The mug shots below are of members of society that were arrested or tried this month (July) for their sexual crimes. Not all of these people are “sex addicts” but I believe there is some sort of disorder within these people to have them commit these crimes against others.
I am not posting these mugshots to punish these men and women; their punishment is already coming at the hands of the courts and our legal system. I post these images so that everyone can see that these men and women look like anyone else in our community; our teachers, coaches, fathers, mothers, pastors, police officers, etc… The addiction has no boundaries, it affects anyone and everyone. My sponsor once made a joke about attending his first recovery meeting, stating that he was expecting to walk into a room of a bunch of men wearing fedoras and long overcoats as is the typical stereotype of “flashers” or “sex addicts” in our American society. This may be true in some cases, but a large majority of sexual addicts are just everyday people, like you or me.
You should be able to hover over the pictures and see a description of their crime.
The above men and women entered into what is considered Level 2 and Level 3 sexual addiction. The reality of the addiction is that if you took a brain scan of a sex addict acting out with Level 1 behaviors versus the above, the scans would be nearly identical. That is to say, there is very little difference to the human brain, the high one gets from acting out with masturbation and pornography and those acting out with level 2 and 3 sex crimes. Level 1 includes sexual activity “socially acceptable” by society; masturbation, viewing pornography, visiting strip clubs, prostitution, etc… Levels 2 & 3 include sexual activities that are not socially acceptable and in some cases, morally offensive as in the case of Jerry Sandusky and a few others shown above. To learn more about the three levels of sexual addiction, please read Chapter 2: The Levels of Addiction in Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction by Patrick Carnes, Ph.D.
All the above are representations of “The Empty Chair” that sits in the middle of our recovery meeting circle. The empty chair represents those members that have left the sexual addiction recovery program in search of their true bottom, those that are suffering the consequences of their addiction in prison, and those whose disease drove them to take their own life.
May God grant these people serenity.
Take what you like and leave the rest.
