Living Lies Destroying Lives

Walls of denial conceal secret lives
Until they're caught, those who have sordid secrets put up a good front and conceal the evil within
11:41 PM CST on Friday, November 17, 2006

By JIM GETZ / The Dallas Morning News
When Louis "Bill" Conradt put a bullet in his brain Nov. 5, he may have lost two lives.

The first, public life included more than 20 years as a prosecutor in Kaufman and Rockwall counties, one who sent hundreds of criminals – including child molesters – to prison.

The second was of unknown duration, that of a hidden personality who, police allege, used the Internet at least once in an attempt to entice someone he thought was a 13-year-old boy into sex.

Experts view Mr. Conradt as the latest example of someone who put up a psychological wall to lead a double life – a virtual one within and a virtuous one without.

It's only when that wall is breached – as allegedly happened to Mr. Conradt and 21 others caught in a sting by Murphy police, Dateline NBC and the group Perverted Justice – that both worlds fall apart.

"It's not an unusual phenomenon for someone who is wrestling with something that society would deem to be terribly deviant to wish to split off part of themselves and keep it not only from the public but from themselves," said Dr. Gail Saltz, an associate professor of psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill-Cornell School of Medicine and author of Anatomy of a Secret Life. "They use tremendous denial to not even admit to themselves they're doing these things."

The wall of denial has crumbled several times lately on the national stage. Consider Mark Foley, a congressman brought down by the disclosure of explicit electronic messages to pages; the Rev. Ted Haggard, who opposed gay marriage as head of the National Association of Evangelicals but saw his public image shatter when a male escort exposed their meetings; and the late Jim West, who led anti-gay initiatives as a Washington state representative but last year was ousted as Spokane mayor after getting caught chatting with young men on a gay Web site.

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"You can do your job at work and go home and get on the computer, and you feel it's an anonymous thing and that it's a guilty pleasure, a secret pleasure," said "Richard," a Maryland computer programmer in his late 50s who was caught trying to solicit an underage girl in a 1999 sting similar to the one in Murphy.

"Part of that whole addictive process is poor decision-making, self-destruction, social isolation," said Richard, whose therapist at the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic put him in touch with The Dallas Morning News and who insisted on being identified by a pseudonym. "The Internet sort of allows people to be under the illusion that they're isolated."

"R.J." had a different problem, addiction to adult pornography on the Internet, but the same solution: a double life.

"I had a front that everybody else saw – I was involved in church, was a song leader, was involved in youth group," said the Central Texas construction worker, also contacted through his therapist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Nobody saw the other side.

"I was in torment all the time because I didn't want to do what I was doing. But I was obsessive-compulsive. I didn't know how to stop myself. ... I wanted to be one way, but I kept reverting back."

Flip side of an angel
Before his death from cancer in July, Mr. West described his dual existence similarly. "My private life is my private life and always has been," he told the Spokane Spokesman-Review. "There's been a strong wall between my public life and my private life."

A.W. Richard Sipe, whose books include A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy, said the Haggard case shows "if you have to be too much of an angel, the flip side is you get into a little devilishness."

"So here [with Mr. Conradt]," he said, "you have a DA, a man of the law, who presumably knows what the law is."

Richard agreed, while emphasizing the power of sexual addiction. "Surely if someone is a police officer or a congressman passing laws and stuff, you have to compartmentalize," he said. "But look at Foley. ... He was sending messages at work. So the addiction gets worse."

Ezio Leite, a Fort Worth therapist, said those who solicit sex with minors over the Internet wrestle with strong inner conflicts.

"I haven't met anybody with a strong interest in children who thought that was a good thing – they know it's wrong, " he said. "But on the other hand, they have a craving for it. They create a second life to feed their devious desires."

Dr. Fred Berlin, who has treated Richard at the Johns Hopkins clinic, said the Internet's first lure is that it provides something at the push of a button.

"Secondly," he said, "it gives you anonymity that removes the social restraints. ... If we're in a place where others are aware of what we're up to, we have to be careful. But if we think we're alone and this is a game and not something other people will know much about, it can lead to impulses and very serious consequences.

"And thirdly, and perhaps most insidious, the Internet blurs the line between reality and fantasy. It begins to be like Dungeons & Dragons," he said, referring to the role-playing game. "People lose sight of the fact there's consequences, and it comes back to slap them in the face."

Reality is beginning to slap harder in Texas. Because the law against online solicitation of a minor has been in effect only since June 2005, a mere 21 offenders had been convicted in the state through early this month.

