Introduction

What we know about sex crimes and sex offenders has changed substantially over the past several decades. For example, Robert Longo, now the director of a psychiatric hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, “remembers appearing on ‘Donahue’ and ‘Oprah’ in the 1980s, making pronouncements like ‘sex offenders can’t be cured,’ and ‘victims are damaged for life.’ Neither statement was based on good research, he now says. ‘We were desperately trying to bring attention to the issue,’ Longo says of himself and other sex-abuse experts, ‘and we went way overboard’ ” (Jones, 2007, n.p.).