by Dr. Daniel Berger II

The Hidden Truth about Psychiatric Genetics

In my book, Saving Abnormal: The Disorder of Psychiatric Genetics, I discuss in detail how psychiatry formulated the hereditary theory of mental illness that would develop into eugenics and eventually into psychiatric genetics. Long before Hitler or Nazi socialism took power, psychiatrists had fully accepted and begun to propagate the eugenic model. Psychiatrist and historian Heinz Haefner makes this remark:

It was against the backdrop of this already quite widespread ideology of “negative eugenics” among psychiatrists and parts of the general population that Hitler stepped in with his human rights infringing plans.

This history of ideas helps us to understand Hitler’s first step, the compulsory sterilization of people with allegedly hereditary illness and of members of “unworthy” racial groups to prevent them from procreating, his second step, the murder of large numbers of mentally ill and disabled people, and, finally, the unfathomable fact that numerous psychiatrists participated in these crimes.

Though incredibly significant, the sobering reality that German psychiatrists both initiated and provided the intellectual foundations of the Holocaust is largely unknown today. Furthermore, it is not well known that the field of psychiatric eugenics in Nazi Germany would be reframed as psychiatric genetics when it was accepted in America. Nor is it realized by many in society that the German field of “mental hygiene” would be recast as “mental health.” These truths are hidden for several reasons and deserve attention.

1) Historians often attribute the holocaust primarily to political causes (e.g., socialism) and secondarily to the genetic/hereditary psychiatric theory. For example, most children today are taught that it was Hitler’s ideas that Germany accepted and that initiated the Holocaust. Clinical psychologist Richard Bentall illustrates how many people have come to believe that psychiatrists were complicit but not primarily responsible for Nazi policies and practices:

In the following years, Nazi policies were gradually embraced by the German psychiatric establishment, championed in particular by Ernst Rüdin, who had been recruited to the Institute by Kraepelin in order to develop the new field of psychiatric genetics. The eugenic theories that Rüdin proposed led, first, to the enforced sterilization and then, later, the killing of mentally ill patients.

But what Bentall misses is that it was first the figureheads in biological psychology/psychiatry who championed “race psychology”as foundational to the eugenic theory. Take for example the words of Wilhelm Wundt, the most influential professor to Emil Kraepelin and Sigmund Freud (the biological psychologist credited as being the “father of modern psychology”):

Psychology must not only strive to become a useful basis for the other mental sciences, but it must also turn again to the historical science, in order to obtain an understanding for the more highly developed mental processes. Racial psychology is the clearest proof of this latter. It is one of the newest of the mental sciences and depends absolutely on these relations between psychology and the historical sciences. It is the first transition from psychology to the other mental sciences .

Psychiatric eugenics was not influenced by German science. Instead, the Kraepelinian psychiatric hereditary theory became the foundation of German science and medicine under the leadership of figures like Wilhelm Wundt, Emil Kraepelin, and eventually Kraepelin’s predecessor, Ernst Rüdin. One scientific journal remarks on how it was geneticists (psychiatric geneticists) who needed a political power to implement their theory:

The eminent geneticist, Benno Muller-Hill, described eugenics as “explosive mixture between something we might call hard science, that is, human genetics, and the sphere of political action. On the one hand, geneticists needed politicians to implement their ideas. On the other hand, Hitler and the Nazis needed scientists who could say that anti-Semitism has scientific theoretical foundations.” For some Polish eugenicists, the Third Reich was not the home of the Nuremberg Laws, but a country that “boldly embarked on racial hygiene.” This enthusiastic attitude of Polish intellectual circles towards Nazi eugenic laws was characteristic of the status of pre-war science in Poland, which in many areas, such as anthropology and psychiatry, remained strongly influenced by the paradigm of German science .

