerned at the pre-occupation of seeing sexual abuse as the be-all and end-all of abuse when actually that feeds right into the medical definitions of abuse, which is that the degree of seriousness depends upon the degree of contact. Contact can never be the determinant of seriousness. It is the psychological components that go with the actual abuse which causes the long-term damage. It's the threats, the control, the power issues, the passing on of the offender's beliefs to the victim that cause the real damage... Legal definitions are stuck in trying to prove the content of an offence. But this feeds into the distorted thinking of offenders: "I only did this", "I only did that", "I only touched her breasts", "It was only partial penetration" and all that sort of stuff.
Are the men who come to Gracewell identified in terms of their sexual orientation, according to the gender of their victims?
No, we use the term paedophile. We use that term although we don't like it. I might be disagreeing with some of my homosexual colleagues in their view of homosexuality, but I think it's helpful for clients to see themselves on a sexual continuum [ie from hetero- to homo-sexuality,]. I've got young men here who are totally screwed up sexually. Their fantasies are still of their own abuse.
We've already got some boys from the Brent case [a case involving several boys sexually abused in a children's home], for example, serving sentences for rape as they went out to prove to the world that they were not homosexual because of the abuse they had experienced and because their fantasies of their own abuse concern men.
| most boys and girls who have been abused do not grow up to abuse |
You've just talked about the "Brent boys", about how boys who have experienced sexual abuse themselves might go on to be abusers as adults. Is that your experience here at Gracewell?
I think it is incredibly important to say that most boys and girls who have been abused do not grow up to abuse. And that's very powerful. On the other hand 90 per cent of my men here at the moment are what I call AMACs, Adults Molested As Children.
How does this fact influence your work with them?
It's a problem because when you start, you don't want to go into the victim side of the offender too early because they will use that to justify and excuse their offending behaviour. It's natural that they want to be on the side of the victim because it feels better than being on the offender side. And that's been a problem with this Esther Rantzen thing; using male survivors. Because one of the problems at Gracewell is that an awful lot of male survivors that come forward to us are abusers as well but that's the way they come in.
Is it accurate to call these men "sex offenders"?
No. But, again, I disagree a little bit with the feminist movement when they say sex offending has nothing to do with sex because, clearly, it is something to do with sex or you wouldn't use sex as an expression of it. Sex being used to meet non-sexual needs in a sexual way is a better way of looking at it but you can't ignore the fantasy component of sex abuse, men on their own fantasising and masturbating to images because that's the addictive side of sex abuse which is something we can use quite explicitly and carefully. So, that's why I had sex, power, anger, control and fear, because I think all that's involved. I think the first abuse is an abuse of control, because you use control to do what you want to do. The first question is, "How do I get control of the victim? How do I do that?", and "How am I going to stop them from telling? How do I subtly create the relationship with the child so that the child will feel responsible for what I am doing to them? How can I make the child initiate sexual contact?" Because that's the cleverest way for a child sexual abuser; you do it in such a way that the child takes the blame.
They start by denying that they've abused and now they're admitting 200. The 200 is as much a lie as the denial. But, because the therapist wants to hear it, because he thinks he's getting a lot of information, what he's not realising is that the reason he's confessing to 200 is, once you start to admit it, it's best to become the worst because then you can become better. I mean if you're going to do a long prison sentence for God's sake don't do it and be nice from the beginning because you'll be seen as plausible, manipulative and devious and trying to con the system. Go in and be a bastard and then change. Then the system thinks it's worked and they let you out on parole. Now we all know that game but the problem is to challenge it every day in treatment, you need the time.
The information leaflets about the Gracewell Clinic talk about "behavioural techniques" We asked Wyre what these involved.
Covert sensitisation is the main one, what I like about it is that it is there, in the person you're working with. You are getting from them what they normally illegally fantasise to. We don't use the word "deviant" here. "Deviant", I think, is a bloody stupid word. There's no "normality" to all this. Everyone will have their own definitions of what "deviant' or "normal" is. Illegal fantasies mean that if it is put into practice it would be breaking the law. If it is, then we'll get involved.
