Can Offenders Really Change?

Alicia Kozak sits down with Rachel, a former leader of a sex-offender supervision unit who now works in victim services. Drawing from years spent monitoring offenders and protecting communities, Rachel shares what she has learned about manipulation, risk, rehabilitation and the gaps that allow victims to fall through the system. With blunt honesty and unexpected dark humor, they examine whether meaningful change is possible, and what public safety requires when there are no perfect answers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, I'm Alicia Kozak and this is the Lei Shia
Kozac Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I
survived being kidnapped and abused as a child, and I've
spent over twenty years working to protect kids and change laws,
speaking out, trying to prevent this from happening to other people,
to other kids, to other families. And since I started

(00:22):
speaking out at fourteen, there's one question that people have
asked me over and over and over. Even though I
was so young and in the middle of all of this,
they would ask me, can sex offenders really change? Kids
have asked me parents, teachers, law enforcement, legislators, even people

(00:43):
who help run the sex offender registries. And my answer
has stayed almost the same, even as I've learned so
much more as an adult. And what I want to believe,
what I want the answer to be is yes, because
that would make the world safer, and because I do
believe in second chances. But when you choose to harm
a child, or harm really anybody in this way, that

(01:06):
is a line you can't uncross. The circumstances that allowed
that crime to happen once can absolutely line up again.
I've seen it in my own case and in the
stories of people I've worked closely with that many of
these offenders do reoffend, and you don't need a new
arrest to have a new victim. So it's not enough
to say the numbers go down, the statistics look good,

(01:27):
everyone's safer. Now, that's kind of easy. It's an easy answer,
but it buries the reality and leaves people at risk.
So my guest today has lived in the middle of
this tension for years. For about a decade, she ran
the sex offender Supervision Unit Probation and Parole. She comes
in after the crime has been committed and after the
sentence has been served, and her job is to know

(01:49):
these people in a way that most of us never will,
and to connect the dots and to do everything she
can to keep them from hurting someone again. Now she
works in victim services, helping her community respond to sexual assault,
domestic violence, human trafficking, and stalking. Rachel has seen both
sides of the system. The offender is sitting across from
her and the victims and communities who live with the fallout.

(02:12):
She is smart, she is blunt, and she brings a dark,
really very funny honesty about what this work actually looks
like behind the scenes and she is a total badass.
Today we get into what change really means in this context,
what she's learned from years of supervising sex offenders, and
how she thinks about risk, hope, and safety after everything

(02:36):
that she has witnessed. So let's get into it. Rachel,
thank you so much for joining me today. I am
so excited to have this conversation today. It is sure
to be an interesting one. But before we get into this,
we went over your official title. But what is it
that you do?

Speaker 2 (02:57):
I would say that I'm a fixer and a fine
I try to make sure that the good guys don't
have to slow down because something isn't there, Like I
make sure that bridge is built so they can get
across it. So that's kind of my role as it
is now. It hasn't always been like that. I'm glad
I get the chance to come in and try and
fill gaps in the system. I've seen a lot of

(03:20):
the system. There's a lot of gaps. But it was
doing all of this awesome work that brought us, you know, here,
brought me here to this podcast, this awesome world, you know,
And so it's been it's been awesome. I'm excited to
get here.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
A fixer and a finder. I love that. Tell me
a little bit more about what you're fixing and finding.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Well, a lot of the bad guys they really you know,
it's cliche to say, but they live in the shadows, right,
and sometimes, like the reality is, if we just had
enough lights, there's this old Chinese proverb it is better
to light one candle than to curse the darkness. And
so I think that any little change is it could

(04:09):
it could change someone's life. You know, just if there's
a police officer, somebody doing ICAC investigations, or you know,
an advocate on the street, if they just have that
one phone number or that one website, that could make
that change that they didn't know they had before. I'm
something as simple as like, you know, there's illicit massage
businesses in our community, and the Health and Department was

(04:31):
finding them, but they didn't. They were just calling the
police patrol officers and saying like, hey, we think this
might be an illicit massage parlor. We don't think it's
a legit business, and it would just go to like
the general mass tip line. But once we pointed out
that you're going to get these calls from the health Department,
they connect them to the police Task Force on Human Trafficking,
and so just that one little connection could completely change

(04:54):
how we address those issues in our community. And you know,
it's just exciting to be able to be part of
those little you know, it's not like me doing it,
but it's like letting other people kind of guide you
to where those gaps are.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
So finding those gaps and fixing them and fixing the bridge.
I'm seeing this image of a bridge and there's all
these slats that are missing, and the victims can fall
through them, the offenders can fall through them, law enforcement
can fall through them, and you're there to help find
what they are and then come out and close those
slats up so everybody can get across.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yes, it's very poetic way to put it. I love that.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
And I'm just wondering, did you think that this is
what you would end up doing when you were younger?
Like if somebody said what do you want to be
when you grow up? Was that your answer?

Speaker 2 (05:43):
No? Absolutely not. And I remember being in college, you know,
criminology major, and I I was I remember there was
some you know, some classmates that were really into like
sexual assault, they really like their papers were on like events,
and I was like, why on earth would anybody ever
want to work in that sphere?

Speaker 1 (06:02):
What were you afraid of?

Speaker 2 (06:05):
So I, you know, it's they're so manipulative, right, And
that's like the first thing you hear is they're like
these big, dangerous, scary people. They're the predators, you know,
and you're kind of raised, especially me growing up, you know,
a woman. I was just kind of told I was
naive and just unaware, you know, just kind of like
you're a perfect person to get taken advantage of kind

(06:27):
of thing, and so like you don't who wants to
accept that? Right? And it's like, well, I don't want
to be when I'm told let me try something. Let
me go pick out the biggest scariest caseload I can
find and see how we do it. And so a
lot of it is proving like oh, oh shit, I
can do this and not just that, but I'm good
at this and I can make a difference here and
and so it was just a very unexpected twist. But

(06:51):
you find out a lot about yourself when you choose
to get into any kind of like law enforcement kind
of job. There's that moment where it's like is this
for me? You know? And so that's kind of to
me the whole point, right, how does it work? My parents,
their people be like, why did your daughter work with
sex offenders? And my parents would be like, she just
she likes to understand why people do what they do.
So it's been it was fun.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
That's something I hear a lot in the psych world
of all of this. So I buy masters and friends
in psychology and we'd always have to go around the
room in classes and they would always say why are
you here? And I'd always have a very interesting answer.
But most people's answer would be I want to know
how their minds work. I want to understand the offender.

(07:35):
I want to understand the serial killer, the murderer, the rapist.
I want to know the inner workings of their mind.
And it sounds like you would have raised your hand
baby and felt a similar that you would have felt
a similar way to that.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yes, yeah, and that's exactly right. It's why does this happen?
How did we get here? And you know it's not
coming from a naive place either of like I think
I can change them or I want to help you know,
and there's it's kind of I don't need to fix it,
I just I want to know how how we got here.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, it's amazing where our lives lead us. And like
you said, it felt like you were supposed to to
be there, that you fell into this, but it was
kind of a strange home for you, a scary home,
an interesting home, but a home nonetheless. So we're going
to talk a lot today about sex offenders, and I'm

(08:34):
just wondering, when you say sex offender, who are we
actually talking about? What is the sex offender? And then
I'd like to know what kinds of cases would land
on your desk?

