My name is C.J., and in 2017 I pled guilty to one count of possession of child pornography. Since the moment of my arrest, I have maintained a full and abiding belief that no matter what happened in my life, there was no legitimate excuse for doing what I did. Even though I neither produced this pornography nor shared it, I have always assumed full responsibility for my actions and have spent years wracked by the guilt of this offense, being convinced that I must be a monster. I was so paralyzed by the shock of the events that it was difficult at first to parse how I’d arrived here.

I beat myself up so severely because for my whole life I had considered myself extremely cognizant of the dangers of sexual abuse/deviancy. When I was five I experienced a catastrophic event which turned my entire world on its head. I remember so vividly the pain of that day in the bathroom stall. I have nightmares so violent that to this day my family still informs me they hear me screaming constantly in my sleep. But when it first happened, the sheer enormity of the shame and confusion caused me to react by becoming absurdly secretive. Because it was someone within my parents religion who did this, I remembered how worried I was (yes, even at five years old) that they would lose their faith over me. I began to never share anything about my internal life with my family. After I was molested by my uncle when I was seven, I retreated even further within myself.

My secrecy became an obsession. It is almost impossible to exaggerate how all encompassing this behavior became. Until the age of 34, I had never even told my family about a single girlfriend I’ve had, despite dating over a dozen girls in my life. They used to joke I was gay, but the truth is I wasn’t even a little homosexual – I was just terrified of being judged for who I dated, or having to explain why my relationships ended. My parents were extremely open with me and my siblings, and the lines of communication were open – I just was too ashamed to utilize those lines. And the longer I went and the more secrets I picked up – from my drug addictions on up to my pornography addiction – the more I felt compelled to keep it all hidden. My mom was very neurotic about allowing us alone with men other than my father, and early on I learned that was because my mom experienced a level of sexual/physical abuse as a child so profoundly obscene that it made my own experience feel quaint by comparison. This simply led to me being even more secretive, as I was such a sensitive child I feared she would believe she failed totally as a mother if I told her. When I finally did tell her late into my adult years, she did indeed take it extremely hard and to this day has never been the same.

One of the reasons I feared telling my family about my relationships is that I felt eventually it would force me to explain precisely why they typically never last longer than six months. Relationships for me are extremely hard, due to the severity of my depression and anxiety. Women often find me too overly negative about life, not assertive enough (since I avoid confrontation like the plague), or find it hard to accept how difficult intimacy is for me (at least in the start of any relationship). When I am first getting to know someone I will literally flinch when they go to touch me, and it is very hard to tell someone why that is (since it is a reflection of phobias that have existed ever since I was first molested). How do I tell someone genuinely that it is not them, that I really do like them and desire that physical intimacy, when my body flinches no matter what I think? Most internalize it as a personal rejection, or start realizing I have too much baggage for them to handle. And usually that means they don’t stay longer than three to six months. So this led to devastating loneliness, and horrendous overcompensation. Whenever I landed a girlfriend, I would buy them literally anything they wanted, would drive them anywhere they desired in a desperate attempt to get them to stick around long enough to look past my tics and phobias, and by the end they would abuse that giving quality and would start to lose respect for me. I was often told to “man up”, because I would refuse to argue or tell them no. Those that didn’t do that would simply tell me my own head was getting in the way of healthy relationships, and that I needed to work on me before I got into a serious relationship. As the years passed and I got older and older and saw my associates and siblings begin to get married and have kids, I started feeling even more isolated. What was wrong with me? Why didn’t anyone want me? My use of drugs started late in my teens but only started being a real issue in my 20s, and got worse as the years went on without a. answer for how to fix why I was the way I was.

So around the age of 32 after a particularly terrible dating experience, I gave up. I upped my pornography viewing, and my heroin addiction came back with a vengeance. As I became addicted to porn, I noticed my tastes were becoming more and more extreme. I had thought I had fairly average sexual appetites, but somehow after years of viewing porn I had drifted to uglier and uglier places. I would go on torrent sites and download hundreds of gigs of porn, often never even looking at the contents of what I downloaded.

One day I stumbled on a torrent website I was unfamiliar with. Later I learned it was Russian in origin. I thought I might have luck finding porn I’d never seen before, but eventually I downloaded a file with a name and description you could in no way tell what the contents were. I don’t know why but my intuition must have told me something was wrong, because I went into my settings and turned my upload speed down to 0 kb/s, just so I wouldn’t risk sharing the file with anyone if it did end up shady. Instead, I simply should have walked away. But by this point downloading unlimited porn was almost reflexive, and my internal moral walls had long ago been eroded away. So I downloaded it.

As soon as it was done, I opened the folder I had downloaded. And I was stunned by what I saw. It was images of underage erotica. It is impossible for anyone who has not been in this situation to know why I made the choices I did, but my whole messed up life seem bent toward ensuring I did not make the smartest choice in that moment. I should have reported it to police, but as I had several run ins with police in the past for my various drug offenses I was too scared to do that. Instead after deliberating for two or three days, I simply deleted the file and tried to pretend nothing happened. I was so full of shame and had spent my life in such secrecy that it only felt natural to hide this too.

