1949 Police Training
| 
Preface: An educational course administered to the St. Louis Police Department in 1949 was cited as a model for other cities and demonstrates the degree of exposure fifties-era police had to popular moral views of the time. The course opened with a reading of the Biblical chapters of Leviticus and addressed social morality on the subject of homosexuality. The following academic paper reviewed the course.
The Education of a Metropolitan Police Department Respecting Sex Molestation
by Val B. Satterfield
Val B. Satterfield, M. D., is the Consultant Psychiatrist, St. Louis Police Academy, and Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Washington University, School of Medicine, St. Louis. Dr. Satterfield has been active in the formation of the Academy of Forensic Sciences and is serving now as Chairman of its Psychiatric Section. This paper was read at the 1950 Annual Meeting of the Academy:
The St. Louis Police Department is continuing its program for the education of its personnel respecting sex molestation, and a brief outline and description of ifts nature and progress is given herewith. The conception of the program occurred following the first meeting of the Academy of Forensic Sciences in January 1948, sponsored by the St. Louis Police Department. The interest aroused in scientific methods was intense, and the possibility of educating the Police Department in reference to specific topics was considered.
As a part of this development, it was believed that the problem of sexual molestation could be profitably surveyed. St. Louis has never had an acute sexual molestation problem, and no pressures of any type encouraged this selection. The topic was considered limited in scope and one that might be dealt with as the subject matter of two hour lectures.
The St. Louis Police Academy gives a week of intense refresher experience to every police officer in St. Louis, passing them through the Academy in small groups throughout the Spring, Summer, and Fall of each year. In addition, recruit classes are given a full course of instruc- tion, and this project was included in the recruit class curriculum. The problem then consisted of organizing material on a plan of instruction for sixty men utilizing a two hour period.
The program was started in the Summer of 1949 and was very timely in that the project was well along when national interest became focused upon a nation-wide flurry of cases of sexual molestation. Again, this increased activity did not hit St. Louis with any force, but the newspapers and general public were reassured by the well organized plan of the St. Louis Department.
As a result of this interest a new state law covering the management and institution of sexual psychopaths was passed by the legislature, and considerable favorable publicity came to the City of St. Louis. The members of a large metropolitan police force can be considered to be quite different in their experience from the average collection of students.
They have had wide experience in all types of human activity, and although they have not been able to critically analyze much of this experience, they have in a usable form a very profound understanding of city dwellers.
It was considered that it would be necessary to "talk up to" their experience using common everyday language and drawing for them dramatic pictures of the events and personalities involved in sexual molestation. A presentation that would be provocative of the wide experience of these men would bring into the discussion period material that was more acceptable because it came from their fellow officers. In the beginning it was evident that several types of resistances and difficulties had to be overcome.
Although officers of the St. Louis Police Department are accustomed to instruction in the Police Academy, it was considered that resistance to instruction, especially from one other than a police officer, must be made acceptable through the avoidance of any unrealistic handling of the material. It was also evident that many of the members of the St. Louis Police were devout and had strong feelings of right and wrong and of social appropriateness. To meet this condition there had to be an honest dealing with social morality free from cynicisms.
The disturbing quality of the material under discussion was considered, and the presentation of the material and the management of the class was conducted in such a way as to reassure and relieve members of the class who were visibly affected. The teaching periods were divided into two portions. The first portion was devoted to demonstration and lecture, and the second to questions and answers and class discussion. The material selected for the lecture and demonstration was as follows: As an introduction there was a reading from the Book of Leviticus of the Holy Bible, beginning at verse ten of chapter twenty.
This was done for the purpose of giving a historical background beginning in ancient times, and led into developments in the last century including the Jesse Pomeroy case of Boston. There was then a brief survey of conditions as they exist at this time throughout the world. The theme of this background was social morality, dis- cussing the attitude of society toward behavior, including and putting emphasis on the other types of behavior that are objectionable to society, keeping sex out of the foreground until there appeared to be acceptance of what social attitude and its fluctuation means.
