“It’s where the literature was,” Longo, a founder of the international Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, told me not long ago. Sex-offender therapy for juveniles was a new field in the 1980s, and Longo, like other therapists, was basing his practices on what he knew: the adult sex-offender-treatment models. I sexually offended against a 10-year-old boy I made him lick my penis three times.” And at the beginning of each group session, the boys introduced themselves much as an alcoholic begins an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting: “I’m Brian, and I’m a sex offender.
They created “relapse-prevention plans,” based on the idea that sex-offending is like an addiction and that teenagers need to be watchful of any “triggers” (pornography, anger) that might initiate their “cycle” of reoffending. As part of their treatment, the boys had to keep journals - which Longo read - in which they detailed their sexual fantasies and logged how frequently they masturbated to those fantasies. Their offenses ranged from fondling girls a few years younger than they were to outright rape of young children. In the early 1980s, a therapist named Robert Longo was treating adolescent boys who had committed sex offenses.