From the perspective of Wundt’s “race psychology,” Kraepelin would form the foundation for today’s prominent “bio-psycho-social” or “neo-Kraepelinian” model found in America and around the world. Historian of medicine and neuroscience at the University of Calgary, Frank Stahnisch, explains how the Nazi’s list of “degenerates” was developed as it was accepted from Wundt, to Kraepelin, to Ernst Rudin, and beyond:

“This argument was likewise taken up and prominently reformulated in Kraepelin’s famous article “On Degeneration” (Zur Entartungsfrage), which appeared in the influential Zentralblatt fuer Nervenheilkunde, Psychiatrie und gerichtliche Psychopathologie in 1908. Long before the war, Kraepelin argued that the etiology of neurasthenia and related mental disorders depended on the general conditions of modern life. These views about nervous degeneration by the doyen of German psychiatry became so powerful that they even impacted approaches in social medicine and psychoanalysis later in the Weimar Republic. It was clear for Kraepelin that the war-traumatized had not become ill due to the external conditions of industrialized warfare, but because the nervous degenerate dispositions, which these individuals had since birth, had given rise to their ‘nervous diseases .’”

Several historians also note how the psychiatric theory of “hereditary degeneration”—coupled with the philosophy of materialism/reductionism—became the foundational philosophy that brought about the Holocaust and would eventually transform into the field of psychiatric genetics.

Formal genetic psychiatry was established in the early 20^th century at a time of therapeutic nihilism, when psychiatry was strongly influenced by the theory of hereditary degeneration. This combined with economic considerations, led to a change of emphasis from healing to prevention of the more severe types of psychiatric illness. This was reflected in the popularity of the eugenics movement, which advocated measures such as restrictions on marriage or sterilization to prevent inherited disease. A key aim of psychiatric genetic research was to provide scientific evidence that severe mental illnesses were inherited, thus strengthening the case for eugenic measures .

Well before the S.S. took over in Nazi Germany, the eugenic framework was fully developed within Germany psychiatry.

In fact, this “medical model of the mind” was first developed in the United States in the late 1800s under the theory of Dr. Benjamin Rush, the face currently represented on the logo of the American Psychiatric Association. Historian Christopher Willoughby comments,

Throughout the eighteenth century, physicians and scientists in Europe and the United States discussed and attempted to define racial difference. In the 1790s, however, Benjamin Rush, a founding father and early medical professor at the University of Pennsylvania, introduced racial difference into the curriculum of US medical schools. Rush taught his students that blackness was a form of leprosy that physicians would learn to cure eventually. By constructing a national future free of black Americans, Rush defined the country’s destiny as all white. Thus, within a few decades after the founding of the United States’ first medical school, physicians began to carve out their position as experts on racial difference .

Physicians at the University of Penn Medical School, where Benjamin Rush taught and was influential, also offer insight into this far too often hidden reality:

Much as medicine and science have moved beyond the bloodletting and purging favored by Benjamin Rush 200 years ago, it behooves today’s doctors and scientists to make sure eugenics remains an illegitimate science.

This historical fact led historian Wendy Gonaver to state that “slavery and ideas about race were fundamental to early psychiatry.” The psychiatric paradigm of eugenics preceded both Germany’s leadership within psychiatry and the socialist party that would carry out its horrific application. Sadly, many historians either ignore or deny that the psychiatric genetic theory (“eugenics” or “hereditary degeneration”) was the basis of the Holocaust.

When the influential figures Wundt and Kraepelin formalized the concepts of “racial hygiene” and “mental hygiene” into an allegedly scientific field (eugenics), pre-Nazi Germany began to believe its doctrines and applications were necessary. Prominent professor of psychiatry and former consultant for the National Institutes of Mental Health Peter Breggin also comments,

It seems necessary to conclude that the inherent, basic principles of psychiatry were not only consistent with Nazi totalitarian and racist aims, but anticipated, encouraged and paved the way for Hitler’s eugenical and euthanasia programs. Without psychiatry, the holocaust would probably not have taken place .