This was then integrated into religious, aesthetic, and social idealism. The approach to the biological and physiological aspects of sex behavior proved to be very acceptable, provided that the parallels of bladder and bowel func- tion and nursing were thoroughly discussed. The similarity between male and female anatomy and the potentials for variance were under- stood readily if diagrams were used for demonstration. For the purpose of instruction, sexual variance was discussed in its longitudinal aspect with the infantile, adolescent, and adult variance emphasized.
The psychological mechanisms involved were explained with recourse to their own infantile and developmental experience. In order to maintain a sense of proportion, the types of behavior discussed were kept in a true relationship to all other types of social behavior of the individual of the same age. It was evident throughout this teaching experience that any swing far into the field of sexuality distracted from the result with a drop in interest due to a loss of orientation.
It was necessary at all times to keep the problem in some true proportion to the other types of behavior problems. As an introduction to the psychology of the offender the role of the victim of molestation was discussed. Police officers have a deep interest in the prevention of crime, and it was evident as lecture followed lecture that the officers were as interested in the characteristics of the victim that made him or her the object of the offender as they were in the mechanisms that brought about the act on the part of the offender.
As a result of the discussion periods it was evident that there was a strong need for the police officer to accept all types of antisocial and asocial behavior as being of the same order, and this was adopted as a method of presentation.
The sex offender was discussed emphasizing his personal and social problems and attempting to define the similarity and difference between him and other types of criminals. Here again it was apparent that there was willingness to accept the sexual criminal as part of the general criminal population.
There was acceptance of the fact that the "abominable" nature of the offense, and the quick reaction that "there must be something the matter with the mind of a person who would do that" frequently interfered with the inclusion of sex crimes into the mass of criminal offenses. It was not difficult to differentiate between crime as an expression of a maladjusted individual and crime as an expression of a psychotic individual. The question-and-answer and discussion periods found the officers surprisingly free in an expression of opinion and quick to narrate per- sonal experiences with various types of offenders.
The breadth of experience on the part of the sergeant and upper rank officers was evident in the more reasonable understanding that they possessed about the offender and his crime. The younger men were more frequently surprised and found it more difficult to orient themselves in respect to the material.
In the order of frequency, questions raised had to do with the influence of family training, the influence of bad associates, the danger to police officers in their relationships with offenders, the influence of the suppression of prostitution upon the frequency of sex offenses, the necessity of supressing homosexuality, the effects upon the character and intelligence of sex perversion, and the method of treatment of the offender of this type and in general offenders of all types.
As part of this educational program it became apparent that "live material" was invaluable as illustration. It was decided that the statistician of the St. Louis Police Department would begin a systematized gathering of reports to provide material respecting the offender, the victim, the time, the circumstances, and geographical peculiarities. An analysis was made of all available material and this proved invaluable in the strategic handling of the police work necessary to protect the adults and children of the City of St. Louis. As part of the educational program the work described above was supplemented by a period of instruction aimed at integration of this material into police procedures.
In summary the Police Department of the City of St. Louis has experimentally approached this topic to explore whether it might be integrated into the habits and experience of the police officers of that force. It has been a timely and valuable experiment in that it has given the community a sense of security and has acquainted the department with the material required for a closer application of prevention and enforcement to the real needs of the community.
As part of the research a questionnaire was sent to other police departments throughout the country, and it appears there is little in the way of statistics at hand respecting the experience of a metropolitan police force with the subject of sex molestation.
As a continuation of this study it is expected that refresher material of a live nature will be provided for subsequent training periods of the Academy. The organization of the experience in a presentable fashion for distribution is contemplated.
Source: Val B. Satterfield, "The Education of a Metropolitan Police Department Respecting Sex Molestation," Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science, 42:403 (May-June 1951).
1930s Negro Girls Home
| By Gary R. Kremer and Linda Rea Gibbens
...A detailed look at one Midwestern facility for juvenile delinquents graphically illustrates how ill-prepared and unequipped were the facility's operators to handle their charges. The Missouri Industrial Home for Negro Girls at Tipton housed more than one thousand black juveniles 5 between the time it opened in 1916 and its closing in 1956. Throughout that forty-year period, the institution generally failed to help its inmates prepare to enter the mainstream of American life.