When police raided my home three months later they made note of all the things I said here in the discovery, that I hadn’t shared the file and that there was no child porn on my computer since I had deleted it. But they were still able to determine I had downloaded that file at one time, since they recovered the hashtag of the same file I had downloaded in the history of my torrent browser.

They threatened to give me a charge for every individual image that was contained in the original folder, even though I had only downloaded one thing. Sixty five charges they piled on me, and said I could spend decades in jail if I didn’t plea. I know I felt incredibly guilty and shameful, so out of fear of a tremendous sentence as well as genuinely overwhelming self-loathing I agreed to plead guilty to one count in exchange for a one to two year special probation. I took every program for self improvement I could think of in jail, and got enrolled in a special transitional housing block. In order to go to this block, I had to be moving to the nearby area. But since my home jail was not where I typically live, I asked my unit manager to begin my paperwork to move my probation to the city. I got accepted into a mentorship program, where they would help me the second I left prison to get housing and work. Then one week before I maxed out, they tell me they forgot to do the paperwork so I had to go back to the mountains to do my probation. Since I had gone through a great deal of effort to move my life to the city, I now had nowhere to live up in the mountains. And since the mentorship required I be on probation in the city, I lost that too. So suddenly I left jail and am homeless. I’ve never been homeless in my life. I called my probation officer from the mountains and told him I have no idea how I’m supposed to see him, as I’m broke and homeless in the city. A roundtrip bus ticket there was 72 dollars. He said that wasn’t his problem and if I didn’t show up I would go to jail. So I didn’t show up, and two months later they arrested me again for probation violation. I was stunned when my judge resentenced me to one to two years in jail AGAIN. So I basically maxed this one too, which meant I had essentially done four years in prison back to back.

When on probation, I took several lie detector tests. I passed the questions when they asked if I was attracted to children, and if I ever touched a child as an adult. I said no, and I passed. And this is the truth: I have never touched a child, nor am I attracted to them. This doesn’t mitigate that I downloaded the file I did, but you would think it would demonstrate I was not as high a risk. But all along the way, in sessions and with my probation officer I was made to feel irredeemable. I internalized this; I began to believe it.

When I finished serving four years in jail, I was a changed man. I was a heroin addict since I was 20 years old, and I was never sober for more than a few days whenever I was on the street after the age of 32. But after I left prison, I resolved to finally get clean. My brother passed away from pancreatic cancer while I sat in jail, which also contributed to my “growing up.” I couldn’t forgive myself for allowing my life to become what it had become.

So I spent two years trying to fix my life. I got a job and within six months was promoted to supervisor of night shift in the whole warehouse. I brought a car, I rented a place. I never missed a day of work and my family for the first time began to be able to trust my word. They could tell I was changing.

Since I was very young I have had severe anxiety and depression. In my twenties, I became a hoarder with garbage literally piled over the top of my bed. I spent years clawing my way out of that addiction, but I did too. All of this was because of how crippling my mental health was, I literally cannot remember a day I was ever happy. So when I got out of state prison, I promised to really take a renewed shot at fighting mental health. I had four therapists simultaneously, including the sex therapist, and still nothing worked until I met Stephanie at drug and alcohol treatment. This therapist saved my life, made me feel like maybe I still do deserve one more chance at redemption. She suggested I take a genetic test to determine if I am resistant to medication. The results shocked me, showing that pretty much zero medications on the market would work for my depression. It felt like the answer I’ve been looking for, so I started looking into alternative treatments.

At this point I started having hope again that maybe it will be possible to fix my life, despite my record as a person who committed a sex crime.

Boy was I wrong.

At the end of year two I had to take my third yearly polygraph. I passed if I had looked at any pornography, and the other question I passed too. But then he told me I failed the question “did I have any special alone time with a child.” This rocked my world like nothing else.

To understand why, you must understand how I was living my life at the time. Every Friday of my own accord I would send a status update about my life to my probation officer. I worked from 11pm to 7am and then went straight home and slept. I have literally zero friends and zero associates. I hang out with no one, I see no one – except my mom, dad, sister and my employees at work. I never missed a day. I was constantly called in for overtime, and as a supervisor could not say no. I deliberately went food shopping as early as humanly possible, just so I wouldn’t risk running into children. I know I’m not attracted to kids, but I was always terrified of what might set the lie detector off. And given the severity of my anxiety, I was always having full blown panic attacks as I was taking them.

So after I failed, they brought me in and had a meeting. They asked what I was hiding. I repeatedly informed them I was hiding nothing, and they kept telling me the lie detector was basically fail proof and that therefore I must be lying. I knew how scientifically flawed lie detectors were, and they kept trying to convince me this wasn’t so.

Then they told me don’t worry we know you can’t afford another test, so we will cover it.  Just focus on trying to think about why you failed. After this my life started collapsing. I could think about nothing but the lie detector test. It preoccupied 100 percent of my thoughts, and my anxiety about it started filtering into my life. I got into a car crash because I was so preoccupied. I forgot to change the oil in my car, and it literally burned up on the freeway. At work, people started to notice how distracted I was, I started making obvious mistakes with the machines. I started internalizing that I was going to fail no matter what, despite the fact I told the truth on all my lie detector tests.