German psychiatrists had not merely gained power in the field of anthropology in Europe. Rather, psychiatrists had assumed prominent authority and spearheaded its application in diagnosing, writing sterilization laws, and forming the first execution facility within their own mental ward:

From late 1933 on, doctors at mental hospitals and homes for the mentally disabled had to fill in a questionnaire for each chronically mentally ill or disabled patient no longer fully fit for work. The questionnaires were then submitted to psychiatrists chosen as experts. The list included patients with schizophrenia, epilepsy, mental retardation, final states of neurological diseases, mentally ill criminals, and all psychiatric patients interned for more than 5 years. The experts drew a red cross on the questionnaires of those patients they selected for being killed. Several professors of psychiatry served as such experts, for example, Prof. Werner Heyde (Würzburg), Prof. Max de Crinis (Berlin), Prof. Karl Schneider (Heidelberg), and Prof. Paul Nitsche (Head of the Public Mental Hospital Pirna-Sonnenstein, successor to Heyde as the “Medical Director of the Euthanasia Program”).

Not only is the fact that the Holocaust began as a massive psychiatric experiment to test the Kraepelinian theory, but some historians present physicians involved as if they were victims who “slipped” into their roles. Former professor of medicine at Cornell University and head of the matrix biology laboratory, Hartmut M. Hanauske-Abel, discusses this common historic revisionism,

The history of medicine this century is darkened by the downfall of the German medical profession, exposed during the doctors’ trial at Nuremberg in 1946 . . .  connotes a gradual slide over infinitesimal steps until, suddenly, all footing is lost; the second conveys forced takeover of the profession’s leadership and values. Both concepts imply that the medical profession itself became the victim of circumstances. The slippery slope concept is a prominent figure of argument in the current debate on bioethics. The evidence presented here, however, strongly suggests that the German medical community set its own course in 1933. In some respects, this course even outpaced the new government, which had to rein in the profession’s eager pursuit of enforced eugenic sterilizations.

Psychiatrists were not the victims of Nazism; they were the architects and driving philosophical force that empowered Nazi socialism.

2) Another reason this history is largely unknown is that many psychiatrists and historians who write on the history of the Holocaust attribute its cause to the German physicians and scientists in general and not to psychiatrists in particular. For example, former professor of psychiatry at Harvard University Robert Lifton hardly mentions psychiatry in his acclaimed book Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. Though his book title expresses the fields of psychology, eugenics, and medicine as key factors involved, even discussing the most prominent of all Nazi psychiatrists—the man hand selected by Kraepelin and the figure widely recognized today as the Father of Nazi Eugenics, Ernst Rudin—Lifton chooses to exclude psychiatrists and bio-psychologists as the principle medical authorities who oversaw the Holocaust. Of course, virtually every field of medicine had bought into the eugenics theory by the 1940s, but eugenics was the main tenet of Kraepelinian theory, and psychiatrists like Rüdin were key evangelists who convinced virtually the whole of German medicine to accept Kraepelinianism. 

It is not merely that historians regularly omit psychiatrists as the principle figures, however, but that they also fail to reveal specific relevant details about psychiatrists. Dr. Peter Breggin, for example, notes how Robert Lifton ignores discussion of critical historical facts. Breggin also explains why this practice is all too common:

Lifton is silent also on one of the most important issues surrounding the psychiatric crimes in Germany—the failure to bring psychiatrists to justice at the Doctor’s Trial. This was due in part to the fact that Leo Alexander, a staunch supporter of eugenical and biological psychiatry, was the chief investigator of psychiatric crimes. Alexander was a primary source of information for Lifton’s book.

One might consider, then, that when historians attribute responsibility for the Holocaust to German medicine that they are primarily referring to psychiatrists, who by their philosophy and treatment of alleged “degenerates” (negative eugenics) controlled much of the medical field. Sadly, psychiatrists like Ernst Rüdin and his right-hand man, Franz J. Kallmann, walked away from the destruction and horrors of their leadership in propagating and carrying out eugenics without incurring any significant consequences for their crimes.

