Sexual Predators: Mental Illness or Abnormality? a Psychiatrist's Perspective

• Publication year: 1992
• Citation: Vol. 15 No. 03

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND LAW REVIEWVolume 15, No. 3SPRING 1992

Sexual Predators: Mental Illness or Abnormality? A Psychiatrist's Perspective

James D. Rear don, M.D. (fn*)

I. Psychiatric Interpretation of Sexually Violent Predators

The absence of a psychiatrist on the Governor's Task Force on Community Protection, which formulated the Washington Sexually Violent Predators Act,(fn1) produced a profound misunderstanding regarding the diagnosis and treatment of sex offenders. To correct this situation, the Washington State Psychiatric Association (WSPA) has attempted to educate Washington legislators about deficiencies in the Act presented to them by the Task Force. The WSPA has testified at legislative hearings considering passage of the Sexually Violent Predators statute. Likewise, the WSPA has filed an amicus curiae brief in the In re Young case now pending before the Washington Supreme Court, which is considering the constitutionality of the statute.(fn2)

In drafting the statute, the Task Force created and defined a new mental disorder, "sexually violent predator," declaring it to be either a form of mental abnormality or a new type of personality disorder.(fn3) The WSPA recognized that the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III-R(fn4) did not define any type of mental disorder called sexually violent predator. Thus, the WSPA assumed that the legislature was attempting to declare a class of criminals (i.e. sex offenders) as mentally ill. Because psychiatrists have traditionally defined and treated mental illness, the WSPA was disturbed that a lay body, namely the Washington State Legislature, was being encouraged to legislate psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. Furthermore, if the legislature were successful in calling sex offenders mentally disordered, it might expand the definition to include other criminals, such as car thieves or bank robbers, claiming that they, too, had some mental abnormality or personality disorder that made them likely to steal cars or commit robberies.

The WSPA knew that there was no scientifically valid treatment for these sexually violent predators. Aside from the fact that this classification includes a heterogeneous group of child molesters, rapists, and violent criminals, the treatment of sex offenders had been declining in recent years...