I spent four years working with juvenile sex offenders

Here are four life lessons I learned.

I spent the first four years after earning my bachelor’s degree working as a Mental Health Specialist (MHS) at a psychiatric hospital — a job I took out of desperation after an unexpected move. The unit I worked on housed a residential program for male juvenile sex offenders, ages 13–17(ish). Despite a rocky journey, my years there were some of the best of my life. Here are four of the valuable life lessons I gleaned from my experiences.

The most important “rule” in life is to treat everyone you meet like a human being.

We’re all familiar with the negative impact of judging others according to race, sex, and religion, but how many of us are quick to judge someone who has a criminal background, or according to their age?

I worked with a population that many people, understandably, would find difficult to respect. Admittedly, coming into the job, I expected a bunch of dangerous, hardened boys… but the boys I met, for the most part, didn’t fit the image I’d crafted.

They were teenagers, for the most part immature, awkward and nerdy. Some were obsessed with sports, others with Dungeons & Dragons. They had done things that most people find hard to stomach, yes, but their crimes weren’t committed in a bubble, and they were rarely committed out of sheer cruelty. These boys were human beings, each with their own story. Many of their stories were quite sad.

The staff I worked with was wonderful, but on occasion, I didn’t agree with some of their practices. For instance, the boys were permitted no personal effects that had anything to do with a minor. In general, I supported this rule. But I remember one boy who was lovesick over a girl he’d met online. And yes, she was two years younger, and yes, it was a teenage online romance. But I could tell by the way he talked about her that he had genuine feelings and not only a sexual attraction.

He wanted desperately to cling to the thought of her and the possibility of a relationship with her in the future, but even a piece of paper bearing her name was considered contraband, destroyed and punished if discovered. He wasn’t supposed to talk about her or think about her; in fact, he was told to forget she existed for pretty much the rest of his life.

This was a boy who’d been sexually abused and in turn had sexually abused several others, but he was also just a boy who was in love with a girl. I got that; for some reason, no one else did. When I was a teenager, I was lovesick over boys, too. I was desperate, too. We may know as adults that those feelings are too strong, or fleeting, or immature, but to a teenager, they’re very real. And teenagers are human beings, their feelings should be validated and respected.

I always thought that it was important to teach the boys to distinguish genuine relationships involving respect and emotional connection from selfish, sexually abusive relationships — but the reality is that as with many other scenarios regarding law, that’s a hard line to draw. Rules exist for a reason, but enforcing rules doesn’t mean we can’t be humane. A little bit of empathy goes a long way, and merely finding a way to convey to someone that you see their pain and you care — which is about all I could do in that situation — is worth its weight in gold.

All jobs are hard (and important!)

During my employment, I worked primarily evening and night shifts but occasionally would pick up days. Staff were also pulled to work other units of the hospital depending on need, which included a short-term adolescent unit, another residential unit housing boys with substance abuse issues, a psychiatric intensive care unit, a drug detox unit, and a short-term adult unit. Each shift and unit presented its own unique challenges.

• Night shift was awesome — I got to read and (secretly) do work/writing/whatever on my computer and iPad most of the time. But I also had to stay awake all night, which wasn’t easy and often left me feeling sick. Research has shown that working night shifts can shorten a person’s lifespan.
• Evening shift involved the most work in the sense of interacting with the boys, and since the time was less structured (they weren’t in school,) staff on that shift tended to deal with the most behavioral issues… which could be terrifying and sometimes resulted in restraints, depending on the kid. But, on the plus side, most of the higher-ups had gone home for the day, so some rules for staff could be a bit laxer, and I really admired most of the staff I got to work with.
• Many staff had trouble working on my unit because they struggled with the crimes our boys had committed. I, on the other hand, struggled most with the psychiatric intensive care unit, where patients in extreme psychiatric crisis were kept. My first day there, a seemingly calm man abruptly stood up and threw a large chair at a window. I was always scared, and I loathed the physical contact involved in caring for most of the patients.
• When working on the drug detox unit, part of my job was to take vitals on the patients every four hours. I wasn’t good at taking vitals, and I hated it. Many of my fellow staff also struggled with that population, as we would frequently see heavily pregnant women come in for detox. Also, some of the patients weren’t sincerely interested in sobriety but simply wanted a bed or ran out of money to buy drugs, so it was often difficult to truly help them.
• The hardest thing about working in mental health is “boundaries.” Maintaining physical boundaries is simple (and desirable!), but when you work with the same patients for months on end in a home-like environment, retaining strong emotional boundaries can be tough. It’s so easy to get in trouble even when you’re following the rules; all it takes is a patient or fellow staff member who has it out for you or a single moment of speaking-before-thinking. I constantly lived in fear for my job and reputation, and along with physical safety concerns, that was the most difficult aspect of the work for me.

