B.C. SUSPENDS PENILE SEX TESTS / Part 263 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

Headline news Yesterday.
The CBC headline is “B.C. suspends penile sex tests on young offenders”
Warning: You may be offended by the description of a procedure in my blog today and if you think you might be offended, sign off now.
Proviso: You should not be offended but rather read on so that you can be offended by the Government of British Columbia who were responsible for allowing this procedure as yet one further evidence of the deficit in wisdom within so many departments responsible for helping Children, Youth and Families.

The test is called a penile plethysmograph, and its purpose is to assess young sex offenders and thereby to determine their risk of re-offending after treatment. In theory, that sounds reasonable. This is a male specific test because during the test a device is attached to a youth's penis. His genitals are covered with a sheet during the testing. The device is designed to measure physical sexual arousal. Theoretically the test will predict whether offenders have gained control of their deviant arousal patterns through treatment or if they have not learned how to suppress deviance and will be a strong risk for re-offending. Take into consideration we are discussing testing the libido response of adolescent males. As researchers in an adjoining room monitor the adolescent responses through one way glass, the subject is shown images of adults, youth, children and babies in various states of undress while simultaneously a story is read that describes sexual activity sometimes coercive or forced. If a stimulation effect is noted then a deduction is made that there is some form of sexual deviancy.

QUALITY RESEARCH, RIGHT? NOT! The reliability and validity of this procedure in clinical assessment have not been well established. The premise is clear enough. Show images to a youth that stimulate sexual fantasy or thought and they will accomplish precisely that. That's not research. That's natural. The fact is that the respondent male sexual response may be manifest whether the youth is deviant or not. What an inane quantum leap to assume deviancy from a natural response to titillating provocative scenes that you are responsible for placing before the subject. What a certain way to create yet another scenario of false allegation and injustice! And further, the researches themselves, jaded and experienced as they may be, experienced in life and sexual activity as they may be, may not respond to the same sexual stimuli as readily as a youth, but what if they themselves also experience some arousal on the other side of that one way glass? That aroused response would not attest to deviancy would it?

Here we go once again. The tests are conducted by Youth Forensic Psychiatric Services, part of the Ministry for Children and Family Development. (Go to the link above and explore the left column index). The psychiatric service comes under the authority of the ministry for Children and Family Services and on any given day, there are up to 1,300 B.C. youth aged 12 to 17 involved in the service, of which 75 to 125 are sex offenders. In the interest of protecting society and helping or penalizing the offenders within it, we have a ministry and professionals condoning a procedure that is inherently questionable, repugnant to many, improper even to many liberated and objective observers, then being discovered, disclosed, chided and embarrassed. Robert Holmes, the president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association revealed this practice this week demanded that the government intervene after it learned of the tests  (you will find a lot of reading at this BCCLA link).

When she learned this she jumped on it. Within hours of the provincial advocate for children and youth Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond raising concerns with senior ministry officials, the government suspended the sex testing. Yesterday she announced she would conduct a review and she said, "It is extremely upsetting to me, as a children's' representative....I doubt there's a judge in B.C. who has any idea that adolescents being referred to this service (by the courts) are being shown pornographic material while having a device attached to their penis... They have assured me this testing is not happening at the moment and they will not continue this testing until my office has completed a review of the matter. … I think we're going to look very carefully at the balancing of the rights of the youth, their vulnerability, the process that was used," she said. "Is this a necessary tool? Is it valuable? I think we're really going to have to look at all of the key issues with this." Of course Mary Polak must seek to explain what on earth her Ministry is thinking so she said, "The ministry relies on the advice of medical professionals and clinical practitioners with regard to research and therapeutic intervention as it relates to the treatment of youth who have committed — and have been found guilty of — serious sexual offenses.” She also said that she takes the concerns seriously and will co-operate with the review by the Representative for Children and Youth.

Here is the actual explanation of the science behind the penile plethysmograph as presented by the Forensic Psychology Centre in Brisbane.
American Psychiatric Association, have called the test unreliable. 

And if Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond needs a lead, here's one. The Supreme Court of Canada adopted the Daubert doctrine in R. v . J.-L.J. [2000] 2 S.C.R. 600, which upheld a lower court's decision to exclude testimony by a psychiatrist who had administered several tests on the accused, including a penile plethysmograph:

A level of reliability that is quite useful in therapy because it yields some information about a course of treatment is not necessarily sufficiently reliable to be used in a court of law to identify or exclude the accused as a potential perpetrator of an offence. In fact, penile plethysmography has received a mixed reception in Quebec courts: Protection de la jeunesse – 539, [1992] R.J.Q. 1144; R. c. Blondin, [1996] Q.J. No. 3605 (QL) (S.C.); L. Morin and C. Boisclair in "La preuve d'abus sexuel: allégations, déclarations et l'évaluation d'expert" (1992), 23 R.D.U.S. 27. Efforts to use penile plethysmography in the United States as proof of disposition have largely been rejected: People v. John W., 185 Cal.App.3d 801 (1986); Gentry v. State, 443 S.E.2d 667 (Ga. Ct. App. 1994); United States v. Powers, 59 F.3d 1460 (4th Cir. 1995); State v. Spencer, 459 S.E.2d 812 (N.C. App. 1995); J. E. B. Myers et al., "Expert Testimony in Child Sexual Abuse Litigation" (1989), 68 Neb. L. Rev. 1, at pp. 134-35; J. G. Barker and R. J. Howell, "The Plethysmograph: A Review of Recent Literature" (1992), 20 Bull. Am. Acad. of Psychiatry & L. 13.

• See also article by Pamela Fayerman, Vancouver Sun
• And if you think comments on this blog will be critical look at the almost 300 comments on CBC's page.
• Click this link or type in to Google the words, "Mary Polak + penile plethysmography," and you will get lengthy list of potential reading.
  
  

  Then on Friday the 30th we learn that one of the medical technicians who conducted the tests was charged with sexual assault this month, in a case not related to the individual's government work. Mary Polak made that revelation as she shut down the testing at least temporarily.