Weird, disgusting - and a valuable lesson, too

I've never understood the urge for deviant sexual behavior in some individuals. I'm not talking about a taste for the mildly kinky or unusual, you understand: I'm talking about the way-out-there fringes of sexuality, the sort of thing that makes one wrinkle one's nose in disgust. I wouldn't blog about such incidents at all if it weren't for the fact that, as a former chaplain, I've had to deal with many sex criminals in prison, and I understand the extent of the danger.

Two recent reports illustrate a very real truth. Such deviance usually can't be successfully treated and cured. It's the same thing with pedophiles - they're not curable. Sure, there are those who claim that as long as the 'patient' is taking his or her medication, they're 'under control': but these incidents highlight just how dangerous that supposition really is. It's almost impossible to guarantee that they'll continue to take their medication, or that it'll continue to have the desired effect. If they stop taking it, or if it ceases to work for them . . . danger lurks.

The first story to catch my eye came from South Carolina back in July.

A South Carolina man was charged with having sex with a horse after the animal’s owner caught the act on videotape, then staked out the stable and caught him at shotgun point, authorities said Wednesday.

But this wasn’t the first time Rodell Vereen has been charged with buggery. He pleaded guilty last year to having sex with the same horse after owner Barbara Kenley found him in the same stable and was sentenced to probation and placed on the state’s sex offender list.

Kenley said she noticed several weeks ago her 21-year-old horse Sugar was acting strange and getting infections again. She noticed things in the barn had been moved around — dirt piled up and bales of hay stacked near the horse’s stall at her Lazy B Stables in Longs, about 20 miles northeast of Myrtle Beach.

“Police kept telling me it couldn’t be the same guy,” Kenley said Wednesday. “I couldn’t believe that there were two guys going around doing this to the same horse.”

She spent several nights at the stables, which are about four miles from her home, but didn’t find anything. So she installed surveillance cameras, and when she reviewed the footage from July 19, she couldn’t believe she was seeing the same man doing the same thing to her horse.

Kenley didn’t call police because she was certain the man would come back to the stable, and she wanted to make sure he was arrested. So she staked out the barn and caught Vereen inside Monday night, chasing him to his truck and holding him with her shotgun until police came.

“He said he wasn’t there to do anything, and I said, ‘I know you were. I have you on tape.’ And then he said he was sorry if he hurt me,” Kenley said.

Vereen, 50, was first charged with trespassing, but police added a buggery charge after watching the surveillance tape. He faces up to five years if convicted. Vereen was already on probation after pleading guilty to buggery last year and was sentenced to three years of probation, ordered to stay away from the Lazy B Stables and declared a sex offender.

There's more at the link, including a video report.

The second story was from Maine.

When Gary Moody pleaded no contest to trespassing in 2005 for hiding in a pit toilet on White Mountain National Forest property in New Hampshire, a judge urged him to seek help for whatever had driven him to climb down there.

According to a new complaint, Moody didn't get the message.

The 49-year-old Pittston man is charged again – this time in federal court – with climbing into a pit toilet in the White Mountain National Forest.

Authorities say a 9-year-old boy saw Moody climbing out of a toilet at the Hastings Campground on Memorial Day and two other witnesses saw him walk away from the outhouse. The campground is about three miles south of Gilead, just east of the New Hampshire border.

Moody was not identified at the time, but a special agent from the U.S. Forest Service investigated the report from the campground manager. Recalling the well-publicized incident involving Moody in 2005, special agent William Fors paid a visit to Moody's home on June 19.

. . .

According to Fors, Moody admitted that he had been in a toilet at the Hastings Campground on Memorial Day. Moody initially said he had dropped his shirt into the pit and climbed down to retrieve it.

That story was similar to one Moody had told authorities on June 26, 2005, when he was found in a toilet on U.S. Forest Service property in Albany, N.H. Moody said he climbed into the pit to retrieve his wedding ring, but officials cleaned out the pit, screened the contents and found no ring.

"I told Moody that I did not think that his trips into the outhouse pits had anything to do with dropping things by accident, and asked Moody if I was right," Fors wrote in the affidavit. "Moody said 'yes.'"

Moody admitted that he had gone into outhouse pits more than twice, Fors wrote. Moody said he never took photographs or videotaped people using the toilets, and he told Fors that he had not received counseling for what Fors called "the outhouse problem," according to the affidavit.

Moody faces one count of attempted violation of privacy, one count of entering an enclosed area not open to the public and one count of leaving refuse in an exposed and unsanitary condition. Each count is a federal misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum of six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Again, there's more at the link.

I apologize if any readers are offended at my linking to these stories. It wasn't done out of prurient preoccupation, I assure you! I hope that they illustrate how difficult - well-nigh impossible! - it is to treat such deviant behavior, and prevent offenders from re-offending. Admittedly, no harm to humans resulted from the behavior reported above: but who's to say that would continue to be the case? When might such deviant urges 'cross the line' and become dangerous?

Next time someone tries to persuade you that the more extreme forms of sexual deviance are quite harmless, really, and shouldn't be condemned or punished . . . remember these two cases as examples. In the same light, ask yourself whether a pedophile can be treated. He or she can't, of course - they're as likely to re-offend as the subjects of the two reports quoted above. The only two ways I know that are certain to prevent them re-offending are permanent incarceration, or death.

Let that reality guide your response - and your precautions to safeguard your loved ones.

Peter