The Miramonte Elementary School Scandal and the Psychology of Paraphillias

by Gina Simmons, Ph.D.

A dark cloud hangs over a Los Angeles Elementary School after two long-term teachers were arrested on allegations of lewd acts on children under the age of 14. Miramonte Elementary, educates low-income, mostly Latino youth, and ranks at the bottom in achievement for schools in its comparison group. When a film processor notified authorities about strange photos of blindfolded children with tape over their mouths, Miramonte Elementary hit a new bottom.

Veteran teacher, Mark Berndt, allegedly masturbated in the classroom, placed his semen on a spoon and fed it to blindfolded children in a "tasting game." Photos of children with the milky substance near their mouths alerted the film processor and stemmed a nearly year long investigation. Investigators allegedly found a blue plastic spoon with semen on it in a trash container at the school along with hundreds of photos of children.

Disturbing as the allegations are, the story gets sicker. Investigators arrested another suspected Miramonte teacher, Martin Springer for lewd acts on young children. He and Berndt were apparently friends. Two teachers aides also came under suspicion at the school. One was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2005 for lewd acts on children in cases going back as far as 1995. Another teacher's aide wrote a love letter to an elementary school child. The mother of that child complained to school authorities and was allegedly rebuffed. Students who reported the strange sexual behavior were allegedly told to "stop making things up."

In reaction to these disturbing allegations, Los Angeles Unified School District administrators removed the entire staff of Miramonte school and replaced them with new people. They provided counselors for each classroom, as the investigation and interviews of students and staff continues. Some Miramonte parents have spoken in protest of the removal of teachers beloved by their students. An atmosphere of anger and distrust, mixed with poverty and powerlessness, likely creates a toxic environment for learning. Those with immigration issues may have felt more powerless to report abuses to authorities.

How Did They Get Away With It For Decades?

Pedophiles, those with a sexual attraction to children, are a sneaky bunch. They know that children don't understand sexuality and cannot talk about it intelligently. They know that most people don't want to believe sexual exploitation of children exists in their neighborhood, school, house, backyard, or office. So it's easy for them to hide in plain sight.

I once worked with a boy who was molested by his grandfather, while sitting on Grandpa's lap, at the computer, with his parents sitting a few feet away in the same room. When I worked in residential treatment with a group of pedophiles, I learned that they can engage in sexual activity, with one hand under the table, while eating dinner. The other diners, unless they have x-ray vision, won't see or suspect a thing. Psychologists call this "perceptual set" which prompts us to see what we expect based on our emotional needs. If your basic need is food, you'll focus more on the spaghetti and meatballs on the table.

The Psychology of Paraphilias

Besides being sneaky and immature, pedophiles can become fixated on specific objects, rituals or behaviors that stimulate them sexually. Called paraphilias, these fixations can become the primary way the individual finds sexual satisfaction. Besides pedophilia, other paraphilias, like frotteurism (touching and rubbing against people against their will) or voyeurism (watching the private activity of others without their consent or knowledge) have a hostile component. The prowling perpetrator gets a power rush by sexually exploiting someone without their knowledge or consent.

Pedophiles often reveal a history of childhood trauma and sexual victimization. When they molest children, they psychologically reenact the abuse, bringing it under their own control. Recent neuroscience research finds abnormalities of the brain in the early development of pedophiles. They show a decrease in the volume of gray brain matter in the central striatum which impacts their emotions and behavior. In addition they show abnormalities in the frontal and central regions of the brain. These parts of the brain control the ability to practice restraint, use good judgment and apply reason to their behavior. These folks are sick and it shows in their brain scans.

What Can We Do About it?

Pedophilia is not curable. Those who enter treatment with a desire to get better usually need lifelong therapy and medication. Usually they are given antidepressants to reduce the drive to molest, in addition to hormonal medication to reduce the sex drive. Our best defense for our children is to pay attention. Ask the school their policy on reporting possible offenses. Do they screen employees. How do they handle complaints? Teach your children about these people so that they know what to do when an adult asks something of them that feels creepy or weird. Encourage your children to speak up when something feels wrong to them. Blindly obedient children make easy victims. Finally, try to stay involved in your child's school, and get to know the teacher. Your visibility and observing eyes can act as an inhibiting factor for a molester.