3) In addition, advocates for the genetic theory of mental illness wish to keep hidden the precise history of the theory, since today’s psychiatric genetics theory is virtually the same eugenics theory that brought about the Holocaust. Though it is difficult for some to discover, the fact remains that the current mental health system in America and beyond is fully Kraepelinian. No wonder so many in academia desire to keep this reality hidden since it places the Kraepelinian genetics theory (the genetic theory of mental illness) into rightful skepticism and caution. In the International Review of Psychiatry, psychiatrists discuss this sobering truth:

Reviewing the history of psychiatric genetics is a difficult task, since—in contrast to genetic research into most other disorders—it cannot simply be done by chronologically listing methodological achievements and major findings. Instead, it necessitates a comprehensive assessment of how the aetiological concept of mental disorders has developed since as early as the world of ancient Greece. Furthermore, it has to touch upon the sensitive issue of the eugenic movement that was closely linked to the study of heredity in mental disorders in the first half of the 20th century and, in Nazi Germany, led to the systematic mass murder of psychiatric patients.

Similarly, psychiatrist Rael Strous offers his own explanation as to why most psychiatrists prefer to keep these facts hidden:

While it would be expected that the involvement of psychiatrists in such a profound manner would be well-known in the field, this is not the case. Little has been published on the subject in mainstream psychiatry journals and even less is part of the formal education process for medical students and psychiatry residents. Several reasons may be proposed for this. First, it remains an embarrassment for the field that so many senior members – professors, department heads and internationally known figures – were so intimately involved. Second, many of those involved continued to practice and conduct research long after the war and were protected by colleagues. Third, and arguably most important, what psychiatrists did was based upon a paradigm shift in how patients and mental illness were viewed. Activities of psychiatrists became much of a value judgment in how they “read” the community and principles of neo-Darwinism with subsequent consideration of racial hygiene . 

Peter Breggin also comments,

Psychiatrists suffer from the repression of painful memories as much as anyone else does. Genetic psychiatrists not only must repress the lessons of Nazi Germany, they have to forget about the lessons of their own research, which ultimately has undermined their position. As a result, the history of genetics is largely expurgated from reviews on the subject.

Likewise, one group of scientists assert that

The lineage of the effort to find genetic predispositions runs back through the eugenic thinking of the 1930s and 1920s, with its belief in genes for criminal degeneracy, sexual profligacy, alcoholism, and every other type of activity disapproved of by bourgeois society. It is deeply embedded in today’s deterministic ideology. Only thus can we account of the extraordinary repetitive perseverance and uncritical nature of research into the genetics of schizophrenia.

The genetic theory of mental illness, which has gained wide acceptance today, is not merely rooted in Nazi eugenics; it is the same theory repackaged.

4) Another reason most people do not realize the Holocaust was initially a psychiatric experiment based upon the current theory is the deliberate historical revisionism that regularly occurs. For example, Rüdin, Kallmann, and other Nazi psychiatrists are minimized, whitewashed, or left out of historical accounts altogether. Many people are unaware that psychiatric genetics were at all involved in the Holocaust, let alone that the theories’ principle philosophies formed the basis of the Holocaust and remain the foundation of today’s psychiatric theories. For example, in the abstract of one medical journal,

The authors also document what they see as revisionist historical accounts by leading psychiatric genetic authors. They outline three categories of contemporary psychiatric genetic accounts of Rüdin and his work: (A) those who write about German psychiatric genetics in the Nazi period, but either fail to mention Rüdin at all, or cast him in a favorable light; (B) those who acknowledge that Rüdin helped promote eugenic sterilization and/or may have worked with the Nazis, but generally paint a positive picture of Rüdin’s research and fail to mention his participation in the “euthanasia” killing program; and (C) those who have written that Rüdin committed and supported unspeakable atrocities. The authors conclude by calling on the leaders of psychiatric genetics to produce a detailed and complete account of their field’s history, including all of the documented crimes committed by Rüdin and his associates.

Harvard professor of genetics Richard Lewontin, professor of neuroscience Steven Rose, and professor of psychology Leon Kamin offer another case in point in reference to Dr. Kallmann—the eugenic psychiatrist who when he fled Nazi Germany brought the Kraepelinian paradigm with him—of how history is regularly rewritten by secularists in order to maintain a false narrative:

The particular genetic theory espoused by Kallmann has made it possible for latter-day psychiatric geneticists to attempt a spectacular rewriting of their history. Thus, in a recent textbook the following note appears: “Kallmann’s theory was apparently not based solely on his data. His widow has indicated that Kallmann advocated a recessive model because he could then argue convincingly against the use of sterilization to eliminate the gene. As a Jewish refugee, Kallmann was very sensitive to this issue and afraid of the possible social consequences of his own research.”