Political patronage determined who would govern the institution, leaving well-meaning but ineffective leaders, with poorly-trained staffs, to deal with an often too- large number of girls whose background and behavior would have challenged even the most sophisticated juvenile delinquency experts. This essay focuses primarily on life in the Missouri Industrial Home during the 1930s, not because that decade is more important than any other, but because through historical accident the case files of seventy- seven inmates incarcerated during that period have been deposited in the Missouri State Archives and are available to researchers. The rarity of such records becoming available to historians makes their use all the more imperative...
One of the most graphic examples of (Supt.) Bowles' use of corporal punishment appears in the case file of a nineteen-year-old St. Louis girl named Clara, labeled by Bowles as "a sex problem." Clara was a member of the C.O.C. group until she "became involved" sexually with another girl. According to Bowles's testimony, she demoted Clara to the Fourth Group and placed her in "isolation" after discovering her homosexual behavior.
Subsequently, another girl named Alice managed to sneak into Clara's room for a night of sexual activity with her. Both girls were then locked in their respective rooms "and not allowed to mingle with the rest of the girls for two and a half months."
The two girls were finally released from their rooms after promising to stay away from each other. They did not, and this time the threat of further punishment evoked a violent response in Clara. According to Bowles's account, she was punishing yet another girl (by cutting her hair) when Clara entered the room and, after a brief exchange of words, tried to wrestle the scissors from Bowles, shouting that she would never submit to having her hair cut again. Ultimately, it took Bowles, her husband, a matron and the night watchman to subdue Clara.
Bowles described Clara as the worst case she had had since becoming Superintendent (at the time, five years) and bluntly told Col. J. E. Matthews, Director of the Department of Penal Institutions, that: "I have punished this girl many times during the four years she has been here, even whipped her in December, but she had always admitted I was right and that she more than deserved whatever punishment she received."
In view of Clara's intransigence, Bowles recommended she be "returned to the Court as an incorrigible whom we are unable to handle at the Industrial School for Negro Girls." The case of Clara illustrates that homosexuality was a problem at the Home, although just how widespread it was would be impossible to say. David Rothman contends that "sexual offenses were invariably among the leading three or four causes of disciplinary action" in early twentieth century homes for juvenile delinquents...
Also, matrons often defined girls merely as "sex problems," by which they meant both masturbation and homosexuality. That homosexuality caused both institutional and individual tension is clearly evident in the case of a young girl named Lillian, who was thought to have "more intelligence than the average" at Tipton.
Her case history reveals that her "conduct was almost perfect with the exception of the sex problem. She was usually in the C.O.C. but would occasionally become involved and drop to the 4th group. She was seldom in between. either the top or the bottom." Not only did Lillian suffer the loss of privileges that came with a demotion to the Fourth Group; but also she lost self-respect because she had disgraced herself and disappointed Mother Bowles.
Her letters reveal her own inner conflict as she pleaded for both understanding and forgiveness, acknowledging at once that her behavior was deviant and immoral but that she was unable to change it: "I'm writing this against my will, but not for my benefit, but for the benefit of others I have gotten in trouble with. You have beat me, and you have done everything that you could do to break me of the most disgraceful habit that one could have. . . . Please lock me up forever, I can't live like this and I don't want to. I've tried but I never go any length of time before I fall again for the same thing. So let me go, you have wasted too much precious time on me and it is in me and I know it, but you don't know. ..."
Lillian's release was contingent upon her ability to control her homosexual encounters. Arrangements had been made to parole the young woman to a family that had already arranged for her to finish high school. But when Lillian's future foster parents found out about her homosexual activities, they refused to take her.
This change of heart nearly destroyed Lillian. Her feelings of complete abandonment and hopelessness are evident in a letter of Superintendent Bowles, written a few weeks after her date of release was canceled.
