After being accepted into the Western State (Mental) Hospital "SP" (sexual psychopath) treatment program at the age of seventeen (the first "juvenile" ever admitted to the "adult" sex offender program), Duncan was given regular member status and limited privileges, such as being able to walk around the ward alone (and hence shower and shit alone as well for the first time in months). More privileges were to be earned with each "step" completed, all the way up to step 10, which was "outpatient" status (step 9 was "work release", step 8 allowed you to walk the hospital grounds alone, step 4 is "escort" status where you could assume "security" and "leadership" responsibilities, and step 5 was "senior member" status, etc. etc.). The first four steps took the longest and were by far the most difficult to accomplish. The highest step Duncan achieved before he "refused treatment" and was sent to prison was step 5 ("senior member" status). He was nineteen when that happened.
Newly accepted member were expected to apply for step 1 after they came back from court. Each "step" requires a group vote and therapist's approval. The first step required members to demonstrate "responsible" sexual behavior patterns, be able to identity and begin circumventing "outlet" behavior and thinking patterns, and to write a detailed "sexual autobiography". (Remember, a regular autobiography was completed and voted on by the group as part of the three-month (OBS" evaluation period before being accepted into the program. The "sexual AB" focused exclusively on all sexual behavior, from earliest childhood memories up to and through the "outlet" (crime) behavior that landed the "SP" in "treatment").
The sexual AB would then be expanded upon and analyzed over the course of the next several steps in the program. Personal behavior and thought patterns would be teased out with the group's help, and then a system of "stop signs and controls" would be developed and implemented as a means of controlling one's "deviant" sexual behavior. (The idea was to be able to recognize personal "stop sign" behavior and thoughts, and then "control" one's behavior long before "outlet" is even considered; that's the "idea".) This mean that the "SP" (Espease) spent a lot of time in group meetings listening to and discussing each other's "deviant" sexual behavior in great detail. This was the primary mode of "treatment".
For Duncan, having almost no sexual experience to speak of (or write about for the program), this meant exposure to more sexual exploits than even the most randy and precocious teenager could even imagine. On a daily basis he was saturated (usually under significant psychological stress caused by lack of sleep and intense peer pressure to behave and even think "responsibly" according to strict rules and codes of conduct that would put most "boot camps" to shame) with constant sexual scenarios from simple fleeting voyeurism to violent and even homicidal rape. Duncan thus became very familiar with not only his own sexual thoughts and behavior, but everyone else's as well, which was required and expected so each member in the program could "police" the others and make sure "controls" were being constantly applied, and "confronting" anyone's behavior that even hinted at "uncontrolled" thought.
Here is a taste of what Duncan learned in "treatment". Lonnie liked little girls. He was a quiet but friendly "Teddy-bear" of a man who repeatedly "molested" his step-daughter (from age eight to eleven perhaps), and her friends on occasion. He would pretend to be passed out drunk on the couch when she had friends over and then his step-daughter, per his prior instructions, would get her friends to fondle and masturbate him while he pretended to remain comatose. One of her friend's spilled the beans and Lonnie was arrested for daring to have his pleasure with little girls.
Robin was a rapist, technically; though he never quite fit in with the "rapist clique". He was a small dark-haired man with a very weak-chin that he kept self-consciously hidden behind a thick black goatee and heavy mustache (at least he did until one day the group demanded that he "quit hiding" and shave; he walked away - or "escaped" - from the program shortly after that). He once super-glued a woman's hands to the floor in a dry-cleaner's business he robbed, and then raped her doggy-style while she was thus immobilized, as an after thought.
James was the next youngest member in the group after Duncan, about five years older. He was a high-school track star; popular, athletic, and good-looking, and a vanilla rapist. He got caught and made an example of for raping a girl who tried to steal him away from his girlfriend. These days it's called "date rape", but that term didn't exist yet back then, so James was just a 22-year-old who'd now be a "sexual psychopath" for the rest of his life for just trying to be "cool".
