Devan Filchak, additional reporting by Rebecca R. Bibbs and Stuart Hirsh Broken Trust investigative team, Herald Bulletin Staff Writers
Second of three parts.
Editor’s note: In this article and in other articles in the Broken Trust series, The Herald Bulletin is not using the real names of child sex abuse survivors who’ve asked not to be identified.
Glance at Madison County’s online sex and violent offender registry, and it’s clear to see that Rita has two convictions – one for child molestation and one for sexual misconduct with a minor. What you don’t see in the registry is Rita’s childhood in Anderson. By her account, she was molested by her siblings from the ages of 5 to 8. When she was 16, her father raped her.
But Rita doesn’t blame childhood victimization for her later behavior. Drug and alcohol abuse, she said, led to her crimes. She started partying as a teenager and hung around with a rough crowd.
The first time she was convicted, she was at a party when a boy who was a “friend” of hers directed her to have sex with a 16-year-old. She was 18 at the time and didn’t believe it was a big deal.
Later, she found out the boy she had sex with was only 13 years old.
Rita is one of more than 200 people in Madison County convicted in the past nine years for sex crimes against children. Madison ranks fourth highest, despite having just the 13th-largest population, among Indiana’s 92 counties in convictions for such crimes during that span.
Rita was incarcerated twice, the second time for sexual misconduct with a minor. She was in prison for a little over a year between the two convictions.
Being incarcerated, Rita said, was good for her. It enabled her to beat her addictions and start a new life without partying and bad influences.
Like Rita, some others listed in Madison County’s sex and violent offender registry didn’t premeditate their crimes. Others did so with painstaking deliberation.
Canadian forensic psychologist, sexologist and author Michael Seto estimates that 50 to 60 percent of those who commit crimes of child sexual abuse do so because of their attraction to children.
“At the same time, a lot of sexual offenses against children are committed by relatives, where pedophilia doesn’t play as much of a role,” said Seto, previously the director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University.
“In these cases, I think factors such as being antisocial and offending opportunistically and family problems are more important.”
Some offenders know exactly what they’re doing when they assault a child. Over the course of weeks, months or years, they methodically desensitize their victims to sexual acts, according to the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse (NAASCA).
The offenders are often authority figures: a teacher, a coach, a pastor, a parent or another adult relative, said Jennifer Drobac, a professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law.
Jack Reynolds, who currently lives in Anderson, gained access to children through coaching boys sports, such as youth baseball, in Indiana, Florida and elsewhere.
Reynolds has been convicted of child molestation in Indiana at least eight times.
He was incarcerated for about 13 years, starting in 1990.
He claims to have violated many, many more boys beyond those convictions. But he says he’s reformed now and determined never to molest another child.
As a youth coach, Reynolds was present in locker rooms as young boys changed clothes. He patted his players on the buttocks, ostensibly for encouragement, without anyone thinking it was wrong.
Reynolds said he would groom boys until he could get what he wanted, and it wasn’t difficult. He was already in the powerful role-model position of coach.
The boys weren’t the only ones he was fooling.
“I was literally grooming society into thinking I was normal,” he said.
Reynolds was married and did everything he could to look like an upstanding citizen. He would coach girls sports, as well, to veil his attraction to boys.
He said he usually operated in small towns. As soon as he felt someone might become suspicious he was molesting a boy, he would leave the community.
“As soon as the heat got on, I would pack up and move overnight,” Reynolds said.
His methods are common among sexual predators.
They often begin grooming victims by offering compliments – “You are so pretty” – and support – “I believe in you.” Grooming can continue for months or just a matter of days before the initial sexual assault, according to NAASCA.
Common grooming tactics include making the child feel special, giving gifts and commiserating when the child is upset with other adults, Madison County Deputy Prosecutor Mary Hutchison said.
Predators often groom the child’s parents, as well, to engender misplaced trust, according to Educate Empower Kids, a nonprofit that provides educators and parents with resources to encourage deep connections with children.
The first touch between an offender and victim is often nonsexual, noted Hutchison, who previously worked on the special victims team in the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office.
Later, she said, an offender might “accidentally” touch a child near the genitals or on the chest. The offender might say it was an innocent mistake, but it desensitizes the child by breaking down the security of an anatomical region that had been off-limits.
Indiana’s sex and violent offender registry – icrimewatch.net/indiana – provides parents and the general public with information about where offenders live and work in the community.
The registry in each county is maintained by the local sheriff’s department.
Managing the registry is a full-time job for Kathleen Short, sex offender administrator of the Madison County Sheriff’s Department.
The registry is meant to make offenders easily identifiable. It reports all of the identifying information that is generally on a driver’s license, including an updated photo and a list of tattoos.
Offenders are placed into one of three levels: sexually violent predator, offender against children and sex offender.
Sexually violent predator is the highest level and always means an automatic lifetime presence in the registry. Short said the level generally includes those convicted of Class A felony rape and Class A and B felony child molest.
The number of people in the registry changes often – sometimes daily – as some offenders are released from prison or move into the community, others move out of the community, and still others, according to the terms of their conviction, are no longer required to be registered.
Generally, from 270 to 300 offenders are listed in Madison County’s registry, according to Short.
Deputies check regularly to verify the whereabouts of offenders. Homeless offenders, who might be living places such as under the Eisenhower Bridge on Eighth Street, are required to check in weekly with Short.
She receives phone calls frequently about sex offenders living across the street from a day care. That’s not necessarily illegal.
If an offender was living in a residence before incarceration, and a day care opens across the street after the offense, they can continue living at the residence after being released from incarceration.
Some offenders say the registry isn’t fair because it doesn’t allow people who have served their sentences to return to a normal life. A group of sex offenders sued the state of Illinois in 2016, claiming that restrictions kept them from normal lives, from attending church and from living with their families. The lawsuit has not yet been resolved.
An organization called Women Against Registry opposes sex-offender registries on the basis of their impact on the families of offenders.
The group maintains that registries make it difficult for offenders to find employment and exclude them from living where they want.
Rita said she can’t wait until her 10 years on the registry lapse. She worries that someone will confront her when she’s at the park playing with her daughters, both of whom are less than 10 years old.
When they get older, she plans to tell them about why she spent time in prison.
Some people say they are attracted to children or teens and can’t help it. They call it a sexual orientation.
Todd Nickerson, a freelance graphic designer from Tennessee who has written articles published in Salon magazine and other media, moderates a group called Virtuous Pedophiles. The group maintains that minor-attracted people can’t change the way they feel about children but can control their actions and not offend.
Others justify sexual activity with teens who look sexually mature.
Drobac, the IU law professor, has written a book titled “Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers: Adolescent Development, Discrimination, and Consent Law.”
She explains that teens, regardless of how they look physically, “are maturing, but they are not mature.”
The pre-frontal cortex of the brain isn’t fully developed until people reach their mid-20s, Drobac said. Teens aren’t mature enough to agree to have sex before 16, the legal age of consent in Indiana.
Especially with the internet, teens are less safe in some ways than they once were. Even as teens age, parents should monitor their activity online, Drobac noted.
In general, adults should educate children in a tangible, honest way rather than participating in abstinence-only education or having students sign a vow to not have sex, she said.
“Adults need to look to their own behavior, too, which a lot of adults don’t want to do,” Drobac said. “They don’t want to be listed as part of the problem.”