Cruel Attachments: The Ritual of Child Molesters in Germany by John Borneman (review)

In this intelligent and accessible book, anthropologist John Borneman challenges himself and his readers to understand the inner world of child molesters. At the center of his study is a rigorous ethnography of men convicted of child sex abuse undergoing rehabilitative therapy in contemporary Berlin, Germany. Borneman sat in on weekly therapy groups for convicted offenders, worked with a psychologist in a minimum security prison, and studied the case files of fifty adult men convicted of child sex abuse. As a skilled ethnographer, his primary goal is understanding, and he works to bring his reader into the psychic lives of those he studies. These are men guilty of crimes that threaten to place them outside the human community. Challenging the impulse to ostracize such men, Borneman argues that there is much to be learned from the empathetic work of understanding their cases and the cultural, historical, and psychological contexts in which they are embedded.

The book focuses on the process of rehabilitation, which Borneman defines not as behavior modification but as fundamental psychic change linked to a hard-earned understanding of oneself and one’s actions. Borneman argues that rehabilitation of the sex abuser of children in contemporary Germany takes the shape of a “secular ritual” involving a structured movement through phases. It begins with accusation and acknowledgment of the crime, moves through imprisonment and treatment, and ends with social reincorporation and surveillance. Through this process, the offender ideally comes to understand his crime, develops empathy for his victim, and begins to socially reintegrate. Borneman argues that it is essential for the convicted offender to first understand himself and his own history and motives. Apologizing to one’s victim, one of the prescribed steps in the rehabilitation process, involves empathy—an emotional capacity that must be cultivated. Borneman chooses case studies that illustrate how the process of psychic change is central to rehabilitation.

Threaded through Borneman’s study are his meditations on the broader cultural contexts that frame child sexual abuse. The book does not begin with a standard scholarly introduction but with a long prologue that details a different kind of story about child sexual abuse and the process of rehabilitation. This is the case of Andreas Marquardt, a German man who was sexually abused by his mother as a child. Marquardt subsequently became a pimp and a violent abuser of women—activities that landed him in jail. Marquardt’s rehabilitation brought him into contact with therapist and writer Jürgen Lemke. The outcome of their therapeutic work was a well-received and widely publicized book by Lemke charting Marquardt’s transformation.

Beginning here, Borneman deftly challenges the story of child sexual abuse so often reiterated in the media—that of the male pedophilic stranger preying on vulnerable children. Marquardt’s story confounds the received narrative in multiple ways: he is the male victim of an abusive mother; during his life he moved from victim to victimizer; and he goes through a process of psychic transformation with the help of a skilled therapist. This case introduces the themes that interest Borneman. What does successful rehabilitation entail, and how does it proceed? What is the role of the public—public disclosure of infractions, public understanding of such cases, publicity surrounding child sexual abuse—in the rehabilitation process? Borneman suggests that publicity (group therapeutic work, community reintegration) is integral to the process of coming to terms with sexual abuse. Understanding perpetrators as capable of transformative change opens the possibility that forms of effective and humane treatment can be embraced. These treatments do not assume a biological basis for such crimes (inborn or intractable pedophilia, for example) and do not focus on behavior modification, such as pharmaceutical interventions that reduce offenders’ sex drive and render them less likely to reoffend.

Readers interested in the history of sexuality will appreciate Borneman’s efforts to historicize sexual abuse. He argues that in post–World War II Germany, adult...