These scientists respond to the clear attempt to whitewash Kallmann’s image in order not to give the single recessive gene theory away as eugenics:

The picture of Kallmann as a bleeding-heart protector of schizophrenics, adjusting his scientific theories to mirror his compassion, is grotesquely false.

Other historians comment on historical revisionism prevalent in the genetic theory of mental illness in that “scientists reconstruct their own history by rebuilding a narrative of continuity and progress.” Psychiatrist Mary Seeman rewrites history in presenting psychiatry as complicit in the Holocaust but not as the driving force:

Before the new century was 30 years old, German psychiatrists were gassing children with mental handicaps and sterilizing adults with mental handicaps and mental illness or using them as subjects for scientific experimentation before putting them, often brutally, to death. Psychiatrists who once were much admired—Ernst Rüdin, Franz Kallman, Carl Schneider—were complicit in these activities. Devotees of preventive health approved of the practices. Social reformers participated. Disciples of humanism and followers of the holistic medicine movement colluded in the atrocities. Academicians and scientists were at the centre of them. Even well-meaning child and adolescent psychiatrists willingly took part.

Other historians acknowledge that German psychiatry was responsible for the Holocaust, but they deny Kraepelin as being the true father of the eugenic theory.

Whether describing the field in only positive light, minimizing psychiatry’s involvement, excluding important historical facts from discussion, portraying key figures as somewhat noble, denying that today’s bio-psycho-social model is neo-Kraepelinianism, or pretending that eugenics has moved beyond Nazi Germany’s conditions and philosophies, historical revisionism is too often widespread in the literature of psychiatric genetics and modern accounts of the Holocaust.

5) Still another reason the modern psychiatric genetic theory is hidden as the same theory that led to the Holocaust is that historians of eugenics in general and psychiatric genetics in particular hardly connect the transmission of the theory through the various influential figures. The reality that Wilhelm Wundt taught Emil Kraepelin, who discipled and impacted Ernst Rüdin, who partnered with Franz Josef Kallmann, who after fleeing Nazi Germany convinced the American Psychiatric Association to adopt Kraepelinianism as the primary theory and approach to mental illness is largely unknown by the general public. In fact, these undeniable connections expose the current genetic theory of mental illness to be the precise Nazi eugenics theory repackaged.

6) Finally, many people are unware that the Holocaust was the result of the psychiatric genetic theory because many of the historical records before, during, and after the Holocaust are written in German and are either only partially translated or not at all. It is not that the records are not there; they are simply far too often not realized. Heinz Haefner, writing for the Schizophrenia Bulletin comments,

We are here dealing with the greatest crime ever perpetrated on the sick: the murder of 200 000–260 000—the exact number is unknown—mentally ill persons in Germany in the Nazi era. The fact that German historians, psychiatrists, and politicians have addressed this dark chapter has produced a vast body of literature. But most of this material is available in German only.

There are many German historians, however, who in recent time have translated and revealed much of this often unrealized history to the rest of the world.

It is well past time that the true history of the genetic theory of mental illness be realized and discussed within society. These are not side issues to the modern genetic theory and idea of mental health; they are vitally important truths to understand. If a society is unwilling to know precisely what occurred rather than settle for a redacted and revised history, then the “medical field of psychiatry” waving the banner of scientific achievement and altruism will continue to usher in atrocities under the Kraepelinian value system of eugenics without the people’s knowledge. As psychiatrist Mary Seeman remarks,

The Nazi era has taught us that medical values are malleable and can all too easily be shaped by priorities of the state, personal agendas, careerism, the profit motive, and deep biases in society and in ourselves.

We must ask ourselves the tough questions: “Why under the Kraepelinian paradigm has mental health only worsened in America? . . . Why must we continue to view humanity through the stigmatizing lens of eugenics?” We must not only clearly understand who is responsible for the atrocities that occurred in the Holocaust but more importantly, we must also discover and reject their foundational belief system. It is well past time that we reject the Rushian/Kraepelinian medical model of the soul and return to the only known phenomenology/paradigm of understanding, approaching, and seeking to remedy the soul that has shown itself to be effective: the Word of God.

