By Hope Elena Sardella
Professor Gary Ross
LSCJ–2283-201 – Introduction to Criminal Justice
University of Oklahoma – College of Professional and Continuing Studies
I certify that I have read a student’s Guide to Academic Integrity at the University of Oklahoma, and this paper is an original paper composed by me for this course. Except where properly cited and attributed, it has not been copied or closely reworded from any other source and has not been submitted as a whole, or in part, for credit in any other course at OU or any other educational institution. It has not been created or submitted for any other purpose such as a job assignment at my workplace or any other agency.
At this point, the United States must confront the death star of Sexually Violent Predators (SVP) prevailing and implanted in Child Welfare Systems across the universe. A paramount pattern of child sex abuse in foster care was reported by the U.S Department of Justice (USDJ), from the Attorney General’s Office of the Southern District of California in which a fifty-year-old San Diego Pediatric Nurse, Micheal William Lutts, stood trial in federal court to plead guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation and one count of distributing child pornography, of a premature 2-month-old boy as well as an 11-month-old girl who was placed in his care (The U.S Department of Justice, 2015, p. 1). Grounds to establish to be significant case is the time in which the crime was committed, and the individuals whom committed it. It proves a sophisticated network of individuals whom plotted and executed a series of heinous sexual crimes on children, and in this case, the victims are premature infants, whom Lutts more than likely obtain easy access to gaining foster care guardianship to because he was a Pediatric Nurse (United States Department of Justice. 2015). The victims were within a certain age range that was desirable to the perpetrator, and the perpetrator was in a particular position of authority that would allow him the access to his commodity.
So we see that we have two very key elements for opportunity of crime; Time & Power. The age range chosen by the predator is equally important, and begs researchers to further explore answers to a predators choices in the age range of victim. I hypothesize that the choices of the predators victims are do in large to the development of memory of the child. If the predator gains access to their victim before the time in which their brain develops a visual recall this would more then likely be the ideal time for the predator. In the USDJ’s formal announcement, Lutts confessed to fifteen occurrences beginning in July of two-thousand-fifteen until August, whereupon the defendant took photos and film productions of his heinous crimes being committed upon the infants in sexually categorical circumstances (United States Department of Justice, 2015, p. 1). Through the process of adjudication, Lutts secured an astonishingly lenient plea deal in light of the staggering charges, and the manner in which the crimes were accomplished. The defendant had been discovered by the Federal Beau of Investigation (FBI) to have had sixteen articles of evidence depicting sexual crimes on the infants, Lutts only admitted to fifteen of those articles and through adjudication only was charged one count of distribution of child pornography, along with lumping the all the occurrences of sexual abuse into two counts. Often the sway and leniency towards sex offenders speak for itself when such monstrous crimes are not treated with the magnitude they deserve. Furthermore, the victims, who were only two and eleven months old at the time, are mostly unknown to the public. In the final plea agreement, U.S Magistrate Judge Jill L. Burkhardt gave Lutts the option to relinquish his home, which he did, but there is no clear understanding of how Child Welfare in San Diego intends to use that money for the betterment of the children or if they will retain the money for the victims in a fund for them when they are of age. Ultimately it is unclear if the victims who were just infants will receive proper post– adjudication in the matter.
The crimes committed by Lutts were calculating, cognitive, and evil. Critical facts were discovered by the FBI through Lutts sending emails of photos of himself to a known pedophile network; in one particular photo exposed his genitals directly next to the infant with the hospital-band identifying the child was still in the hospital at the nic-u, subsequent videos, were identified of Lutts raping the child as the child screams (United States Department of Justice, 2015, p. 1). There are no easy answers to why the foster-care systems across the nation have been thriving safe havens for pedophile networks. Scholars for decades have identified the main issues in child-welfare, to no avail, and these injustices continue to persist. Haeuser, Stenlund & Daniel (1977) affirms that child-welfare agencies across the nation’s main downfall are their inability to move away from their current methods of child abuse alleviation through the use of foster care or forms of institutionalization. The previous evidence speaks to how experts have thoroughly reviewed the current child welfare systems as often causing more harm, yet society condones these methods. If the child-welfare systems are not serving the people they were designed for, then; they must serve someone else’s purpose, ultimately leaving the states in an enormous position of liability.
At present, laws that were designed for the welfare of children to safeguard the bonds of kinship have only ever resulted in accomplishing a contradictory consequence of advancing the destruction of the family unit and putting children in a prime position to become victims of further abuses that exist within the system (Haeuser et al. 1997, pg. 18). In examining this material, one can see that since nineteen-seventy-seven scholars have attested that foster-care and institutions only endanger children and destroy the American family. To understand the atrocities of sex crimes and how they persist, this essay employs the disciple of criminal justice to make sense of these crimes against humanity by reviewing the process of adjudication of sex offenders about using mental illness as a defense and the implications of the current process. In closing, the analysis will review the post-adjudication in children who report sexual abuse.