I started thinking how absurd the original results were: I had never touched a child in my life, which I passed. My original charge was possession of child pornography, and I had a pornography addiction leading up to that. Yet somehow I passed that I wasn’t looking at any porn, but according to the test I had now moved onto actual children? I was furious.

My therapist told them given my anxiety, she didn’t think it was the best idea to give me a lie detector. But they were unmoved. So I started bargaining. I told them to take my phone and analyze it, they refused. I asked them at least to consider putting an ankle bracelet on me if I fail instead of outright jail (I had seen this be allowed for another far worse sex criminal), yet they said no. I begged them not to derail all I worked for two years over full belief in this garbage technology, but they declined and said it is what it is.

Then, a week before I was set to take the test, they call me in and ask if I have the money to take the test. I was stunned. I responded that they knew I didn’t, that they told me I didn’t have to worry about the cost and that any extra money I had was put back toward fixing my car problem. My PO knew this before I entered the room because we discussed it numerous times, and them telling me I wasn’t going to have to pay was fifty percent of all we had talked about at that first meeting after I failed the first lie detector of that year.

And then he called his supervisor onto the room. She asked what my problem was and I explained. Then my p.o. did something I’ll never forget. He lied. He said he never said that, despite the fact that I had been telling my family and therapists this was the case since the second I left that initial meeting. And now he is pretending he never said it?

Finally the supervisor agreed to giving me the “privilege” of a 45 day extension to allow me to save up another 400 dollars and she left the room.

Then I turned to my p.o. and said “really? You know we discussed this constantly, and now you are lying about it!” And then he looked me in the eyes and said something that chilled me to the bone: “that’s my story and I’m sticking by it, and if you continue to say otherwise I’ll just throw you in jail right now.”

For two years straight, I had only one real write up – I had purchased a Nintendo switch without realizing i had to tell him about it – which he ended up allowing me to keep anyway. And he made me get a medical marijuana card after a single suspect drug test result, which I did. For two years he would drop by completely unannounced and completely unpredictably, and I was always home, always alone. He knew how difficult it was for me to form relationships, how isolated I was. Yet he was convinced that somewhere in the world I had a secret girlfriend who had a secret kid, and that this is why I failed the lie detector test. But when I begged him to analyze my phone or put an ankle bracelet on so I could disabuse them of this notion, they flatly refused.

Eventually I took the test again and failed, and they sent me back to Philadelphia county jail, even though they knew how dangerous it was and that I knew nobody in Philadelphia. There I was almost killed while waiting to see the judge. And my mother had heart failure, almost dying on the operating table. I lost my job and home after two weeks because I couldn’t get out in time, despite telling the judge at my arraignment that if we can get this resolved quickly I would still have a job and a place to live. After spending exactly thirty days in jail, the judge released me to live with my parents.

For the last year, I have spent all of my time homebound, taking care of my ailing mother and sister. I do all the chores in the house from cleaning to laundry, and most of the time also prepare my mom’s special meals and such.

The problem is I can’t find any job willing to take me, nor any volunteer center to allow me in. My only desire is to be given a chance to redeem myself in the eyes of society, but no one seems willing to give me a shot.

In every job I’ve had in life I’ve performed exemplary and have been promoted. I worked seven years at an Army Depot as a lead worker, years as head of night shift human resources at the Johnson and Johnson warehouse (promoted to this despite only being there three months at the time and despite having zero human resource training due to my work ethic). I became a tier four machine operator at a melt-blown plastic insulation company and worked there for years. I am always without exception an exhaustive worker, and every time I was forced to take i.q. tests in jail I would score 135, so I am very capable of learning quickly and on my feet. I graduated technical school with a computer programming certificate. I can type anywhere from 120-140wpm, and am extremely fastidious.

But no one seems to want me anymore, and no one will allow a sex offender to volunteer anywhere. I’ve been off drugs since early 2019, and am still in ongoing treatment. I am no longer on probation, but still regularly go to multiple therapists.

And yet I can find no path to redeem myself, no unambiguous path I should take that will allow me a career to support myself, no place where I can do good to help try to repay society for what I’ve done in my past.

So my question is if anyone knows of any resources for a low level sex offender who only has to register for the next ten years, where I could do some good in this world or support myself? Groups dedicated to networking for ex sex offenders? A path you’d recommend I take, a course I should apply to, a state I should move to, somewhere in this country where there are people working in good faith to provide a path back to societal reintegration? I am running out of hope and I’ve searched for years. I just need one person to look at me and realize I deserve a second chance, and I will never disappoint them.

Anyway, thank you for any time you have taken out of your day to read this, I hope it gives some new perspective. Finally and above all, I would like to remind everyone that we must never forget about the victims in these sexual crimes, and how tragically such victimization can ruin their entire lives. I am truly sorry for those I hurt during the commission of my crime. The only way we are going to reduce these crimes is by bringing this stuff into the light, so we can see it for what it is. Having these conversations is the first step, I believe.

Thanks,
CJ

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