 

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Heinz Haefner, “Comment on E.F. Torrey and R.H. Yolken: “Psychiatric genocide: Nazi attempts to eradicate schizophrenia” Schizophrenia Bulletin vol. 36 1 (2010): 26–32.

Bentall, Madness Explained, 30.

Wilhelm Wundt, Introduction to Psychology reprint (London: George Allen and Unwin, LTD, 1912), 194–95.

O. Blach, “Eugenics—a Side effect of Progressivism? Analysis of the Role of Scientific and Medical Elites in the Rise and Fall of Eugenics in Pre-War Poland,” Vesalius vol. 16 (1) (June, 2010): 10-5: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20977151.

Frank W. Stahnisch, “The Early Eugenics Movement and Emerging Professional Psychiatry: Conceptual Transfers and Personal Relationships between Germany and North America, 1880s to 1930s,” CBMH Vol. 31 (1) (2014): 18; https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8855/29 ed3162bfdf659cba36ae3b1566c9a06b5.pdf.

Gundula Kösters, Holger Steinberg, Kenneth Clifford Kirkby, Hubertus Himmerich’ “Ernst Rüdin ’s Unpublished 19922–1925 Study “Inheritance of Manic-Depressive Insanity”: Genetic Research Findings Subordinated to Eugenic Ideology,” PLOS Genetics (November 6, 2015): https://journals.plos .org/plosgenetics/article?id=10. 1371/journal.pgen.1005524.

 

Christopher Willoughby, “Racist Medicine: A History of Race and Health,” The Oxford University Press (September 12, 2017): https://blog.oup. com/2017/09/racist-medicine-history-race-health/.

Penn Medicine’s Department of Communications, “Psychiatry and Eugenics,” Penn Medicine News (October 23, 2012): https://www. pennmedicine.org/news/news-blog/2012/october/ psychiatry-and-eugenics.

Wendy Gonaver, The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry 1840–1880 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 4.

Heinz Haefner, “Comment on E.F. Torrey and R.H. Yolken: “Psychiatric genocide: Nazi attempts to eradicate schizophrenia” Schizophrenia Bulletin vol. 36 1 (2010): 26–32. See also R.D. Strous, “Psychiatric genocide: reflections and responsibilities” Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance access publication on February 4, 2010; doi:10.1093/schbul/sbq003).” Schizophrenia Bulletin vol. 36 3 (2010): 450–4. doi:10.1093/schbul/sbq034.

Hartmut Hanauske-Abel “Not a Slippery Slope or Sudden Subversion: German Medicine and National Socialism in 1933,” BMJ Vol 313, (December 7, 1996), 1453.

Robert Lifton, Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986).

Peter Breggin, Psychiatry’s Role in the Holocaust,” International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine 4 (1993), 146.

T.G. Schulze, H. Fangerau, P. Propping, “From Degeneration to Genetic Susceptibility, From Eugenics to Genethics, From Bezugsziffer to LOD score: The History of Psychiatric Genetics,” International Review of Psychiatry (4) (November 16, 2004): 246–59.

Rael D. Strous, “Psychiatry During the Nazi Era: Ethical Lessons for the Modern Professional,” Annals of General Psychiatry vol. 6 (8) (February 27, 2007): doi:10.1186/1744-859X-6-8.

Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry, 107.

Richard C. Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature 2^nd edition (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017), 207.

Jay Joseph and Norbert A. Wetzel, “Ernst Rüdin : Hitler’s Racial Hygiene Mastermind,” Journal of the History of Biology Vol 46 (1) (February 2013): 1–2: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-012-9344-6.  

Richard C. Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature 2^nd edition (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017), 208.

Richard C. Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature 2^nd edition (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017), 208.

Michael Arribas-Ayloon, Andrew Bartlett, and Jamie Lewis, Psychiatric Genetics: From Hereditary Madness to Big Biology (Vanderbilt, New York: Routledge, 2019), 11.

