Sex crimes

Alice S. Vachss

As a front-line prosecutor and then as chief of the Special Victims Bureau in the Queens district attorney's office in New York City, Alice Vachss specialized in cases of rape, incest, and child sexual abuse. Now, in Sex Crimes, the woman the press described as one of America's toughest prosecutors grippingly recounts her career and in the process offers a searing indictment of our justice system. Included are close-ups of her most harrowing cases, among them the predatory pedophile who headed a boys' club to get closer to his victims; the serial rapist who terrorized the city as "The Stalker"; and the violent incest offender who tortured his "property" (his own daughter) for more than a dozen years. "My first lesson about sex crimes prosecution," Vachss writes, "was that perpetrators were not the only enemy." She shows how the system is weighted against victims as she describes the "rape collaborators"--Police officers and judges whose ingrained attitudes aid and comfort criminals, elected officials and attorneys concerned only with their political futures, fickle juries seemingly impervious to compelling evidence, and a legal system skeptical of cries of rape. When she saw incompetence, judicial misconduct, misplaced priorities, and favoritism endangering the Special Victims Bureau's successful operation, Vachss spoke out - only to be fired in a political feud. Sex Crimes takes us on a nightmare ride through the dark side of the human soul. As Vachss makes frighteningly clear, rehabilitation rarely works with sex offenders, who are too often released to strike again. This impassioned book will shock and enrage readers as well as challenge them to demand change.