McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC) was a “real prison”, compared to the Washington Corrections Center (WCC) that I had been transferred from in 1984. The main cellblocks were five tiers high, with the traditional bars on the front of all the cells. Most of the cells were 15' deep and 20' wide and housed eight men on four sets of bunks, two bunks against opposite walls, and a single toilet and sink against the wet wall at the back of the cell.
By this time my hatred for the System had finally begun to take root, and this gave me a little bit of status with the other inmates who called themselves “convicts”. I'd learned to hide my fear behind cold expressions and not let myself be bullied by the more aggressive inmates.
Luckily, nobody at MICC knew about how I got raped and “punked out” at WCC in Shelton. I was also finally able to grow a little bit of hair on my face and it seems that went a long way to help deter all but the most hard-core predators. So after a few half-hearted attempts to pressure me by a few of the seasoned predators, I was pretty much left alone.
And then something interesting happened. I started to attract the attention of a different kind of inmate. These were older mosre experienced convicts who I guess saw something in my youth and determination to stand up for myself that must have reminded them of themselves when they were younger. Several of these older convicts took me under their wings, which they wouldn't have done if they had not seen me standing up against the pressure. (They were “older” to me but still young themselves, not more than 30 years or so). None of them ever made any sexual advanced toward me, and having their friendship pretty much squelched all the remaining interest I got from would-be attackers.
But, more importantly, they taught me how to not just survive, but to thrive in prison. Instead of just waiting for the “System” to assign me a job (like I did at Shelton), they encouraged me to go after a job I wanted.
So, after I was assigned to the dish-tank in the kitchen, I went straight to the head-cook and told him I worked as a “cook-five” at Madigan Army Medical Center. And that I wanted to cook instead of wash dishes. (The “cook-five” job was part of the “Youth Summer Employment Program” that I was part of for four months while at the Dyslin's Boy's Ranch, so I did actually know something about institutional cooking). The cook asked me a few questions about safe food handling and how to operate and clean he steam kettles and grills. After I answered his questions he hired me on the spot.
That was another “lucky break” for me, because the inmate cooks were all part of the older more experienced convicts in the kitchen who formed a priviledged clique that even the guards gave some respect to (mostly since these older convicts kept things running smoothly, which made the guard's job easier).
And the cooks ate well, very well! At MICC there was a butcher's shop attached to the kitchen. And the inmate butchers were part of the cook's clique. So we had steak and eggs for breakfast (not all the time, but often enough), and fed on juicy pork chops while everyone else ate “mexican surprize”. And, of course, we were also “in” with the bakers, so doughnuts and cake were status quo. Actually, I'm exaggerating here a little, but only just a little. We weren't supposed to eat anything except what was on the menu, so we had to be discrete. But I'm not exaggerating at all to tell you that when we walked out of the kitchen with a half dozen “Dagwoods” (delux sandwiches) wrapped in plastic and tied around our waist for our buddies back in the cell blocks, the kitchen guards never shook us down. They knew not to.
In the mean time, I had also signed up on the school floor for the Vocational Electronics Program. I had always been fascinated by TV's since I was a kid. Not just the TV programs, but I wanted to know how TV's actually worked. The waiting list for the electronics program was over a year long, but one of my older convict friends suggested that I go out to the electronics shop and talk to the instructor. So I did.
Fred Schuneman had built the electronics program himself, almost from scratch. And inmates who signed up for the program usually only did so with little real interest. So when I showed up in his office begging to be moved up the list because I had “always wanted to learn electronics”, he didn't hesitate. I got into the program right away, and did well. I especially liked the hand's on labs, and the self-paced format, which allowed me to zip through the material quickly. Before long, other students started to come to me for help, and I became a sort of unofficial teacher's aide.
So, I was now working in the kitchen and going to school at the same time, which kept me pretty busy. In my spare time, on the weekends, I liked to play volleyball on the yard, and spend time in the library reading books about computers and psychology that I could barely understand.
I read about computers for the same reason I was taking electronics lessons. I had seen an Apple IIe computer once, and even though I wasn't even allowed to touch it at the time, I just knew I had to find out how it worked. So I began reading books in the library on computers, and even computer programming, long before the first time I actually touched a computer.
I read books on psychology and self-help, because I always wanted to understand my “sexual deviancy” problem. I thought that if I understood how my brain worked then I should be able to “fix it” myself. I definitely wasn't getting any help from the “Correctional System”, and I had decided that “God” wasn't going to do anything for me either. So, my only hope for getting well was to educate myself as much as I could. I took what few psychology and self-help classes were offered by the school, but mostly I familiarized myself with the “psychology and self-help” bookshelf in the library at MICC, as I had once familiarized myself with the “religion and philosophy” bookshelf while I was at WCC. Education was my only hope of ever returning to a “normal” life on the streets, so I took it seriously and read everything I could get my hands on that I thought might help me understand what was “wrong” with me.
Back in the kitchen the institution was starting to cut back on the food budget by reducing how much food inmates could have. One morning as I was frying eggs on the serving line (inmates could have their eggs cooked to order in those days), a guard came and told me to only serve two eggs per inmate. I ignored him and just kept giving the inmates who came through the line as many eggs as they wanted (usually four, sometimes six). After awhile the guard came up and told me again to serve only two eggs per inmate. I said, “Okay”. But when the next inmate asked for four eggs, I gave him four eggs, even while the guard was still standing there.
The guard left in a huff. Then, another inmate cook who saw the guard leave in a hurry and heading back toward the cook-supervisor's office, came up to me and asked, “What was that all about?”
I told him that the guard had told me to serve only two eggs and I refused to do it. The other inmate cook left, also toward the supervisor's office. A little while later I saw the guard and other inmate cook return to their usual positions on the serving line, which surprized me since I had expected to get pulled from the line and given an infraction for “refusing to obey an order”, or worse. But I finished serving that morning with no further incidents.
As it turned out, the other inmate cook also realized that I would probably be infracted and pulled off the line, if not fired. So he went to the supervisor and while the guard was still complaining about my refusal to obey, the other inmate said that if I were pulled from the line none of the other convicts would take my place, and if I were infracted the entire morning crew would quit.
So that explained why I didn't get in trouble. Nowadays inmates could never pull a stunt like that. They'd lock down the whole prison first. But back then, the convicts had a lot more power than today.
Because I was programming so well, with a full time job and school, and staying out of trouble, I ended up getting moved to “preferred housing”. At first I went to “Two-house”, which was an older cellblock that was only three tiers high and all single man cells.
While in Two-house, I began very discretely giving sex pleasure to one two other convicts (I only remember one specifically, but there may have been two). I would come to the TV room during late-night wearing only a long bathrobe, which was commonly done, but I'd only have on a pair of sport-jocky underpants beneath the robe (or sometimes nothing at all), and a pair of thick wool socks that acted like slippers, and made it appear as though I had on more clothes beneath the robe.
Then, after I was alone in the TV room, I'd take off my robe and masterbate to fantasies of letting other inmates have sex with me. I usually did this all by myself, but after a while, at least one other inmate noticed that I spent a lot of time in the TV room at night alone, so he started hanging out later than usual to see what would happen, and sure enough, I started letting him watch me masterbate and I even let him touch me while I was naked. But we never had intercourse, not even oral, and I never let him do more than just touch me with his hands while I masterbated. I got off on the power and control I seemed to have over him. We ended up becoming good friends (since we would converse a lot while all this was going on), and he never tried to go any further than I was willing to let him. He respected me, and that was a new experience for me when it came to sex.
I should also note that while masterbating by myself in the TV room at nights seems bizarre, it made sense to me because by doing so I could cut off my fantasies of child rape. Masterbating in the TV room was a way for me to get excited without fantasizing about children. The risk of getting caught provided a kind of adrenaline kick, while the environment itself, a place where inmates normally congregated, provided tactile support for my fantasies while at the same time interfering with any kind of fantasies about children. It was like therapy for me, in more ways than one, not to mention, great exercise, since I often got very physical as I acted out my fantasies (e.g. dancing erotically in front of the room while I fantasized a room full of cheering inmates eager to have sex with me).
I should also point out that in all my years in prison I never once got into trouble for my sexual behavior. Unlike other queens and homosexuals, who typically had more infractions for having sex than they could count, I never got caught or infracted once. There were a couple of times I came close to getting caught, but I never actually got caught. Nor did I ever contract a single sexually transmitted disease, not even crabs or herpes. I like to think this was because I was always very careful. But, I would not be being completely honest if I did not admit that I had at least some help from lady luck. Though I never needed a lot of luck, mostly because I was never as sexually active with other inmates as I was with myself. I often fantasized about having sex with ten inmates at a time, but I rarely ever had sex with even one (not counting the times I was raped at WCC). Even after I came out on my own as a queen (openly gay) I was almost completely monogamous, almost, but now I'm getting ahead of myself.
When a position came open in the electronics shop for a toolroom clerk, I quit my job in the kitchen and went to work for Fred Schuneman. The pay was the same (19.5 cents per hour, or about 23 dollars per month), and there were far fewer fringe benefits, and somewhat less prestige. The other workers in the electronics shop were mostly regular “inmates”, as opposed to “convicts”, but I didn't mind. The important thing to me was that I could be closer to computers. There were two Apple IIe computers in the shop, and every once and a while I would actually get to use one (usually by volunteering to do some tedious typing or other work).
Then one magical day Fred came into the toolroom where I was working and asked me if I wanted a computer to work with. The shop had ended up with a spare Apple IIe from the school that was in the shop for repairs, but it had already been replaced at the school by the time it was fixed. So now the computer was just taking up room in the shop. Fred decided it may as well take up room in the tool room where I could use it.
This was the first computer that I had essentially unrestricted access to, and I was more than ready for it. I had been studying not just programming languages, but also computer architecture, digital electronics, and just about anything else I could that had to do with computers. And now I could for the first time start applying what I had been learning.
In the first month with the Apple computer I wrote a machine-code program that could beat anyone at a game called Mastermind (a colored peg sequence guessing game). I had assembled the program by hand, without the aid of another program called an assembler. I used the technical specs for the 6502e processor chip, and punched in hexidecimal numbers as the instructions instead of higher level command words. In other words, I did it the old fashioned (and very hard) way and I learned.
Then I built a light-pen from spare electronic parts around the shop, including the machine-code “driver” for the pen, which plugged into an empty chip socket on the mother board of the Apple IIe.
And soon after that (I had saved my pennies from work and bought a real compiler program called “Merlin”, so now I could start writing more advanced programs). I wrote a graphical compession algorythm that allowed my programs to create animated graphics with the very limited memory of computers in those days (my Apple had only 128 Kilobytes of RAM!). This was years before I ever heard of “gifs” (the popular little animated graphics all over the Internet today), which pretty much do the same thing my program did back then.
When the vocational welding instructor saw me demonstrating my animation program he asked if I could use it to create a quiz program for his welding class that would have animated graphics along with each question. I said I could, and I did. I called the program “Quiz Wiz” (and years later I wrote a much more sophisticated Web-based version of Quiz Wiz for another vocational program at Monroe, Washington, that, last I heard, is still in use today.)
I even once wrote a firmware hack (a program that takes over for the software that comes built into the computer hardware) that I called “Err-go!” and submitted it for publication to a popular magazine for Apple II computers called “Nibble”. My article was rejected, but I still think it was a great hack (it let Applesolf BASIC programmers write programs that could jump to labelled subroutines instead of just numbered routines, a feature that is standard today).
In other words, yes, I had proven myself to be a genuine wiz kid. And, I took on all of the haughty airs that go along with such status. Well, I wasn't that haughty, but haughty enough to demand people to “leave me alone!” while I was working on the computer. I eventually got moved out of the tool room and took over the shops main computer, which was a suped-up Apple II e (with 512 k memory and 40 Mb external hard drive! Woo-hoo!). I became, officially, one of the shop techs (doing actual electronic repair work), but I spent most of my time on the computer.
An important aspect of my obsession with computers is that it provided me with a strong distraction from my sexual exploits. By the time I was turning myself into a computer wiz I had been moved to a housing unit called Summit House. It was the ultimate in “preferred” housing units. I could, and would, sit up in the laundry room at Summit House half the night, writing programs and studying, using the large tables, that were meant for folding clothes on, as my study desk, with books and papers spread out all over. I did not have time for fantasies, or dancing naked in the TV room. Computers seemed to be my salvation. Well, maybe not my “salvation”, but they had a definite impact on my fantasies.
I recall that while I was studying computers, I still masterbated frequently.But my fantasies had become almost exclusively adult oriented. I never did “like” fantasizing about children. It was “pleasurable” to do so, but it always made me feel bad. So being able to fantasize about sex with other men was much preferable, and with my new social status as a “wiz kid” I found that I had a place in the adult world after all. For the first time I started feeling like I was an adult, not just a kid anymore. I was 24 years old.
I graduated with honors and special recognition with an AS degree in Electronics Service. At the graduation ceremony I was approached by a woman from Institutional Industries who congratulated me on my honors then offered me a job programming IBM computers in the industries offices. The job would pay five times what I was earning in the Electronics Shop, (over a dollar an hour) and was by far one of the best paying jobs in prison. But, I politely declined her offer, citing loyalty to the Electronics program. I felt I should “give back” what the program had given me.
Suddenly my world got turned upside down, again. Only this time in a good way! The Parole Board had been ordered by the courts to bring the minimum terms of all inmates in their charge, “within range of the SRA” (Sentencing Reform Act – a new set of laws that was supposed to provide predetermined sentences for all crimes and get rid of the Parole Board).
Well, as I've mentioned before, my sentence was more than three times over the SRA range, so the Parole Board had to reduce my time. When they did so, they set a new sentence that was still over the SRA range for my crime, but it was under what I had already served!
So what I expected to be a routine review hearing turned into a parole hearing! They asked me if I had any parole plans. I said, no. They asked what I would do if I were parole. I said, I didn't know. I simply wasn't prepared. They asked if I was willing to get sex offender treatment on the streets, and I said, of course. And then, right then and there, completely out of the blue, they found me parolable!
It was over! I was going home! I'm emotional even now as I write this and remember how happy I was. My mother was still living in Tacoma at the same house I had been arrested at as a 16-year-old boy. I could go live with her, get a job, help her pay the mortage (she was close to loosing the house because of not being able to keep the payments up). And everything would be okay again!
I was going home, at long long last!
But, that's not what happened, not even close. It was another seven years before I actually got out on parole, and by then my mother had long lost the house, and I had long lost any hope of ever returning to a “normal” life.