Mary V. Seeman,”Psychiatry in the Nazi Era,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry Vol. 50 (4) (March 2005): 219.

Paul Weindling, Rockefeller Philanthropy and Modern Biomedicine: International Initiatives from World War I to the Cold War edited by William H. Schneider (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2002), 210.

Heinz Haefner, “Comment on E.F. Torrey and R.H. Yolken: “Psychiatric genocide: Nazi Attempts to Eradicate schizophrenia” Schizophrenia Bulletin vol. 36 1 (2010): 26–32: doi:10.1093/schbul/sbq034.

Mary V. Seeman, “Psychiatry in the Nazi Era,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry Vol. 50 (4) (March 2005): 219.

by Lieutenant Commander Dave Peterson

Needed: Resources for Restoring the Repentant Rapist

The young man sat across from me, crying with his head in his hands. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. We just went out for some drinks. I talked her into coming back to my barracks room. . . . I know it was wrong, but I never meant to wake up this morning as a rapist.”

 The Problem

According to the FY19 DoD Annual Report on Sexual Assault (the sole source for all my statistics), 7,825 reports of sexual assault were made from October 1, 2018, to September 30, 2019. Of those, 2,126 were restricted.

For those not familiar with military sexual assault reporting protocols, restricted reports are made so the victim is able to receive care and services without an investigation or review by any authorities. Of the 5,699 cases of unrestricted reports, 62% of the allegations were a service member being accused by another service member, and 19% were a non-service member accusing a service member. In an additional 16% of the reports, the offender was not identified.

Over the last ten years, 59% of sexual assaults were considered service member to service member, and the last five years have seen 19% of the reports from non-service member victims with service members as the alleged perpetrators (down from 29% in 2010, 27% in 2011, and 22–21% in 2012–2013).

Of these cases, 3,716 were considered for possible administrative action. Seven hundred ten cases were dispositioned as non-sexual assault offences. In the 1,629 cases where sexual assault charges were pursued, 795 were preferred to court-martial (presided over by a judge with rules of evidence applying) and 360 appeared before a nonjudicial punishment (presided over by the unit commander, determined by a preponderance of evidence). Two hundred twelve administrative discharges occurred without either court-marital or NPJ proceedings, and 262 received “adverse administration action.” And this is only for one fiscal year and only for the cases that were reported.

As a former member of a Navy Military Sexual Assault Case Management Meeting (SACMG), I know that each one of these cases is tracked by the commanding officer of the base or aircraft carrier from the report to its disposition. These meetings are by their nature victim-centric, with the victim advocate, victim legal defense counsel, and the sexual assault response coordinator (SARC) representing and advocating for the victim. An NCIS officer, clinical psychologist, and chaplain round out the committee. The alleged offender is not represented at all.

According to the FY19 report, the average case disposition is 4.3 months, with some taking as long as18 months (longest I have ever personally seen). During the process, there is no overseeing of the care for the alleged offender. Typically, these young men are referred to substance abuse counseling prior to their discharge, as alcohol reportedly is involved in the majority of military on military sexual abuse cases (although that correlation is not tracked in the DoD report).

Military chaplains have the unique experience of knowing and caring for both victim and perpetrator. We can put faces and names on these statistics. We typically spend most of our time counseling the victim. Most commands’ protocols for sexual assault response offer chaplain services to the victim. When we do deal with the offender, it is typically for a short period of time until the case is settled and the member is discharged, punished, or transferred.

Our relationship with the victims can last much longer. We often find ourselves advocating for the victim. In my conversations with my colleagues, we seldom find ourselves advocating for an alleged offender. While 36% of these sexual assault reports do not have legal action taken (77% due to insufficient evidence), only 50 of the 3,716 were found to be unfounded reports.

The Need

This article is the result of a conversation I had with leadership of the Fallen Soldiers March at the 2019 ACBC convention. They asked the question, “As a chaplain, what resources or problems do you see that veterans may need that they are not receiving now?”