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Ah, So that's a great question, and the easiest way
to answer it is I would say everybody, anybody, any
like there is no standard sex offender. Of course, there's
a lot of things they have in common, a lot
of like you can literally write books on the kinds

(09:06):
of people that commit these, especially each kind of crime,
like the kind of guy who rapes somebody's nap, the
kind of guy necessarily who always goes after children, and
that's really cool to see, like the different methods. But
it's also textbook, right. So while I can't say the
offenders are are all the same the crimes themselves. Obviously

(09:26):
you have to fit them into one box, right. I
think that people think that they're weird people, or that
there's some way you could tell, you know, it's just
kind of like your your classic like weird guy with
the mustache and glasses who like is like.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
You know, hanging out as a tread shoat.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yes, exactly, and there there are a lot of those guys.
I'm not going to dismiss kind of the typology, but
I think that the scariest misconception people have about sex
offenders is that these are not strangers or even friends
of friends. This is your father, this is your brother,
this is your priest, These are people that are these
are your husbands, These are the people closest to us.

(10:06):
And that is like any kind of predatory kind of violence,
like it's easiest to to hunt the people that are
most vulnerable in your world. And so I think that
to me is it's a lot it's it's a lot
more painful to see among the families, I think than
most people realize. I always say this, and I would
say this to new officers when they'd come on our team.

(10:27):
Is they're going to fool you, and you're never going
to see it coming. A lot of probation officers would
be like, ah, it's a chess game, and I could
see this guy coming a mile away, but they you're
dealing with the guys who got caught, you know, the
guys who aren't getting caught. You're never going to see
it coming. It's like the perfect con. You know, they
walk in and walk out and you never knew it
was there until you see the damage done. But it's

(10:52):
it's the fact that these families, after this damage has
been done of these perpetrators, like the dad still has
to love a son, you know, the moms still has
to love her daughter. Like it's the families and the
fracture there, especially when you have like an offender who
maybe you know, rape somebody and then they go to
prison for a couple of years, never enough right, and

(11:13):
they always they always get back out and you move
back home with mom and dad, and then you know,
there's like this very tricky dynamic of how do we
rebuild around that too? And so I think that's something
interesting that we don't always think of a probation is
how do you support that family supporting that circumstance too,
So it's you know, it's always complex, right.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
I can I can imagine that that is an interesting
dynamic that I think most people would believe that you
knock on an offender's door and you're working directly with
the offender, and that they live alone and they have
a lonely life and nobody with them. And what you're saying,

(12:00):
as somebody at them, do continue to have families or
live with their families and have these social relationships.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
The vast majority of them do, especially the adult males
who had families. And then maybe like your school teacher
or your youth pastor where they have like a wife's
small children and they, you know, sexually assault a fourteen
year old student at the middle school that they're teaching at,
and it's so common for the wives to stand with them.

(12:29):
But what does that mean as far as like safety goes?
So we have to and I think this is the
part about like the supervision that a lot of people
don't really understand is how well we get to know
these guys. Is it's not like check in are you
still working? Checkbox? You know, are you going your therapy checkbox?
It's this we would have them keep a masturbation log,

(12:52):
and I would see them every three to four weeks
and we go over that log with them. We talk
about what fantasies they have while they're masturbating and how
frequent they're doing it, because we know that if there's
a change in their sexual habits, that could be an indicator,
and so we have to track, you know, we're policing
their sex lives, and so you you know, you get
into really weird conversations with these guys when you're having

(13:15):
all of this, and you just you learn things like
one guy, he you know, and nothing can be perfect,
but I remember one guy he would start masturbating to
his masturbation log, and so we would we just started
being like, okay, we're just going to call it the log,
and you're going to check a box yes or a
box no if it was a healthy you know, and
we would define it to him what he felt a

(13:35):
healthy sexual face he was versus what wasn't, and so
we would kind of track it that way, and and
then you bring in like, you know, I know it's controversial,
but the sex funder post conviction polygraph testing and so
you know, of course you're like, they can lie about anything,
but we would say, have you been honest with your
probation officer about your log And so we kind of
guide it that way. But I mean we would go

(13:57):
into their houses, talk to their mom, talk to their
you know, spouse, whoever's there. I would check their deep freezer.
We were required to check the sheds in their backyard.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
A deep freezer, yes, yes, well what.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
For so, you know, like dead bodies obviously, like or
any kind of like weird.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Okay, I didn't want to just assume that.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
No, yeah, I mean that was That's the main thing.
Weird stuff. A deep freezers rarely checked, and I think
that they're kind of there's some famous cases around deep
freezers and sheds in the backyard.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
And certainly sheds, yes, yes, basements.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
We would have to talk to their employers. Sometimes we
would talk to their neighbors. We would talk at length
with these guys over whether or not they felt therapy
was working, you know, like what their aspirations were for
their professional careers. And it was kind of like a
decade of just kind of getting to ask a sex
offender at all kinds like why. So it was it

(14:56):
was interesting, No, day was the same. That is for sure.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
What is the most interesting fetish that you've heard? One
of my guests, they have a board called the Board
of Kink that they would list that day is shocking
kink her sexual interest.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
So I'm curious one of my and I you know,
you can't say you have favorites. My favorite, My favorite
fetish that I heard of was the nylon guy. And
when we think nylon, we think like silk stockings, right,
pantyhose and lingerie. But no, for him, it was like

(15:37):
nylon jackets, like the puffy north face coats. So he
had been caught because he would go around specifically his
crimes that he was masturbating onto a fourteen year old
girl at a bus stop. But he's like, I'm not
a pedophile. I swear I was just drinking off front
of her jacket. It was just the perfect jacket.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
And you know, I'm sorry, I don't need to laugh,
but I had.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Well, here's the thing, like, so this guy had a
hard time getting a job because he was exactly what
you know, like we're talking about stereotypes here. He was
very stereotypical and how strange he was and socially awkward,
and this guy with this nylon fetish is living in
a nylon tent and sleeping in a nylon sleeping bag,
and so I'm like, this is but what do I
give this guy, you know, like what options does he have?

(16:23):
And so again it was just having to have these
conversations where you know, again masturbation log are you using
the nylon? Like is this an appropriate setting for you?
And he'd be like, I found a girl and I
brought her back to my tent and I flipped it
to the flannel side when I had sex with her.
So I didn't, you know, engage in my nylon fetish
on an nylon sleeping bag during that sex act. And

(16:45):
it's like that's that's a win, buddy.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
Wow, Wow, that's fascinating. And I did have a moment
of like, go you buddy, like, eh, that is a win.
It really is, like it's it sounds light and humorous
and horrifying all at the same time. But that, like

(17:09):
you said, it is a way that they are showing restraint.
The fact that that is something that was was something
to catapult them into potentially doing something criminal, and that
they're saying no and stepping away from it, that's that
is a win. Yeah, and you must have a very

(17:31):
strong poker face, like you must be able to hold
in your disgust your laughter. Does it ever slip through?