Photos courtesy of CBS News and Willibys-corruptjustice.

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Revisiting the First Amendment

by Katherine Scardino

A few weeks ago, one of our very fine contributors, Stacy Dittrich, wrote a blog for Women in Crime Ink about the scumbag (her word, but joined by me!), Phillip Greaves, who wrote the how-to book on being a good pedophile. It is hard to believe that one of our human race could and would write a book about doing harm to our children. I cannot even imagine a more low-class, vile subject for a book available to the world via the Internet and Amazon.com.

However, this vile subject is one that we have to talk about because it reaches far beyond Greaves and the subject of how to be a pedophile. In 1775 and 1776, our forefathers crafted a very powerful document, known as the Constitution of the United States of America, which is the supreme law of the land that we live by today. The First Amendment to the Constitution deals with freedom of speech, and you must note that it is the First Amendment. I believe it could have been decided by these fervent and patriotic men that freedom of speech was the most important right that they wanted their descendants to honor. Why? It is possibly due to the fact that the first Americans fled England because they were not allowed to express their desires or opinions about their personal or political lives. They did not want their new world to evolve into the same type of environment that they had just escaped.

So, today, we are in a quandary. There is a man from Colorado named Philip Greaves, and if you looked up the word pedophile in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, you would probably see this idiot’s photograph. I hate to even write his name in this article, because I would not want to add to his obvious need for publicity. But he wrote a book detailing how to conduct yourself as a pedophile. Truly disgusting!

There are people, as Ms. Dittrich stated, who are “defending this type of behavior, all for the sake of the good old United States Constitution.” I am a person who is defending everyone’s right to freedom of speech, as long as that free speech does not break any existing laws on obscenity and pornography. Yes, I will defend the right of every U.S. citizen to be free to speak their minds on any subject they wish, as long as it is legal. I know of no one who would welcome a world where we, as citizens, could be criticized, or worse, thrown in jail for speaking one’s mind.

Remember back in the early '70s during the Vietnam debacle when 19-year-old college student Paul Cohen was convicted of disturbing the peace when, inside a Los Angeles courthouse, he wore a T-shirt saying “F*** the Draft.” The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction, and opined that it was not illegal for him to wear that T-shirt since it was his constitutional right to speak his views.

Now, I will openly admit that announcing one’s opinion on a current event via a T-shirt is very different from Greaves’ how-to book. I heard legal affairs writer Jeffrey Toobin state his opinion on CNN last Sunday evening on AC360. Mr. Toobin said he believed it was not against the law for this scumbag to write a book on this subject since it depicted no photographs, only words. Herein lies the issue. What exactly is pornography? U.S. Supreme Court justices have struggled to establish an appropriate balance between the protection of free speech and the laws that are enacted to curtail the spread of pornography.

In the 1982 case of New York v. Ferber, which was also cited by Ms. Dittrich in her article, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a state statute that prohibited anyone from knowingly producing, promoting, directing, exhibiting, or selling any material showing a sexual performance by a child under the age of 16. It defined sexual performance as any performance that included “actual or simulated sexual intercourse, deviate sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality, masturbation, sado-masochistic abuse, or lewd exhibition of the genitals.” This means that, like obscenity, child pornography enjoys no First Amendment protection and the government can restrict its availability to everyone. In the case of electronic or computer transmission, it is a federal offense to knowingly receive child pornography.

So, what is obscene material? In 1973, the Supreme Court decided in the case of Miller v. California that obscene materials are defined as those that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, find, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest; that depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law; and that, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. The Miller decision provided states greater freedom in prosecuting alleged purveyors of obscene material because, for the first time since prior cases, a majority of the court agreed on a definition of obscenity.

