Read Into the Darklands Online
Authors: Nigel Latta
Into the Darklands
This book is dedicated with love to one of the
finest men I know
—my father, Elvyn Rutherford Latta.
There simply aren’t enough thank yous in the world.
I travell’d thro’ a land of men,
A land of men and woman too;
And heard and saw such dreadful things
As cold earth-wanderers never knew.
W
ILLIAM
B
LAKE
, ‘T
HE
M
ENTAL
T
RAVELLER
’
BEWARE THE ROAD OUTSIDE YOUR DOOR
I JUST NEED TO KNOW WHY I DID IT
WHY DO YOU HELP THOSE ARSEHOLES?
BAD COFFEE, SEX OFFENDERS AND MOUNTAIN GORILLAS
THIS BOOK IS, first and foremost, about real people and real events. It has to be so or there wouldn’t really be anything to say. This said, it is important for you to understand that I have taken great pains to ensure that none of the individuals discussed in this book are identifiable. Names, case histories and various other details have been changed to protect the identities of clients and colleagues. While I discuss some cases where some of the details are now a matter of public record, all other personal details contained in this book have been altered to protect the individuals involved.
The conversations are real, though; no dramatic licence has been taken. What you see here is pretty much exactly what happened. This is what I do, and—even though I’m sure it will send some of my colleagues into a bit of a spin—how I do it.
Following on from that, it should also be noted (and this one is intended solely for other professionals who might read this book) that you should not try to do what I do based on the extracts of sessions contained in this book. I have been working with offenders for a very long time, and as such have learnt a great deal about how to engage people in a conversation who don’t want to cooperate. Underpinning everything I say and do is the belief that the
relationship
is the most powerful tool I have. In fact, it is really all I have. So what I’m saying is, don’t use anything in this book as a basis or justification for how you work with your own clients. If you’re interested in how I work, then come to one of my training seminars and I’ll give you the whole picture.
Let me also state very clearly at the beginning that in
all
sessions issues of safety were paramount, both the client’s and that of the
wider community. Any risks were carefully assessed and managed as they arose, even though this may not be obvious from the extracts.
This is not, and was never intended to be, a
how-to
textbook. This is a work of nonfiction for a general audience.
In short, don’t try this at home.
HE’S NOT A BIG MAN, but there’s something about him. It’s hard to say what exactly, but I feel it just the same. Something wrong.
We’re sitting in a small interview room at a probation office. Mt Eden Prison squats uncomfortably across the road, pretending not to notice us. The sunlight is streaming in through the window behind me, making me feel hot and uncomfortable. I’m originally a South Islander and I hate Auckland summers.
For some reason the sunlight seems to stop at his feet, almost as if it’s afraid to touch him, as if the sunlight feels it too. There’s poison inside this man, and if you get too close it’ll get inside you, like some kind of parasite.
‘I fucking hate them,’ he says, and as he speaks his face curls into a sneer with the easy familiarity of a cat. Clearly this is somewhere his face has been many times before.
‘Who?’ I ask.
‘Fucking kids.’
‘Why?’ I’m keeping my voice neutral, not wanting to disturb his flow at this point.
‘They make too much fucking noise.’
He’s dressed in black—black jeans, black singlet, black leather jacket and black leather boots. His hair is shaved almost to the bone. One of his front teeth is dying, slowly rotting in his mouth. He’s been out of jail for two months, after completing the Te Piriti Special Treatment Programme for sexual offenders at Auckland Prison. The report said, in the careful way people in my profession say such things, that this is a bad bugger.
High risk,
the report said.
Bad bugger, however carefully you say it.
Five years ago he sexually abused two kids, children of an acquaintance of his. In treatment he talked about more children. Other names.
They always do.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, carefully, trying to find my feet in the conversation.
‘I mean they’re too fucking noisy. I’d like to fucking kill them.’
He says it seriously, not offhand. Blinking at this point would be a tactical error, understandable maybe, but an error just the same.
‘You want to kill them because they’re noisy?’
‘Yeah.’ He answers as if I’m stupid, as if that was the only conclusion a thinking person could reach.
‘That’s nice,’ I say, changing my tone, pushing back just a little.
‘I killed a dog when I was a kid,’ he says.
‘Really?’ I’m trying to sound unconcerned. It’s never good to show your colours too soon. Don’t react,
enact,
is my motto.
He smiles, and I feel myself pulling back from him. He’d never see it though, because on the outside I don’t move a muscle. All he’d see is this thirty-something shrink in jeans and a red shirt looking back as if this was just another day at the office. Which it is, but inside I draw back from that smile just the same.
‘I flipped it on its back and pulled its front legs apart till its chest caved in,’ he says, demonstrating the movement for my benefit.
Fuck me,
I think.
‘Really?’ is all I say.
‘Uh huh,’ and he sits there smiling at me, close enough to lean out and touch.