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Do you?

Speaker 1 (17:43):
Like? How do you how do you manage that? I'm
somebody who if something is funny, I will laugh no
matter where I'm at or what I am doing.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah, I would liken it to sit to being You'd
have to be like a really good actor. Because what
I've found in what people tell me, like in my
personal life, where been at work? If I'm because you know,
it's been about four years, four or five years now
since I've been in probation, and so I don't realize
now that the look on my face is like people
are like, no offense, but we don't think that you'd

(18:12):
be really good in a highly sensitive situation. And I'm like,
you know, I definitely am, I promise.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
But if they're like the practice RBF, like you get
a practice that resting bitch space.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yes, so I'm told I don't have a good poker face,
but I know, like with the whole time I was
in probation parole, I was always told I did so
I know it. That's a skill that you actively have
to work on to keep. But I'll never forget. It
was when I was a new officer, and that was
really tested with me. I had a he was a
seventy eight year old man, and in our inventory of fetishes,

(18:48):
his was a shit fetish. And so having to sit
there as like this mid twenties young lady fresh out
of college with this older man who's struggling to just
speak at all, have to explain to you how he
engages in his ship fetish and then again keeping secrets

(19:09):
you're not that was very frowned upon. So in his
effort to be honest with me, He's like, I ate
ship over the weekend, and so I was. And I
know this sounds I've told the stories to people who
I thought would find it funny and they did not.
So please forgive me for bringing this story onto.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
Your part in dark camer Yes, but no, please stell it.
It's the it's the truth. It's the real thing. It
is disgusting and real as that is. He is not blowed.
It's not the only person who has that fetish. It
is a it is a real fetish.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
It is very real. So he's he's describing to me
how he's you know, eating a ship while masturbating. And
I've got four coworkers in the next room and they
are laughing their asses off so loud it's coming through
the wall. And I've got to keep just a total
with that going on, total straight face. And when the

(20:03):
laughing comes through the wall, I have to come up
with a reason why they're not laughing at him, you know, like,
wonder what's going on over there that's weird? Please, sir,
tell me, you know, and just be completely, you know, neutral,
completely neutral to it. And then I you know, this
this thought that always comes in my mind when I
think of the stories. I had asked him, like, well,
how much shit do you eat? And so his answer

(20:26):
was like, you know, lifetime, I'm seventy eight. I'm like,
how much shit would you say you've eaten in your life?
When he said probably the amount of a teacup, It's like, well, I.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Didn't ask me a weird amount.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
It's not like I asked a normal question. Why would
I expect a normal answer, you know, And so.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
A teacup what a day like a little answer to something.
So yes, I know, serious, Yes, It's kind of like
when I was in my mid thirties.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
I got called an old bitch by one of my
probationers and it was the first time I'd ever I
had never been called old before, and I was like,
And the first thing I did is I turn around.
I was like, am I old? Like thirty three? I think?
And my coworker is like, he's a pedophile, Rachel, Yes,
you're old to him.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
So wow, okay, Wow, you have really had to to
sit in being uncomfortable. They've had to be uncomfortable. I'm
just imagine, like just thinking about your coworkers right now
in the other room laughing and you having to find
a reason that they're laughing and not laugh as well,

(21:40):
which is laughing. It's like a communal thing. Yes, cool girl,
You've got so really job.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Just yeah, that's why I miss it. I miss it
for you know, it sounds strange, but you miss it
for just stuff like that, like what you had to
wear to work every day, you know, just just that
because it's like, well, I can't wear the puffy jacket right,
it's cold outside and I have to find wool instead.
Shoes were probably the number one thing you can't wear

(22:10):
open tod shoes not that you'd want to on a
job like that, but you might think you checked every box,
but you didn't think that, like, oh, this guy's into
two inch heels and now I've got this story about
today or the glitter. Shoe fetishes were one of the
most common fetishes. And I asked on one guy. He
was a psychologist with a shoe fetish and was now

(22:31):
a registered sex offender. And so I was like, I
feel like, if anybody can explain it to me, Sarah,
you can explain to me why why the shoe fetish?
And you know, he said, and I think this is
true when it comes to sex offenders, is you can't
generalize anything. But what he realized is that right around
the time he was hitting puberty, he started watching The
Wizard of Oz. So he said it was the ruby

(22:54):
red slippers, and it was just because it happened to
come around the time that he, you know, learning about sexuality.
That's just what he associated and it came into like
the shoes were just this what stuck out to him,
and then it became about.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
It was like the dots that connected for him exactly.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
And so I think absolutely, and so you know, and
I don't know that it's all all true, but I
know a lot of like sex is like Pavlovian, right,
so sometimes it's a time and a place and a
connection that can be made in some cases. But I
understood it because when I was a kid, I had
a pair of ruby red slippers and I was obsessed
with them. Not sexually, no, but it was high fashion

(23:32):
for me, high fashion for me at six years old.
So so I don't know, I mean, that's you know,
you try to understand it. But I had talked at
a conference once and I it was full of just
police officers, and it was the first time I think
I'd ever talked to in front of police officers before.
But I opened it with saying, you know, all the

(23:54):
work you guys put in, all of these hours of
investigation of evidence, trials in court, after every thing, when
it's all said and done, these guys get right back out.
Could be five days later, could be ten, twenty years later,
but they get back out. And I remember an officer
came up to me afterwards and she's like, I never
thought about that. She's like, I just I'm so focused

(24:15):
on getting the bad guy today that I never think about,
what is this man who's going to be walking out
when it's all said and done. And I think it's
also this misconception that it's particularly with sex offenders, because
that was the only case load I ever wanted to
work on. So I can't always like speak cannassary speaks
to probation as a whole. But I know, you know,

(24:36):
just kind of like from what I've explained to you,
you really it's not just a I supervise this guy
and I see him every now and then. It's I
get to know this guy, like I polygraph this guy.
I'm in his dreams, you know, and you become like
the person who the sex offender ideally, not me particularly,
but there has to be some kind of accountability. And
that's you learn through all of these cases where they

(25:01):
you learn what they got away with, you learned what
they didn't, and you learn how they didn't. So you
learn all their The goal for the probation officers to
learn those indicators what is going to tell me that
this guy is going to reoffend and you get really
creative with how that that happens. So I think that
there's a common misconception about how much the probation officer knows.