Mike liked little babies. Or at least that's what he was in the "SP" program for. His girlfriend caught him masturbating naked on the floor while performing cunnilingus on her one-year-old. You'd never guess this if you met him. He was a tall and "ruggedly handsome" cowboy type. He was the only "child molester" who hung out with the "rapist clique" in the group.
Rick was your garden variety twinky lover. He was one of the very few "patients" in the program who did not have a prison sentence hanging over his head. His "outlet" was consensual sex with an under-aged (15-year-old) boy. He was charged with something like indecent exposure, so all he got was jail time that he had already served. So if he didn't complete the program he'd go back to jail, but only long enough to see a judge, then he'd be released on probation. And that's presumably what happened after he got caught in the shower having sex with Don.
Don "raped" his younger sister; at least that's what he was charged with. Actually it too was consensual, but because he was over 18, and she was only 14, it was legally considered child rape. Don was no rapist, but he did enjoy sex just about any way he could get it, including with his own horse (he grew up on a farm and had his own mare). Unlike Rick, Don went to prison for over ten years, for having sex in the shower with Rick. After Don got out of prison, he contracted AIDS and died relatively young.
Dave was at step 10 ("outpatient" status) when I arrived at the program, so I only met him a few times when he came in for his final discharge meetings. He was "high up" in the Roman Catholic church, and was an extremely arrogant homosexual pedophile who got caught molesting church boys (of course). And get this, after he completed the program, he went right back to serving the Catholic church and boasted at his last treatment group meeting that he was even to be promoted to some sort of regional "archdeacon" or something. Duncan was the only member in the group who voted "no" on Dave's final discharge request, not that anyone cared because he was only an OBS at the time. But he voted no because he felt Dave was the phoniest person he'd ever met and couldn't believe how blinded the rest of the group was by his religious clout; Duncan was not impressed.
Duncan was more impressed by the one "serial killer" in his treatment group named Jim. Jim killed for the first time when he was still a preteen (eleven or twelve, maybe). He killed a much younger neighbor girl because she irritated him by asking him to play with her all the time. Jim had been badly scarred as a young child when his mother either spilled or threw boiling water in his face. His mother lost custody, and Jim was being raised by his adult older sister at the time he took the neighbor girl into the woods and stabbed her repeatedly with a fillet knife. His sister found his bloody clothes in the dirty clothes hamper and turned him in to the police after the girl's body was found.
Because of his age Jim could only be held until he turned 21 by the juvenile system. At that time he was actively recruited by the Army, and received special training (that he was not permitted to disclose, not even in "treatment") on how to kill people in all sorts of ways, including his bare hands. He later used this training in a series of rapes, where he would subdue the female victim. Because of the level of violence involved with Jim's "outlet" (crimes) only "senior members" were permitted to attend meetings where he "disclosed" or otherwise discussed his crimes. And because Duncan was only a senior member for a short time before he ultimately refused treatment he only sat in on one or two such "senior member only" meetings for Jim's layouts. In one of these meetings Jim disclosed a murder he had committed but never got caught for where he literally snapped a man's neck just so he could grab and rape the man's bikini clad girlfriend. Jim was a very intense man, short but stalky with blond hair and piercing blue eyes that made the burn scar that covered one whole side of his face all the more stark. He was one of the SP program's big "success" stories (yes, a known serial killer who never got "caught" for murder, but did get "caught" and "successfully treated" for rape). Jim received his final discharge and successful completion of his "treatment" around the time Duncan was getting repeatedly raped in prison for having refused any further "treatment". Duncan spent over seventeen and a half years lock up for making another boy suck his dick in the woods, while Jim spent less than four years getting away with murder.
"I don't hate Jim," Duncan says. "I hate the system, that convicted me for rape, and then sent me to prison to be raped after filling my head with so much confusing garbage."
It took Duncan decades to even begin to sort out the madness he was subjected to in the name of "Justice" and "rehabilitation" while he was still just a "kid" himself. To this very day he is still trying to figure it out, but given his current predicament --- that is being on death row for numerous sex murders --- he's not holding out much hope for coming to any real understanding soon.
"The world is insane, not me," Duncan says.