It’s time to start dancing now. He’s playing with me, and whatever else you do, you can’t let the bad guy play with you.
‘And you want to do that to kids?’ I ask, mimicking his chest-splitting trick with my hands in the stuffy air.
He smiles wider. ‘No, it wouldn’t work on kids. Only works on dogs.’
‘So how would you kill all these noisy children?’
‘I’d stab them.’
‘What kind of knife would you use?’ I ask, wanting to see how far down this particular road he is. ‘Do you have one?’
‘I’m a cook,’ he says. ‘I got lots of knives.
Big
ones.’
He smiles again and it’s like looking at a wall of blackness.
‘That’s pretty fucked up,’ I say.
‘They shouldn’t make such a fucking noise,’ he replies.
At times like this I wonder how my life ever travelled down this dark road. I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that he says these things, or the fact that I know what he’s really doing. The problem is, he’s overplayed his hand, he’s too evil, almost a caricature. In short, I don’t buy whatever he’s trying to sell me.
‘So what is this?’ I ask, injecting a little more edge into my tone. ‘I’m supposed to be scared? I’m supposed to think you’re this big psycho-killer? You want to freak me out, is that it? Truth is, I know who you are better than you do. You want me to believe you’re a kid killer? I don’t think so. You’re fucked up, absolutely.
That
part I do believe.’
He’s still smiling, but the easy, fluid nastiness is draining away.
And I’m on the road now, the box is open, pulling him in with
my voice, focusing it all down so it’s just him and me and the darkness that’s suddenly fallen in the middle of a sunny afternoon.
‘You’re fucked up and you have been your whole life. Normal people don’t say this kid-killing shit. You talk like this because that’s how you keep the world away, and you keep the world away because you’re a lonely fucked-up man. Someone hurt you a long time back, and you couldn’t stop it so you told yourself you’d never be hurt again, you’d never let anyone get close enough to hurt you like
he
hurt you.’
I’m talking now as if there’s nothing else but him and me, and only this one chance to reach down into the darkness and find him. God knows where this stuff comes from. Once you’re on the road you just open your mouth and out it comes.
‘So don’t give me this bullshit about killing kids, James, because I don’t buy it. But if you want to talk about what’s
really
messing you up, if you want to talk to me about whatever it is inside you that makes you hate the world so much—and hate yourself so much—if you want to talk about that shit, then I’m here.’
I pause, letting the moment drag out.
He’s not smiling now.
‘But if you just want to talk about killing dogs and kids then you can do that somewhere else, ‘cause I don’t do that game-playing bullshit. Life’s too short.’
James is different now. The psycho-killer smile is gone. If it’s ever going to happen with him and me, it’ll happen now. These are the moments when you hold your breath, and hope the angels are with you.
‘No one ever gave a shit about me,’ he says at last, his voice small. ‘My whole life is shit.’
Now I don’t see a psycho-killer. Now all I see is a man. And I feel a familiar sadness. Just another day at the office.
‘Tell me about that
shit,’
I say.
And just like that, we’re off…into the Darklands.
IT WAS ONLY WHEN I sat down to write this book that I realised how far I’ve come. It feels like a long way from where I first started—some days it feels like a lifetime. Officially I’m a clinical psychologist, and I’ve spent a great deal of my career, almost 13 years, working with people who do bad things to other people. Over that time I’ve interviewed literally thousands of offenders, young and old, who between them have committed every kind of crime you could imagine, and some you probably couldn’t.
I’ve also worked with their victims. The cruelty I’ve seen has at times left me numb.
Over the course of writing this book I’ve opened up places that haven’t seen the light of day for a long time. I’m usually good at forgetting things, just ask my wife. I forget to ring the plumber, get the milk, post the letter, pick up my socks. The ability to forget is important when you do what I do—there is simply too much hurt for any one person to bear.
Every day I go to work and walk around in places most people don’t even know exist. ‘You must have such an interesting job,’ a
woman once said to me. ‘I’d love to spend a day watching what you do.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ I replied. ‘The stuff I do is pretty awful most of the time.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I
really
would.’
She didn’t understand, but then how could she? We live in a marketing-driven world, where everything is cool and everything has a soundtrack—even wars and elections. Hell, I’m no better, most of this book was written with
The Eminem Show
blasting in my ears, either that or U2 singing ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’. Murder is sexy in these media-drenched times. Oddly enough, sex crimes aren’t.