Of course, there were many staff members at the hospital with very different jobs. We interacted daily with the janitors, for instance, who were called in to clean up vomit, debris from tantrums, feces, you name it. Would I want to do their job? Hell no, but I definitely respected them. Even the cafeteria staff, who on the surface had a straight-forward job, seemed to deal daily with overwhelming demands and difficult management and patients.

It’s easy to look at what someone else does and daydream about the grass being greener, but it’s important to remember that all roles have their pros and cons. Everyone’s job is important and valuable, and in my experience, we don’t acknowledge that enough in America.

Tough love is the best love.

There seems to be fluctuating trends when it comes to addressing juveniles who have committed serious crimes — sex offenses, murder, etc. Regulations veer toward lenient or strict in waves. While I was working, the trend seemed to be moving towards leniency. The use of isolation as a disciplinary measure, for example, was being questioned, and ultimately was used to a lesser degree on our unit.

That being said, many individual staff members operated on the tough love principle, and I couldn’t have been more grateful. I’m not so good at being tough myself, but watching these ladies in action (the toughest staff were always women!) was inspiring.

One woman had been on the job for around 20 years, longer than nearly every other employee at the hospital. When boys first arrived at our facility, they quickly grew to hate her. She was a no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is stickler for the rules, and nobody stood up to her for long. To avoid using real names, I’ll call her Liz.

I loved the precedent she set for discipline and honesty, so much so that earning her respect was one of the first goals I established on the job. It wasn’t easy, because we were very different people, but eventually I got there. It’s one of the accomplishments I’m most proud of in life. She stood by me through some hard times at the hospital — on a few occasions stood up for me — and I’ll be forever grateful.

Tough love is an ill-defined concept, and sometimes controversial. But in my experience, teenagers don’t learn lessons without graphic knowledge of potential consequences. It does them no favors to sugar-coat or beat around the bush. Some of the staff I worked with hated to acknowledge what these kids had done. Liz, on the other hand, regularly and bluntly reminded them of what would happen if they didn’t straighten up and thus landed in big-boy prison. (In case you don’t know: they’d likely be raped, beaten, or killed by other prisoners. If they got out, they’d be on the sex offender registry for life. As minors, on the other hand, they still have a chance to escape all that.) It was exactly what they needed to hear.

She was real with them. She had a knack for supporting them through the good and bad phases of life, including setbacks and successes, family strife, the loss of loved ones. She helped them with sports, watched games with them, spoke the same lingo… but she also came down hard if they stepped out of line.

Kids appreciate consistency of expectations. While most of the boys hated Liz when they first came in, those that successfully graduated from the program inevitably loved her like a mother by the time they left. Consistent discipline demands respect, and even with those boys who didn’t grow to love her (i.e. weren’t successful,) that’s what she always got.

You are exactly who you need to be.

Not everyone can be a Liz… I’m certainly not! As much as I admired and respected her, I had my own way of doing things. At first, I wasn’t at all confident in myself and my ability to be helpful, and I think many of the other staff didn’t like me right away. After all, it’s not every day you meet someone who walks around a psychiatric hospital singing showtunes (and isn’t a patient!)

Over time, though, I came to recognize and appreciate the unique strengths I brought to the job. For instance:

• I once talked a kid out of a funk by singing “I want to be happy, but I won’t be happy, till I make you happy too…” Yeah, he definitely thought I was crazy, but he couldn’t help but smile!
• I also de-escalated a boy who was in the midst of “flipping out” by appealing to his (feeble) sense of empathy. Who knew “Hey, I know you’re kind of angry but I’m kind of tired and I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t throw a garbage can at me tonight” could be effective?
• While I was hopelessly out of touch with the jocks, I always bonded with the nerdy kids that came through the unit. I would encourage them to write stories and offer up my skills as an editor, or chat with them about various fandoms… and maybe also detail, with emotion, the plot of Les Mis to anyone who would listen.
• Apparently, I’m also good at planning insanely complex games… even if it takes me around 3 hours to do it!

Maybe I’m a little crazy, and not so good when it comes to disciplining others (or anything else that might put me in the path of conflict,) but in time, I improved those skills and discovered what I could uniquely bring to the table. Everyone is different, and that’s a good thing. Find a way to do you on the job instead of letting yourself become the job.

Takeaway

So that’s my story. I miss that work every day, but there are also some things I’m glad to be done with (restraints, managers, paperwork…) More than anything else, I want others to recognize that any situation in life can bring about positive growth. When I began my job as an MHS, I was terrified, but it turned into one of the best experiences of my life.

Be who you are, embrace discipline, and respect other people and their work. Life will still give you clouds, but following these guidelines, you’ll be focusing on the silver lining!

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please share some love by pressing the ❤ or leaving a comment. Feedback is also welcome and appreciated!

Anne Marie is a writer and entrepreneur. She lives with her husband and daughter in Pennsylvania. You can find her at her online home, www.inspiration-kindled.com, or follow her on twitter @InspireEach_Day.