Being found guilty of a sex crime in the United States can be a life sentence. While the convicted may not spend the rest of their lives in jail, regardless of the details and the gravity of the sexual crime in question, the words “sex offender” will follow them to the grave. To society at large, they will be ostracized, with the offense largely overshadowing the person behind the crime. However, sexual offenders don’t cease to exist once they’re released back to regular society, and it’s only through the opportunity at recovery and redemption that the rates of recidivism and cycles of abuse can be slowed.
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“Pervert Park,” a challenging yet rewarding documentary by director couple Frida and Lasse Barkfors, is about the day-to-day lives of a fairly large community of sex offenders who live in a small housing area in rural Florida operated by Florida Justice Transitions. As they wait out their probation period, the residents struggle to re-enter society through therapy and hard work. To the rest of the town around them, they are pariahs, nothing more than a bunch of perverts and sickos.
At the beginning of the doc, one of the residents finds a bag of dead rats in his dryer. And according to Don Sweeney, the therapist whose life mission is to truly listen to these people in order to hopefully break the chain of abuse (apparently he’s doing a pretty good job, since the recidivism rate of people who come out of this community is an amazingly low 1%), this sort of bullying happens all the time. Sweeney has dedicated the last 30-plus years of his life to truly listening to sex offenders while providing them with understanding and compassion. This doesn’t mean that he condones their actions, but he does believe in trying to treat them humanely.
Indeed, some of those looking to rebuild their lives are victims of abuse themselves. One of Sweeney’s patients, a woman who was abused by his father, confesses to the camera that since she didn’t have anyone tell her in her youth that what her father did was wrong, thought having sex with your children was how love was expressed, leading to her abuse of her eight-year-old son. Thanks to Sweeney’s therapy and her support group in the compound, she was able to confront the gravity of her crime, and sought her son’s forgiveness, hopefully marking the first step toward healing and stopping the wheel of abuse from turning again.
The Barkfors take a fly-on-the-wall approach, almost never making their presence known, as they intercut between tragic and terrifying (sometimes at the same time) testimonials from the residents and their humdrum existence, maintaining the community, and looking for any kind of employment that will have them. Some of the most effective sequences involve sex offenders doing fairly dull and insignificant chores, as they frankly talk about their crimes. This approach is efficient in two different ways: It underscores that these convicts look and act like the rest of the world around them, and that even while they seem to be moving on with their lives, they are burdened by the regret and shame of what they’ve done.
“Pervert Park” doesn’t shy away from detailing the various specific crimes connected to these residents in order to underscore the importance of communication and therapy in their rehabilitation. The crimes committed range from being caught in a police sting while trying to arrange a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl online, to the serial rape of a young boy. But that range provides needed perspective when considering the convicts are all placed equally under “sex offender” umbrella.
While it maybe be difficult to find sympathy and compassion for the subjects of the documentary, the film is a fascinating examination of how the justice system and society treats those who have committed crimes that are often unspeakable. Harrowing, uncomfortable, and heartbreaking, “Pervert Park” is an important film with an urgent, compassionate message. [B+]