The Bad Man has become an almost mythical figure. He is reviled and feared more now than ever before. And he’s so busy. Two pretty little blonde girls abducted, murdered and buried in a field in England. The local school caretaker and his girlfriend are arrested and charged with their murder. Two boys take guns and bombs into a school in Columbine. A disgruntled ex-scout leader shoots 16 children and a teacher at a school in Dunblane. Between 1989 and 1992 Ivan Milat, ‘the Backpacker Murderer’, abducts, tortures and mutilates seven backpackers in the Belango State Forest south of Sydney. Martin Bryant goes on a shooting rampage in Port Arthur that leaves 35 dead, including children. Closer to home a father is convicted of bludgeoning his wife and daughter to death with a tomahawk. Before his arrest he is filmed being carried from the funeral service, apparently overcome with grief. A stepfather brutally stabs his two young stepdaughters to death and then fakes being attacked. He is alleged to have killed them because he was afraid they were going to report him for sexual abuse. Evidence given at his trial suggested one of the little girls may have lived for up to an hour after being stabbed in the chest.
Another rather nerdy-looking young man is convicted of shooting his whole family.
And these are just the ones that made the papers. Underneath them are the bread-and-butter tragedies, the ones too boring to make the news; the mundane murders, the unremarkable rapes, the everyday sexual abuse of anonymous children.
Despite what the media tells you, it’s the mundane horrors that should really scare you. Forget the headline-grabbing celebrity killers, it’s Mr Nobody you should worry about, because he lives in every town.
Want to do something absolutely chilling? Log on to the Internet and go to any of the missing children sites, then just click through the pictures, one after another. Children are dying as you sit here reading this.
I’ve spent my career working with the Bad Man. He and I have spent many hours together, and I’ve gotten to know him fairly well. We’ve even shared a joke or two. Up until the last couple of years I’ve never really talked much about my work with anyone except colleagues. It’s just easier with people who know the territory.
So why this book?
For a long time now I’ve felt an increasing sense of frustration. Everyone has a theory about how to stop the Bad Man. Mostly it’s a variation on a very old scene: the villagers gather in an angry mob, replete with burning torches, pitchforks, axes. As one they surge up the mountain towards Frankenstein’s castle.
When the Bad Man hurts us, we want to hurt him back. We want our pound of flesh. We want him to bleed. If we can just get tough enough, the Bad Man will stop. He’ll give up his evil ways and let us be. If we hurt him badly enough, he’ll stop hurting us.
Let me tell you something right now. If we want to really stop the predators, the state has either got to kill them, or fill them up.
It’s as simple as that. We either have to put them in a hole—literally or figuratively—or we have to find some way to fill the hole inside them that makes them want to hurt the rest of us.
You can frighten the wolf as much as you like, but when the hunger in his belly starts to gnaw, he’ll take your young the first chance he gets. When his stomach rumbles he won’t think about the shepherd’s rifle—the wolf will do what his nature tells him. He’ll wait till it’s dark, or your back is turned, and then he’ll take them.
Kill them or fill them, that’s the only choice we have.
Unfortunately I don’t have the luxury of being able to lose myself in that stuff for very long. I feel the urge to seek retribution just like everyone else—but I can’t indulge it the way most people can. I’m one of the people you send the Bad Man to—I’m one of the people who tries to decide how dangerous he is, and how to make him stop. Sometimes I might be the only person between the wolf and his next meal. I have to try and fill the hole inside him with little more than a conversation and a smile.
I have absolutely no qualms about keeping the ones we do catch in jail for a long time. In fact there are some people I’ve met whom I believe should never be let out of jail. Some people give up the right to walk around with the rest of us. If it were up to me these people would spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
But don’t think for a moment that it will make you any safer, because for every Bad Man you put down the hole, another will take his place.
And he won’t care that the last guy got a 20, 30 or even 40-year minimum non-parole period. He wouldn’t even care if you’d taken the last guy out into a field and shot him in the back of the head. All he cares about is the pretty little girl he wants to take off to some quiet lonely place. For him, ‘getting tough’ has a whole
different meaning. He lies in bed at night thinking of her face, and masturbating to his own version of ‘getting tough’.
It’s dangerous, all this simplistic talk of toughness. It’s dangerous because if too many people believe that’s the only answer, we’ll stop looking in the directions we really should be looking. If all we do is get tough, then good people will continue to die.
In large part I wrote this book because I hope that by showing people what it’s like to work in this area, more people might begin to understand the true nature of the debate a little more.
However, it isn’t going to be a conventional journey. When you travel with me you’ll see a different kind of psychology, hopefully without the preciousness and stuffy ‘professionalism’ that matters so much to the bureaucrats and the ladder-climbers. People are not machines. We’re not a series of widgets that can be identified and filed in some logical order passed directly to psychologists from God.
Let me also state clearly that this is not dispassionate work. To the contrary, this is
intensely
passionate work, where
everything
matters. All I have when I’m sitting in a room with a bad guy is me and him, nothing more, nothing less. So I’m not going to pretend to be anything other than what I am, just a guy trying to get some shit done. I’m not going to talk much like a psychologist, because that careful polite language doesn’t work here. It holds no currency. I can’t talk about the things I’ve seen if I have to worry about offending anybody’s delicate sensibilities. Polite society this is not, and will never be.