Covert sensitisationCovert sensitisation is a method which uses the man's imagination to reduce his deviant or illegal sexual urges. To achieve this the man uses his imagination to link deviant fantasies with thoughts of highly aversive consequences. men often grasp the explanation of this method quite easily, because they have sometimes found it useful in reducing their urges to offend, prior to treatment. By repeatedly linking the deviant or illegal fantasies with such unpleasant thoughts, the deviant or illegal thoughts in themselves become aversive and produce less pleasure or arousal. Men are taught that their offending is the end point of a long chain of events. it is essential to obtain a clear account of each stage in the process leading up to the offence. The man learns to insert aversive thoughts or scenes easily in the chain of events, before the behaviour gets out of control. Four stages are suggested by the therapist. Firstly, a neutral scene that lasts about 30 seconds, in which he might describe himself, listening to music or reading a book. Secondly, a deviant or illegal sexual scene that lasts one to two minutes which is followed, thirdly, by a highly aversive scene that lasts two to five minutes. An aversive scene might be being discovered by a close family member or being arrested at work. The man is taught to repeatedly switch between the deviant fantasy and the aversive consequences to strengthen their association. Finally, fourthly, in half the sessions, the man is taught to "escape" the aversive scene by describing "appropriate" or legal sexual interactions with consenting adults. The escape scene is used to enhance the man's ability to enjoy non-deviant sexual fantasies. |
So, you draw out the illegal fantasies from the offender. Then you discover something for them that is anxiety provoking. Not necessarily fears, because I think fears are a problem. Also, we would never use anything that was overtly painful. Pain and sex are too dangerously connected. So, that's why I was always against electric shocks in all the early behavioural experiments. Also, having worked with men who have electrocuted children... I think it's too dangerous. But, also, I don't want to impose fears either. And I don't want to impose something that isn't there. So, I elicit from them what their fears are or what provokes anxiety in them and, basically, they do that in covert tape recordings and in written work where they connect the illegal fantasy to the anxiety. What you're doing is that you're using the addictive nature of the illegal fantasy to push them into an anxiety that suddenly gets hold. It's a check. I don't ever want this arousal to disappear. I think it's crazy to think of it like that. Because then they'll be more dangerous because they'll think they're cured. I don't want men to ever think that they're cured. We are, all of us, in control of our sexuality and if we're not we get into a hell of a mess and we break the law... You're not looking to "cure", you're looking to check the initial cycle of behaviour.
Also on the treatment programme side is the linear process through which, according to Wyre, every offender goes. He explained.
When you start looking at a pattern of behaviour for anybody you start with the predisposition. We're not sure how or why, with all the options men have available to them, they decide to abuse children or women. That's what we call the predisposition. You know you have the predisposition because your fantasy life tells you so. You then have distorted thinking because, somehow, you've got to re-frame reality. But you still may not abuse. To abuse you must overcome internal inhibitors.
Like guilt?
Whatever. Actually, guilt is a dangerous one because guilt can lead to self-love. Self-love is masturbation, back to fantasy. That's why guilt-trips aren't helpful to sex offenders because they go into self-love-depression. Guilt trips for abusers are dangerous and people who give abusers guilt trips are doing more harm than good. So, you can still have the predisposition, a fantasy, distorted thinking and you have overcome your internal inhibitors but you may still not abuse. To abuse you must also overcome external inhibitors. They're the things around you that would prevent you from doing it. When you've overcome that, you've then got your targeting, initiating, grooming, overcoming victim resistance, reinterpretation of victim behaviour. As the victim survives the abuse you reinterpret the behaviour to feed your distorted thinking. Every sex offender goes through that process.
One method commonly used with paedophile sex offenders is to encourage the abuser to adopt a legal fantasy, to transfer fantasies of sexual activity with children to sexual activity with adult women. We asked Wyre if this method was used at Gracewell.
Masturbatory SatiationThis involves having men masturbate for protracted periods of time, an hour or more per session, while exposed to the deviant or Illegal fantasy. The technique was originally devised by W. L. Marshall. who argued that such exposure leads to "boredom" or "satiation" resulting in diminished sexual arousal to the targeted, deviant stimuli. The technique was "refined" by Alford et al and renamed masturbatory extinction. Each masturbatory extinction session lasts one and a half to two hours. There are three stages. First, while looking at slides of naked adult females and listening to an audiotape describing heterosexual activity they masturbate to orgasm. Secondly, the men immediately masturbate to orgasm again, though this time listening to a relaxation tape and are instructed to avoid any type of sexual fantasy as far as possible. Thirdly, the men then masturbate for one hour in the presence of the deviant or illegal slides and tapes with instructions to engage in relaxed fantasy, but without achieving orgasm. Orgasm is seen as a powerful and addictive behavioural reward. This method attempts to pair or relocate orgasms with normative sexual stimuli, to separate it from paedophile stimuli. |
What you're talking about is masturbatory satiation. We do use masturbatory satiation. What you are trying to do is enhance their legal fantasy, whatever that fantasy is. But, by writing out the "legal" fantasies of offenders you can't assume it's going to be a nice legal fantasy in the way that we might accept. It may be incredibly bizarre. And then you realise, "How are they ever going to get a partner to do that?" It's like with the men who abuse boys; I think some of our successes at Gracewell are those men who abused boys who used the word "detest" about homosexuality, and are now in homosexual relationships as a result of the programme. When it comes to it there are issues about men fantasising about women. I just think we haven't got much choice. For some of the men, to start entering into adult homosexuality it's going to be much more successful for them to do than to start entering into relationships with women. I don't think some of these men have got a "cat in hell's chance" of entering into a relationship with a woman. But they do have a chance of entering into a homosexual relationship.