The community standards portion of the decision is of particular relevance with the rise of the Internet, as materials believed by some to be explicit can be accessed from anywhere in the nation, including places where there is a greater concern about obscenity than is found in other areas of the nation. Perhaps the community where this man initially wrote this book (Colorado) is more lenient than the community where he mailed a copy to the FBI agent (Florida) and where he is currently in jail unable to make his $15,000 bond.

I have to ask, however, is it illegal to write a book describing how to be a good prostitute? Prostitution is illegal, just like child pornography and child sexual abuse. Why is it okay for genitalia to be exposed in photographs found in Hustler or Playboy magazines? Just because the subject matter is not one which some of us, although obviously not all of us, find appropriate does not mean it is illegal. The people who enjoy reading and viewing this material have the right to do so. We have the right not to read or view the material or to contribute any money to the sales of these publications.

So, the issue for the legal pundits and authorities will boil down to whether the words written by this imbecile from Colorado constitutes child pornography and is obscene material. I will not read this book, so I cannot state a firm opinion one way or the other. However, I do believe that it is important material for a solid discussion of our First Amendment to the good old United States Constitution, and I always welcome that.

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Best Woman in the World?

by Diane Fanning

I got a very unusual email last week from someone who was quite mad at me—I assume he was angry because of the careful and frequent use of capital letters in his message. Writing True Crime books opens an author up to a lot of unwarranted criticism from two divergent groups of people with dissimilar world views.

The first are those who object to the guilty verdict awarded to a perpetrator and of course, the author who doesn't call it a wrongful conviction. WRITTEN IN BLOOD created a lot of these category of critics. Michael Peterson beat his wife to death at the foot of the stairs in his Durham mansion. He received a guilty verdict, based largely on forensic evidence, and has lost his appeals in the courts.

Yet, there are a number of family, friends and others in the general public who still support his innocence. In doing so, some cling to the most outrageous theories—like the owl as killer story. Yes, they actually believe an owl flew into the home and killed Kathleen as she walked up the stairs. It doesn’t matter that the theory does not explain the presence of red neurons in Kathleen’s brain, or the blood spatter on the inside of Michael’s shorts or the fact that sixteen years earlier, another woman was found dead at the foot of a different set of stairs with the same injuries to her skull and Michael was the last person to see her alive. Nope, an owl did it—don’t confuse them with the facts!

Another group--folks in some towns who don’t think a book should be written at all. They don’t want anyone to know about a crime that happened in their backyard. These very same people often praise any media help in finding a missing person, and when the body is found they waste no time insulting newspaper staff, broadcasters and book writers who dare report on the story.

I saw a book on Amazon this past week that seemed to come under attack just because it existed—MURDER IN CONNECTICUT by Michael Benson. I don’t know Benson and can’t attest to his motivation and I haven’t read the book so have no opinion on its quality. But when I read lines from reviews like: “Amazon remove this book from your site…this is a disgusting attempt by a pathetic author and publisher to profit from a family that was tragically murdered,” or “Evil has many faces. Profiting from an unauthorized book on crime is one of these faces.”

I feel badly for Benson, whoever he is, for these unfair assaults. Do these same people criticize journalists who write for newspaper, magazines, radio or television? The police officers and detectives who get a paycheck for working the crime? For the District Attorney who prosecutes the perpetrators? Probably not. But they “profit” from the crime in the same way a true crime author does—and yet the only one criticized is poor Michael Benson.

The email I received this week, though, was quite different. It was written in the defense of Nina Sells, the mother of Tommy Lynn Sells, a serial killer residing on death row in Texas. The author of the e-mail accused me of not checking sources for my book, THROUGH THE WINDOW. He wrote that I “degraded one of the best women in the world.”

Who were my sources? Law enforcement officials and victims' family members across the country as well as to Tommy Sells and many members of his family, including Nina Sells, who didn't deny anything the others told me. I learned what she did and who she was from multiple sources.

Nina, abandoned Tommy with an aunt when he was 18 months old. She never visitied him. Yet two and a half years later, when the relatives wanted to adopt Tommy so that they could enroll him in school, Nina jerked her son out of the only home he could remember. From that point on, she wouldn't let him see those family members again.