By the time I finally did get paroled I had only one purpose in life, revenge! It was the only thing I felt that I had to live for after what “they” did to me over the course of the next seven years. They destroyed every last hope I had and threw all my efforts to heal myself right back in my face. But, that's another chapter, that I call “The Transition”.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
The Mark Of A Convict
I used to boast, when I was in prison, that my first infraction was for assaulting a guard. I didn't even have to lie. I'd just say, “I hit a guard in the head with a garbage can lid.”
Technically that was the truth, and recently when the Federal prosecutor brought that infraction report into court as evidence of my “past violent behavior in prison”, I didn't challenge it. But, here's what really happened.
I was working in the kitchen “garbage room” with another inmate. Our job was to take the garbage from the room to the back loading dock, and empty it into the garbage truck when it arrived.
The cooks had changed the oil in the friers the day before. So there were about a half dozen boxes of empty Crisco cans. Each can was the same size as a regular can of Crisco oil and each one also came with its own plastic lid for resealing the can if it is only partially used. Each box held about 24 cans and consequently, about 24 plastic lids, which the cooks threw into the boxes loose with the cans after emptying them.
So my co-worker and I were throwing the lids at each other like frisbees. They were harder to catch than to throw, so the object was to try to catch the lids the other guy threw with one hand, while throwing lids back with the other, all as fast as we could; scoring short-lived bragging points for “good catches”.
The kitchen guard, c/o Tobin, was a layed back older man who I thought was “friendly”, as far as my very limited experience with guards went at the time. So when he walked into the garbage room and told us to get back to work, I jokingly threw one of the lids at him and shouted, “Tobin! Catch this!” (Those were the exact words that Tobin himself wrote in the infraction report).
I expected him to turn when I called his name, but he was saying something to my co-worker, and turned about a second too late, just in time for the five-inch plastic lid to hit him on the forehead above his left eye, by surprize.
I laughed and said, “Opps... you were supposed to catch it, sorry!”
The other inmate and Tobin suddenly weren't smiling. I didn't understand it at the time, but I had just violated a subtle, but serious prison taboo; inmates don't familiarize themselves with the guards, no matter how friendly they are. Of course, Tobin was not injured in the least. But, a line had been crossed and he had to make sure that I understood I was never to cross it again. He wrote me up for “Assault on a guard”, one of the most serious infractions possible.
I couldn't believe he wrote me up at all, much less for such a serious infraction. I thought he was such a nice guy. But, I had a lot to learn and this was to be only my first of many “lessons”, over the years, that came in the form of unexpected infractions.
I learned that there is an invisible but well defined social stratum line between guards and inmates; guards above, inmates below. I learned that while conventional etiquette crossed that line freely enough, familiar things such as trust, genuine concern, and any kind of intimacy, were strickly barred from crossing between the two strata. I learned that no matter how friendly a guard was, they could never be my friend. I eventually learned to hate the “System”, and that was an important part of my prison education that helped keep me alive. Other inmates can “feel” this hatred in each other, and it's not easy to fake. It is the mark of a convict, and the basis for a code that I learned and lived by in order to survive, and “stay out of trouble”.
Of course, it is also the basis for what prison officials call, “criminal mentality”, and what psychologists call, “anti-social personality disorder”. Inmates are trained to hate the System, by the System. And nobody seems to care; not even when that hate gets escalated by the same “Criminal Justice” System into a murderous rage.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Prison Rape
Before I ever arrived at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, Washington (W.C.C. state prison) I had been told by just about everyone I spoke to that I would be “targetted for sex” by other inmates, and probably beat-up, or maybe even killed, just because of the way I looked. I was only 19 years old, six feet tall and 138 pounds soaking wet. I had no body hair to speak of, and no facial hair at all. According to my psych-evals, I was also very immature and effeminate (though I had no idea at the time what being “effeminate” meant).
They say the three things that will get you killed in prison are sex, drugs and gambling. But the one thing that will get you killed or hurt the fastest is fear. Fear draws predators like death draws flies. With my age, my looks, and my fear, I was a walking rape just waiting to happen.
The first men to rape me were two “sexual psychopaths” who were from the same sex offender program at Western State Hospital that I had been expelled from in order to be sent to prison. I don't remember their names (they were not in the same “treatment group” that I was in at the program), so I'll just call them Big John and Kevin.
Big John was a huge youngster (but still several years older than me). In fact, he was the “biggest white guy” in the whole prison. But he was also soft spoken and easy going. He was the one who first came to my cell and told me that because we were both “from the program”, we should be friends. He asked me if I wanted to get high, and invited me to come down to his cell with Kevin, at the very end of the tier, away from the guard station, to smoke a pinner (a small marijuana joint, common in prison). I knew enough at least to avoid a set up like this, but Big John and Kevin were x-program members, so I thought I could trust them. Yes, I was that naïve.
Big John was a pedophile. So, he resorted to trying to manipulate me with conversation in order to get me to do what he and Kevin wanted, after he got me into his cell with the door closed. He promised me that no one else would find out and that it would be “mutual”.
But, I said I wasn't interested and tried to leave. That prompted Kevin to grab me from behind. He was a little shorter than me, but heavier and much stronger. Kevin was a stone-cold rapist, and seemed to enjoy the prospect of violence. He forced me down onto the end of the bunk, then told Big John to grab my hands (since I was trying to fight him) so he could pull down my pants. But, Big John still prefered manipulation over psysical force, so he told me, “We're gonna do it one way or the other. You may as well just go along so we won't hurt you” (which, incidentally is the same logic that police proffer when subduing a “suspect”). I agreed, and stopped resisting. I let Kevin pull down my pants while I was still bent over the end of the bunk. He penitrated me from behind while Big John put his erect penis in my mouth as he layed on the bunk and told me how to pleasure him. This was the very first time I had ever had anal sex (top or bottom), and it was also the first time anyone ever told me how to “suck dick”. (All my previous experiences with oral sex had never consisted of more than placing the penis in the mouth while masterbating, including the oral “rape” that I was in prison for.)
After Kevin ejaculated inside of me, they switched places.
And, with more threats of violence, Kevin persuaded me to pleasure him orally too, even after he had just had anal sex with me. The entire experience was revolting, but I was too frightened to not do what I was told. Luckily there was only a little pain (other times that I was raped in prison were much more painful during the act of penitration, I learned the hard way why “bending over” is always a good idea when you are getting anally raped).
There was nothing “mutual” about any of it, at least not until a few days later (after other inmates had found out that I was “easy”, and started pressuring me with threats of violence to have “one-way” sex with them). Big John told me to come down to his cell again, so we could talk. I went, expecting to be raped again, but this time he was alone (not that he couldn't have raped me all by himself if he wanted to), and instead of demanding sex from me, he offered himself to me! He told me not to tell anyone, not even Kevin. He gave me oral sex until I was half erect, then he layed back on his bunk and put his legs in the air and told me to “put it in!”
Well, the sight of his giant hairy ass was more than my poor little fellow could bear. I lost what little stiffness I had, and told him I wasn't really interested in the “mutual” thing anyway. He was kind enough to let me go, with a few further, admonishments to not tell anyone, of course.
But I did tell, my friend and fellow “punk”, Junior. And Junior told a black man who was pressuring him for information about me. And the black man told his friends, who told their friends, until, of course someone finally told Big John, “what Duncan was saying”.
By this time I was living on a different tier, from a futile attempt to get away from being “pressured for sex”. But Big John came onto my tier and a huge crowd followed him to my cell to witness the confrontation that it seemed everyone but me knew was about to happen. He came into my cell and pretty much accused me of lying about him, then punched me in the face. There was no way I could even hurt this guy if he gave me ten free shots, so I fell to the ground, and confessed profusely that I had lied about him. He pretended to be satisfied, and left. The show was over.
I should actually credit him for not doing much worse. By all “rights” he should have put me in the hospital (and at the same time I thought he was going to). But his true nature was not violent, he only did the bare minimum of what he had to do to protect his “reputation”. He let me off easy, and I learned to keep my mouth even more “shut” than before. Now I knew that I couldn't tell the guards, or even other inmates, about what was happening to me. I never felt more scared and alone in all my life.
By not at least trying to fight back against Big John, I unwittingly “announced” to the whole tier that I was “fair game”. Anyone who wanted to have sex with me from then on didn't even have to threaten me themselves. All they had to do was threaten to tell Big John that I was “talking about him” again, and they could make me do anything they wanted. Especially since before Big John left my cell, after punching me in the face, he threatened to do “a lot worse” if he ever heard of me talking about him again. And all the “vultures”, “wolves” and “big cats”, were no doubt salivating at his words (these are the different kinds of prison sex predators, each with their own tactics and tastes). Once again, I was the last one to realize what was going to happen next. The wolves ganged up (six of them attacking me at once), the big cats pounded in turn, and the vultures moved in for the left overs. If I hadn't been transferred when I was, I probably would have been killed; if not by someone jealous “daddy's” shank, then for sure by the even more gruesome, Mr HIV (which was in it's heyday at the time).
I eventually began getting aroused while I was being used for sex. At first it confused me, I wasn't trying to be aroused at all. I remember the first time it happened, as I lay on my stomach on a black man's bunk with my pants down around my ankles, and the man himself laying on top of me kissing the back of my neck while he had anal sex with me. I felt myself getting an erection, and thought it was just more evidence that something was “wrong” with me.
I got transferred to another prison soon after that, and had learned how to “act tough” (i.e. not show fear) so I didn't draw so much unwanted attention, and the rapes stopped. But then the fantasies of getting used began. It gave me a way to take control back from the men who had taken so much control away from me. At least, in my mind, at first. But eventually I started “letting” men use me for sex, but only if they treated me with respect. And hense, I became a prison queen. But that's a different story.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
The Predator Awakens
As readers of my original Fifthnail blog (link, top-right) may know, while I was living in North Dakota I took up skiing for the first time. The slopes were no resort, more like just a few hills. But they did have lifts, and Thursdays were “student night”, so I could use my NDSU I.D. To get rentals and lifts until midnight for only $25. It was the perfect chance for me to learn something I had always wanted to learn.
Of course there are always a lot of kids around the ski slopes, especially little slopes like these. But I wasn't interested in the children, I was there to practice skiing, and even if I happened to get a lift with a cute kid, I would be courteous, but otherwise ignore them. Like I said, my mind was on skiing, and I was enjoying myself responsibly for once.
I spent hours at a time on the slopes without a break, even in below zero weather (I'd learned how to dress warm living in Fargo). But, at some point I had to stop to use the bathroom.
On one such occasion I found myself in the small “boys room” alone, relieving myself in a urinal with my mind on what run I would choose next, or some such thing, when I heard the door to the bathroom open behind me and someone come in. As I finished relieving myself I instinctively noted that whoever came in did not move into the bathroom to take care of business, so I glanced out of curiosity over my shoulder to see if anyone was actually even there.
I saw a young boy, about nine or ten years old standing by the door, dressed as though he'd just come off the slopes for a quick pee, like me. Several children had just exited the bathroom a moment beforem after I had politely waited for them to finish theis business before pulling out my own hose to take care of mine. So seeing the kid in the bathroom alone was no real shocker, or turn on. I figured immediately that he must be waiting for me to finish – since it was such a small bathroom with only two urinals side-by-side – the same way I had waited for the kids before me to finish, just being polite.
But then I saw him flinch with hesitation. It was the most subtle movement that I caught out of the corner of my eye just as I was looking away from him. The boy had made a move that an animal makes when it is suddenly afraid and uncertain of its predicament. Something inside of me became suddenly awake, and aroused at the same time.
Of course I did not move on the boy, he was very safe where he was. In fact – and I know many will scoff at this, but it is absolutely true – I would have risked my life to protect that boy from harm if any had been threatened. At least in that context I would have; the chalet was not a safe “hunting ground”, not by far.
But the predator had definitely been stirred and awakened, and I took due notice. It wasn't the boy's appearance, age, or circumstances that aroused me, it was his fear, and his fear alone. The boy's fear had awaken a very dangerous predatory instinct.
I turned again and shrugged, nodded, and smiled to the boy, to assure him that I was finished, and that he was safe. As I washed my hands, I metaphorically scratched the predator inside of me behind the ears and thought to it: not yet my friend; not yet... go back to sleep.
P.S. We all have “sleeping predators” inside of us. Predators are born of fear, and live by it. To teach our children to “be afraid of strangers” (e.g. “stranger danger”) is to prepare them to be a victim. Children who are not afraid of strangers are not nearly as appealing to child predators. That does not mean they are immune to attack, only that they are much less likely to be targeted. And, if they are attacked, they are much more likely to escape unharmed. As a “child predator” myself I speak from direct experience, not psychological theory. Several times children that I targeted as prey escaped using natural instincts that were unhampered by fear. (Once a 7-year-old boy who I had alone in the woods, a firm grip on his arm, and a sharp knife in his face, got away by screaming and fighting. He was lucky I did not use the knife, or was he? Perhaps he instinctively knew that I wouldn't. Who knows, but he got away unscathed.) I also know of other child predators who have said the same thing (Westley Allan Dodd, for one), though most child predators are oblivious to their own predatory nature, so they do not even realize that it is fear that drives their lust. The same can be said for most other predators as well.
Of course there are always a lot of kids around the ski slopes, especially little slopes like these. But I wasn't interested in the children, I was there to practice skiing, and even if I happened to get a lift with a cute kid, I would be courteous, but otherwise ignore them. Like I said, my mind was on skiing, and I was enjoying myself responsibly for once.
I spent hours at a time on the slopes without a break, even in below zero weather (I'd learned how to dress warm living in Fargo). But, at some point I had to stop to use the bathroom.
On one such occasion I found myself in the small “boys room” alone, relieving myself in a urinal with my mind on what run I would choose next, or some such thing, when I heard the door to the bathroom open behind me and someone come in. As I finished relieving myself I instinctively noted that whoever came in did not move into the bathroom to take care of business, so I glanced out of curiosity over my shoulder to see if anyone was actually even there.
I saw a young boy, about nine or ten years old standing by the door, dressed as though he'd just come off the slopes for a quick pee, like me. Several children had just exited the bathroom a moment beforem after I had politely waited for them to finish theis business before pulling out my own hose to take care of mine. So seeing the kid in the bathroom alone was no real shocker, or turn on. I figured immediately that he must be waiting for me to finish – since it was such a small bathroom with only two urinals side-by-side – the same way I had waited for the kids before me to finish, just being polite.
