Attorney Heather Cucolo must navigate the complicated psychology surrounding her sex-offender clients.

Heather Cucolo is an adjunct professor at New York Law School and the current director of New York Law School’s Online Mental Disability Law Program. She has contributed to the development of courses for the program as well as assisted in collaboration with Asia-Pacific partners to foster international distance learning. Her academic work has afforded her wonderful opportunities, such as addressing mental disability law issues at the United Nations and allowing her to travel domestically and internationally to lecture and teach.

This story originally aired on Feb. 24, 2017.

Story Transcript

I graduated law school, and I was twenty-seven years old and I was young and blonde and wide-eyed, and ready to embrace the profession and basically save the world. So I went into a small litigation firm in New York City where we did personal injury work. It became very clear to me very quickly that A) that was not the job for me, but B) more importantly was, rather than embrace the world, I really got to understand the world a little better and especially how I was being perceived and how the perceptions of me based upon my appearance and based upon what people assumed I was capable of very much played into the belief as to whether or not I would be a competent attorney, or whether or not I would do the best job for my client.

This became quite clear because oftentimes when I would walk into court rooms, I would hear whispers from sort of the old boys' club, and these were the older white males with grey hair that would stand there and say, "Isn't that cute that they sent their paralegal in?” and “Wow! The judge is going to be happy with that one." That was sort of an understanding of, again, how it was assumed that I certainly couldn't be an attorney, and if I was an attorney I certainly was not going to be very competent in my job.

Well, it lasted about a year or maybe less, and I decided again that no my passion is not, again, helping people who have been hit by an automobile, but my passion is to make a difference in the world and to help those who truly need representation and so I decided to work with sex offenders. I went to the New Jersey Public Defender's Office and I had an interview. This was in the civil commitment unit—sex offenders’ civil commitment. And in twenty states in the federal government, after an offender has served their time in prison, these states and the federal government have enacted statutes to commit them. Meaning they're in civil commitment, indefinite commitment based upon the fact that they have committed an offense and that they are suffering from a mental abnormality or personality disorder, and they are therefore ... there's a connection that means that they're going to be highly likely to commit future acts of sexual violence.

I decided that this is what I want to do. This is where I want to be and I went for the interview. It was a wonderful interview. I think I was the only person that actually came to the interview saying, “This is what I want to do. I want to work representing sex offenders.” The interview concluded and I was asked whether or not I was going to get pregnant any time soon. I believed that that was because they were so impressed with me that they wanted to make sure that they weren't going to lose me. Again, regardless—young, maybe twenty-eight, twenty-nine years old, and apparently that's what we do. We're going to get pregnant, and I can't be an attorney and pregnant at the same time.

I got the job, clearly. Because the ADA would have forced me to get the job no matter what. I got the job and I went running right into it. I had my first case in court, and I won the first case. You don't win these cases—you lose. You expect to lose. You walk in—"I'm going to lose." Well, I won this case and I went back to the office and they said, "Well, weren't you lucky? That was luck. Definitely luck. There's no way otherwise. The judge must have taken pity on you." Well, I'm pretty sure that I won the case because the judge, who was a sixty-something male who was one of two judges who'd heard every single sex offender civil commitment case in the state of New Jersey, looked at me and didn't expect me to do anything in cross-examining the psychiatrist. When I walked up with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—the DSM—and started questioning them on the diagnosis, I think the judge was just so shocked and blown away like, "Well, you know what? We've got to release this guy. That's just the end of it." Again, the perception.

In that sense, that perception worked for me in many ways. But what had occurred and what I realized was that it seemed to me that my colleagues and the experts that I talked to and the treaters in the institution seemed to be very concerned about my ability to handle these very difficult scenarios. Am I going to be able to deal with these extreme sexually infused types of crimes and situations? Could I tell the seventy-year-old female judge what anal beads were? Yes, yes, I could. Again, this idea that I was delicate or that I was fragile, that I wouldn't be able to handle these types of cases. This continued throughout my representation of my clients.

I would get questions such as, "Aren't you afraid that your client is going to hit on you?  Why aren't you afraid that your client is going to be attracted to you or do something inappropriate?" Of course, understanding that sex offenders is a wide range of individuals, most of my clients really would not have been interested in me anyway. Again, that was the belief, that somehow I was going to be sexually assaulted or treated poorly by my clients. In fact, though, my clients didn't care that I was young and they didn't care that I was blonde and they didn't care that I wore skirts instead of a pant suit. What they cared about was that I was empathetic and that I cared about the predicament they were in, even though they were seen as the worst individuals of society, the lowest of humans, and I cared. I cared about their past, their histories; how they were suffering, what they were going through.