The History of SVP Adjudication
Within the subject of criminal justice, the process of adjudication is a necessary procedure concludes a battle that is legal in context, as well as serving as the official declaration of a verdict in the judicial process, which involves an audience by a tribunal court following notification of lawful proof (adjudication. 2008). The process of adjudicating sexual deviance and violent crimes has become very complicated but could not have been possible without the public outrage against these crimes that had been mostly kept quiet for some time in American society. Hamilton et al. (2013) state that overtime societies faced panic towards sexually violent predators (SVP), which has led the public to influence and shape legislative authority to seek methods to diminish the general population’s observable hazards by tranquilizing public fear. In order to accomplish this, the government and the laws must develop a means to prosecute sex crimes, which are present are using solutions to control the populations of sex offenders using forms of social control through “medicalization,” at which point the law engages in the specific uses of psychiatric disorders attached to odd sexual choices to continue to rationalize a multitude of criminal and civil crimes behavior (Hamilton, M., 2013, pg. 536).
Consequences of Law-Psychology Adjudication
At present, society is using a combined form of medical diagnosis for crimes that involve sexual deviance. The consequences of using psychiatric disorders can have critical legal repercussions and can either work for or against a defendant’s defense. At present, the association of a diagnosis of paraphilia gives grounds for authorities to intervene on the accused defendant’s freedoms and personal information; criminal prosecution to turn down the defendant’s ability to bail out of jail awaiting trial; secure long-term prison sentences vs. house arrest; enhance a defendant’s currents charges to support as a mitigating factor in aggravation; is usually met with a long-term sentence in order to ensure the protection of society (pg. 537). For example, research has shown that reasons that would require a court to pursue consulting services of forensic medical analysis that results in a confirmed paraphilias diagnosis, may look favorable for the defendant; however, the actions are meaningful signs that the result will end in forcible detention (pg. 537). But what many scholars don’t address is that the exact diagnoses used to impede on an individuals rights, is then used to make claims in the defendants defense in lou of civil liberties violations, carving legal pathways for the defendant to use the same diagnosis as a weapon of virtue. SVP laws and the agents that promote the continuance of Law-Psychiatry interface birthed a wolf in sheep’s clothing, basing their advances on pedestals of liberty and privacy which consequentially interprets laws designed to protect society from sexually violent predators into violations of the SVP’s rights (Moser & Kleinplatz, cited in Hamilton. 2013. pg. 31, para. 1). The continuance of such rationales in law are deeply alarming.
What Does the Application of Paraphilia diagnosis accomplish for the defendant?
The application of paraphilia as the center for logic that compelled a sex crime can be haggled with the court to reduce the sentence if the defendant and their attorney can convince the courts it’s justifiable (pg. 538). In capital cases, paraphilia diagnosis can be applied to talk to the Judge and Jury out of sentencing an individual to death by promoting the diagnosis in a manner to support a case of incompetency “Insanity Defense.” (pg. 538).
Aiding the Interests of Sexually Violent Predators through development of the
“Sexually Violent Predator Myth”
Conglomerates of scholars have poetically waxed their way into convincing the public that sex crimes are a legal and public issue caused by an oversaturation of media coverage that creates an illusion that there are more predators then there are victims, they have given a name for the whole charade coining their illusions a Social-Construct (Petrunik et al, cited in Hamilton. 2013. pg. 31. para. 1). Consequentially the “Myth of the Sexually Violent Predator”, subscribes to a belief system that is a social construct of the agents invested in them; to give the illusion of a false social construct, is a social construct in itself. Developed by the people whom developed the social construct which it serves best ; I.E the individuals who commit sex crimes. According to what I’ll call the “Myth of the Myth” the world is crazy, living in a crazy town, and all the victims of sex abuse are just entirely lying if the sex offenders could have it their way. Oh wait, they have, haven’t they?
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Rodriquez, F. (n.d). University of Oklahoma.
Cognitive Dissonance is a predictable system that governs others’ behavior when their belief system undeniably is tested, and the results prove them to be wrong. When the individual is given a choice to leave their previous constraint of thought, a portion of the population will abandon the rationale. In juxtaposition, the realities that govern these with the continuance of the same path of study have been sustained in that individual through the high psychological investment of belief systems. They are much more likely to become even more fervent and zealous in their beliefs.
References
Adjudication. (2008). West’s Encyclopedia of American Law (Ed. 2). Retrieved from https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/adjudication
Cognitive Dissonance Theory. Frank Rodriquez. University of Oklahoma
Hamilton, M. (2013). Adjudicating Sex Crimes as Mental Disease. Pace Law Review, 33(2), 536–599.
United States Department of Justice. (2015) Pediatric Nurse Pleads Guilty To Sexual Exploitation Of Children In His Care. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/pediatric-nurse-pleads-guilty-sexual-exploitation-children-his-care