But then I saw him flinch with hesitation. It was the most subtle movement that I caught out of the corner of my eye just as I was looking away from him. The boy had made a move that an animal makes when it is suddenly afraid and uncertain of its predicament. Something inside of me became suddenly awake, and aroused at the same time.
Of course I did not move on the boy, he was very safe where he was. In fact – and I know many will scoff at this, but it is absolutely true – I would have risked my life to protect that boy from harm if any had been threatened. At least in that context I would have; the chalet was not a safe “hunting ground”, not by far.
But the predator had definitely been stirred and awakened, and I took due notice. It wasn't the boy's appearance, age, or circumstances that aroused me, it was his fear, and his fear alone. The boy's fear had awaken a very dangerous predatory instinct.
I turned again and shrugged, nodded, and smiled to the boy, to assure him that I was finished, and that he was safe. As I washed my hands, I metaphorically scratched the predator inside of me behind the ears and thought to it: not yet my friend; not yet... go back to sleep.
P.S. We all have “sleeping predators” inside of us. Predators are born of fear, and live by it. To teach our children to “be afraid of strangers” (e.g. “stranger danger”) is to prepare them to be a victim. Children who are not afraid of strangers are not nearly as appealing to child predators. That does not mean they are immune to attack, only that they are much less likely to be targeted. And, if they are attacked, they are much more likely to escape unharmed. As a “child predator” myself I speak from direct experience, not psychological theory. Several times children that I targeted as prey escaped using natural instincts that were unhampered by fear. (Once a 7-year-old boy who I had alone in the woods, a firm grip on his arm, and a sharp knife in his face, got away by screaming and fighting. He was lucky I did not use the knife, or was he? Perhaps he instinctively knew that I wouldn't. Who knows, but he got away unscathed.) I also know of other child predators who have said the same thing (Westley Allan Dodd, for one), though most child predators are oblivious to their own predatory nature, so they do not even realize that it is fear that drives their lust. The same can be said for most other predators as well.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
What Happened In Prison - Part I: "The Punk"
After I was “voted out” of the Western State Hospital Sexual Psychopath Treatment Program, my 20 year prison sentence suspension was revoked. At the very tender age of 19 I was sent to prison.
While I was still in the county jail I learned the hard way that I needed to invent a story for why I was sentenced to prison. Rape was not a very popular crime, especially if it involved a child. The weak minded inmates (typical bullies) of course needed to make themselves feel better than someone, and society already made the rapists and child molesters easy scapegoats. So I made up a story about a “burglary that went bad” and became a first degree assault. Because of my age, the length of my sentence (a rapist typically only served 3 to 5 years on a first offense in those days), and the convincing details of my story, no one ever questioned it, or asked to see paperwork.
I was classified for population at the Washington Corrections Center (WCC) in Shelton. When I arrived I still did not know how much time I would be spending in prison. The judge only set the maximum term (20 years). But the parole board set the minimum term, which would determine your length of stay until you were eligible for parole.
Because this was my first offense as an adult, I expected to get 5 years at the most. That would make me eligible for parole after about one year in prison since I would ger credit for time served in jail and at the state hospital. All I had to do was hold my breath; the nightmare would be over quickly.
Or so I thought.
It turned out that the political environment concerning “sex offenders” was heating up. A small boy had been sexually mutilated by an x-mental-patient. The boy's mother was determined to get “justice” by punishing all child molesters severely, especially “homosexual” child molesters. I guess that meant me.
The parole board also had a letter that the therapist from the treatment program had written to the judge. I had no idea at the time that they could do that, so I made no effort to defend myself or contradict the numerous lies that the therapist had written about me. The therapist was one, Gary “Mike” Shepherd, and he had attempted to use his position of control over my treatment to coerce my mother into having sex with him. He was the reason I quit the program and decided to take my chances in prison. The incident with my mother was fully reported to the treatment program officials. Shepherd denied everything, of course, and accused me (in cohorts with my mother) of being manipulative and rebellious against the treatment program.
When the parole board took Shepherd's letter and the political circumstances into consideration, they came up with a minimum term of fifteen and a half years! That was five times over the expected range (of 3 years) and it meant that I would have to serve at least eight more years before even being eligible for parole!
Needless to say, I was shocked, severely! I lost part of my vision (literally tunnelvision) for some time after receiving the news. How could I possibly survive that long in prison? The worst I had expected was one more year! I was barely keeping my head above water as it was! And now...
A man in the cell next to me in the county jail had told me that because of my looks and my “attitude” (naive and immature to say the least) that I would be raped, and probably even killed, in prison. He claimed to speak from experience, and he predicted that I would “not last a year”. After getting 186 months from the parole board his prophecy haunted me.
I did get raped, of course, many times. And once I was attacked by a whole gang of black men (six at one time) who scared me so bad that I screamed with a loud high pitched shrill voice, exactly like the “punk” I was, “No! Please no! Help! No! Please stop!” the entire time. They didn't actually rape me. They just beat me to the floor, and then, of course, one of them “came to my rescue”. All he wanted in exchange was a small favor; a sexual favor. And then another, and another... each time threatening to “unleash” his friends if he didn't get what he wanted.
I went to the guards and told them I wanted to be moved to “protective custody” because I was being “pressured for sex”. The guards told me that unless I gave them a name they would not move me. I was too scared of the men who were raping me to give up their names. They told me if I ever did that they would kill me, even in protective custody. The “prophecy” from jail seemed to be coming true, so I kept my mouth shut.
I started taking classes to get my highschool diploma. I was safe in the school building, where the inmates who were raping me never set foot. I learned to like school, a lot. I became an almost straight - “A” student. Before leaving Shelton I had finished two years of highschool and got my diploma.
(Incidentally: They don't teach highschool in Washington state prisons any more. The best you can get is a G.E.D., so I was lucky.)
I spent my time in the living unit playing “Dungeons and Dragons” with other “kids” who were being “punked out” (pressured for sex) too. There was a little protection by staying in a group, but not much. Once several men came into my cell while “Junior” was visiting with me. I watched helplessly as they wrestled him down, pulled down his pants and put several of my personal art pencils into his rectum. They were laughing and joking the whole time. After they left, Junior curled up in a corner next to the locker in my cell and wouldn't talk to anyone. I wanted to help him so badly, but I didn't know how. (I find myself holding back tears even now as I remember this) I felt so desperately and painfully powerless.
When they put double-bunks in all the cells at Shelton I ended up moving in with Junior. It was convenient for the men who were pressuring us to have us both in one cell.
I tried everything I could think of to get out of being raped. I even asked my “classification counselor” if I could be transferred to the new sex offender treatment program at the Twin Rivers Corrections Center (TRCC) in Monroe. He told me that I had too much time left on my sentence to be eligible for the program. It was only for people who were close to getting out of prison.
I also studied religion, and hung out with the Christian inmates for awhile, until one of them raped me. I took correspondence Bible study courses, and became very familiar with the “religion” bookshelf in the prison library. I was looking for answers, but wasn't finding any. I finally said a prayer to God that went something like this:
“God, I don't know if you are real or not. But I can't find any evidence at all that you exist. I have prayed and prayed for help, but so far the only help I have ever gotten has come from myself. So I'm going to go my own way for now. I pray that if this is a mistake that you will bring me back. Amen.”
That was the last time I prayed or even acknowledged God for many years. “My own way” was to educate myself, and to start sticking up for myself. Which I did. I can still remember the first real sense of power I got from seeing the look of surprize on inmate Guzman's face when I picked up a mop wringer to use as a weapon when he started picking a fight with me on the tier. Guzman had once beat me up just to steal my Timex watch that was a gift from my grandmother she gave one just like it to my brother too, one of the very few sentimental items I owned. I made him beat me up in order to take the watch but I didn't fight back. This time I was clearly going to fight back and Guzman backed down immediately. I learned a new lesson that day about bullies. They really are cowards.
My victory did not last long though, before those six black men put me “back in my place”. But I wasn't ready to give up so easy.
After two years of being beat-up and raped I figured a way out. I gave the guards the name of a black inmate who I knew would not try to kill me. But neither had he ever assaulted me. So after they took him to the “hole” and me to PC (protective custody), I sent a letter to the prison disciplinary officials (who were going to punish the black inmate for pressuring me based on my statement alone) and I told them that I had lied in order to get put in PC.
It worked. The black inmate got released from the “hole”, and after six months in PC (segregation), I got transferred to McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC). At McNeil nobody knew me. And, I was older and better able to defend myself against other inmates. The rapes stopped, and a new chapter in my nightmare began.
(To be continued...)
While I was still in the county jail I learned the hard way that I needed to invent a story for why I was sentenced to prison. Rape was not a very popular crime, especially if it involved a child. The weak minded inmates (typical bullies) of course needed to make themselves feel better than someone, and society already made the rapists and child molesters easy scapegoats. So I made up a story about a “burglary that went bad” and became a first degree assault. Because of my age, the length of my sentence (a rapist typically only served 3 to 5 years on a first offense in those days), and the convincing details of my story, no one ever questioned it, or asked to see paperwork.
I was classified for population at the Washington Corrections Center (WCC) in Shelton. When I arrived I still did not know how much time I would be spending in prison. The judge only set the maximum term (20 years). But the parole board set the minimum term, which would determine your length of stay until you were eligible for parole.
Because this was my first offense as an adult, I expected to get 5 years at the most. That would make me eligible for parole after about one year in prison since I would ger credit for time served in jail and at the state hospital. All I had to do was hold my breath; the nightmare would be over quickly.
Or so I thought.
It turned out that the political environment concerning “sex offenders” was heating up. A small boy had been sexually mutilated by an x-mental-patient. The boy's mother was determined to get “justice” by punishing all child molesters severely, especially “homosexual” child molesters. I guess that meant me.
The parole board also had a letter that the therapist from the treatment program had written to the judge. I had no idea at the time that they could do that, so I made no effort to defend myself or contradict the numerous lies that the therapist had written about me. The therapist was one, Gary “Mike” Shepherd, and he had attempted to use his position of control over my treatment to coerce my mother into having sex with him. He was the reason I quit the program and decided to take my chances in prison. The incident with my mother was fully reported to the treatment program officials. Shepherd denied everything, of course, and accused me (in cohorts with my mother) of being manipulative and rebellious against the treatment program.
When the parole board took Shepherd's letter and the political circumstances into consideration, they came up with a minimum term of fifteen and a half years! That was five times over the expected range (of 3 years) and it meant that I would have to serve at least eight more years before even being eligible for parole!
Needless to say, I was shocked, severely! I lost part of my vision (literally tunnelvision) for some time after receiving the news. How could I possibly survive that long in prison? The worst I had expected was one more year! I was barely keeping my head above water as it was! And now...
A man in the cell next to me in the county jail had told me that because of my looks and my “attitude” (naive and immature to say the least) that I would be raped, and probably even killed, in prison. He claimed to speak from experience, and he predicted that I would “not last a year”. After getting 186 months from the parole board his prophecy haunted me.
I did get raped, of course, many times. And once I was attacked by a whole gang of black men (six at one time) who scared me so bad that I screamed with a loud high pitched shrill voice, exactly like the “punk” I was, “No! Please no! Help! No! Please stop!” the entire time. They didn't actually rape me. They just beat me to the floor, and then, of course, one of them “came to my rescue”. All he wanted in exchange was a small favor; a sexual favor. And then another, and another... each time threatening to “unleash” his friends if he didn't get what he wanted.
I went to the guards and told them I wanted to be moved to “protective custody” because I was being “pressured for sex”. The guards told me that unless I gave them a name they would not move me. I was too scared of the men who were raping me to give up their names. They told me if I ever did that they would kill me, even in protective custody. The “prophecy” from jail seemed to be coming true, so I kept my mouth shut.
I started taking classes to get my highschool diploma. I was safe in the school building, where the inmates who were raping me never set foot. I learned to like school, a lot. I became an almost straight - “A” student. Before leaving Shelton I had finished two years of highschool and got my diploma.
(Incidentally: They don't teach highschool in Washington state prisons any more. The best you can get is a G.E.D., so I was lucky.)
I spent my time in the living unit playing “Dungeons and Dragons” with other “kids” who were being “punked out” (pressured for sex) too. There was a little protection by staying in a group, but not much. Once several men came into my cell while “Junior” was visiting with me. I watched helplessly as they wrestled him down, pulled down his pants and put several of my personal art pencils into his rectum. They were laughing and joking the whole time. After they left, Junior curled up in a corner next to the locker in my cell and wouldn't talk to anyone. I wanted to help him so badly, but I didn't know how. (I find myself holding back tears even now as I remember this) I felt so desperately and painfully powerless.
When they put double-bunks in all the cells at Shelton I ended up moving in with Junior. It was convenient for the men who were pressuring us to have us both in one cell.
I tried everything I could think of to get out of being raped. I even asked my “classification counselor” if I could be transferred to the new sex offender treatment program at the Twin Rivers Corrections Center (TRCC) in Monroe. He told me that I had too much time left on my sentence to be eligible for the program. It was only for people who were close to getting out of prison.
I also studied religion, and hung out with the Christian inmates for awhile, until one of them raped me. I took correspondence Bible study courses, and became very familiar with the “religion” bookshelf in the prison library. I was looking for answers, but wasn't finding any. I finally said a prayer to God that went something like this:
“God, I don't know if you are real or not. But I can't find any evidence at all that you exist. I have prayed and prayed for help, but so far the only help I have ever gotten has come from myself. So I'm going to go my own way for now. I pray that if this is a mistake that you will bring me back. Amen.”
That was the last time I prayed or even acknowledged God for many years. “My own way” was to educate myself, and to start sticking up for myself. Which I did. I can still remember the first real sense of power I got from seeing the look of surprize on inmate Guzman's face when I picked up a mop wringer to use as a weapon when he started picking a fight with me on the tier. Guzman had once beat me up just to steal my Timex watch that was a gift from my grandmother she gave one just like it to my brother too, one of the very few sentimental items I owned. I made him beat me up in order to take the watch but I didn't fight back. This time I was clearly going to fight back and Guzman backed down immediately. I learned a new lesson that day about bullies. They really are cowards.
My victory did not last long though, before those six black men put me “back in my place”. But I wasn't ready to give up so easy.
After two years of being beat-up and raped I figured a way out. I gave the guards the name of a black inmate who I knew would not try to kill me. But neither had he ever assaulted me. So after they took him to the “hole” and me to PC (protective custody), I sent a letter to the prison disciplinary officials (who were going to punish the black inmate for pressuring me based on my statement alone) and I told them that I had lied in order to get put in PC.