(25:22):
I mean, I get all the trial records, all the
police investigation records, so we really see the full three
sixty of this guy and try to prevent that. So
I always try to tell police if a probation officer
comes to you about a sex offender, they know that guy,
like they know intimately what this guy could be doing.
So I wish that you know there was a I'd

(25:44):
always worked to try and make sure there was a
good relationship for that. But I always say, like, Jeffrey
Dahmer was a registered sex offender on probation while he
was killing people, And I remember reading an interview with
like the Milwaukee Chief of Police and he's like, well,
we got to work together better, and I'm like, you know,
And that's why I have the job I have now,
is because it's all about, Okay, we know we need

(26:05):
to how are we going to do it? So it's interesting,
for sure.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Your job so important because it's often after this person
is caught and they've probably done this time and time
again before getting caught. But now you've stepped in, it
is known and you can move forward to help prevent it.
But once that probation ends, now they're back to being

(26:33):
free to not be checked on. And it's frightening, it
really is. It's so scary.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
I can tell you about one of the scarier cases,
probably the only one that actually affected me outside of work.
It was the only time I had ever had an
offender stalk me in any kind of way. To my awareness,
that had not happened before. But the guy I had
supervised him for five whole years, and the whole time,
I'm like, this guy can never be let free like

(27:03):
he is so to me, he seemed so potentially dangerous that.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Like a sexually violent predator. Ye.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
Surprisingly, the ones I worked with were not as scary
as this guy. But yes we did supervise SVPs. That's
a whole other fun bag of tricks, but another day maybe.
But this particular guy, his offense was he had stalked
a teenage girl for several months and then, you know,

(27:32):
had all this preparation in place, and then when he
went to abduct her, there was some kind of intervention
like a dog barking or family walking by or something,
and so she was able to escape. He goes to
work like everything's normal, and then when the cops locate
him in his car, they find trash bag, zipdizes, shovel,
you know, like knives and everything. And so he was

(27:57):
he had a delusional disorder, which I don't I'm sure
you know what that that is where they're like completely
normal and functional except for in this one little belief system.
And it was really hard to tell if he was
being truthful or he was making up the delusion. But
we knew that because of it, we couldn't polygraph him effectively,
so we were never able to find him theory. And

(28:19):
so he was either. So he had mentioned like a
fetish around the film Faces of Death from like the nineties,
and so then I'm like, this is weird. He had
just the way, like his comprehension of sex and sexuality
was so strange to me that I suspected he was
a necrophiliac. But I'm like, well, how do you. You

(28:40):
can't outright say that to somebody, So I'm like, how
do I So then you're kind of like confronted with
the situation of how do I ask somebody if they
are a necrophiliac? How do I do that? And I thought, well,
I should probably ask him if he's something worse, like
ask him that and then say, well, argue this. And
then then I had to sit there while I'm talking
to him and think, what's worse than necro feel in

(29:00):
my head? To me? Like that's one of like the
HEBGB kind of fetishes for me. I'm like, I just
that when I just cannot wrap my head around. So
the only thing that could come to mind remotely that
I thought might be worse was cannibalism. So I was like, hey,
are you in necrophilia? And he's like, oh no. And
I'm like, so are you into cannibalism though, and he's like,
god no, and I'm like, just the necrophilia. He's like,

(29:21):
just the necrophilia, not into cannibalism at all. And I'm like, okay,
well we got that straightened out. And so through that conversation, yes,
you gotta you know, I don't know. I through the
conversation with him, he then admitted that the intention with
his original victim was not to abduct her raper and

(29:42):
then murder her. It was to abduct her murder her
than raper. And so this guy, I'm like, you can't
turn that off. You know, there's no we can work
around it. But I think at that point he had
like two more years left in this probation. So that
was the only case I recall ever having where when ended,
I wrote a letter to the court saying, I think
you're going to see this name again, and this is

(30:03):
why I think you should pay attention. And then within
like a couple months of him ending probation, he starts
sending my work cell like creepy text messages. And so
there was nobody watching him at that point, and so
I reached out to our state troopers who were monitoring
the registry, and I mean they went by and said, like, hey,

(30:25):
we know you're being creepy, please stop. And then I
know that we even had one of his previous therapists
reach out to him, and we knew he was off
his medication. That like, we just didn't really know what
would happen next. And so then he ended up sending
like a tip to the police saying because in his
original offense, he had tried to redirect the police to
a roommate of his and accused the roommate of doing

(30:47):
what he was doing, And so he started to accuse
his coworkers of stalking me and following me home and
wanting to kill me. So I'm like, of all the people,
but I get stalking me. This is not the one
I would have wanted with the only when I saw coming.
So he ended up. You know. Every now and then

(31:07):
he'll reach out to one of the old professionals that
we worked with and so. But he doesn't live in
a in the era anymore. So if nothing else we have,
the registry works for that.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Oh goodie, he's still out there. Yes, so, oh how
how heartwarming? Oh that's I'm so sorry that you had
to experience that.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
It really didn't bother me at all. It was just
like shit, and now you don't want to change your habits.
But when you work with that, you know, like when
you do this every day, like it's just kind of
like I was surprised it didn't happen more often to
my knowledge at least, so, but I can be a
little oblivious.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
So what are the most common lies and manipulation tactics
that you've seen and are there any tells that give
them away?

Speaker 3 (31:56):
Ah?

Speaker 2 (31:56):
This is fun. This was probably like I always tried
my best, you know, and this is the part that
I'm frequently wrong about, frequently wrong a lot. But when
it comes to lying, you just be prepared to be
wrong they I would agree that there's usually you know,
everybody's different, but when you have like those really manipulative
sex offenders, everything's at stake being able to pick it apart.

(32:18):
You kind of gotta figure out which I don't know.
The best way I can put it is like you
kind of wrote on vibe, you know, like with the
vibe this guy's giving me, is he seem a little scared,
a little insecure? Does he seem a little socially awkward?
And you kind of like just kind of burrow your
way through, like getting to know the answers he gives you.

(32:38):
I do training for a behavioral threat assessment, and so
one of the things that I always key on, especially
with perpetrators is leakage. So you look at like, what
is it they're accidentally telling you? What's the language they're using.
I would always like to sit down and get a
guy comfortable and then start bringing up the offense in
a very direct way and see how his body language

(32:59):
and his words change. So before he's like, oh, yeah,
it was this and that, and now he's like, I
believe it was exploy and Z. And it's like okay,
so the whole If he was relaxing and upfront, then
we all have like code switching when we're in an
uncomfortable situation. But I wanted to see, like with the
I guess to what degree what code is he using
when he switches. And so one of the best ways

(33:21):
that I found, and I didn't figure it out really
till later, best indicators of a lie is cognitive load,
where they can't come up with a lie and make
a decision at the same time. And so I would
always say, like, hey, I believe you've got a secret
phone that you're talking to perhaps teenagers on I don't know,

(33:42):
but I believe you have it. If you show me now,
I'm going to work with you. We're going to talk
about this in treatment, and we're not going to send
you to jail today, like it'll be on your record,
but you're not going to be arrested. If you're upfront
with me and show me that you want to move
past this or you continue down this road, and if
I find it, we will have you arrested and there'll

(34:02):
be no questions asked, and it will be noted in
the judge that you were given this opportunity and a
guy who truly didn't have a phone wouldn't need to
make a choice. Right, I didn't do it. I'm not
going to give you anything I don't have. But when
they sit there and they're like, it's like you're deliberating,
You're making a decision. You wouldn't have to if there

