# The psychology chairman's letter

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "The psychology chairman's letter," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-psychology-chairmans-letter/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*Unsure how to deal with the child molesters who made up a large share of the population at FCI Loretto, John Kiriakou wrote to a professor friend for advice; the reply, from the chairman of a university psychology department, told him that pedophiles cannot be cured and that they talk about their crimes constantly because reliving them is itself gratifying.*

- **Sent to:** A professor friend, a former colleague from Kiriakou's adjunct teaching
- **Answered by:** The chairman of the university's psychology department
- **Finding reported:** No therapy, no medication, no rehabilitation
- **Told to:** Peter B. Collins, 19 May 2017

Kiriakou has said that before Loretto he had, to the best of his knowledge, never met a pedophile.[1] He arrived to find that a very large share of the population at a federal low-security prison was made up of child molesters, that they ate, roomed and exercised together, walked the track together and even had their own shot-caller.[2]

## The question

He did not know how to deal with them, so he wrote a letter to a professor friend — he had been an adjunct at a university in Washington — and laid the whole situation out, asking what he should do and how he should handle these men.[2][3]

## The answer

The professor took the letter to the chairman of the psychology department, and the chairman wrote back to Kiriakou directly. The reply, as Kiriakou reports it, made three claims.

The first was that pedophiles cannot be cured: there is no therapy, no medication, nothing that can change them.[3]

The second explained the behaviour Kiriakou had been watching. The reason the men hung around together and talked about their crimes constantly, the chairman wrote, was that it gave them sexual gratification to relive those crimes.[3]

The third followed from the first two: there is no rehabilitation for these men. Kiriakou's own gloss on the letter was that, in consequence, *"they actually enjoy themselves in prison."*[4]

## What he did with it

The letter hardened rather than softened his position. Kiriakou has been open that his attitude to sex offenders after prison is absolute — asked whether he cut them any slack, his answer was *"zero, zero slack"*[1] — and the chairman's answer supplied him with a rationale for it. He also used the letter to explain, without endorsing, the treatment such men received elsewhere in the federal system: he had heard of prisons where inmates bought olive oil in the commissary, microwaved it to boiling and poured it on child molesters as they slept, and he noted that at Loretto they were comparatively lucky.[4]

It is one of the few occasions on which Kiriakou sought an outside expert opinion on something he was living through, and the only one that arrived by mail.

## See also

- [The professor in the visiting room](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-professor-in-the-visiting-room)
- [Prison pedophile accounts](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/prison-pedophile-accounts)
- [Chomo](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/chomo)
- [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto)

## Sources

1. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 25:32. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1532s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/
2. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 27:43. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1663s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/
3. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 28:15. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1695s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/
4. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 28:47. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1727s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-psychology-chairmans-letter/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt