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[Lightwriter]

My father passed away 16 years ago, he left his body to Stanford medical school because he's been a life-long Diabetic and felt he could help people best that way. About two months later, the head of Pathology called my mother with the autopsy report because my mother had requested someone do this. The doctor read of a monster list of my father's maledies and then when he got to the report on my fathers brain there was a brief pause. Then the doctor says: "Whoah!, Did your husband ever display any sociopathic behavior?", Mother just laughed and asked the doctor how much time he had...

My father was a pedaphile.

My mother asked how he could tell just by reading a chart (Dad was never prosicuted, this was a long time ago when Pedaphila was often overlooked by the law), the doctor said that my father had dead areas of his brain in the region that governed bahavior. My Father had been thrown through the windshield of the family car durring a violent head-on collision that left him in a coma for a month or so. My dad had a scar on his forehead and he was firm about everyone wearing their seatbelt, to the point of pulling over on the highway and asking if I wanted to walk. Anyway, the Pathologist said that this was common in violent prisoners and sex offenders, many of them being beaten as childred in the head.

  This was a huge relief for me because I didn't know what had sent my father down that path and I lived in fear that , just like a werewolf, one full moon I would suddenly desire children. It was a weight off of my chest and to this day I'm a normal ( well, as normal as a survivor of molestation can be) adult, I'm single but that has more to do with my financial situation than anything else. My brothers are also normal, but in the popular culture, we're all supposed to be in jail or drug addicts and certainly pedaphiles ourselves. So here's my question:

Was the doctor correct? Are brain injurries common in violent criminals and sex offenders?

The Pathologist said that a CAT scan would have picked it up and that my father's behavior could have been controlled with a combination of medications and electro-shock theropy. His tone of voice was very matter of fact.

Is that true?

I ask this because if there is a way that we can shut these guys down, turn off or control their sickness then why isn't this part of every discussion of child preditors? Or regular criminals for that matter?

[Zwheels]

a very good post .it makes you think..i started at age 5 i hit the dash of my fathers studebaker with my head . at age 12 i put my head through a  windsheld after that i've hit my head on trees/concrete/pavement a few times/a 55 chevy/a large boulder/the gastank on my norton/the headlight on my norton/a stone wall/the rear bumper of a buick/baseball bat twice/a 2x4/a lightpole/...guess i was lucky all i've had so far has been head aches, blurerd vision, a slight coma"was out for three days" but when i fell and hit the boulder the right side of my face lost feeling and started to droop had to eat and drink with the left side of my mouth. it only lasted a few weeks. but after reading your post it makes me think how lucky i've been. thank you.

[Lyric]

From a medical standpoint, people who have had closed head injuries, can display different behaviors.
Some of these behaviors have to have triggers, typical is drugs or alcohol, before the behavior changes.

In your dads case, it was more likely injury that caused the dysfunction in his brain, and with that dysfunction, there were the unfortunate manifestations.

In the case of other violent offenders, you would have to seriously comb through medical history, to see if there were accidents that could have caused a closed head trauma.
Some violent offenders have no moral compass.. Or, such little reaction in the reasoning centers of the brain, where the "you shouldn't do this", is either non-existant or not loud enough.


You bring up some incredible questions, and definate rational thought behind what may cause some behaviors.

Anyone else with more knowledge on head injuries and the criminal mind?

[Ectoplasmic Terrier]

Is the legend of Phineas Gage true?
 :?:

[Navi]

As far as I know, yes.

[Ectoplasmic Terrier]

I too have heard numerous accounts of violent, ant-social behavior who were beaten about the head as children.   But then again, there are far more abuse victims who don't display violent, anti-social behaviors.  Then there are guys like Jeffrey Dahmer who grew up in a dysfunctional family.  If growing up in a dysfunctional family turned you into a cannibal, three quarters of us would be eating human livers with some fava beans and a nice Cianti.  I would be flossing the gristle of human flesh out of my teeth right at this moment!
I have a few signs that indicate I could be a serial murderer.  
a. bedwetting past normal age.
b. setting fires in childhood.
c. social rejection by peers.
d. negligent and abusive parents.
One constant that is completely missing is cruelty to other people and to animals.  I never, ever enjoyed inflicting pain on animals.  I loved our pets.  I never smashed frogs.  I watched in disgust as peers did it.  Heck, I never even liked keeping insects in captivity.  Didn't seem fair!  If I ever battered another person, it was out of defense.

When I meet new girlfriends, I never tell them about my childhood pathologies.  Makes sense doesn't it?  Don't want to make people nervous, especially if you're trying to get laid!

I just wonder what wrong switches get thrown--or what right switches don't get thrown---at what stage of development to turn a person into a Jeff Dahmer or an Ed Gein....
 :?:

[Lightwriter]

The brain injury was the cause of his lack of control, the root cause stemmed from him being molested himself at around the age of 13 at a summer Bible camp. Since he had brain damage, and because it happened at the start of his puberty it became hard-wired into his head as a way to behave.

He was a full functional person otherwise. The injury also made him manic depresive and had dramatic mood swings. But everyone seemed to like him.

[Sian]

I'm utterly gobsmacked. I have never imagied that such behaviour may be bought on by an injury as opposed to a mental imbalance. You have given me a lot to think about and I'm going to see if I can research it a bit more.