Well, two stories. I had a client who was not allowed to have female attorneys. This is what I heard. My office was so poorly staffed and it was where they sent the bad attorneys. If you were in trouble, you had to go represent sex offenders. So nobody really paid all that much attention. Now, there were some great attorneys, don't get me wrong, but nobody paid that much attention. As soon as I heard that this client wasn't allowed to have female attorneys, when no one was looking—and we were so understaffed—I just snatched that case up, because I was curious.

I ended up having a really great rapport with this client. I intended to work very hard to help him get through treatment. One of the things that we talked about was that when he was having these fantasies and desires, these feelings, that he should write it down in a letter because he was afraid to share it in treatment because anything you say in treatment is going to be entered into court, so there's no confidentiality. I said, "If you need to share these things, you write them in a letter, seal it, legal mail, and you send it to me. And at least you're able to express it.” That was that.

For whatever reason, there was a spotlight on me and a spotlight on the clients and as I learned later, a concern for my safety and well-being. The Department of Corrections, who run the safety and care of the institution, claimed that one day they found one of his letters that was open. So they opened the letter and they read it, and it contained these thoughts or these fantasies. Immediately they told the Department of Human Services and the treaters, and it all went that I cannot represent this individual because he is writing fantasies to me. Now, the fantasies had nothing to do with me. It had nothing do with anything in reality, to be honest with you.But the client was removed from my caseload.

I remember going back into the institution and they said, "Aren't you glad that we're looking out for you?" No.

Well, it works both ways. Again, I was constantly seen as someone who was delicate, fragile—you know, not someone tough enough to be able to handle this population. Those types of perceptions also work on the other side. I had a client who was one of the first individuals to be civilly committed in the state of New Jersey. He was very special to them. They did not want to let him go. He was young, he committed his offenses when he was really… it was a peer offense; again, a sex assault. He was I think on the cusp of like seventeen or eighteen when this occurred and he had been incarcerated and then in civil commitment ever since. When I got his case, he'd probably been institutionalized now, or in the civil commitment center, for I'd say about nine years, ten years.

I took this client on and I won his case. I won his case, and the institution fought me, or fought the court order, in not wanting to release him, saying, "He's not ready, we have to go with this." Well, we had a number of hearings arguing this, and at one of the hearings the judge dismissed everyone but me and the head of the Department of Human Services. In hindsight, I should have said, "No. Anything you say should be said in front of my client," but I allowed this to happen. The judge said, "Let me tell you, this is what I'm worried about. This guy is so good-looking that he's going to get released and have all this opportunity for sex." I said, "Your honor, I've got to be honest with you. He can have as much sex as he wants as long as it's consensual and legal."

Again, though, this perception that somehow this was going to heighten his risk or somehow this was going to be a problem for him because he was attractive and because therefore women were going to be attracted to him, which I guess, in turn, would make him want to assault them sexually? Well, anyway, that was one of the instances. We fought and fought this case. In sex offender civil commitment therapy, it is recommended that it's a group therapy situation, and individualized therapy is oftentimes seen not to be beneficial. We're going into maybe eight, nine months of continuous hearings, continuous fighting to have the court order recognize that my client would be released. A high-ranking female psychologist decides that she's going to start doing individualized therapy with my client. I'm thrilled. They start doing therapy for a couple months, and she comes into court with an order saying that it's time for him to be released. Wonderful, great. My client is released.

In about a month or two months later, I get called into the facility back into the institution from the office for a meeting. The meeting is because one of the corrections officers, who was moonlighting at the Jersey shore in New Jersey as private security, allegedly took pictures and witnessed my client and this female therapist holding hands and kissing as they were walking along the boardwalk. Well, the female therapist was soon after fired, let go, and my client was brought back into the institution under the guise that he had, I think, driven with a suspended license. He was brought back into the civil commitment setting institution, and basically the whole focus of his treatment from that point on was the fact that he had manipulated this high-ranking female psychologist, who was married with children, into having this affair with her and thus ruining her life. He's still there today. This was about five, six years ago now.

In addition, it is very clear and it makes so much sense when we're looking at sort of how we judge people based upon their labels, how we judge people based upon  their appearance, and how we make improper judgments and improper opinions that are not beneficial to any aspect of finding the truth and the worth in each and every one of us. Thanks.