Again, the letter abounds with expressions of appreciation and apologies and pleas for forgiveness: "I hope you will not misunderstand my letter or think me ungrateful for I don't mean to be ... I'm more than grateful for everything that you have done for me, knowing that my conduct all along has not been worthy..."
Source: Gary R. Kremer, Linda Rea Gibbens. "The Missouri Home for Negro Girls: The 1930s," American Studies (1983): 77-93.
1897 Sodomy Case
| The State v. Smith
Supreme Court of Missouri, Division Two
January 19, 1897
PROCEDURAL POSTURE: Defendant, a police officer, appealed from a judgment of the St. Louis Criminal Court (Missouri), which convicted him of an attempt to commit and perpetrate the crime of sodomy or buggery upon a 16-year-old boy complainant. Defendant's motions in arrest and for a new trial were overruled and he was sentenced to the penitentiary.
OVERVIEW: The State's testimony tended to show that defendant became acquainted with complainant while patrolling the beat in complainant's neighborhood. On the night in question, complainant and another boy were accosted by defendant who threatened the boys to come with him, conducted them into a lumber yard, and compelled complainant with threats to lower his clothes and lie face down. Then with obscene expressions indicating his detestable desire, he opened his clothing, and attempted to complete the sodomy or buggery act forbidden by the statute. Testimony favored complainant's general reputation for general morality and defendant absolutely denied the story. No error was assigned in giving or refusing jury instructions and no error existed in refusing to strike out evidence of a witness not listed. On appeal, the court was unable to say that the verdict was without substantial evidence to support it. The court could not properly interfere with the jury's findings. Also, the indictment was entirely sufficient where it clearly stated what offense was prohibited by law that the accused attempted to commit and stated some act committed toward the perpetration of such offense.
OUTCOME: The court affirmed the judgment of the trial court, which convicted defendant of attempt to commit and perpetrate the crime of sodomy or buggery.
Source: 137 Mo. 25; 38 S.W. 717; 1897 Mo. LEXIS 4
1909 Woman Living as Man
| Preface: Fascinating account of a woman who lived and worked as a man. During this era, there were many reports of women posing as men for employment purposes, however this case notes the young woman "courted" girls too.
By Havelock Ellis
In St. Louis, in 1909, the case was brought forward of a young woman of 22, who had posed as a man for nine years. Her masculine career began at the age of 13 after the Galveston flood which swept away all her family. She was saved and left Texas dressed as a boy. She worked in livery stables, in a plough factory, and as a bill-poster. At one time she was the adopted son of the family in which she lived and had no difficulty in deceiving her sisters by adoption as to her sex.
On coming to St. Louis in 1902 she made chairs and baskets at the American Rattan Works, associating with fellow-workmen on a footing of masculine equality. One day a workman noticed the extreme smallness and dexterity of her hands. "Gee, Bill, you should have been a girl." "How do you know I'm not?" she retorted. In such ways her ready wit and good humor always, disarmed suspicion as to her sex. She shunned no difficulties in her work or in her sports, we are told, and never avoided the severest tests.
"She drank, she swore, she courted girls, she worked as hard as her fellows, she fished and camped; she told stories with the best of them, and she did not flinch when the talk grew strong. She even chewed tobacco." Girls began to fall in love with the good-looking boy at an early period, and she frequently boasted of her feminine conquests; with one girl who worshipped her there was a question of marriage.
On account of lack of education she was restricted to manual labor, and she often chose hard work. At one time she became a boiler-maker's apprentice, wielding a hammer and driving in hot rivets. Here she was very popular and became local secretary of the International Brotherhood of Boiler-makers. In physical development she was now somewhat of an athlete.
"She could outrun any of her friends on a sprint; she could kick higher, play baseball, and throw the ball overhand like a man, and she was fond of football. As a wrestler she could throw most of the club members." The physician who examined her for an insurance policy remarked: "You are a fine specimen of physical manhood, young fellow. Take good care of yourself." Finally, in a moment of weakness, she admitted her sex and returned to the garments of womanhood.
Source: Ellis, Havelock, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, 1936 edition