(34:23):
weren't two choices for you. There should only be one.
So you kind of look at little things like that
to just see where the pauses are, I guess, and consistency.
How are they consistent with not just what they say
but what they do. They'll tell you anything, but are
they doing something that you would think? Like I was,

(34:47):
we had this case and it was a therapist. It
wasn't my case, but a therapist had come in and
I had sat in and watched like the interview with
this guy, and the therapist was like, Ah, he's so
he's so sad, he's socially isolated. He just got this restaurant,
he has this girlfriend, you know, but he's just so
sad and not really confident. And I was like, have
you ever worked at a restaurant? This guy worked like

(35:08):
Chili's or something like, have you ever worked there? Have
you met a sad only guy that gets a girlfriend
in three weeks? Like that's you know, that's an indicator
that this might not be what he's telling you doesn't
seem to be matching up with what he's actually doing.
So and I've missed until I realized, like to really
key in on that, I missed a lot.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
It sounds like could be very very difficult for them
to keep up with their own lies and their own stories.
Do they slip up a lot in that way as well?
Where you're like, well, he said this the other time,
and now you're saying that's so one of these isn't true.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
You know, you just made me realize something I didn't before,
which is probably why they made us see them so often,
because I was always like, this caseload is tough. I
gotta go see this guy. Like we'd go to his
house and search his you know, like like every three
to four weeks. That's a lot, But the standard case
load was you would just have them in your office
every three months, And so it's probably so that way

(36:09):
you can pick up those inconsistencies more frequently, And it's
also the longer that goes on, the harder it is
to maintain, So that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Relation. Yeah, that is interesting. Do you think that they
offend because it's a choice, it's an addiction, it's an affliction.
Is your answer? Just yes? Because it's all of them.
What are your feelings on that? Like, where does that
motivation come from?

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Everybody's different, I mean, and so I and that's always
like the safest answer, right, everybody's different. But I you know, ultimately.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
We we want to feel important, right, I think like
when we talk about people offending, it's really fulfilling, like
a deep ego psychological need of It's more than just
like your basic needs and function for sex.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
It's like this val We all need validation for who
we are. And I think that to me is kind
of at the core of it. It's very sad, you know,
very flimsy answer, I'll say, but I think that when
we look at like I always like to think that
there's this Groth typology of a rapist, and he says
there's like four different kinds, and so I think there

(37:18):
are four different kinds, you know. I think it kind
of applies broadly, kind of like my Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
You know, It's not like quite real. But it's like
it's a good explanation. But you have your power reassurance
rapist who feels powerless so they rape to reinforce who
they are. And then you have like the power assertive
rapist who knows they're great and they're just proving to

(37:41):
you and putting you in your place. Then you have
the sadistic rapist who does it because they just straight
up and enjoy it. It's sexually arousing to them. Then
you have the anger rapist who's doing it just purely
for the rage and anger and emotional piece. And I
think that there's a connection obviously in all of those emotions.

(38:03):
And I think that's to me, if I had to
say where it comes from, it seems embedded in one
of those in that kind of concept.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
I remember learning about that in graduate school and the
term anger excitation, which is one of them that stuck
with me. And there was this part where we went over.
My professor called it a rape tree and it was like,
if this happens to do this, and if this happens
do that. I was like, what is this? This is
very strange, But I remember the rapist, Yeah, I wouldh

(38:32):
I could find what that was, I'm going to have
to dig into my files and figure out what on
earth that was. So when the man who kidnapped me
was sentenced, and I was a teenager, and I remember
he was sentenced to nineteen years and seven months, and
I held on to this fact that he was going

(38:55):
to be really old when he got out and was
back in society, and that I would be and so
many other people would be safer because of that. And
then shortly after that, when I started doing my advocacy work,
I met this mom whose young girl, her daughter had

(39:19):
connected with somebody at church and they'd connected online as well,
and it was a much older man who was in
his sixties who eventually groomed her and had taken her.
And when she was found there was just a shovel
in the truck. Very concerning, very very very scary, and

(39:43):
it opened up my eyes to yes, age can lessen
the chance, maybe, but like you just said, it doesn't
really get rid of of that urge and it doesn't
make something impossible. And again going back to my own

(40:04):
story and this person being released, going back to prison
because they had violated the terms of their probation and
now facing what they are are facing and a possible
trial coming up. They are much older, and it just

(40:28):
gives him this is hard to talk about the words,
and I'm trying to not give too much detail of
this story yet because it is as actively ongoing, but
that in some ways gave him less time to do
what he very much wants to do with his life,

(40:49):
so to take the risks, and to yeah, to take
more risks, and to be more impulsive, and to think
a little less clearly, and to just risk it all
to have that thing that they so desperately I don't
even say want, but think that they need. That it's

(41:09):
going to serve some sort of purpose or some sort
of need that they need to fill. That's really it's
really scary to me, and I've seen that in my
own life but in other cases as well. So I
just think about the way that people are evaluated and
there's so much that goes into it. But there also
is no perfect answer. If I was like, Rachel, what

(41:30):
do we do? I'm not going to ask you this,
I promise, but what do we do to solve all
of this? There is no perfect answer, and people are
trying to do the best that they can do with
the information that they have while the perpetrators and the
bad actors and the offenders are out there just wanting
to do the bad thing and not thinking about who

(41:52):
they can harm other the fact that they want to
harm people. It's just a demented, demented kind of thing.
And there's there's no clear answer, and I really wish
there was. And tonight You've talked about a lot of
cases that are going to stick with me and probably
with our listeners. But is there a case that sticks

(42:13):
with you more than any other?

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Yeah, I mean there's definitely a couple, But I would
have to say there was this guy and he his
crime was so violent. He in a homeless camp. He
had raped a teenage boy, and he was just so

(42:40):
high risk that he was this little guy, maybe like
five foot four, metalhead, you know, just like long dark hair,
you know, like megadet T shirts and stuff. And he
was very laid back and he was fine with me
until I got in the way of like him being
homeless and drinking, because I'm like, there's a pattern here,
and it was he got out, I'd violate him again,

(43:02):
he'd go back in, and then it got to the
point where it was just like he started getting fed
up with the fact that we were gonna keep catching him,
so then he started threatening to kill us, Like he's like,
I'm gonna kill this bitch. Or she locked me up
again and he went and did two more years just
for threatening me. And that was on his way out
of prison, he goes right back in. Oh. But what
was so funny to me is as angry as he

(43:25):
was and as dangerous as this guy was, is he
he was always nice to me. And then when he
was incarcerated the last time around, before I left, he
wrote me a letter and he's like, you know, I
think you've got a really hard job, so I've written
down a playlist that I think would really help you
and people on your team. So he'd writen me this

(43:46):
like twenty song playlist of all these metal songs and
some that weren't like Duran Duran, And I'm like, what
did this get me?

