Sep 4, 2002 3 min read

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Tonya Payne got four years in jail for luring a 15-year-old boy into her trailer and raping him, exposing him to the AIDS virus. When she gets out this week, she says, she will be a changed woman – thanks to a sex offender treatment program Tennessee recently began offering to female inmates.

“If I hadn’t had the treatment, I would definitely classify myself as being at high risk to do it again,” Payne said.

Payne is among five inmates at the Tennessee Prison for Women to graduate from the prison’s first therapy program for female sex offenders, a two-year program that ended in July.

Such programs are widely offered to men who commit sex crimes, but they have been almost unheard of for women. Texas and Kentucky are among the few states that provide counseling for female rapists.

Payne went through two-hour sessions five days a week that included group therapy on topics such as anger management and victim empathy. She also received help with her history of sexual abuse and drug and alcohol addiction.

Payne said counseling helped her come to terms with being sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, getting married at 13 and contracting HIV through casual sex.

“I started looking at what in life made me who I was. I hadn’t dealt with it,” Payne said. “I’m not going to say my old issues are what caused me to rape my victim. I just didn’t like me.”

“Our goal is no more victims,” said Genella Phillips, an instructor of the Tennessee prison.

“We work to identify their belief systems, the consequences and strategies to help them change their behavior.”

Between 35 and 40 female sex offenders are held in Tennessee prisons at any given time. Some 3,000 men are imprisoned for sex crimes in the state.

Nationally, there were 300 women serving time for rape in 2000 and 900 more for other sexual assaults, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

The state of Texas recently completed its first 18-month program, treating 15 female sex offenders. Kentucky began its program in 1986 after legislators passed a law requiring treatment for sex offenders.

Pat Scholes, a specialist for the National Institute of Corrections, said the rarity of female sex offenders might explain why there are not many programs nationwide.

“It’s not a norm to define female sex offenders. There’s just not that much literature out there,” she said. “It’s just not common.”

Phillips said women are just as capable as men of committing sex offenses, especially against children.

“I don’t think people understand that women have much more access to children than men. They haven’t thought of it in that way,” Phillips said.

Treatment does not end after graduation – or in Payne’s case, upon prison release. She must register with her community as a sex offender and participate in follow-up counseling.

Payne has a lot of catching up to do when she returns to East Tennessee to live with her mother. She has not seen her children – now 16, 18 and 19 – since 1999.

Now a grandmother to an 8-month-old boy, Payne gave a broad smile as she talked in a recent interview about holding the baby for the first time. But her lips trembled when she thought of what she is not allowed to do under the terms of her release.

“I’ll have contact with my grandson – but I won’t bathe him,” she said. “I’m a grandmother, but not like I want to be. I’ll always have that barrier.”

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On the Net:

Tennessee Correction Department: http://www.state.tn.us

orrection/