Then when Tommy was 7 years old, she turned him over to a predatory pedophile. The writer of the email claimed that Tommy wanted to go over to his molester’s house and his mother couldn’t stop him. Really? I’m sorry as a mother, it stretches my imagination to think I could not control any of my kids when they were seven or eight years old—or that I’d let a child of mine go live with a pedophile because that’s what the child wanted.

Even after writing ten true crime books, the cruelty, depravity, arrogance and narcissism of killers still shocks me. But I have gained some understanding of how their minds work and the sociopathic personalities that allow them to commit acts of evil without a scintilla of remorse. I don’t think, though, I will ever be able to understand people who defend these killers or the neglectful and abusive parents who are sometimes responsible for the monsters in our midst.

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A Criminal Autopsy of Michael Jackson

by Kathryn Casey

Today, huge crowds will gather in L.A. to memorialize Michael Jackson. More than a million-and-a-half people tried to get tickets. I do understand. Right out of the gate, I want to say how much I enjoy his music. He was an amazing artist and an exciting performer, and I sometimes find myself humming his songs while I write. "Billy Jean" is my favorite.

That said, I'm uncomfortable with this outpouring of adulation and the massive media coverage it's scheduled to receive. There's little beyond a presidential inauguration that merits live coverage on six networks. But that's what we're doing today for Jackson's service. Why? Come on, folks. Why are we doing this? Especially when we consider the circumstances of his life and his death.

I am sincerely very sorry for Michael Jackson's children, for his family. For them, this is a true tragedy. But why are we making Jackson a hero in death, when he wasn't in life? The truth is that Jackson was a very troubled man. Need proof? Look at the way he paid doctors to disfigure his own face.

Second: He was an addict. For many years, Jackson was known to be addicted to prescription meds. His family tried to stage an intervention. In his final months, friends worried about his drug use. It was so bad that just weeks before his death, Jackson begged a nurse to inject him with Propofol, a powerful anesthetic used exclusively in operating rooms. Despite the drug's dangers, it appears that he found someone to hand it over to him, since the drug was found in his home. Autopsy results aren't in yet, but will anyone be surprised to find out that Jackson's death is the result of some misuse of narcotics?

This at a time when prescription drug abuse is a growing trend among teenagers. In January 2008, around the time actor Heath Ledger died of a combination of prescription drugs, a study was released that showed today's teens abuse prescription meds more than any other type of drug, with the exception of pot. Yet here we are, again as we did with Ledger, portraying the death of a celebrity who died of such drug abuse as a national tragedy.

What message does this send to our children?

Then there's the way past child molestation charges against Jackson are being white-washed in the media. Now I haven't seen everything, so if your experience is different than mine, perhaps you're watching other channels, reading other articles? What I've noted is an ongoing tribute to Jackson the performer and a write-off of the questions surrounding his behavior with children. Whenever it's brought up, I've heard a brief mention of his 2005 trial on charges of child sexual abuse and an immediate dismissal of the case's validity.

"He was acquitted," Matt Lauer quickly said when Vanity Fair's Maureen Orth mentioned the trial on the Today Show.

Orth agreed but then went on to peg the reason for the not guilty verdict not on Jackson's innocence but his talented legal team, especially defense attorney Thomas Mesereau, who all but put the mother of Jackson's 13-year-old accuser on trial instead of Jackson. In the end, many press reports theorized that jurors voted not guilty more out of contempt for the boy's mother than support of the King of Pop. (That's Jackson showing up at court in his pajamas on the right.)

But the 2005 allegations weren't the only ones. Remember the 1993 case, dropped after Jackson settled with another young boy and his family for a reported $22 million? I do.

My point is that there are certainly a lot of questions about Michael Jackson. This man is not a role model, not someone to be idolized. Yet that's what we're doing. Through this over-the-top coverage, we're buying into the myth of Michael Jackson the tragic superstar, and we're setting him up to be remembered for decades to come, especially by our children, as a fallen hero. Is that really what we want to do?