Speaker 1 (43:53):
But maybe these songs are the answer to it all.
Maybe the answer is within the music he's giving you,
giving you hints. But he wrote you a playlist like
if this were the nineties, he would have given you
like a little mixtape.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Yes, And I think to me, I think that's kind
of the hallmark difference between like a police officer and
a probation officer. Is I hear all these great stories
about police officers who, you know, yes, they've interrogated this guy,
the guy confessed or something happened, you know, like whatever
it was. The cop is taking them into jail and
it's the end and they know that it's over for them,

(44:31):
and they thank the police officer for their professionalisment for
you know, like at the end of the day, you
just did your job right, and even the offenders can
kind of appreciate that. And I think that in this case,
I had worked with that guy for like three or
four years, and at the end of the day, he's
still thought enough to write me a playlist, you know.
So it's just.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
You get trinket, you know.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
You know, yes, but I think, you know, it just
shows you it's it's not personal to you know. And
I think that it's these crimes get really messy when
the perpetrators make it personal and they they attack, you know,
and it's just it can get It's not what it's about.
You do your job.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
While we are going through all of this, I would
imagine that supervision is very much in person, right, they
have to come to you, You go to them. You
have to check their freezers.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
And their.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Their sheds and all of these different things that have
these really personal conversations, very personal conversations going over their
logs and such. How did that work during COVID when
everything was shut down.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yes, that is a very good point, because that was
such a strange time for probation, coming from doing such
intensity with these guys to you know, when it came
to our program, it was really hard to shut it
down completely, but we did try to revert to as
much online as we could. I always found it really
challenging because with these conversations virtually, Like I remember there

(46:04):
was there was this old man and he was in
a hotel lobby because his wife was upstairs asleep and
they were in the process of moving. And I was
on the phone with him because I couldn't go inside,
so I'd pull up my car outside so I could
see him and like with big eye contact, and I
talked to him on the phone, and halfway through the
conversation he's like, oh, no, I've had the phone on
speaker mode this whole time, and we're like talking about

(46:27):
his masturbation log and in my n and he said
a hotel lobby. So you know, you can't save them
from themselves sometimes, but they're the biggest challenge I had
was with these virtual calls where I always required like
I had to see their hands on camera. So it

(46:48):
was like you had to sit far enough away so
that I could see like your full torso, or you
had to hold up your hands like this, like shoulder height,
because if I couldn't see your hands, I did not
know where the other half this conversation. You know, that's
half the conversation. So oh, yes, I had. Speaking of
the autistic client that I had is he kept putting

(47:10):
his hands down and I'm like, put him back up.
And you know sometimes like if they're not doing something,
they'll be like, come on, you're being paranoid. But that
guy was like, I see what you're like. He knew why.
So it was all of the sudden, don't really always.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
Have to do that about Yeah, I mean we couldn't
prove anything. Yeah, I never thought about that. I've certainly
never thought about that on a zoom call. That's just
not not not the normal. Hey, your mic is muted
conversation for sure.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Yeah, it's not the hey, I'm not wearing pants, you
know kind of thing. It's like I'm not wearing pants
kind of thing. And so it's yeah, you had to
make sure the whole that you were watching all of it.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Were they required to wear pants, like what I mean
than going like like this the whole time and doing
spirit fingers.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Well, great, Alicia, I didn't think about that, you know,
you just I should have just kept the full like
step away from the camera. Let me just make sure.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Oh my gosh, Yeah, they may not have depants on.
That had to be interesting for them as well, to
have that barrier and to just not be able to
read your body language too, like having those uncomfortable conversations
being so honest, also probably being able to hide things

(48:38):
so much more easily and having to trust them so
much more. Do you think, Yeah, do you think unfortunately
something slipped through with COVID.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, I'd say some of the biggest failures I had,
I would say would be a direct result because I
didn't do things I would have. It wasn't stuff I
couldn't have done. I just didn't make the extra effort
to do it because of COVID.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
So could you tell me about that?

Speaker 2 (49:10):
You know, it's always yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
So there was a case I had and very likable guy.
He had sexually abused a five year old boy. And
I always have this rule where if so the one
of the if not the highest risk cases for reoffense
are those who abuse against pre pubescent boys, men who

(49:34):
abuse it against prepubestent boys. He had over thirty victims,
both male and female, and so it was just kind
of like, well, where are we going with this guy?
And this is the case why I always say, never
forget when they're a little boys involved, Never ever take
a chance on that case. So he was homeless, and
it was during COVID, but he never he had never

(49:55):
given me like we would polygraph him and he would
just say like, oh, I had a beer for my birthday,
and we're like, okay, well he's you know, he seems
to be doing fine. And I couldn't find anything. He
had like two jobs. He worked all day and he
worked at night. Whenever I called his roommate, the roommates like, yeah,
he lives here. He gave me his paystubs, and then

(50:15):
I started getting a call from a state trooper saying
your guy's going down to Richmond and he's not supposed
to be and I'm like, I just I don't have
evidence of that, and he's like, put him on GPS,
but it was pandemic and we really really didn't want
to because of the extensive like physical contact and intensity
of that. I'm like, I don't have enough to put

(50:36):
this guy on that level of supervision. The guy had
been abusing an eleven year old boy down in Richmond,
and I didn't. I just completely missed it. And if
I had done with that officer had suggested and put
him on GPS, it would have stopped, but it wouldn't
have taken away the harm that had already been done.
But I remember they put me. It was the only

(50:56):
time that I'd ever really been put on the phone,
like while they're on scene with the family, taking the
reports and getting information and the marshals are there and
they're loading up to go to like Ohio or something,
and they put me on the phone with a child's
mom and I'm just like, what do you say to
this woman?

Speaker 1 (51:13):
You know?

Speaker 2 (51:13):
And this was, you know, a tough time, so I
just I can't say anything, but I'm sorry, but like
I felt like, this was my job and I had
failed this woman completely, the most I had ever failed
any case ever, and she wasn't mad at me at
all because in her mind, she had failed more than
I ever could. And then, you know, and then you're

(51:34):
just like, Okay, so that's what's at stake. It's not
about me. It's not about me at all or what
I did or my career. It's what happened to this family.
And so it's just that's what's at stake when you
miss the signs. And that's why I say it all
depends on that therapist, you know, doing those evaluations and
that po taking that second look and working together because
if I had listened or you know, and I can

(51:54):
tell you in other cases, if those cops said listen
to me, you know, but this time I was the
one who was like, you know what, I would have
done that one differently. But but yeah, and that's just
stuff that happens. You can't save the world, you know,
when I know that, But it was just you have
those stories that change the way you do it next time.
So yes, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
If a heart breaking, Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
That's a heart breaking story. And I like that, you said,
you can't save the world. You can't you can't catch everything,
You can't do it right all the time. It comes
down to intention, and your intention is to do the good,
and that person's intention was to do the bad.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Yeah, exactly, and they yeah, you just can't pick. I
always say, you get you don't get to pick who
who reoffends, and then you can't stop it. If that's
what they want to do, they're going to do it,
because even if they're on GPS, they can go and
do whatever they want. And at that point, from what
I gathered, that guy had started that behavior very early,
and it was like he got out of prison and

(53:06):
he went right there. You know, it's just if they're
going to do what they want to do and your
tools are only so good, you know. And I've read
a number I'd like to blame it all on COVID,
but no, there's.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
A lot of things to blame on COVID. But really
it comes down to the these terrible offenders and these
terrible people. And I've read these cases quite a number
of them where the people do get out of prison
and they reoffend, like on the way home or that
they reoffend in prison in the visiting room that, like

(53:45):
you said, if they want to do this, they're going
to find a way to do it. And all you
can do and people like you is do the best
that you can do. And yeah, do you think that
you've you've done the best you can do.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
I give it, You're a lot more. I'd like to
do a lot more of it, but I did the
best I could at you know, at the time, it's
I'd like to think I did.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
You always thinks you have.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
You could have done more, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
That's just that's part of life. So I don't know
about you, but I would assume it's the same thing
when people ask me how's work. It's trinky to answer
that question without feeling like I've darkened their day or
I've just made them uncomfortable over brunch in some way.

