This fascinating BBC documentary on California’s civil commitment facility for violent sex offenders provides an opportunity to hear from the pedophiles first hand. It’s about an hour long, but it is worth the time in order to gain at least some insight into the minds of child molesters. Unfortunately, it’s somewhat like trying to understand the predatory behavior of lions by standing outside their cages at a zoo. Make no mistake, these men are dangerous.
One of the things I noticed right away was how intensely the men struggled to find the right words, to adopt the right affect and demeanor in order to convince the therapists that they have been “cured” sufficiently to be released. To me, the therapy appears to teach the offenders how to beat the polygraphs and the penile plethysmograph. The truth is that any such instrument can be defeated.
The therapists, themselves, seemed somewhat creepy to me as well. They, too, were painfully controlled in what they said. They almost seemed like Stepford people.
Personally, I’m not convinced that any of them are being cured. There should be civil commitment laws in every state, but I would not spend $200,000 per inmate to keep them there. We should be able to figure out how to warehouse them humanely for a lot less.
A PLACE FOR PAEDOPHILES – (Full documentary, Louis Theroux) – YouTube.
truthalliancefoundation.org 
The priest who headed the Paraclete treatment center in NM also became convinced the paedophile religious could not be cured. He had wanted to purchase an island and have them live there but the Vatican declined. After and during their stay in the facility they were used as supply priests for local community Churches and many eventually were returned to active regular ministry. The results of their ongoing sexual abuses is still being heard today in the courts.
As a Catholic , I find it most troubling that the Heirarchy seems to have an inability to recognize the damage to society in general by refusing to acknowledge their complicity in this . To simply say they did not understand is not truthful.
Having been employed in the healthcare field I have had discussions with Physicians concerning the victims of child abuse. We concurred that the biggest problem is the propagation of the abuse by the victim themselves. The core emotion that incites the repetition of sexual abuse by those who were themselves victims is an abnormal response to ‘rejection’. One Dr said all the female adults who were once victims of child molestations themselves that he had treated found it difficult to form lasting adult relationships and marriages. Each time they felt the slightest emotional rejection they responded inappropriately in anger and frustration.
In contrast, for the male victims of sexual abuse as children , the same feeling of rejection as an adult triggered thoughts of repeating the child sexual abuse themselves as a perceptional response for regaining back the loss of power and control when they had been abused.These Physicians saw how abuse propagated itself in families and society as a whole.
In the BBC Documentary one of the men who was seeking to be released from treatment acknowledged he was a victim as a child himself. It is sad that the supposedly educated clerical ranks have not acknowledged the same continuance of the dysfunction that leads to the possibility of crimes against children.
It is even more frustrating that any state would legally bar parents from seeking Therapy for their children to better discover if their sexuality is really the result of a trauma that they have buried or reasoned to be a “normal” part of their life, just as so many of these men who refused Therapy stated in the film.
The “Stepford” syndrome you commented on is taught to healthcare employees as “empathy” rather than “sympathy” under the guise of protecting the employee from personal involment and burnout
“Patients” now termed “clients” is an effort to elevate their status by the use of semantics and they are usually always perceptive enough to interpret it as a lack of sincerity on the part of the Provider. However academia has not realized this yet.
One could also argue that just as pornography and deviance rose to the level of individual freedoms in society, the same has imprisoned individuals psychologically physically and even spiritually.