Personally, I'm left regretting that there isn't some kind of test that could be run on autopsy to confirm or disprove allegations that the man Jackson looked at in the mirror each morning was a pedophile.

In the week following his death, Jackson was autopsied twice. First up was an L.A. County coroner. Then, due to questions about the circumstances surrounding Jackson's demise, a private autopsy commissioned by the Jackson family. Once the medical examiners made the "Y" cut through Jackson's chest, sternum to belly button, they inspected his internal organs, his heart, lungs, his kidneys and his liver. They used a saw to slice through his skull and examined his brain. Theoretically, they should have been able to diagnose all the superstar's illnesses.

Pedophilia, however, doesn't show up on autopsy. Experts could run every known test on Jackson's brain and not uncover evidence either proving or disproving the claims made against him over the past sixteen years. The result is that without some concrete evidence emerging, Michael Jackson has taken his secrets to the grave.

So I'm left wondering about the wisdom of turning Jackson's death into a national tragedy, and I'm uncomfortable about celebrating the life of a man who abused drugs and may have victimized young children. What about the rest of you?

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Will We Ever Learn?

by Diane Fanning

Will we ever learn that the phrase "he paid his debt to society" is an irrelevant concept when applied to pedophiles?

Last week, Gilbert Gauthe made the case for permanent confinement of these types of sex offenders. Gauthe was the priest in Louisiana who heralded the beginning of the Catholic sex scandal as the first in the country to face multiple charges of child molestation. In 1985, he admitted that, over a five-year-period, he raped and sodomized thirty-seven altar boys, ages six to thirteen. He abused them on the altar, in the confessional and everywhere else. Thirty-seven!

He was convicted on eleven counts of crimes against nature with children and eleven counts of pornography involving a child. His punishment for scarring these innocent children for life? He served nine years of his 20-year sentence before his release in 1995.

Debt paid? Felon rehabilitated? Not hardly. In 1997, he was no longer a priest but he certainly was still a pedophile. He was arrested for fondling the genitals of a 3-year-old boy in Polk County, Texas. What did he get for that offense? He was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of "injury to a child" when Louisiana failed to forward his criminal records to the court. Gauthe’s sentence: seven years probation. It boggles the mind.

In 1998, a woman stepped forward with the accusation that Gauthe raped her seventeen years earlier when she was just twelve years old. Gauthe was arrested and returned to Louisiana where he spent two years in the Lafayette jail before the charges were dropped and he was released. It seems that the prosecutor, in making the 1985 plea bargain, wrote a very broad immunity agreement that shielded Gauthe from any additional charges for child molestation offenses committed before that date in the Vermillion Paris. He walked out the front doors of the jail to face the jeers of a crowd gathered to protest his regained freedom.

Gauthe still had four years of probation to serve in Texas. He returned to the state and, worked in Conroe, just north of Houston, driving the elderly to appointments in a commuter van. After keeping this job with The Friendship Center for about two years, his employers learned about his past from reporters who had tracked down the pedophile and asked the agency about their driver. He was fired.

Soon after that, he moved south of Houston to La Marque. He found a job working for a limousine company. Nobody's sure how long he was living there on the property of his employer since he did not report his whereabouts to the probation office as required. But intrepid reporters at KTRK-TV found and attempted to interview him. Their efforts came to the attention of the police who noticed that the 62-year-old Gauthe was in violation of the law that requires him to reaffirm his personal data, including his address and employment every ninety days for the rest of his life. When confronted, Gauthe complied with the reporting rules and went on the list of sex offenders in the area. With that accomplished, he moved, without giving authorities the required seven day notification.

Detective Geoff Price--our new hero--tracked him down to Galveston Island State Park. He was living in his recreational vehicle in this target-rich area for a pedophile. Gauthe lied to the officer about his continued employment. Last Wednesday, Price hauled Gauthe off to jail where he belongs.

If he is convicted of failing to register as a sexual offender, Gauthe could receive up to a 20-year sentence and a fine of $10,000.

Who cares about the fine? Keep the money, honey--just lock up this destructive jerk for the rest of his natural life.

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