(54:37):
Has this job ever asked you anything personally, like your relationships,
how people see you, your opinions on things. Has it
impacted you personally in that way?

Speaker 2 (54:50):
Yes, I would say, you know, obviously you find ways
to cope and compartmentalize and things like that, but you can't,
and you know, you can't look at everybody like they
could be a potential sex offender. You just can't do that.
But I think, like the fact is, it would be
nice to go to a park and not think about
the guy by himself on the bench every time we're

(55:11):
walking through the mall. I mean, you know, it just
you see things differently, Like you go to someone's house
and it's like, this is a grown man. Why does
he have the entire Disney collection? You know, like it's right.
I remember I was sitting in court. My brother was
in court. He had a victim advocate with him, and
he's sitting between me and the victim avocate, and I
don't remember how we started talking about sex offenders, but

(55:34):
this victim advocate's like, oh, you know, they're all abused
as children, right, like ninety percent. And I'm like, no, sir,
that's that's not true. Maybe twenty percent, but we know
that they lie, so like that number is just absolutely
not true. And he's like, no, it is. I heard
it recently from X, Y and Z. And I argued
with this man. I wasn't at work, but he was.

(55:55):
He should He should have known better than to argue
with me in front of my brother. So but yeah, but.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
It is definitely, but that is a myth for sure
that people they must have been abused, that's why they
do this.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
No, definitely, not.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
Elaborate on that for me.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Oh so I can just say anecdotally from all the
cases having done the criminal like you know, criminal histories,
but also sexual histories. Very rarely, it was very rarely.
Do we have them absolutely, maybe one in five. It
was more than just a few, but the vast majority
of them, that was not why they happened. It could
be other traumas, other experiences, like we said, just associations

(56:39):
as they grow up, but it didn't make them who
they they were. And there's far more people who get
abused and don't become sex offenders than did right.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
I think about that a lot too. How Typically from
what I've seen is the good in people and that
when they have suffered a trauma, they then turn it
into something positive in their own life, or that is
the goal. It's not because I was harmed as a child.
Now I understand if I'm a child and I'm experiencing

(57:12):
abuse and I'm mirroring this behavior. But if this happened
to me as a child and.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Now I'm in my twenties and I'm.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Hurting another child. That's you just understand the pain that like,
why would you want to cause more pain? That doesn't
make you a better person. That doesn't make me go, oh,
I understand you were hurt, so now you want to
hurt other people? Like I don't stub my toe and
then go step on somebody's foot and say, oh now
I feel better, thank you, And people will be like, oh, wow,

(57:42):
that's it. I understand why you would do that. You stubbed,
You've got your toae stubb. Now you have to hurt
somebody else. That doesn't make sense to me.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
I think, like, especially when it comes to like pedophilia,
I think for me, the scariest thing is a lot
of these pedophiles don't believe that there is harm that's
being done. Yeah, they're like, I enjoyed it when I
was eight. So there's just this complete you know, everybody
copes and responds to trauma differently, and that just happened
to be the way that they experienced it. And so

(58:11):
while failing it is just like failing to believe that
this could have caused harm to it them much less
anybody else, like justifies it and there was I remember
one of the creepiest conversations I had, you know, And
it's funny because not it didn't come from a case
that I thought. I would have thought the cannibal necrophilia
story would have been the creepiest conversation I had, but

(58:32):
it wasn't. There was a there was a man who
was probably in his like late forties, early fifties. He
had done ten years because he had sexually abused three
little boys, all at the same time. Altogether. They were
between the ages of ten and twelve. And what I
had asked him was tell me how you got all

(58:55):
three little boys to cooperate? That just seems like little
boys are so full of energy, like to coerce them
into this act, much less three of them at the time.
You know, I can't explain why I asked the question,
but the way he answered me is you kind of
got this far away, like starry look in his eyes.
And he said, well, when boys are verging on puberty,

(59:20):
they they get aroused. If the wind blows, it's so
easy to seduce a child. They don't know any better,
and they'll it's like you have a spell over them.
And it was just one of the more chilling answers
because he seemed to just really kind of cherish the
memory and he was just so candid and honest about

(59:40):
it that you know, those are just one of the
answers that kind of stay.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
With you, Like you got into this because you wanted
to know why you wanted to make a difference. What
was that first win for you and the moment that
you realize that your work is making a difference, that
you can do good here.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
You know, there was a case where the there's two
cases that come to mind. One was important because I
think it had an impact on the victim, and another
because I think it really had an impact on the
victim that didn't get created, which could have been myself.
But in one case, the perpetrator his victim showed up

(01:00:23):
to the probation violation hearing and I had never known
there to be somebody in the room, you know, who
had gone had that experience, and so I was actually
on the stand. I was on the stand for forty
five minutes. In that case. I remember like the electricity
I'm not kidding went out in the courthouse halfway through.
It was wild, but in that moment, yeah, it was wild.

(01:00:46):
In that moment they had us like leave the court
room like, oh, let's wait for electricity to come on.
And I got to meet this victim who's now this
grown man, like he was in his late forties early fifties,
and he's like, I just want to thank you, and
I'm just like, who is this, Like I just do probation.
It's just me and this orbetrator. And that was like,
really the first time I had seen like kind of
the other side of how much is really writing on this?
And so it gave me conviction to go back in.

(01:01:06):
And that was that testimony had that you know, that
individual went back to prison for the first time. The
guy had only ever done like five days because the
crime had happened like thirty forty years previous, and so
that probation violation was the first time that man, that
victim saw justice really that meant to prison. So that
was a really cool win. That was really cool. But

(01:01:28):
the other one was when I was brand new, there
was this guy who got out and he was really
he was this tiny little guy. But his nickname in
prison because you can see like their prison nicknames in
our system, it was like hekay because he yes, it's
the funniest stuff you can see, like the prison infractions,
like doing weird stuff. But that's why I always say,

(01:01:52):
like who they are in prison is not who they
are when they get out. But you need to know,
you need to know who they were. But anyways, this
guy's nickname was Pitt because he had a vague resemblance
to Brad Pitt. So he's not a bad looking little dude.
He did ten years because he had violently, like he
had held down and rape a ten year old girl.
So he had done ten years. He was getting out,

(01:02:13):
and I think again, being like a young female probation officer,
I think he just thought this girl is like, this
is gonna be a cakewalk for me getting out of here.
And I didn't necessarily see the signs until I was
pulling up for our home. Aus it. It's just one
of those weird timing where I see like a ten
year old girl walking up to his house while I'm
pulling up, and I'm just like, what the hell is

(01:02:34):
happening here?