It worked. The black inmate got released from the “hole”, and after six months in PC (segregation), I got transferred to McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC). At McNeil nobody knew me. And, I was older and better able to defend myself against other inmates. The rapes stopped, and a new chapter in my nightmare began.
(To be continued...)
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Murder Isn't A Solution
While I was still in prison for “raping” a 14 year old boy (when I was 16), two significant events occurred that caused me – or rather, allowed me – to decide that if I was ever to get any “justice” in this world I would have to take it for myself.
Both of these events were directly related to society's attack on sex offenders.
The first significant event, that I later used as a convenient and convincing excuse to dehumanize children so I could use them in my schemes, was the receipt of my minimum sentence (which determines the actual amount of time spent in prison until I was eligible for parole). It was set to five times over the normal range for my crime (I got 186 months, the range was 30 to 40 months, 40 being the theoretical “high end” for a first offense like mine).
My sentence was so exceptional that I nearly went into emotional shock, literally, when I was told. I lost all peripheral vision for about an hour and had memory blackouts while I tried to grasp this inconceivable reality. It took me several days to recover, and even then I thought it must be a terrible mistake. It had to be a mistake, since that was the only way I could survive the emotional impact.
Over time of course I got over the “denial stage” and began the process of developing more long term coping mechanisms. Of course, I got no counseling or professional advice, I was expected to “suck it up”. It was all a part of my “punishment” (oh ya, and “rehabilitation”). So the coping mechanisms I came up with were mostly supplied by the only source I had, other inmates, who had all learned numerous and apparently effective ways of dealing with their own “unfair sentences”.
I began fantasizing a lot about what I would do when I got out. Of course, since I was only 16 when I was arrested, and still living at home and going to highschool, I had no way of imagining how unrealistic and even crazy my fantasies were. But they helped me survive, and that was all that mattered.
There were two main reasons why I got such an exceptional sentence, and I was oblivious at the time to both of them.
One reason was politics. Unbeknownst to me, a small boy was attacked by a mental hospital patient who severed the boy's penis. The mother of the boy became politically active, using her son's tragedy to promote her own agenda of tougher sex crime laws (e.g. longer sententes for sex offenders). Since my victim was also a young boy (never mind that so was I) my case was “politically sensitive”. If I had received anything less than an exceptionally exceptional sentence certain people in the community may have been aroused against the Parole Board which was under a lot of political preasure already from new sentencing guideline laws that were to go into effect soon.
The other reason I received such a long sentence was because of a scathing report from the “Sexual Psychopath” Treatment Program. I did not finish the program after the therapist tried to pressure my mother for sex by threatening my status in the program (this was all documented, but the Parole Board believed the therapist, not me or my mother).
The second event during my incarceration that further supported my decision to “get even” with society, was the public murder, by hanging, of one Westley Alan Dodd. Dodd had also victimized small boys sexually, so that made him akin to me. He murdered three boys and was caught trying to kidnap another boy at a movie theater.
It wasn't as though I sympathized with Dodd so much because of his sexual preferences, as much as it was his repentance after he was caught. Dodd expressed repeatedly that he could not control his fantasies and that he prefered to die rather than grow old in prison. He tried to tell people how things could have been different for him and especially for the boys he killed, “if only people would listen”, instead of being so quick to judge and condemn a man like him; which was a man like me.
I understood Dodd completely. Even while I was still in prison I tried to get help, but no one would listen. It was all about rules and regs. I was not just a number, but a “bad number” that was to be delt with systematically. Of the only two people who ever did listen to me, one was ignored by the Parole Board (Dr. Sally Sloat, a prison psychologist who told the Parole Board, in person, that I needed treatment and was an excellent candidate for treatment outside of prison – all the Board heard was “needs treatment” and they actually added more time to my sentence!).
The other was my “Man” (Lover), another inmate who also happened to have a B.A. Degree in psychology. He wasn't just ignored, he was harassed by the guards and ultimately serving more time in prison because of trying to help me (which he knew would happen when he made the choice to help).
So I understood Dodd perfectly, and when they hung him at the Washington State Penitentuary in Walla Walla, while I was there (1993), to “send a message” to other would-be child killers, like me! But the only message I heard was not the one that the people sending the message intended.
The message I heard was, “Murder is a good solution for a bad person”. Except to me the “bad person” was the society that condemned me, that condemned Dodd, my “brother”, and unwittingly condemned themselves to my wrath and vengence.
I literally swore to myself on the day Dodd was murdered that I would avenge him. Of course by that time I had already decided to avenge myself, so my oath for Dodd was really a commitment to “attack society” more than once, and I am presently sitting here in a California jail cell as a direct result of that commitment.
A prudent reader will note that I am not claiming that these “significant events” that occurred while I was in prison are “reasons” for why I ended up raping and murdering children when I got out. They are not reasons; they are a part of what I did, not excuse or reason for it. The two girls I murdered in Seattle were a part of the exceptionally long sentence I served in prison for “raping” a young man. And the boy that I murdered here in California was (is) a part of Dodd's “execution”.
There are no reasons and excuses for any of it. But there can be understanding, if we stop focussing on cause and effect, which only solicits blame and excuses, and instead embrace our own part in the madness. That's exactly what I did when I picked that little girl up in Montana and carried her home to Idaho. I realized that I was a part of the very insanity that I condemned! I was not the cause, but I was a part. I saw that murder was not a solution after all, it was only another part of the problem.
So I stopped murdering. I also stopped judging, condemning, and blaming (i.e. “reasoning”) and started understanding for the first time in my life.
Both of these events were directly related to society's attack on sex offenders.
The first significant event, that I later used as a convenient and convincing excuse to dehumanize children so I could use them in my schemes, was the receipt of my minimum sentence (which determines the actual amount of time spent in prison until I was eligible for parole). It was set to five times over the normal range for my crime (I got 186 months, the range was 30 to 40 months, 40 being the theoretical “high end” for a first offense like mine).
My sentence was so exceptional that I nearly went into emotional shock, literally, when I was told. I lost all peripheral vision for about an hour and had memory blackouts while I tried to grasp this inconceivable reality. It took me several days to recover, and even then I thought it must be a terrible mistake. It had to be a mistake, since that was the only way I could survive the emotional impact.
Over time of course I got over the “denial stage” and began the process of developing more long term coping mechanisms. Of course, I got no counseling or professional advice, I was expected to “suck it up”. It was all a part of my “punishment” (oh ya, and “rehabilitation”). So the coping mechanisms I came up with were mostly supplied by the only source I had, other inmates, who had all learned numerous and apparently effective ways of dealing with their own “unfair sentences”.
I began fantasizing a lot about what I would do when I got out. Of course, since I was only 16 when I was arrested, and still living at home and going to highschool, I had no way of imagining how unrealistic and even crazy my fantasies were. But they helped me survive, and that was all that mattered.
There were two main reasons why I got such an exceptional sentence, and I was oblivious at the time to both of them.
One reason was politics. Unbeknownst to me, a small boy was attacked by a mental hospital patient who severed the boy's penis. The mother of the boy became politically active, using her son's tragedy to promote her own agenda of tougher sex crime laws (e.g. longer sententes for sex offenders). Since my victim was also a young boy (never mind that so was I) my case was “politically sensitive”. If I had received anything less than an exceptionally exceptional sentence certain people in the community may have been aroused against the Parole Board which was under a lot of political preasure already from new sentencing guideline laws that were to go into effect soon.
The other reason I received such a long sentence was because of a scathing report from the “Sexual Psychopath” Treatment Program. I did not finish the program after the therapist tried to pressure my mother for sex by threatening my status in the program (this was all documented, but the Parole Board believed the therapist, not me or my mother).
The second event during my incarceration that further supported my decision to “get even” with society, was the public murder, by hanging, of one Westley Alan Dodd. Dodd had also victimized small boys sexually, so that made him akin to me. He murdered three boys and was caught trying to kidnap another boy at a movie theater.
It wasn't as though I sympathized with Dodd so much because of his sexual preferences, as much as it was his repentance after he was caught. Dodd expressed repeatedly that he could not control his fantasies and that he prefered to die rather than grow old in prison. He tried to tell people how things could have been different for him and especially for the boys he killed, “if only people would listen”, instead of being so quick to judge and condemn a man like him; which was a man like me.
I understood Dodd completely. Even while I was still in prison I tried to get help, but no one would listen. It was all about rules and regs. I was not just a number, but a “bad number” that was to be delt with systematically. Of the only two people who ever did listen to me, one was ignored by the Parole Board (Dr. Sally Sloat, a prison psychologist who told the Parole Board, in person, that I needed treatment and was an excellent candidate for treatment outside of prison – all the Board heard was “needs treatment” and they actually added more time to my sentence!).
The other was my “Man” (Lover), another inmate who also happened to have a B.A. Degree in psychology. He wasn't just ignored, he was harassed by the guards and ultimately serving more time in prison because of trying to help me (which he knew would happen when he made the choice to help).
So I understood Dodd perfectly, and when they hung him at the Washington State Penitentuary in Walla Walla, while I was there (1993), to “send a message” to other would-be child killers, like me! But the only message I heard was not the one that the people sending the message intended.
The message I heard was, “Murder is a good solution for a bad person”. Except to me the “bad person” was the society that condemned me, that condemned Dodd, my “brother”, and unwittingly condemned themselves to my wrath and vengence.
I literally swore to myself on the day Dodd was murdered that I would avenge him. Of course by that time I had already decided to avenge myself, so my oath for Dodd was really a commitment to “attack society” more than once, and I am presently sitting here in a California jail cell as a direct result of that commitment.
A prudent reader will note that I am not claiming that these “significant events” that occurred while I was in prison are “reasons” for why I ended up raping and murdering children when I got out. They are not reasons; they are a part of what I did, not excuse or reason for it. The two girls I murdered in Seattle were a part of the exceptionally long sentence I served in prison for “raping” a young man. And the boy that I murdered here in California was (is) a part of Dodd's “execution”.
There are no reasons and excuses for any of it. But there can be understanding, if we stop focussing on cause and effect, which only solicits blame and excuses, and instead embrace our own part in the madness. That's exactly what I did when I picked that little girl up in Montana and carried her home to Idaho. I realized that I was a part of the very insanity that I condemned! I was not the cause, but I was a part. I saw that murder was not a solution after all, it was only another part of the problem.
So I stopped murdering. I also stopped judging, condemning, and blaming (i.e. “reasoning”) and started understanding for the first time in my life.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The Mermaid Sex Offender
Rick was a classic homosexual “pedophile”, who was forbidden to ever be alone with me because of his desires for young boys. There were actually several members in my group (and even more throughout the program) who were not allowed to be alone with me, because for the entire first year or so, I was a “minor”. So anyone with a sex crime against minors could not be around me without a chaperone. So, the fact that Rick was under this same restriction, did not make him special to me. But, apparently, I was special to him.
At the time I had no way of understanding the excruciating desires that Rick would have had to be struggling with to see me with my shirt off and in swim-shorts at the pool. At that point in my life, I had honestly never had what I later learned to be “strong sexual desires”.
Yes, I raped a 14 year old boy, and yes, I desired sex, but nothing like what I learned later that Rick must have been feeling. I had, at that time, yet to experience anything close to an “uncontrollable sexual urge”. Apparently, Rick Johnson was not so innocent.
As a kid, my mother used to take us swimming a lot. It was also one of her favorite activities, and being in the military made it extremely affordable. So, getting to go swimming for the first time since my arrest, when I was still living at home with my mother, brought out all the kid in me. I was as excited as a 10-year-old and acting just as silly, doing flips off the diving board, cannon-balling anyone who dared to dare me, and demonstrating my prowess in the water by swimming the length and breadth of the pool underwater.
It was during a demonstration of this later that I decided to surprise Rick, who I chose as my “victim” by his mere proximity at the time. I swam underwater, as close to the bottom as I could get, over to where Rick was standing in the pool, and then grabbed his hand, and imagined myself to be a “mermaid”, gave the back of his hand a big wet underwater kiss, and then popped up out of the water to enjoy his surprise and announce my game.
“I'm a mermaid!”, I said excitedly.
Rick didn't get it. In fact, it seems the only thing Rick got, was extremely aroused. So, as I swam off to hunt for my next “victim”, Rick got out of the pool and called a “special meeting”.
I moaned my disappointment when the meeting was called, because even though I had no idea what the meeting was for, I fully realized it meant no more swimming, perhaps for weeks, perhaps longer - much longer.
When we got back to the ward, and in group, Rick very haughtily announced (he was always so haughty) that he had a “line of concern on Ed” (“Ed” was what they called me in the program). A “line of concern” usually means someone is in big trouble, but not always, so I waited with trepidation to hear what this was all about.
Rick explained what happened in the pool, but, from his perspective, I had deliberately and deviously “sexually molested him”. I actually relaxed when I heard this, because, I thought, "Oh, this is just a mistake. I'll be able to clear it all up as soon as I explain that it was just a silly game I was playing, trying to have fun!" Well, did I have a thing or two to learn at the time!
The group (lead by Rick, who was much senior to me in the program at the time, though he was later kicked out for having sex in the shower with another much younger member – but, that's a different story) accused me of “being in outlet”, which is the worst accusation in the program. It meant that I was completely out of control of my sexual impulses and acting on them inappropriately. Wow! All I did was kiss his hand, and maybe he got some kind of sexual charge out of that, but I sure didn't.
The group didn't believe me. I was grounded to the ward, and my “treat-ability” was reviewed. Very serious trouble indeed, that meant they would consider voting me out of the program (and sending me to prison) if I did not confess to my “attack” on Rick and show to the group that I am “dealing with” the “issues” that caused it to happen.
Well, I managed to survive the ordeal, but only by convincing myself that on some unconscious level I really did want to have sex with Rick, even though, consciously, the very idea repulsed me (it would have been like having sex with my dad, something I couldn't even imagine), and so my “treatment” continued...
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The Multi-Purpose Room
They called it the M.P.R. (Multi-Purpose Room). It had a spring mattress bed, a metal cabinet filled with clean sheets, towels and pornography.
I was required by the sex offender treatment program at Western State Hospital to enter this room, at least once a week, preferably two or three times a week, lock myself in, and while my “buddy” sat outside waiting, masterbate.
I was strickly forbidden from fantasizing about my highschool girlfriend, Sharon, the only girl I had ever made love to at the time. She was 15 and I was 17, and we had both been in the same grade together. We had even talked about getting married and having children together after highschool. But according to the treatment program, fantasizing about Sharon would have been “deviant”, because I was an “adult” now.