I immediately thought of the young man in my office who was guilty of rape and facing a court martial (and eventual discharge—plea deal resulting in OTH). His life was forever changed.

My answer was “resources to work toward redemption and renewal with sex offenders.”

They responded, “Wow, that is going to be a tough one. If we are going to show the love of Christ to everyone, that includes the rapist.”

They were right. Over one year (and one missed deadline) later, I still haven’t found many such resources. There are not any life-line mini-books titled Help! I Woke Up This Morning a Rapist.

Biblical counselors I polled commonly referred me to Warren Lamb’s Behind the Veil or Chris Moles’s The Heart of Domestic Abuse, both of which dissect the problem of domestic violence perpetrators and the road to redemption and renewal. But this doesn’t cover the majority of the military sexual assault cases; in fact, domestic rape isn’t included in the DoD report I am using. Those incidents are covered by the Family Advocacy Program (212 of the 274 offenders were service members in these cases, according to Appendix G: Domestic Abuse-Related Sexual Assault).

Others recommended William Hines’s Leaving Yesterday Behind or At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry by Steve Gallagher. Again, great resources, but not contending directly with the act of rape, repentance, redemption, and living with the label and characterization of discharge.

The most relevant resource I have found to date is Putting Your Past in Its Place by Stephen Viars, an excellent book on freedom and forgiveness. It provides a section on handling the guilty past and discusses David’s sin with Bathsheba (a rabbit trail of several hours investigating whether this was rape or not was interesting but inconclusive). It also addresses sexual infidelity involving “immoral and illegal contact” arranged on the Internet. But even this did not deal directly with walking with someone through redemption and restoration after they are convicted of rape.

As I pursued further research, I began to call area pastors to ask what procedures they had to help restore a person convicted of a sexual offense. Every single one of them (11 in my small sample of varying Christian denominations) began with the restrictions that would be placed on the member, usually starting with “no access to children.” As a reminder, all these offenders and victims were adults. But I found that every church’s response to any kind of sexual offense is to automatically classify them as “pedophiles” in their response.

This type of response is reflective of national attitudes. In a phone conversation with Dr. Harry Morgan, a teaching elder at Faith Bible Church and the director of the Biblical Counseling Center in Bradenton, Florida, he referred to the sexual offender as a “modern day leper.” This led him to establish the Sex Offender Sanctuary to provide a place for these “lepers” to live and receive skills training, along with counseling and Christian discipleship support. Although not a certified biblical counselor, Dr. Morgan studied under Jay Adams at Westminster while a psychology student at Princeton. A licensed neuro-psychiatrist who works primarily with male sexual offenders, he has noted that most churches tend to lump all sexual offences into one category and do not distinguish between offender and predator. This is mainly due to financial and insurance considerations.

It is tough. As the father of a daughter and a chaplain who has sat across from countless victims whose lives have been turned upside down, it is difficult for me at times to show empathy or compassion for the offender until I remember what Christ has delivered me from and has forgiven me for. The realization that, much as the victim is not identified by what has happened to her, I should not identify the offender by what they have done. I have been challenged frequently in this regard.

It is important to note that the desire for the restoration and redemption of sexual offenders in no way is meant to diminish the suffering of their victims. It is not meant to cause victims additional pain but to restore the once guilty into the forgiveness of Christ. It is to change their heart, to change their desires as they now march to the cadence of the Holy Spirit.

In lieu of a dedicated program for sexual offenders, I found the Unbound curriculum by the Truth in Love Biblical Counseling Center an excellent place to begin the restoration process. It can help break down the heart of offenders, exposing their deepest desires, re-centering them on the glory of the Almighty God, and helping them place their hope in Christ and work toward daily abiding in Him.

There Is Hope

Biblical counselors are needed who can provide biblically sound principles to restore and redeem these fallen soldiers and churches that are willing to support them in this journey. I pray that God will continue this good work that the Fallen Soldiers March has begun. If you are a church that would like to partner with the FSM, or a biblical counselor who has the heart to serve, you are needed.

If you are veteran struggling with past sexual sins that you committed on another person, forgiveness and assistance is available. Freedom is available in Christ.

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