Murphy police and Perverted Justice netted that many suspects in a single sting.

Richard, the Maryland offender, said he didn't start out trolling for teenagers on the Internet. Instead, he used online dating services to meet older women. But things took a turn after his mother died and a girlfriend jilted him.

"It would be like, someone would enter a chat room – like in a chat room where people were older – and say, '15-year-old girl wants to talk,' " he said. "I was doing things to titillate myself, medicate my depression. It just got too far out of hand."

R.J. described a similar experience. "It starts out as a curiosity more than anything else," he said, "but then you get hooked into it. It's like a gambling or any other addiction, the euphoric feelings that go along with it.

"It probably was like your DA – that you go along with it and it develops into a fantasy. That's probably how it is with a lot of these guys, and that's all it's ever going to be. But you never think about the consequences until you get caught."

For R.J., the line between online titillation and reality blurred, with serious consequences: Immediately after surfing porn, he molested his niece as she slept. The teen had become reduced, in part of his mind, to an object.

"I don't know that I was thinking anything – she was just there," he said. "After I was looking at my porn sites, the places I normally looked at, with the sexual height I was in, I just went over and fondled her. It wasn't like I had been sexually attracted to her [in the past]. It could have been her, my girlfriend or another woman."

In defense of stings
Dr. Anna Salter, a sex offense specialist in Madison, Wis., agrees with other experts that offenders can be so compulsive that, as one told her, "If I'd known the earth would have opened up and I'd burn in hellfire forever, I still would have done it."

But she still thinks they know what they're doing – and that stings are legitimate because they target behaviors, not compulsions: "You may not be able to control the impulses you have, but you can control whether to act on them or not. So it is right to hold them accountable for those choices."

Accountability can be severe. Richard spent four years in prison, then a year homeless and jobless. R.J., who is on five years' probation, lost a $100,000-a-year job and now works for a quarter of that salary.

And then there's Mr. Conradt's ultimate, self-imposed penalty. Because of his suicide, he will never stand trial on the solicitation charge. But if he did solicit an imaginary boy as police allege, the sting was a good thing, Dr. Salter said, because "he would have gone to see a real one."

Didn't he know the risk?
Royse City police Sgt. Jim Baker, who had worked with Mr. Conradt to charge a man with soliciting teen girls over the Internet, was stunned when revelations about the prosecutor exploded with a gunshot.

"Other than the fact that he lived alone, there is nothing in his background or my experience with him that would lead me to believe that," Sgt. Baker said. "I've talked to members of the task force who deal with this, and they were just as shocked as I was."

The sergeant still doesn't see why Mr. Conradt, who was thoroughly familiar with the procedures used to nab offenders, might have engaged in behavior he knew could get him caught.

"It doesn't make logical sense," Sgt. Baker said. "But this crime doesn't make logical sense, especially when it's a person holding a position of trust like he was."

R.J., though, thinks he has a sense of Mr. Conradt – and why he chose that bullet.

"He knew what kind of life he was going to have" after being caught, R.J. said. "In a way, I don't blame him."

E-mail jgetz@dallasnews.com

HIDDEN LIVES
Here's a look at the contrast between the public image and private life of several high-profile figures.

Louis "Bill" Conradt
Public life
Worked with police as Kaufman County district attorney for 20 years and assistant DA in Rockwall County for the last two years, including on sex-offense cases

Hidden life
Police allege he used the Internet to solicit someone he thought was a 13-year-old boy for sex; committed suicide Nov. 5 as police tried to arrest him.

Mark Foley
Public life
Served as a Republican congressman from Florida; co-chaired the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus

Hidden life
Sent sexually explicit e-mails and instant messages to former House pages; resigned this fall after they became public.

Ted Haggard
Public life
Opposed sex-same marriage as head of the National Association of Evangelicals

Hidden life
At least once sought a massage and bought drugs from Mike Jones, a gay prostitute; Mr. Jones alleged a three-year sexual relationship. Mr. Haggard denied it but resigned this month. His church also fired him.

Jim West
Public life
Elected as the conservative mayor of Spokane after opposing gay-rights bills during 20 years in Washington state's legislature

Hidden life
Caught trolling for young men on Gay.com in a sting operation by the Spokane newspaper in 2005; accused of offering city appointments to men he had met there. An FBI investigation found insufficient evidence of corruption. Mr. West died of cancer earlier this year.

SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research

source: www.dallasnews.com