So I was required to construct fantasies of sex with the women in the magazines. I struggled with this constantly. Since I was only 16 years old when I was arrested (for threatening a 14 year old boy with an empty gun and making him have oral sex with me i.e. “First Degree Rape”), I had no idea of what a “consenting adult relationship” even meant. I had to try to figure it out based on descriptions given to me by other men in the treatment group. These descriptions were heavily outwieghed by descriptions of every kind of deviant sex you can imagine (and many you probably can't imagine).
To me, the “responsible fantasies” that I was told to masterbate to were no more real, and no less strange, then the “deviant fantasies” that I heard over and over every day in the grouproom. But the deviant fantasies were usually more interesting.
Not to say that I did not try to stick to the fantasies of having sex with older women when I was required to masterbate, though it wasn't easy, and never got any easier. But I tried hard and met with mostly success, and when I failed, I dutifully told my “buddy” waiting outside the M.P.R. And I also told the group, of course.
I was determined to “get better”.
I even told my “buddy” after the time that I found very explicit “evidence photos” of a very young girl who had been brutally raped, laying naked on a medical gurney with her legs spread wide showing the world her bruised and brutalized privates. The images were part of a Playboy article about child rape. Apparently no one thought to remove those pages before placing the magazine in the M.P.R. Cabinet for the sex offenders to enjoy.
At first the images shocked me, and then they saddened me, then they confused me.
Why would someone do that to such a little girl? I asked “why?” compulsively, yet I also realized that these images were the starkly real results of the “deviant fantasies” I had been hearing about in group for more than a year by that time.
Finally the images aroused me, and I masterbated. And yes, I did tell my treatment group also, like I was supposed to do.
I was required by the sex offender treatment program at Western State Hospital to enter this room, at least once a week, preferably two or three times a week, lock myself in, and while my “buddy” sat outside waiting, masterbate.
I was strickly forbidden from fantasizing about my highschool girlfriend, Sharon, the only girl I had ever made love to at the time. She was 15 and I was 17, and we had both been in the same grade together. We had even talked about getting married and having children together after highschool. But according to the treatment program, fantasizing about Sharon would have been “deviant”, because I was an “adult” now.
So I was required to construct fantasies of sex with the women in the magazines. I struggled with this constantly. Since I was only 16 years old when I was arrested (for threatening a 14 year old boy with an empty gun and making him have oral sex with me i.e. “First Degree Rape”), I had no idea of what a “consenting adult relationship” even meant. I had to try to figure it out based on descriptions given to me by other men in the treatment group. These descriptions were heavily outwieghed by descriptions of every kind of deviant sex you can imagine (and many you probably can't imagine).
To me, the “responsible fantasies” that I was told to masterbate to were no more real, and no less strange, then the “deviant fantasies” that I heard over and over every day in the grouproom. But the deviant fantasies were usually more interesting.
Not to say that I did not try to stick to the fantasies of having sex with older women when I was required to masterbate, though it wasn't easy, and never got any easier. But I tried hard and met with mostly success, and when I failed, I dutifully told my “buddy” waiting outside the M.P.R. And I also told the group, of course.
I was determined to “get better”.
I even told my “buddy” after the time that I found very explicit “evidence photos” of a very young girl who had been brutally raped, laying naked on a medical gurney with her legs spread wide showing the world her bruised and brutalized privates. The images were part of a Playboy article about child rape. Apparently no one thought to remove those pages before placing the magazine in the M.P.R. Cabinet for the sex offenders to enjoy.
At first the images shocked me, and then they saddened me, then they confused me.
Why would someone do that to such a little girl? I asked “why?” compulsively, yet I also realized that these images were the starkly real results of the “deviant fantasies” I had been hearing about in group for more than a year by that time.
Finally the images aroused me, and I masterbated. And yes, I did tell my treatment group also, like I was supposed to do.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The Real Story
(The following is the correction of a news article that appeared in the Spokesman Review on July 6, 2005. I chose this article only because it is very typical of the many fabrications that have been written about “Joseph E. Duncan III” since my surrender on July 2, 2005.)
Original Headline: Duncan's History: By age 17 he fit the definition of a “sexual psychopath”.
Real Headline: Duncan's History: At the age of 17 he was labelled a “sexual psychopath”.
Original Story: TACOMA – Long before Joseph Edward Duncan III crossed paths with the two Idaho children he's now accused of kidnapping, it was clear that something was seriously wrong with him.
The Real Story: TACOMA - Long before Joseph Edward Duncan III crossed paths with the two Idaho children he's now accused of kidnapping, it was clear that he had serious problems and needed help that he frequently sought but never received.
Original Story: In 1980, a psychological evaluation at a Washington state mental hospital found that Duncan – only 17 at the time – was preoccupied with “deviant sexual fantasies” and “meets the definition of the sexual psychopath”.
The Real Story: In 1980, a treatability evaluation (not a psychological evaluation) written by a sex offender therapist (not a doctor) for the adult “Sexual Psychopath Treatment Program” at a Washington state mental hospital pronounced that Duncan - only 17 at the time - “meets the definition of the sexual psychopath”, as required by the program in order for it to accept Duncan for treatment.
The evaluation found that Duncan “shows every willingness to continue to be a cooperative and hardworking member”, in the treatment program. His “large amount of self-disclosure is a positive sign of (his) future success”, the therapist wrote. The evaluation concluded that Duncan was “amenable to treatment” (emphasis in the original).
Original Story: During assessments at Westrn State Hospital near Tacoma, Duncan detailed a sexual history that began at age 8, when he was allegedly performing incestuous acts with female relatives. By age 12, he told doctors, he forced a 5-year-old to perform oral sex on him. At 15, duncan told the doctors, he did the same thing to a 9-year-old boy at gunpoint.
The Real Story: During treatment at Westrn State Hospital near Tacoma, Duncan openly disclosed his sexual history, which, because his young age in the program, mostly envolved incidents of childhood curiosity and “sex play” that was usually initiated by older children. He revealed that at the age of 12 he asked a 5-year-old neighbour boy to “blow on” his penis, because he wanted to know what a “blow job” was like. At 15, Duncan used an empty toy “BB” gun to scare a 9-year-old boy into doing the same thing.
Original Story: “It is important to note that Mr. Duncan did go out looking for victims.” the hospital report notes.
The Real Story: What the hospital report fails to note is that Duncan claims he did not have his first “real” sexual experience (i.e. involving an orgasm) until the age of 14, when he was masterbated to climax by a pediatrician during a psysical exam at Madigan Army Medical Center on the Ft. Lewis Military base. Because of the confusing context of this experience, Duncan later told doctors, he did not realize the sexual nature of masterbation. He began to masterbate himself frequently, even fantasizing about being masterbated by the doctor while Duncan masterbated himself.
It was not until about a year later, when an older sister asked him to “put it in” (because she wanted to see what it would feel like) that it finally dawned on Duncan what an erection was for. Duncan explained that his seventh-grade “sex-education” class was a confusing blur to him that he never realized had anything to do with him, until his sister inadvertently brought all the pieces together for him years later. By that time his sexual fantasies were a confused hodge podge of bizarre and humiliating experiences that caused him a lot of consternation.
Duncan told doctors later that at the age of 15 he had a lot of questions about sex but he did not know how, or even who to ask. So, he said, he began experimenting for himself.
Original Story: At 15, he tried to outrun police in a stolen car, at one point trying to run down a police officer. He was sent to the Tacoma-area Dyslin's Boys Ranch for several months.
The Real Story: At 15, he was chased, and shot at, by police after stealing a car “to get home”. The police accused Duncan of trying to run down a police officer when he drove past a police cruiser that was attempting to block the road. Stolen car charges were never press. Instead, Duncan was charged with assaulting a police officer (presumably to allay the officer's attempt to kill a juvenile).
As a result of this charge, Duncan was sent to the Tacoma-area Dyslin's
While at Dyslin's, Duncan apparently got along with the other boys, making fast, if delinquent, friends. He related no memories of sexual involvement with the other boys at the ranch to his treatment group at Western State Hospital. It is significant to note that while there were numerous younger boys at Dyslin's, Duncan reported that he has no recollection of ever wanting to have sex with them while he was there. This was less than six months before he was arrested for raping a 14 year old boy in Tacoma.
Original Story: By age 16, he told doctors, he'd committed 13 rapes of young boys. In one case, he claimed, he tied up six boys, ages 6 through 10, forced them to perform oral sex, then raped them.
The Real Story: Between the age of 15 and 16, Duncan claimed to have sexually assaulted as many as 13 other boys. Though these “assaults” did not involved psysical force, violence, or sodomy, the treatment program characterized them as “rape”, since “we know rape to be predominantly an act of aggression and control”.
In one case, he claimed that he tied up six boys, ages 6 through 10, forced them to perform oral sex, then anally raped them. However, very early in Duncan's treatment, this claim was challenged since Duncan did not seem to understand the mechanics of anal rape (i.e. the necessity for lubrication). Duncan admitted that he exaggerated his sexual history at times during the 90 day evaluation period, in order to appease the group so he would be accepted into the program and not sent to prison.
Original Story: Then, just before his 17th birthday, he was arrested for breaking into a neighbour's house, stealing guns, and then accosting a 14-year-old boy and raping him at gunpoint. That incident appears to have been the first time Duncan was charged with a sex crime.
The Real Story: Then, a month before his 17th birthday, he was arrested for breaking into a neighbour's house, stealing guns, and then accosting a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint and forcing him to perform oral sex. Duncan was charged with two counts each of First Degree Rape, Burglary, and Simple Assault, as well as one count of Kidnapping. This was the first and only time Duncan was charged with a sex crime until earlier this year (2005).
Original Story: “This position of power over children has developed into a very powerful and compulsive pattern”, clinical director Dr. William Voorhees Jr. and other officials wrote in their report. “...Mr. Duncan is not safe to be at large.”
The Real Story: In the standard language of sex offender treatment jargon, Therapy Supervisor Gary M. Shepherd (who was later accused of having sex with program member's female relatives, in exchange for facilitating the member's progress in the treatment program) claimed that, “This position of power over children has developed into a very powerful and compulsive pattern”, in order to justify the program's finding that Duncan was a “sexual psychopath” so he could be accepted for treatment.
Shepherd also found that Duncan “is not safe to be at large”, which is a standard finding for all patients admitted to the treatment program that was necessary in order to justify the inpatient treatment model.
Original Story: Duncan was the fourth of five children born to Joseph E. Duncan Jr. and Lillian Mae Duncan. His parents were married in rural Burnham, PA.
The Real Story: (No necessary corrections)
Original Story: A year later Duncan's father joined the Army. He'd stay a soldier for the next 20 years.His son would later complain to state doctors that until he was 12, the family moved every two years, from one military assignment to the next. They lived in Europe and at several U.S. Posts.
The Real Story: A year later Duncan's father joined the Army. He'd stay a soldier for the next 20 years. Shepherd's report claims Duncan suffered developmentally from being moved from “city to city every two years until he was 12 years old, due to his father being in the military, “though Duncan himself never complained. They lived in Europe and at several U.S. Posts.
Original Story: “As a result of this, he kept to himself a lot and formed only a few superficial acquaintances”, Shepherd wrote. The boy felt picked on and mocked, and said he spent most of his time watching TV and daydreaming.
The Real Story: “As a result of this, he kept to himself a lot and formed only a few superficial acquaintances”, Shepherd wrote. Though other documents indicate that Duncan had several friends, a “best friend”, and even a fairly serious girlfriend, named Sharon, who Duncan told juvenile officials after his arrest that he wanted to marry, “after he gets out”. Duncan was also an active member of the Boy Scouts of America until the age of 13, when his family moved and he could no longer attend meetings.
Shepherd notes that as a boy, Duncan was often picked on and bullied by older children, especially his own sisters, but Duncan himself did not consider that unusual. “He admits to spending a good deal of time watching television and daydreaming (when at home)”, but Duncan spent most of his time outside “playing” with his younger brother and other children in the neighbourhood. He frequently avoided going home even for supper because of the negative feelings he got there.
Original Story: In 1978, Duncan's father retired from the military. He ended up getting a job with the U.S. Postal Service, working at a Tacoma-area bulk mail center.
The Real Story: (No necessary corrections)
Original Story: A year later, after 22 years of marriage, Duncan's parents separated, their marriage “irretrievably broken” for reasons unspecified in their thick divorce court file. Duncan and a younger sister were the only kids still living at home.
The Real Story: (It was a younger brother, not “sister”. Duncan had no younger sisters.)
Original Story: Duncan went to Lakes High School in Tacoma until his sophomore year, when he never returned after Christmas break. He had a 1.7 grade-point average, out of a possible 4.0, according to court documents. Duncan later told a pre-sentencing investigator that he was using marijuana daily by the time he got to high school, and tried LSD, amphetamines, barbituates, valium and PCP.
The Real Story: Duncan went to Lakes High School in Tacoma for only his sophomore year. He did not return after being arrested in January 1980. School records from Lakes indicate that he “is a bright student and is easily bored with school”. Prison records show that Duncan completed high school at the Garrett Heyns Education Center with a grade-point average of 3.4, out of a possible 4.0 while he was at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton. Duncan also received two Associate's degrees, with academic honors, before his release from prison in August of 2000. In the Fall of 2000 Duncan enrolled at North Dakota State University in Fargo and began work on his Bachalor's degree in Computer Science, receiving many more academic honors including induction into the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society.
Duncan bragged in 1980 to his pre-sentencing investigator that he was using marijuana daily by the time he returned to Lakes highschool after his stay at Dyslin's Boys Ranch. He had also by that time tried LSD, amphetamines, valium and PCP, though never more than once for each, and mostly never more than enough to get a “buzz”.
Original Story: During the car chase at age 15, he tried to run a police roadblock. The crash shattered his sinuses and the right side of his face.
The Real Story: During the car chase at age 15, he drove past a police car that was attempting to block the road. That was when a police officer who was standing next to the car (the same officer Duncan allegedly assaulted), fired his shotgun aiming at Duncan's head and missing by only inches. The blast blew out the side drivers window. Duncan crashed a block later after missing a sharp turn in the road. The crash shattered his sinuses and the right side of his face. He was hospitalized for more than a week before being released on a medical personal recognizance order pending trial. Duncan said he stole the car to get home and was shocked when the police shot at him.
