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Reinaldo J. Rivera confessed last year to raping and killing four women. Sex offenders often move on to murder, says Bob Buffington, director of Georgia's police academy in Forsyth.
JONATHAN ERNST/FILE |
After he was finally caught and confessed to raping and killing four women, in addition to sexually assaulting 200 to 300 others, Reinaldo J. Rivera said he couldn't control his sex drive.
''I think what triggered it, what finally pushed me over the edge was when I was (traveling across the country) from San Diego to Washington, D.C., when I was in New Orleans ... I picked up this hooker,'' Mr. Rivera told investigators last October.
''I realized right there how easy it was to force yourself on a woman ... Maybe it was just a feeling that I needed to dominate, to have control. Uh, to have somebody scared, you know, of me.''
Sexual assault is about power and control and instilling fear in the victim, which is how the sex offender achieves gratification, said Yvonne Saunders-Brown, who designed a program used in Georgia prisons to treat sex offenders.
''It's more than 'I'm addicted to sex,''' she said. A sex offender can distinguish the difference between sex and violence and control, Ms. Saunders-Brown said.
In the nine-month program she designed, Ms. Saunders-Brown said, the focus is more about education than treatment.
''What we focus on is sexual arousal ... educate about the harm they do to their victims,'' Ms. Saunders-Brown said.
Similarly to self-help programs on addiction, the key is to first get sex offenders to drop the justifications, excuses and denials and own up to what they have done, she said.
They want to blame the victims, insist what happened wasn't criminal, claim an inability to control themselves because of drugs and alcohol, say they do it because they themselves were sexually abused.
''We work to show them that it is a choice they made,'' Ms. Saunders-Brown said.
''Rape is a conscious, deliberate decision on the offender's part, although often rationalized,'' said Dr. Harold Morgan, a forensic psychiatrist who teaches at the University of South Carolina and does examinations of convicted sex offenders under the state's sexual violent predator act.
There's controversy in his profession about classifying rape as a sexual disorder or crime of violence, but the prevailing opinion is that rape is not a manifestation of a psychiatric disorder, Dr. Morgan said. A person could conceivably be a sex addict and a rapist, but the first does not cause the latter, he said.
Why some people turn to sexual assaults is unknown. ''As much as we would like to know ... there's been a lot of research, but the nature of the problem makes getting the data difficult. There are a lot of questions but not a lot of answers,'' Dr. Morgan said.
But Dr. Morgan is in agreement with Ms. Saunders-Brown's assessment that sex offenders are unlikely to change, particularly child sex offenders, without intensive treatment. Dr. Morgan adds that pedophiles must have medicine to reduce their sex drive in addition to mental treatment.
The program for sex offenders in prison is voluntary, meaning prison officials cannot force anyone to attend, and some prefer to serve out their maximum sentence instead, Ms. Saunders-Brown said.
''It's a long tedious process,'' she said. ''We don't kid ourselves that in nine months they will be all better.''
Bob Buffington, the director of the state's police academy in Forsyth and a former Atlanta homicide detective, doesn't kid himself either when it comes to sex offenders and the reason why they commit these crimes.
''There's the old idea that rape isn't sexual gratification but power and control,'' Mr. Bob Buffington said. ''(That's) my position as a cop.''
One class at the academy, called ''criminal sexuality,'' teaches officers about serial rapists, he said. It's common for serial rapists to move onto murder, powered by fantasies that become more and more elaborate and that desensitize the rapist so he sees victims as objects, Mr. Buffington said.
There's often a progression from peeping Tom, to burglary, to rape.
''Then that gratification is no longer enough,'' he said. ''Like a drug addict building up a tolerance.''
Serial rapists often turn to murder for the same reason, Mr. Buffington said. Known serial rapists and murderers hunt prostitutes, at least in the beginning, because they are easy prey, he said.
Mr. Rivera's case exemplifies the pattern. Police stopped Mr. Rivera in New Orleans after his victim, who he said was a prostitute, called 911.
They let him go.
Reach Sandy Hodson at (706) 823-3226 or shodson@augustachronicle.com
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