Also, a question. Please don't be exasperated with me because I generally have no idea......

If people with paedophile/sexually deviant tendancies have developed them through brain injury would it show on a scan? Or do you have to be autopsied (sp?) to discover this?

[Lynne]

The section of your brain that synthesizes what you know into one integrated piece, helps you learn from experience, helps you plan and organize, and helps keep your impulses in check is called the frontal lobe (the "executive" section of the brain).  There are different parts of the frontal lobe, and depending on where the injury occurs you can either become "over-controlled" - extremely passive and zombie-like, not being able to plan well enough to do anything without help, devoid of emotional energy; or the other extreme - no impulse control, saying whatever you think, not learning from experience, and having no conception or interest of how you impact others.  

From what I know of the research, a frontal lobe brain injury will not make you a pedophile (or anything else) unless you already had those tendencies - however, it might make you more likely to act out if you have those thoughts or interests and it may depress the area that makes you care about how others feel (empathy) or how others look at you (concern for how you are seen by the people you care about).  

Most of us have "bad" thoughts and feelings often (it's what brains do - scan the environment continuously and make judgments about what we see and hear), but the frontal lobe is the thing that keeps us from blurting out to our best friend how ugly his/her new hairdo is or our significant other how fat s/he has become.  It also helps us in small ways, like being able to wait in line, and in larger ways, like putting off the things we want right now, knowing that by putting off fun right now (going out and taking a spin on a gorgeous day) it will help us get what we want later (studying to pass a class) - that is delayed gratification.

I can tell pretty quickly by observing someone's behavior whether they have frontal lobe issues if they have had SIGNFICANT damage, but it is difficult to tell without more exhaustive testing whether someone has minor frontal lobe damage.  The testing (which is very comprehensive and takes a long time) involves whether the person can change strategies mid-stream, whether they are able to plan tasks, whether they can make a cohesive whole out of small units, whether they can synthesize information, etc.

Frontal lobe abilities are like eveything else - they range along a continuum.   I personally believe we all have some problems with frontal lobe functioning, but that's just me.  

At the same time, there is a difference between having frontal lobe damage and being lazy, not caring, or having other values than most people, such that it might look on the surface like you have frontal lobe damage, but you need to do testing to check it out.  Some of the best mastermind criminals of the century have had exquisite planning skills, so brain damage doesn't "cause" crime.  In fact, people with this sort of damage are the ones who are more likely to get caught, since they can't integrate well, can't plan well, and don't learn from mistakes.

If you had a large lesion in the frontal lobe they can tell this at an autopsy, but they can't tell the specific types of problems you might have exhibited.

[Sian]

Lynne....you rock!

Thanks, you made it easier to understand.

[Lightwriter]

See, I don't know that it was a frontal lobe injury, his scar was caused when his body flew through the windshield of his parent's car. He bounced off of the hood of the other car and ended up on the road. The injury could have been anywhere or in multiple locations.

The Pathologist seemed to be able surmize some kind of sociopathic outcome from the injury because nobody at the hospital was aware of my Father's past, which is too bad in itself because theymight have studied his brain more closely.

There are incidents of behavior and personality changes after head trauma. There are a PBS segment on brain trauma that was done for "California Connected" that alluded to this problem. I will go research this and post some links.

[Lightwriter]

Okay, it was a frontal lobe injury.

Here's the link to the show I was talking about. It's about Iraqi War vets who are trying to put their lives back together. Most of their injurries were caused because our helmets, though bullet proof, have no padding inside them (WTF?).

This first link has a bunch of great resources linked at the bottom too:

http://www.californiaconnected.org/tv/archives/417

the follow up:

http://www.californiaconnected.org/tv/archives/431

Thanks for all of the thoughtfull replies too.

[Lightwriter]

Dad was 9 years old at the time of the accident, which puts the year at 1945, so I don't know what they did in the way of re-hab back then. I think that my dad just awoke from his coma and knew his name, could count his toes and knew who his parents were so they sent him home.

He was a phenominal organist, he could play all of the great music and always had a job playing for a church on Sunday. The Organ requires the use of the left and right hand PLUS both feet to play the bass register pedals.

He died at the age of 53, he was STILL in college. Dad took college courses off and on from 1957 until his death in 1990. He could never finish a course of study and divided his time between studying to be a priest and a nurse. He held low-paying meanial jobs , inspite of the fact that he was smart. He had problems with authority figures and wouldn't hesitate to argue with his boss.

He was an avid reader. His small apartment was loaded with books. He never got so much as a traffic ticket. He had a strong sense of justice and hardcore about doing the right thing. That's why his Pedaphilia didn't add up. I guess I'm lucky in that he could have been violent but he wasn't.

[Kadee]

Lynne your awesome, you always put it in a way that is so easy to understand
 I remember hearing  soemthing about the fact that teenagers act all out of sorts and just plain senseless  most of the time because there frontal lobes aren' t fully developed yet, is this true?

[Lynne]

Lynne your awesome, you always put it in a way that is so easy to understand
 I remember hearing  soemthing about the fact that teenagers act all out of sorts and just plain senseless  most of the time because there frontal lobes aren' t fully developed yet, is this true?

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/Publicat/teenbrain.cfm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/interviews/todd.html
http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=news-in-rev/teen-frontal