Original Story: In 1980, he committed the crime that landed him in Western State Hospital.
The Real Story: One year later, on January 24, 1980, he committed the crime that landed him in Western State Hospital.
Original Story: It started with a burglary. In the evening, knowing that a neighbour was gone, Duncan smashed out a storm window and broke into the man's bedroom. He stole four pistols, about 1.000 rounds of ammunition, and some pornographic magazines. He said later that he had intended to return home, look at the magazines and masterbate.
The Real Story: It started with a burglary. In the evening, knowing that a neighbour was gone, Duncan smashed out a storm window using masking tape to silence the glass, as he learned to do while at Dyslin's Boys Ranch the previous summer. He then climbed in through the window into the man's bedroom where he found some money and pornographic materials. From another room that was being used as an arsenal (the man was a retired police officer), Duncan stole four semi-automatic handguns and about 1.000 rounds of ammunition.
He said later that he returned home and started to masterbate while looking at the pornographic book he stole from the man's house.
Original Story: “Then I decided, why not the real thing, so I got a gun... and went cruising for a victim”, he wrote in a court questionaire.
The Real Story: “Then I decided, why not the real thing, so I got a gun, unloaded, without a clip and went cruising for a victim”, he wrote in a court questionaire. Duncan insisted that the gun was not loaded, nor did he bring any ammunition with him since he “didn't want to hurt anyone”. (When the police later recovered the gun, which Duncan had thrown into some bushes on his way home, the gun was empty. The clip was found in Duncan's bedroom along with the other stolen items.)
Original Story: He found the 14-year-old boy in front of a nearby school. At gunpoint, Duncan forced the boy into the woods and made him strip. He made the boy perform oral sex on him twice, hit him repeatedly with a stick, burned his buttocks with a cigarette and then let him go. When Duncan got home the police were waiting for him.
The Real Story: He found the 14-year-old boy in front of a nearby school, less than a block away from where Duncan lived with his mother. At gunpoint, he ordered the boy into the woods and made him strip and lay down on his back. After removing his own clothes and setting them aside with the gun, Duncan straddled the boy and at one point placed his penis into the boys mouth (first count of rape). He then masterbated and ejaculated in the dirt over the boy's head.
He and the boy then got dressed, and Duncan ordered the boy to walk to a more secluded area. He ordered the boy to strip again, then picked up a fern branch and hit the boy no more than a few times on the buttocks and legs. After that he lit a cigarette, and lightly touched it once to each of the boy's buttocks (two counts of assault not resulting in an injury, i. e. “simple assault”). Duncan later disclosed during treatment that he was acting upon the things he had heard about, while at Dyslin's Boys Ranch, but did not understand. He said that he got no pleasure from hurting the boy, which is why he did not pursue the behavior. Duncan then masterbated again while straddling the boy, this time ejaculating into the boy's mouth (second count of rape).
He then helped the boy find his clothes, showed him that the gun was not loaded, and led the boy out of the woods (the boy told Duncan he was lost and did not know the way out). He then told the boy to “run home and don't look back or I'll kill you!”. But the boy told police that he looked back several times and saw Duncan “standing there”.
When Duncan got home, after ditching the gun and stopping to smoke marijuana with some friends, the police were waiting for him. During all of this, Duncan had made no attempt to conceal his identity, so the boy knew who he was and subsequently led the police directly to where Duncan lived.
Original Story: He subsequently pleaded guilty to first-degree rape.
The Real Story: During the ensuring police interogation, the detectives told Duncan that he needed help and that they could get help for him if he confessed. Duncan cried, thinking he would finally find some understanding, and wrote out a complete and detailed confession.
He was arrested as a juvenile, but then declined to adult status after three months in Reimann Hall Juvenile Detention Center. The declination report found that Duncan was “a fairly immature boy who doesn't seem to realize the seriousness of his present situation”.
In adult court, Duncan pleaded guilty to one count Rape in the First Degree, as a part of a plea agreement that was meant to spare him from having to go to prison where, according to the pre-sentencing report, “because of his age and appearance he would likely be sexually abused by other inmates”.
Original Story: “I held a gun to a juv. and forced him to commet sertan sex acts.” Duncan wrote on the plea form.
The Real Story: With obviously childish handwriting, Duncan wrote in his own words on the plea form, “I held a gun to a juv. and forced him to commet sertan sex acts.”
Original Story: He later said the rape stenmed from a sense of rejection by his mother and father. He said he was upset because his parents had been fighting a lot and were breaking up, because he was doing badly at school, and because he couldn't get into the Air Force with his auto-theft conviction.
The Real Story: At the adult sex offender treatment program in Western State Hospital, Duncan was required to find emotional reasons for his sexual behavior. The reasons he came up with were later reflected in the program's report to the courts.
In other evaluations, done after Duncan left the program at Western State, psychologists have reported that as a juvenile, Duncan should never have been sent to an adult offender program. It is known that juvenile offenders do not have the same complex emotionally charged behavior patterns found in adult offenders. The record shows clearly that Duncan was not a mature offender. Juvenile offenders, if treated appropriately, have a very high rate of rehabilitation compared to adult offenders. Later psychological reports indicate that Duncan was likely irreparably harmed by Western State's misdiagnosis and attempt to treat him as an adult sex offender.
Original Story: He was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison, but the time was suspended. In lieu of prison, Duncan was committed to sex offender treatment at Western State Hospital.
By 1982, Western State Hospital had given up. Duncan was 19.
The Real Story: By 1982, Duncan seemed to be doing very well in the adult program. He had achieved senior member status (level 5), was voted into group leadership, and was routinely responsible for ward security and “group charge” responsibilities at night while the rest of the program members slept. He conducted head counts and carried the keys to secured areas on the ward. Even though Duncan was only 19, he had earned the respect and confidence of the older program members and staff.
Original Story: “After 22 months in the program, Mr. Duncan has shown an unwillingness to modify his sexually deviant behaviors and has chosen not to commit himself to program techniques,” his therapist wrote. Duncan showed “a constant need to maintain secrecy” about his fantasies and rebelled against treatment.
The Real Story: “After 22 months in the program, Mr. Duncan has shown an unwillingness to modify his sexually deviant behaviors and has chosen not to commit himself to program techniques,” so Duncan's therapist, Gary a.k.a. “Mike” Shepherd wrote in his report to the court expelling Duncan from the program.
Shepherd's report makes no mention of that fact that Duncan's mother had just recently accused Shepherd of coming to her house in the evening, pretending to offer counsel for her, and walking uninvited into her bedroom while she was getting dressed for his untimely visit. Duncan's mother later told Shepherd's superiors that “Mike” tried to embrace her and told her that if she cooperated (by having sex with him) that he could “make things easier” for her son in the program.
Mrs. Duncan told officials that she screamed at him to get out of her house or she would call the police. At her next visit with her son at Western State Hospital she tearfully disclosed to her son what the therapist had done. It was a Sunday, and Duncan told his mother to report the incident to Shepherd's superiors the next day, which she did.
Duncan also told his group what happened, as he also cried during a “feelings layout” after the visit. Duncan said he never felt more confused and betrayed in all his life. He had come to view Shepherd as a trusted father figure whom he depended on to help him “get better”.
According to the treatment program's values, and what Duncan had been taught to believe for the 22 months he was there, Shepherd had attempted to rape his mother.
The next day, while Mrs. Duncan was in another area of the hospital to make an official complaint against Duncan's therapist, Shepherd called Duncan into his office. He explained to Duncan that he had reviewed the group's notes (for the “feelings layout” the previous night), then he denied attempting to have sex with Duncan's mother. Shepherd ordered Duncan to “not bring this up again in group”, where notes are taken and every session is recorded. The notes from the previous nights meeting also disappeared.
Shepherd was later asked by hospital officials to answer these charges. He admitted being at Mrs. Duncan's home, but denied trying to have sex with her. The grievance was formally dropped after that and no investigation ever came of it until years later, when Duncan was in prison.
In 1985, a joint law suit was brought against The State of Washington and Western State Hospital.
An investigation revealed that Shepherd, who had lied on his job application and was not qualified to be a sex offender therapist, was having sex with Mr. Anderson's wife in exchange for “pushing” Anderson through the program much quicker than usual. Shepherd had also made the same arrangements with several other female relatives of members in the program The law suit was settled quickly out of court.
Original Story: They cited a key incident. On Valentine's Day 1982, Duncan' mother came to stay with him at a Western State Hospital cottage used for family visits. After she went to bed, he gathered up his coat, gloves, and an extension cord. He jumped the hospital wall and crept up to a nearby house, where he spied on an 18-year-old woman and people in other houses. When dogs began barking and a man spotted him, Duncan fled back to the cottage, where he woke his mother. She then taught him how to disco dance, according to the report.
The Real Story: Shepherd's report to expell Duncan from the treatment program cites a key incident. On Valentine's Day 1982, less than a weel after Duncan's confrontation with Shepherd over his mother, Duncan's mother came to stay with him at a Western State Hospital cottage used for family visits. The visit had been approved several weeks in advance and was a privilege exclusively afforded to senior members in the group (step 5 and up) who demonstrate good standing in the program.
Duncan had already decided that he could not stay in the program after what Shepherd had done to his mother. He explained to psychologists years later that he decided to wait until after the much anticipated cottage visit with his mother before he asked the group to vote him out of the program, which he knew would result in him being sent to prison.
After his mother went to sleep, he got his coat and gloves and left the cottage, walked across the hospital grounds, jumped a three foot stone wall, then jogged for about a quarter of a mile to a nearby residential neighbourhood. Once there he walked down a street while looking at the houses nostalgically (the first houses he'd seen since his arrest at age 16) thinking that it could be a few years before he would get to go home himself after going to prison.
Duncan told his treatment group the next day that he was not trying to escape, but just wanted to make sure he would be voted out of the program. Duncan knew that leaving the hospital grounds meant automatic expulsion from the program, which was the only reason he did so.
Duncan reported that he ran to the residential neighbourhood so he could later prove he left the hospital grounds by reporting what he saw. He told the group that he saw a teenage girl, through the front living room window of a house, who appeared to be doing homework at the dining room table. He also saw a man and heard dogs barking before running back to the cottage and waking his mom (who had been taking a nap). She then taught him how to disco dance.
Original Story: A week later, Duncan announced that he wanted to leave treatment and serve his time in prison.
The Real Story: The next day the cottage visit was cut short due to an emergency group grounding. Two other members in Duncan's group were caught having sex in the shower. That evening, Duncan announced to the group, without explaination, since he was ordered not to talk about the situation in group, that he wanted to be “voted out” (leave treatment) and serve his time in prison.
Original Story: “He exhibited little remorse or guilt for his sexual deviation while in treatment... He is not safe to be at large”, the therapist wrote to Pierce County officials. “...Mr. Duncan is available for transport back to your county by your sheriff at your earliest convenience.”
The Real Story: Duncan's therapist, Shepherd, wrote a scathing report to Pierce County officials claiming that Duncan was not amenable to treatment, and was violent and extremely dangerous to the community. This report followed Duncan to prison and was used by the parole board to justify an exeptional minimum term of over five times (15.5 years) the standard range for his crime.
Shepherd's report also became the primary source of information used in every psychological evaluation for Duncan throughout his incarceration, mostly without Duncan ever being aware of it.
Original Story: In 1982, he was sentenced to at least three, and no more than 20, years in prison. Duncan served 14 years for the rape and three more for parole violations.
The Real Story: In 1982, he was sentenced to at least three, and no more than 20, years in prison. Duncan served 14 and a half years before he was paroled. After two and a half years on parole he was sent back to prison for three years because of parole violations. Duncan is now suspected of murdering at least three children while he was on parole from 1994 to 1997. (What happened in prison?)
Original Story: Since then, Duncan has moved to Fargo, N.D. He disappeared after an April 5 hearing in Becker County Minn., about an hour from Fargo, where he is accused of sexually molesting one boy and of attempting to molest another.
The Real Story: Since his release from prison in August of 2000, Duncan has moved to Fargo, N.D. where he worked two computer programming jobs while attending classes at N.D.S.U. Police and neighbours reported that Duncan seemed to be a “model citizen” who enjoyed social activities and helping his neighbours.
He apparently committed no new crimes while in Fargo, until July 2004, when he was accused of molesting a 6-year-old boy in Detroit Lakes, MN, about 40 minutes East of Fargo. After appearing for an initial hearing in Becker County on April 5, 2005, Duncan posted 15.000 cash bail, then disappeared several days later.
Duncan did not resurface until July 2, 2005, when he walked into a Denny's restaurant in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho with an 8-year-old girl who had been reported missing, along with her 9-year-old brother, six weeks earlier. Duncan told police, who were called when the little girl was recognized, “I was bringing her home...go ahead and arrest me.”
The Real Story: Credibility
The “Real Story” blog entry is as honest and forthcoming as I could make it. It took me over a week to write and much of that time was spent making sure that I did not misrepresent myself in the story. It is easy fot me to exaggerate or minimize different parts of the truth according to my own interests. So I have carefully reviewed the “Real Story” blog entry to make sure that every word and every sentence represents my best and most honest recollections, backed as much as possible by documentation.
However, because of the large number of reports and evaluations (and other documents) that have been written about me, there are numerous inconsistancies that have emerged from misquotes, and even misquotes of misquotes. The result is that I am attributed as often making contradictory claims. However, most of these so-called claims of mine in the record are misquotes, and some are statements that I know I could never have made.
So who do we believe? Ask a historian, since this is an age old problem throughout history. Rarely, if ever, are historical documents, even the most official records, consistant and uniform in their presentations and claims. Historians address this problem using various techniques from simple intuition to complex statistical analysis. I suggest that what ever you read about me (or anyone) in the future, even in this blog, be taken with a grain of salt. I'm not suggesting that I am, or even may be, dishonest – I am honest – but even I make mistakes in recollection.
The Real Story: No Excuses
In case anyone thinks that I am trying to make excuses with “The Real Story” blog entry for what I did as an adult, you should know this: As far as I am concerned, nothing that happened to me as a youth has anything to do with what I did as an adult, which is why I did not let my attorney's present this information in court, even though it is all well documented and easily proven.
I have said on numerous occasions since my arrest in 2005, that there is no excuse for what I have done, and I mean it. Besides, what happened to me in “The Real Story” was nothing compared to what happened to me in prison – and that's no excuse either!
The Real Story: Entertainment in the News
In writing “The Real Story” blog entry it has not been my intention to discredit the original “news” article. The original story was written for a purpose other than to portray the objective truth.