Why is that?
Because of the way, from my experience, if I take Alan, he abuses boys, but he now talks about he's thinking a lot about 17, 18, 19 year olds in his fantasies although he is conscious that, at times, they are still like boys. But he is trying to disassociate his fantasies from children. What is happening is that the boys he's thinking about are himself. It's his own victim experience caught up in him. Which makes it complex and every time he up-ages the man he becomes the victim. That's the problem. I think the least successful of any men to treat are the fixated paedophiles towards boys, who have no arousal to adults, men or women. Without any doubt they are the most difficult. And looking at our programme I am not totally sure whether it's fantasy and behavioural work that would be the most significant input in effecting change in those areas. I think it has to be a lot of other things as well, mainly around the problem of their own victimisation. But I don't know how we do that. I've done some regressive work with some of those sex offenders. Their abuser is back in the room with them, in their head, and they're saying "I can't". I actually think that if we can start looking at how could you have power back or get power back by believing that you were in control. There is a power issue there which is quite interesting... What other ways could you get power back, other than by abusing?
How do you make the decision in your pre-court assessment programme as to whether a man is safe to live in the community or likely to respond to treatment? What are you looking for?
| No man has ever been re-convicted who has been connected Gracewell, yet |
The extensive assessment file helps to see his ability to co-operate and work with the programme. We do his offence and his cycle of behaviour and we write a report to the Court about the extent of his offending. We know that a lot of the men, if they're going to get up to four years in prison, the maximum time they'll do is 22 months on average, so I know that incidents during treatment are incredibly rare, in fact, I've never had one. In fact we haven't had one after treatment either. No man has ever been re-convicted who has been connected with Gracewell, yet. And that's in three years of operation. Either we're making very clever offenders or else we're having some effect... although we have the clinical stuff at the end of the day it's a feeling that this is okay or that isn't.
Presumably you reject some of the men who come here for assessment? Are there any men in prison because you have decided that you could not work with them?
Yes, a couple, not many.
What happens to men who fail to co-operate with the treatment programme?
The best sanction is probation because we can take them back to court if they fail to co-operate and they can be re-sentenced for the original offences.
What's your view of the claim that all men are potential rapists?
I think it's unhelpful to say that... I think it's better, as with pornography, to see it as the climate or the bed that other things grow out of. It is the sea, it is the ground, it is the soil, and the seeds are thousands of other things. But the soil is how I see it. So, anything in society which helps to validate, sustain or maintain the distorted thinking of those who abuse makes it difficult for me do do my job. But offenders and non-offenders alike respond similarly to the questionnaire that I have in the assessment pack. So, if I said things like "The more assertive a woman is makes men feel small: Do you agree or disagree? Do you strongly agree or disagree?" I got predictable answers from sex offenders. But I got the same answers from ordinary men in the community.
Is there a link between pornography and sex offending?
There isn't a doubt about that although it depends on what you mean by a link. I don't think cause and effect is a useful way of talking about it. I think it's more useful to talk about it as material that validates or confirms the distorted thinking of those who abuse. Now I'm leaving aside the feminist arguments about sexism, racism and the objectifying of women and parts of women and all those things. I'm just looking at that as a therapist working with offenders. It's no good, at one level, telling me that these men are bastards and perverts and want me to work with them when the very things out there in society are confirming what they are saying and justifying what they do.
There was a book in the cabinet in Wyre's office entitled 'Witchcraft". We asked if he had found any evidence of ritualistic or "Satanic" abuse in his work at The Gracewell Clinic.
Well yes, I've worked with more born-again Christian abusers than any other. The religious sex offender is the bane of my life. A lot of our child killers are evangelical born-again abusers. In a sense, I have to be careful coming from my background, but it helps me to understand it. I could count on two hands those men I know who have abused using a Lucifer concept to control children but other religious sex offenders are just too numerous to mention.
The new anti-gay laws place Wyre in a difficult position, if he is seeking to shift those sex offenders with illegal fantasies of boys towards adult gay sexuality.
The whole thing is bloody stupid. Our influence on the vice squad is probably going to help. They are beginning to move away from spending a lot of their time on adults and they are beginning to focus more on children.
The recent pronouncements by the Home Secretary about the treatment of sex offenders?
I would rather they had accepted our pre~release plans and some of the other proposals we put to them. But it is a step in the direction of institutions owning the problem and I applaud any move in that direction ... any initiative that is going to stop the alienation of people like me and the marginalisation of probation officers and others who feel it is important to work with sex offenders
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