A key expert witness testified Friday that serial rapist Thomas Duvall is not ready for release from Minnesota's sex offender program, arguing that he remains fixated on deviant and violent sexual thoughts despite decades in treatment.
"He is a man obsessed with sex — most of it violent," said Dr. James Alsdurf, who described Duvall as a sexual sadist. He added, "If you're Tom Duvall, sex is always there. It's an enormous pressure."
Alsdurf is a forensic psychologist appointed by a state Supreme Court appeals panel reviewing Duvall's petition for conditional release into the community. He said he reached his conclusion after giving Duvall a series of psychosexual exams and reviewing more than 10,000 pages of Duvall's criminal and treatment records, which include details of his brutal rapes of teenage girls in the 1970s and 1980s.
For the third straight day, much of the testimony centered on Duvall's personal journals, or "fantasy logs," maintained as part of his therapy. In the logs, which span more than 500 pages, Duvall described fantasies involving teenage girls, female body parts and past victims, according to testimony. The journals have become a central piece of evidence in the state's case against his release.
The inclusion of the journals in this week's hearing has been controversial because Duvall was encouraged to write them as part of his therapy. Some treatment professionals have warned that their use in a public trial could have a chilling effect on other offenders, making them less likely to reveal their thoughts honestly in therapy.
Alsdurf said the personal journals are significant because they demonstrate that Duvall is still preoccupied with deviant sexual thoughts, many of them "dominant and controlling." In some entries, for example, he used objectifying language to describe female body parts.
"They represent what's in Tom Duvall's head," Alsdurf said. "He is what I would describe as 'hypersexual.' He is constantly aware of and focused on sexual topics."
The focus on Duvall's inner thoughts also seemed to perplex members of the three-judge Supreme Court panel hearing his petition, and set off a broader discussion about the purpose of sex offender therapy. At Friday's hearing, one of the judges questioned whether it was "a realistic goal" for offenders to "not think about sex," while questioning how a treatment regime could address a person's thoughts.