The news media routinely “frames” their stories to suit their audience, they would go quickly out of business if they did not. So they must basically write what people expect, or want, to hear. In other words: entertain.
It is strange to me that so many people still believe the “news” to be objective and “fair” even though it is commonly known among social scientists to be heavily biased and badly distorted with a sensationalistic “bent”. If you want to know the real story, the last place you should look is to the popular news media. The real story is almost never what we expect, or want, to hear.
The Real Story: Shepherd Now
Apparently, Mr. Gary “Mike” Shepherd is still employed as a therapist by the Washington State Department of Social Health Services at Western State Hospital (though the sex offender program has long since been shut down and a pail shadow of it moved to a prison setting at Twin Rivers Corrections Center in Shelton
According to formal complaints filed by his current co-workers, and other official documents stamped “Confidential”, that were given to me as part of the Federal discovery evidence (that I got to see only because I was representing myself) Shepherd is still getting into trouble for, and still denying, his inappropriate sexual advances toward subordinate members of the opposite sex as recently as early 2000.
The Real Story: On Sex Offender Treatment
Even after I asked out of the sex offender program at Western State Hospital I kept, and still have, a high regard for the treatment methodology employed there.
To me, it was a program that relied fundamentally on support through meaningful human contact (i.e. “group support”). Modern versions of sex offender group therapy (such as that at the Twin Rivers Corrections Center in Shelton, WA) have stripped out all the real and meaningful contact between group members (they aren't even permitted to keep in touch with each other after treatment!) and hense the only form of treatment that has ever been shown to actually work!
Of course, this kind of intimate contact between sex offenders had draw backs, especially when it is not properly monitored and supported by qualified therapists who “buy into” the program. But when it worked it could “cure” the most hardened sex offender – and I've seen it work.
To this day I can remember the full names and faces of practically every member in my group (about 20 of them). They were my family, and it broke more than just my heart when I asked them to send me to prison, but I felt I had no choice. What Shepherd had done could not be reconciled. To remain in the program would have been to live a lie, something I could not do at that young an age (but I eventually learned how... in prison. In order to just survive).
Original Headline: Duncan's History: By age 17 he fit the definition of a “sexual psychopath”.
Real Headline: Duncan's History: At the age of 17 he was labelled a “sexual psychopath”.
Original Story: TACOMA – Long before Joseph Edward Duncan III crossed paths with the two Idaho children he's now accused of kidnapping, it was clear that something was seriously wrong with him.
The Real Story: TACOMA - Long before Joseph Edward Duncan III crossed paths with the two Idaho children he's now accused of kidnapping, it was clear that he had serious problems and needed help that he frequently sought but never received.
Original Story: In 1980, a psychological evaluation at a Washington state mental hospital found that Duncan – only 17 at the time – was preoccupied with “deviant sexual fantasies” and “meets the definition of the sexual psychopath”.
The Real Story: In 1980, a treatability evaluation (not a psychological evaluation) written by a sex offender therapist (not a doctor) for the adult “Sexual Psychopath Treatment Program” at a Washington state mental hospital pronounced that Duncan - only 17 at the time - “meets the definition of the sexual psychopath”, as required by the program in order for it to accept Duncan for treatment.
The evaluation found that Duncan “shows every willingness to continue to be a cooperative and hardworking member”, in the treatment program. His “large amount of self-disclosure is a positive sign of (his) future success”, the therapist wrote. The evaluation concluded that Duncan was “amenable to treatment” (emphasis in the original).
Original Story: During assessments at Westrn State Hospital near Tacoma, Duncan detailed a sexual history that began at age 8, when he was allegedly performing incestuous acts with female relatives. By age 12, he told doctors, he forced a 5-year-old to perform oral sex on him. At 15, duncan told the doctors, he did the same thing to a 9-year-old boy at gunpoint.
The Real Story: During treatment at Westrn State Hospital near Tacoma, Duncan openly disclosed his sexual history, which, because his young age in the program, mostly envolved incidents of childhood curiosity and “sex play” that was usually initiated by older children. He revealed that at the age of 12 he asked a 5-year-old neighbour boy to “blow on” his penis, because he wanted to know what a “blow job” was like. At 15, Duncan used an empty toy “BB” gun to scare a 9-year-old boy into doing the same thing.
Original Story: “It is important to note that Mr. Duncan did go out looking for victims.” the hospital report notes.
The Real Story: What the hospital report fails to note is that Duncan claims he did not have his first “real” sexual experience (i.e. involving an orgasm) until the age of 14, when he was masterbated to climax by a pediatrician during a psysical exam at Madigan Army Medical Center on the Ft. Lewis Military base. Because of the confusing context of this experience, Duncan later told doctors, he did not realize the sexual nature of masterbation. He began to masterbate himself frequently, even fantasizing about being masterbated by the doctor while Duncan masterbated himself.
It was not until about a year later, when an older sister asked him to “put it in” (because she wanted to see what it would feel like) that it finally dawned on Duncan what an erection was for. Duncan explained that his seventh-grade “sex-education” class was a confusing blur to him that he never realized had anything to do with him, until his sister inadvertently brought all the pieces together for him years later. By that time his sexual fantasies were a confused hodge podge of bizarre and humiliating experiences that caused him a lot of consternation.
Duncan told doctors later that at the age of 15 he had a lot of questions about sex but he did not know how, or even who to ask. So, he said, he began experimenting for himself.
Original Story: At 15, he tried to outrun police in a stolen car, at one point trying to run down a police officer. He was sent to the Tacoma-area Dyslin's Boys Ranch for several months.
The Real Story: At 15, he was chased, and shot at, by police after stealing a car “to get home”. The police accused Duncan of trying to run down a police officer when he drove past a police cruiser that was attempting to block the road. Stolen car charges were never press. Instead, Duncan was charged with assaulting a police officer (presumably to allay the officer's attempt to kill a juvenile).
As a result of this charge, Duncan was sent to the Tacoma-area Dyslin's
While at Dyslin's, Duncan apparently got along with the other boys, making fast, if delinquent, friends. He related no memories of sexual involvement with the other boys at the ranch to his treatment group at Western State Hospital. It is significant to note that while there were numerous younger boys at Dyslin's, Duncan reported that he has no recollection of ever wanting to have sex with them while he was there. This was less than six months before he was arrested for raping a 14 year old boy in Tacoma.
Original Story: By age 16, he told doctors, he'd committed 13 rapes of young boys. In one case, he claimed, he tied up six boys, ages 6 through 10, forced them to perform oral sex, then raped them.
The Real Story: Between the age of 15 and 16, Duncan claimed to have sexually assaulted as many as 13 other boys. Though these “assaults” did not involved psysical force, violence, or sodomy, the treatment program characterized them as “rape”, since “we know rape to be predominantly an act of aggression and control”.
In one case, he claimed that he tied up six boys, ages 6 through 10, forced them to perform oral sex, then anally raped them. However, very early in Duncan's treatment, this claim was challenged since Duncan did not seem to understand the mechanics of anal rape (i.e. the necessity for lubrication). Duncan admitted that he exaggerated his sexual history at times during the 90 day evaluation period, in order to appease the group so he would be accepted into the program and not sent to prison.
Original Story: Then, just before his 17th birthday, he was arrested for breaking into a neighbour's house, stealing guns, and then accosting a 14-year-old boy and raping him at gunpoint. That incident appears to have been the first time Duncan was charged with a sex crime.
The Real Story: Then, a month before his 17th birthday, he was arrested for breaking into a neighbour's house, stealing guns, and then accosting a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint and forcing him to perform oral sex. Duncan was charged with two counts each of First Degree Rape, Burglary, and Simple Assault, as well as one count of Kidnapping. This was the first and only time Duncan was charged with a sex crime until earlier this year (2005).
Original Story: “This position of power over children has developed into a very powerful and compulsive pattern”, clinical director Dr. William Voorhees Jr. and other officials wrote in their report. “...Mr. Duncan is not safe to be at large.”
The Real Story: In the standard language of sex offender treatment jargon, Therapy Supervisor Gary M. Shepherd (who was later accused of having sex with program member's female relatives, in exchange for facilitating the member's progress in the treatment program) claimed that, “This position of power over children has developed into a very powerful and compulsive pattern”, in order to justify the program's finding that Duncan was a “sexual psychopath” so he could be accepted for treatment.
Shepherd also found that Duncan “is not safe to be at large”, which is a standard finding for all patients admitted to the treatment program that was necessary in order to justify the inpatient treatment model.
Original Story: Duncan was the fourth of five children born to Joseph E. Duncan Jr. and Lillian Mae Duncan. His parents were married in rural Burnham, PA.
The Real Story: (No necessary corrections)
Original Story: A year later Duncan's father joined the Army. He'd stay a soldier for the next 20 years.His son would later complain to state doctors that until he was 12, the family moved every two years, from one military assignment to the next. They lived in Europe and at several U.S. Posts.
The Real Story: A year later Duncan's father joined the Army. He'd stay a soldier for the next 20 years. Shepherd's report claims Duncan suffered developmentally from being moved from “city to city every two years until he was 12 years old, due to his father being in the military, “though Duncan himself never complained. They lived in Europe and at several U.S. Posts.
Original Story: “As a result of this, he kept to himself a lot and formed only a few superficial acquaintances”, Shepherd wrote. The boy felt picked on and mocked, and said he spent most of his time watching TV and daydreaming.
The Real Story: “As a result of this, he kept to himself a lot and formed only a few superficial acquaintances”, Shepherd wrote. Though other documents indicate that Duncan had several friends, a “best friend”, and even a fairly serious girlfriend, named Sharon, who Duncan told juvenile officials after his arrest that he wanted to marry, “after he gets out”. Duncan was also an active member of the Boy Scouts of America until the age of 13, when his family moved and he could no longer attend meetings.
Shepherd notes that as a boy, Duncan was often picked on and bullied by older children, especially his own sisters, but Duncan himself did not consider that unusual. “He admits to spending a good deal of time watching television and daydreaming (when at home)”, but Duncan spent most of his time outside “playing” with his younger brother and other children in the neighbourhood. He frequently avoided going home even for supper because of the negative feelings he got there.
Original Story: In 1978, Duncan's father retired from the military. He ended up getting a job with the U.S. Postal Service, working at a Tacoma-area bulk mail center.
The Real Story: (No necessary corrections)
Original Story: A year later, after 22 years of marriage, Duncan's parents separated, their marriage “irretrievably broken” for reasons unspecified in their thick divorce court file. Duncan and a younger sister were the only kids still living at home.
The Real Story: (It was a younger brother, not “sister”. Duncan had no younger sisters.)
Original Story: Duncan went to Lakes High School in Tacoma until his sophomore year, when he never returned after Christmas break. He had a 1.7 grade-point average, out of a possible 4.0, according to court documents. Duncan later told a pre-sentencing investigator that he was using marijuana daily by the time he got to high school, and tried LSD, amphetamines, barbituates, valium and PCP.
The Real Story: Duncan went to Lakes High School in Tacoma for only his sophomore year. He did not return after being arrested in January 1980. School records from Lakes indicate that he “is a bright student and is easily bored with school”. Prison records show that Duncan completed high school at the Garrett Heyns Education Center with a grade-point average of 3.4, out of a possible 4.0 while he was at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton. Duncan also received two Associate's degrees, with academic honors, before his release from prison in August of 2000. In the Fall of 2000 Duncan enrolled at North Dakota State University in Fargo and began work on his Bachalor's degree in Computer Science, receiving many more academic honors including induction into the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society.
Duncan bragged in 1980 to his pre-sentencing investigator that he was using marijuana daily by the time he returned to Lakes highschool after his stay at Dyslin's Boys Ranch. He had also by that time tried LSD, amphetamines, valium and PCP, though never more than once for each, and mostly never more than enough to get a “buzz”.
Original Story: During the car chase at age 15, he tried to run a police roadblock. The crash shattered his sinuses and the right side of his face.
The Real Story: During the car chase at age 15, he drove past a police car that was attempting to block the road. That was when a police officer who was standing next to the car (the same officer Duncan allegedly assaulted), fired his shotgun aiming at Duncan's head and missing by only inches. The blast blew out the side drivers window. Duncan crashed a block later after missing a sharp turn in the road. The crash shattered his sinuses and the right side of his face. He was hospitalized for more than a week before being released on a medical personal recognizance order pending trial. Duncan said he stole the car to get home and was shocked when the police shot at him.
Original Story: In 1980, he committed the crime that landed him in Western State Hospital.
The Real Story: One year later, on January 24, 1980, he committed the crime that landed him in Western State Hospital.
Original Story: It started with a burglary. In the evening, knowing that a neighbour was gone, Duncan smashed out a storm window and broke into the man's bedroom. He stole four pistols, about 1.000 rounds of ammunition, and some pornographic magazines. He said later that he had intended to return home, look at the magazines and masterbate.
The Real Story: It started with a burglary. In the evening, knowing that a neighbour was gone, Duncan smashed out a storm window using masking tape to silence the glass, as he learned to do while at Dyslin's Boys Ranch the previous summer. He then climbed in through the window into the man's bedroom where he found some money and pornographic materials. From another room that was being used as an arsenal (the man was a retired police officer), Duncan stole four semi-automatic handguns and about 1.000 rounds of ammunition.
He said later that he returned home and started to masterbate while looking at the pornographic book he stole from the man's house.
Original Story: “Then I decided, why not the real thing, so I got a gun... and went cruising for a victim”, he wrote in a court questionaire.
The Real Story: “Then I decided, why not the real thing, so I got a gun, unloaded, without a clip and went cruising for a victim”, he wrote in a court questionaire. Duncan insisted that the gun was not loaded, nor did he bring any ammunition with him since he “didn't want to hurt anyone”. (When the police later recovered the gun, which Duncan had thrown into some bushes on his way home, the gun was empty. The clip was found in Duncan's bedroom along with the other stolen items.)
Original Story: He found the 14-year-old boy in front of a nearby school. At gunpoint, Duncan forced the boy into the woods and made him strip. He made the boy perform oral sex on him twice, hit him repeatedly with a stick, burned his buttocks with a cigarette and then let him go. When Duncan got home the police were waiting for him.
The Real Story: He found the 14-year-old boy in front of a nearby school, less than a block away from where Duncan lived with his mother. At gunpoint, he ordered the boy into the woods and made him strip and lay down on his back. After removing his own clothes and setting them aside with the gun, Duncan straddled the boy and at one point placed his penis into the boys mouth (first count of rape). He then masterbated and ejaculated in the dirt over the boy's head.
He and the boy then got dressed, and Duncan ordered the boy to walk to a more secluded area. He ordered the boy to strip again, then picked up a fern branch and hit the boy no more than a few times on the buttocks and legs. After that he lit a cigarette, and lightly touched it once to each of the boy's buttocks (two counts of assault not resulting in an injury, i. e. “simple assault”). Duncan later disclosed during treatment that he was acting upon the things he had heard about, while at Dyslin's Boys Ranch, but did not understand. He said that he got no pleasure from hurting the boy, which is why he did not pursue the behavior. Duncan then masterbated again while straddling the boy, this time ejaculating into the boy's mouth (second count of rape).
He then helped the boy find his clothes, showed him that the gun was not loaded, and led the boy out of the woods (the boy told Duncan he was lost and did not know the way out). He then told the boy to “run home and don't look back or I'll kill you!”. But the boy told police that he looked back several times and saw Duncan “standing there”.
When Duncan got home, after ditching the gun and stopping to smoke marijuana with some friends, the police were waiting for him. During all of this, Duncan had made no attempt to conceal his identity, so the boy knew who he was and subsequently led the police directly to where Duncan lived.
Original Story: He subsequently pleaded guilty to first-degree rape.
The Real Story: During the ensuring police interogation, the detectives told Duncan that he needed help and that they could get help for him if he confessed. Duncan cried, thinking he would finally find some understanding, and wrote out a complete and detailed confession.
He was arrested as a juvenile, but then declined to adult status after three months in Reimann Hall Juvenile Detention Center. The declination report found that Duncan was “a fairly immature boy who doesn't seem to realize the seriousness of his present situation”.
In adult court, Duncan pleaded guilty to one count Rape in the First Degree, as a part of a plea agreement that was meant to spare him from having to go to prison where, according to the pre-sentencing report, “because of his age and appearance he would likely be sexually abused by other inmates”.
Original Story: “I held a gun to a juv. and forced him to commet sertan sex acts.” Duncan wrote on the plea form.
The Real Story: With obviously childish handwriting, Duncan wrote in his own words on the plea form, “I held a gun to a juv. and forced him to commet sertan sex acts.”
Original Story: He later said the rape stenmed from a sense of rejection by his mother and father. He said he was upset because his parents had been fighting a lot and were breaking up, because he was doing badly at school, and because he couldn't get into the Air Force with his auto-theft conviction.
The Real Story: At the adult sex offender treatment program in Western State Hospital, Duncan was required to find emotional reasons for his sexual behavior. The reasons he came up with were later reflected in the program's report to the courts.
In other evaluations, done after Duncan left the program at Western State, psychologists have reported that as a juvenile, Duncan should never have been sent to an adult offender program. It is known that juvenile offenders do not have the same complex emotionally charged behavior patterns found in adult offenders. The record shows clearly that Duncan was not a mature offender. Juvenile offenders, if treated appropriately, have a very high rate of rehabilitation compared to adult offenders. Later psychological reports indicate that Duncan was likely irreparably harmed by Western State's misdiagnosis and attempt to treat him as an adult sex offender.
Original Story: He was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison, but the time was suspended. In lieu of prison, Duncan was committed to sex offender treatment at Western State Hospital.
By 1982, Western State Hospital had given up. Duncan was 19.
The Real Story: By 1982, Duncan seemed to be doing very well in the adult program. He had achieved senior member status (level 5), was voted into group leadership, and was routinely responsible for ward security and “group charge” responsibilities at night while the rest of the program members slept. He conducted head counts and carried the keys to secured areas on the ward. Even though Duncan was only 19, he had earned the respect and confidence of the older program members and staff.
Original Story: “After 22 months in the program, Mr. Duncan has shown an unwillingness to modify his sexually deviant behaviors and has chosen not to commit himself to program techniques,” his therapist wrote. Duncan showed “a constant need to maintain secrecy” about his fantasies and rebelled against treatment.
The Real Story: “After 22 months in the program, Mr. Duncan has shown an unwillingness to modify his sexually deviant behaviors and has chosen not to commit himself to program techniques,” so Duncan's therapist, Gary a.k.a. “Mike” Shepherd wrote in his report to the court expelling Duncan from the program.
Shepherd's report makes no mention of that fact that Duncan's mother had just recently accused Shepherd of coming to her house in the evening, pretending to offer counsel for her, and walking uninvited into her bedroom while she was getting dressed for his untimely visit. Duncan's mother later told Shepherd's superiors that “Mike” tried to embrace her and told her that if she cooperated (by having sex with him) that he could “make things easier” for her son in the program.
Mrs. Duncan told officials that she screamed at him to get out of her house or she would call the police. At her next visit with her son at Western State Hospital she tearfully disclosed to her son what the therapist had done. It was a Sunday, and Duncan told his mother to report the incident to Shepherd's superiors the next day, which she did.
Duncan also told his group what happened, as he also cried during a “feelings layout” after the visit. Duncan said he never felt more confused and betrayed in all his life. He had come to view Shepherd as a trusted father figure whom he depended on to help him “get better”.
According to the treatment program's values, and what Duncan had been taught to believe for the 22 months he was there, Shepherd had attempted to rape his mother.
The next day, while Mrs. Duncan was in another area of the hospital to make an official complaint against Duncan's therapist, Shepherd called Duncan into his office. He explained to Duncan that he had reviewed the group's notes (for the “feelings layout” the previous night), then he denied attempting to have sex with Duncan's mother. Shepherd ordered Duncan to “not bring this up again in group”, where notes are taken and every session is recorded. The notes from the previous nights meeting also disappeared.
Shepherd was later asked by hospital officials to answer these charges. He admitted being at Mrs. Duncan's home, but denied trying to have sex with her. The grievance was formally dropped after that and no investigation ever came of it until years later, when Duncan was in prison.
In 1985, a joint law suit was brought against The State of Washington and Western State Hospital.
An investigation revealed that Shepherd, who had lied on his job application and was not qualified to be a sex offender therapist, was having sex with Mr. Anderson's wife in exchange for “pushing” Anderson through the program much quicker than usual. Shepherd had also made the same arrangements with several other female relatives of members in the program The law suit was settled quickly out of court.
Original Story: They cited a key incident. On Valentine's Day 1982, Duncan' mother came to stay with him at a Western State Hospital cottage used for family visits. After she went to bed, he gathered up his coat, gloves, and an extension cord. He jumped the hospital wall and crept up to a nearby house, where he spied on an 18-year-old woman and people in other houses. When dogs began barking and a man spotted him, Duncan fled back to the cottage, where he woke his mother. She then taught him how to disco dance, according to the report.
The Real Story: Shepherd's report to expell Duncan from the treatment program cites a key incident. On Valentine's Day 1982, less than a weel after Duncan's confrontation with Shepherd over his mother, Duncan's mother came to stay with him at a Western State Hospital cottage used for family visits. The visit had been approved several weeks in advance and was a privilege exclusively afforded to senior members in the group (step 5 and up) who demonstrate good standing in the program.
Duncan had already decided that he could not stay in the program after what Shepherd had done to his mother. He explained to psychologists years later that he decided to wait until after the much anticipated cottage visit with his mother before he asked the group to vote him out of the program, which he knew would result in him being sent to prison.
After his mother went to sleep, he got his coat and gloves and left the cottage, walked across the hospital grounds, jumped a three foot stone wall, then jogged for about a quarter of a mile to a nearby residential neighbourhood. Once there he walked down a street while looking at the houses nostalgically (the first houses he'd seen since his arrest at age 16) thinking that it could be a few years before he would get to go home himself after going to prison.
Duncan told his treatment group the next day that he was not trying to escape, but just wanted to make sure he would be voted out of the program. Duncan knew that leaving the hospital grounds meant automatic expulsion from the program, which was the only reason he did so.
Duncan reported that he ran to the residential neighbourhood so he could later prove he left the hospital grounds by reporting what he saw. He told the group that he saw a teenage girl, through the front living room window of a house, who appeared to be doing homework at the dining room table. He also saw a man and heard dogs barking before running back to the cottage and waking his mom (who had been taking a nap). She then taught him how to disco dance.
Original Story: A week later, Duncan announced that he wanted to leave treatment and serve his time in prison.
The Real Story: The next day the cottage visit was cut short due to an emergency group grounding. Two other members in Duncan's group were caught having sex in the shower. That evening, Duncan announced to the group, without explaination, since he was ordered not to talk about the situation in group, that he wanted to be “voted out” (leave treatment) and serve his time in prison.
Original Story: “He exhibited little remorse or guilt for his sexual deviation while in treatment... He is not safe to be at large”, the therapist wrote to Pierce County officials. “...Mr. Duncan is available for transport back to your county by your sheriff at your earliest convenience.”
The Real Story: Duncan's therapist, Shepherd, wrote a scathing report to Pierce County officials claiming that Duncan was not amenable to treatment, and was violent and extremely dangerous to the community. This report followed Duncan to prison and was used by the parole board to justify an exeptional minimum term of over five times (15.5 years) the standard range for his crime.
Shepherd's report also became the primary source of information used in every psychological evaluation for Duncan throughout his incarceration, mostly without Duncan ever being aware of it.
Original Story: In 1982, he was sentenced to at least three, and no more than 20, years in prison. Duncan served 14 years for the rape and three more for parole violations.
The Real Story: In 1982, he was sentenced to at least three, and no more than 20, years in prison. Duncan served 14 and a half years before he was paroled. After two and a half years on parole he was sent back to prison for three years because of parole violations. Duncan is now suspected of murdering at least three children while he was on parole from 1994 to 1997. (What happened in prison?)
Original Story: Since then, Duncan has moved to Fargo, N.D. He disappeared after an April 5 hearing in Becker County Minn., about an hour from Fargo, where he is accused of sexually molesting one boy and of attempting to molest another.
The Real Story: Since his release from prison in August of 2000, Duncan has moved to Fargo, N.D. where he worked two computer programming jobs while attending classes at N.D.S.U. Police and neighbours reported that Duncan seemed to be a “model citizen” who enjoyed social activities and helping his neighbours.
He apparently committed no new crimes while in Fargo, until July 2004, when he was accused of molesting a 6-year-old boy in Detroit Lakes, MN, about 40 minutes East of Fargo. After appearing for an initial hearing in Becker County on April 5, 2005, Duncan posted 15.000 cash bail, then disappeared several days later.
Duncan did not resurface until July 2, 2005, when he walked into a Denny's restaurant in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho with an 8-year-old girl who had been reported missing, along with her 9-year-old brother, six weeks earlier. Duncan told police, who were called when the little girl was recognized, “I was bringing her home...go ahead and arrest me.”
The Real Story: Credibility
The “Real Story” blog entry is as honest and forthcoming as I could make it. It took me over a week to write and much of that time was spent making sure that I did not misrepresent myself in the story. It is easy fot me to exaggerate or minimize different parts of the truth according to my own interests. So I have carefully reviewed the “Real Story” blog entry to make sure that every word and every sentence represents my best and most honest recollections, backed as much as possible by documentation.
However, because of the large number of reports and evaluations (and other documents) that have been written about me, there are numerous inconsistancies that have emerged from misquotes, and even misquotes of misquotes. The result is that I am attributed as often making contradictory claims. However, most of these so-called claims of mine in the record are misquotes, and some are statements that I know I could never have made.
So who do we believe? Ask a historian, since this is an age old problem throughout history. Rarely, if ever, are historical documents, even the most official records, consistant and uniform in their presentations and claims. Historians address this problem using various techniques from simple intuition to complex statistical analysis. I suggest that what ever you read about me (or anyone) in the future, even in this blog, be taken with a grain of salt. I'm not suggesting that I am, or even may be, dishonest – I am honest – but even I make mistakes in recollection.
The Real Story: No Excuses
In case anyone thinks that I am trying to make excuses with “The Real Story” blog entry for what I did as an adult, you should know this: As far as I am concerned, nothing that happened to me as a youth has anything to do with what I did as an adult, which is why I did not let my attorney's present this information in court, even though it is all well documented and easily proven.
I have said on numerous occasions since my arrest in 2005, that there is no excuse for what I have done, and I mean it. Besides, what happened to me in “The Real Story” was nothing compared to what happened to me in prison – and that's no excuse either!
The Real Story: Entertainment in the News
In writing “The Real Story” blog entry it has not been my intention to discredit the original “news” article. The original story was written for a purpose other than to portray the objective truth.
The news media routinely “frames” their stories to suit their audience, they would go quickly out of business if they did not. So they must basically write what people expect, or want, to hear. In other words: entertain.
It is strange to me that so many people still believe the “news” to be objective and “fair” even though it is commonly known among social scientists to be heavily biased and badly distorted with a sensationalistic “bent”. If you want to know the real story, the last place you should look is to the popular news media. The real story is almost never what we expect, or want, to hear.
The Real Story: Shepherd Now
Apparently, Mr. Gary “Mike” Shepherd is still employed as a therapist by the Washington State Department of Social Health Services at Western State Hospital (though the sex offender program has long since been shut down and a pail shadow of it moved to a prison setting at Twin Rivers Corrections Center in Shelton
According to formal complaints filed by his current co-workers, and other official documents stamped “Confidential”, that were given to me as part of the Federal discovery evidence (that I got to see only because I was representing myself) Shepherd is still getting into trouble for, and still denying, his inappropriate sexual advances toward subordinate members of the opposite sex as recently as early 2000.
The Real Story: On Sex Offender Treatment
Even after I asked out of the sex offender program at Western State Hospital I kept, and still have, a high regard for the treatment methodology employed there.
To me, it was a program that relied fundamentally on support through meaningful human contact (i.e. “group support”). Modern versions of sex offender group therapy (such as that at the Twin Rivers Corrections Center in Shelton, WA) have stripped out all the real and meaningful contact between group members (they aren't even permitted to keep in touch with each other after treatment!) and hense the only form of treatment that has ever been shown to actually work!
Of course, this kind of intimate contact between sex offenders had draw backs, especially when it is not properly monitored and supported by qualified therapists who “buy into” the program. But when it worked it could “cure” the most hardened sex offender – and I've seen it work.
To this day I can remember the full names and faces of practically every member in my group (about 20 of them). They were my family, and it broke more than just my heart when I asked them to send me to prison, but I felt I had no choice. What Shepherd had done could not be reconciled. To remain in the program would have been to live a lie, something I could not do at that young an age (but I eventually learned how... in prison. In order to just survive).
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