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
So there was that intervention, but we had just started
requiring we used to only require perpetrators who had online
crimes to submit to phone monitoring or Internet access was
questionable with those guys. Because his offense was not an
online offense. We had not required his Internet to be monitored,

(01:02:58):
but because of that interaction, because I couldn't prove he
had contact with that child, I just knew that child
was at that house, and like we were able to
do interventions with that, I couldn't violate him for that.
Like he was telling me he had no control, he
had no idea. So I'm like, well, I'm going to
monitor your phone because I need to know, like what's

(01:03:18):
happening in your life more than obviously I'm able to.
And so looking at his phone records, there was this
video and son is so much data that it's really
hard to like figure out what's what. But this kind
of goes back to looking at the world like optical,
Yes that's the word. That's a sex offender. But so

(01:03:39):
this guy, I'm looking at this online history and I'm like, well,
I don't really see anything. But then I saw this
like YouTube video scream in the Big Hole, and I'm like,
what the hell is that. Well, it turns out like
the Big Hole was a water park and this was
like a water park reaction video. And at first I'm thinking, like,
this is not like this, like you know, it's funny

(01:04:00):
watch like the roller coaster reaction videos. So I'm not
like thinking too much of it, but I click on
it because I'm like, well, it looks like it's a
water park. This is kind of weird. The title grab me.
So it's a little girl soaking wet in a bathing
suit going down this water slide and she's screaming the
whole time. This is a guy who violently raped a
ten year old girls. So I'm like, okay, so there's

(01:04:21):
a connection here. This is not good. But then when
I continued to look at his history, I found that
he had been looking up desert eagle guns and he
was watching the movie California, which it came out in
the nineties. It starred Brad Pitt, and it was about
killed his probation officer. Yep, with the k he kills

(01:04:41):
his probation officer and goes on a spray with like
a gun across the United States. So I'm like, wow,
this is this seems like a problem. So I had
him arrested and I wrote the violation and he did
I can guarantee you this probably wouldn't happen today. I
don't think courts necessarily take this as seriously today, but
at the time, given his of the totality of it,

(01:05:02):
they ended up giving him like five years. And that
was really the first time I would say, like my
first win in a sense where I had a guy who,
like you could tell visually, like thought he had me
figured out. And then and then I was like, no,
I'm gonna look deeper on this guy, and I'm gonna
I'm gonna go with my gut on it. And so
that's when I'm like, I can do this. This there's

(01:05:23):
something here.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
It's did you get into it thinking that you could
help and rehabilitate these people, that most of them could
be rehabilitated, that there was something that you could bring
to the table that nobody else has before. Were you
a bit more idolistic starting out because you seem to
I don't want to say necessarily jaded, but to see

(01:05:46):
a full.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
Picture, absolutely not. It was never And I know it
sounds we all say, you know, we all get in
this line of work because we want to help people.
But the people I wanted to help were the victims
who hadn't been created yet. And to give justice to
the ones who had. When you can help anybody, it's

(01:06:07):
always a good feeling. But I know that for me,
it was just it was. It was probably one of
the reasons I particularly wanted to work with sex offenders,
because you know, when you look at like the addicts
and the people who commit car theft and things like that,
like there's complex social reasons. I always understand that bring

(01:06:28):
people to those those points and those decisions, and don't
understand like the sex offending, and so I kinda I'm
not as sympathetic, and I think that makes me more
effective to be sympathetic. Intellectually, Yes, that everybody deserves this chance.
Everybody has an opportunity to change. Give them every single

(01:06:49):
opportunity you can possibly afford them under the circumstances. But
never you know, like I said, it's the way that
I can. And you know, I might regret saying this later,
but the best way that I could kind of think about,
like intellectually, like kind of how I approach the work
then and even now is that TV show mind Hunter,
where you have like the main characters and they do

(01:07:11):
it because like there's a value and what's happening and
it's it's making us the system better by doing the
work here and now. And that was I started at
work before that show even came out. When that show
came out, I'm like, that's exactly why I did you
know that role and why I care so deeply about
this work is because it's it's so critical that it's
done correctly and with care and interest, and I don't

(01:07:34):
so I don't really think about rehabilitation or not rehabilitation.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
To tell me a little bit about your role now
and what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
Yes, well, disclaimer, I'm a rip representing me today, so
you know, obviously anything that comes from Rachel today is
her own personal point in opinion, but it's I'm I'm really.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
To say a little disclaimer.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
But anyways, I get to work for the county now,
and we get to work with this special, unique initiative
to try and ultimately reduce calls to nine one one,
And so we say, we're trying to find ways to
prevent people from ending up in the back of a
police car or the back of an ambulance, but we're
also trying to find ways to make that not the
plan A or B or C.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
With the work that you've done and the proximity to
some scary, scary people and this system that you've seen fail,
and the slats in the bridge that are broken and
people are falling through. Do you think that evil is wedding?

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
I think that evil is always so much more visible
because it's so much more exciting, right That's why people
commit terrible crimes at the time. I'm sure they find
some satisfaction minute. So I think it's so easy to
see evil winning, and if it's I think it like
good and evil, Like the stock market, just too opposing

(01:09:09):
stocks and the one you invest in is the one
that that will win. But not everybody's looking at the
stock market. So do I think evil's winning right now?
I mean, it's so so easy to be so so negative,
and I can say that in the past year it has,
but I don't know if it'll get much more time
than that. I think the stocks, you know, I think

(01:09:31):
people are trying to invest in good this time around,
and I can only hope that's that's what we'll see.
But when good starts happening, the world gets a lot
less exciting. So that's how I like it, just kind
of quiet. And so I know, I know that town sounds.
You know, it's not like bleak, it's not like hopeless
at all, but it is that always gets the front page.

(01:09:56):
So let's just forget, you know, not forget. There's a
whole paper after that, guess.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
Thank you so much, thank you for joining me. I'm
going to bring you back so we can have so
many more conversations. I just I appreciate you so much,
and please just keep being you, keep being the badass Rachel.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Wow. Thanks Alicia, Thanks for letting me come and talk
about this stuff. You know, we, as you know, we
don't get much of a chance to really open up
about this or have a conversation with somebody who gets it.
So thank you and thank you for all you do,
because for one bad ass to another, it means a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
Thank you so much for tuning in. We really appreciate it.
We'll be releasing new episodes every Thursday. Make sure you
check out our YouTube channel and hit us up on
our social media on at Alicia Kozacnod for extra content
around each episode, and please remember to subscribe on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
He has a f