Pedophiles.
Once they were more commonly known in the free world population as “child molesters.” In prison they were derisively called “Chester the Molester” or “Baby Raper.” Suffice it to say, “chesters” were not liked in the prison world. They were beaten, raped, or even killed, but then their numbers exponentially grew as “mass incarceration” built the nation’s prison industrial complex over the last four to five decades. While life behind bars is still not the proverbial “bowl full of cherries” for sex offenders, there are simply too many incarcerated child sex offenders to target them as a class for physical or sexual abuse, much less homicide. They are now just part of the penal mix.
To understand the scope of the issue, one needs to know only that there were roughly 750,000 registered sex offenders in the United States as of May 2023, many of who are child sex offenders. Most of these offenders have spent some period of incarceration in a penal facility before being placed on a sex offender registry.
While incarcerated Louisiana’s at the David Wade Correctional Center, a period between 1994 and 2004, I became friends with a man who is an incurable pedophile, assuming the 77-year-old is still alive today. I did not think of him as a “chester” or a “molester.” He was one of the most intelligent men I met in prison. He was simply diseased with what he was and will forever be.
This is Sam’s voice from the prison wilderness.
Sam Teague did not look like a child molester, and he certainly did not act like one. There was nothing in his professional background that would lead one to suspect he was one of the worst breed of criminal predators – an incurable pedophile.
And, yet, despite my own unforgiving aversion toward pedophiles, I still think fondly of Sam.
I first met Sam Teague, in passing, in 1972 when I was on Louisiana’s death row. He was one of a half-dozen, fresh out of college, classification officers hired at the prison by then Angola Warden C. Murray Henderson. One of their first assignments was to evaluate the prison’s death row population in the wake of the Furman v. Georgia decision, which effectively end the death penalty at the time, to determine which of the inmates were psychologically suitable to be housed in general inmate population.
I spoke briefly to Sam. Most of my interactions were with Kelly Ward, who would ultimately become Warden at the Wade correctional facility. I viewed Sam, much like I did Ward, as just another of the young intellectuals migrating from college into Angola in the early 1970s – most of who were hired to deal with the aftermath of Richard Nixon’s “war on crime.”
The ”war” was nothing more than a euphemism for the Nixonian racist law-and-order campaign being waged against young African-American males who were being packed into horrible, wretched state prisons with funds given to the states by the former president’s Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) grant money.
Many of these young Black men, mostly from New Orleans, had either been politically radicalized or sexually abused in the Orleans Parish Prison—one of the worst jail facilities in the nation at the time. The penal need at Angola to “classify” these young inmates in the appropriate prison setting gave birth to college-educated “classification officers” like Sam and Ward who were the antithesis to the prison’s predominantly white, racist security guard staff.
Sam’s penal career, however, did not last long.
“I was never comfortable dealing with a lost humanity,” he explained. “The senseless violence at Angola in that era nearly sucked the life out of me. Each morning as I drove to work on that scary ‘Angola road’ I fought down the desire to turn and run. I never once went to work at that prison feeling safe. And I can barely imagine the survival mode the inmates had to live with during that period.”
Sam married a wonderful, beautiful woman who gave him a bright, well-adjusted son. It was a happy marriage that produced a good home filled with many sacred memories. Sam was a nursing home manager, a college professor, a published author, and a youth director at an Alexandria, Louisiana Baptist Church. He became a well-established, highly-respected member of the Rapides and Grant Parish communities.
Then in 1991 Sam’s “successful life” exploded like a trailer in an Oklahoma tornado. He was arrested and charged with 27 counts of child molestation in Grant Parish and 23 counts in Rapides Parish. Most of the victims were young boys eight to ten years of age he came in contact with as the church youth director and little league baseball coach.
With the representation of Camille Gravel, one of the most prominent and powerful criminal defense attorneys in Louisiana at the time, Sam pled guilty to five counts and was sentenced to concurrent 15-year terms in prison. The “sweetheart” plea deal cost him thirty thousand dollars.
That’s how Sam wound up in the Wade correctional facility.
Why would any man under any circumstances – but especially a man with a beautiful family and a successful career – destroy his life, and severely damage the life of his child victim, just to “man-fuck” (his words) little boys?
From his peculiar perspective, Sam answered that question for me.
Sam and I were housed in a protection unit at the Wade penal facility known as “N5”—a maximum security unit that housed ex-cops, high profile informants, juveniles tried as adults, and Catholic pedophile priests.
I was in N5 because I had become a federal informant who, in 1986, exposed a massive “pardons-selling” scheme that sent the pardon board chairman and a number of high ranking Angola prison officials to either prison or probation.
Sam was in N5 because Kelly Ward had become the facility’s warden. Ward ordered Sam’s placement in the special protection unit after inmates in general population nearly beat the sex offender to death because he was a “former prison official.”
Sam was in the unit when I was assigned there in 1995. By then he had become editor of the prison’s small newsletter, “The Times Square View.”
Although he needed a regular diet of Prozac to stabilize serious bouts of depression, Sam became a very influential inmate under the Ward administration. He assisted at least one prison mental health worker, and several security officials, in securing their criminal justice degrees from Louisiana Tech University by writing their final thesis and required book reviews. He also wrote the Louisiana corrections system’s first sex offender treatment manual – hailed as a “model program” for which Ward and other Wade officials took credit.
It was natural that our paths crossed in the unit. I was an award-winning prison journalist and Sam was a prison editor. We also shared mutual intellectual interests. He was one of the few inmates with whom I could discuss current social and political issues. I had no idea why he was in prison when our intellectual relationship began. It had never been a point of interest in our conversations.
One summer day as I was trying to escape the heat of the N5 cinder block building, I stepped outside building’s doorway into a shaded “patio” to feel a slight breeze that sometimes blew through the patio.
Bored, I watched a nearby pickup basketball game involving some of the unit’s younger inmates, proving that mad dogs and Englishmen are not the only ones crazy enough to play in the “dog days of summer.”
Feeling the sweat trickle down my chest beneath an already sweat-soaked t-shirt, I turned to walk back into the building when at that moment I saw Sam standing at the other end of the building, eyes riveted on the basketball court. That look signaled his real interest – a young juvenile inmate clad only in sweat shorts and ragged tennis shoes. Named Ronnie, he was a “pretty boy” in prison parlance.
I recognized Sam’s interest for exactly what it was – prison homosexual lust. It was a pornographic look – the look of a predatory wolf stalking a cow, waiting for the right moment to launch an assault.
It was a disheartening sight – a sight I had come to loathe in prison – and it was made more poignant because it was Sam. I had no inkling, no suspicion of his sexual preferences. I turned and walked back into the stifling building, troubled by the implications of this new discovery. It was as though our friendship had been forged under false pretenses. A sense of betrayal stirred in my gut, probably because of my personal disdain for prison sex predators who sought out young, vulnerable inmates to sexually abuse.
Over the next several days I toyed with how to broach the subject with Sam. The opportunity presented itself a few days later as we sat at a “picnic table” under the only shade trees on the N5 compound. With the unit’s weight-pile nearby, it was a social water hole for inmates, especially on those late summer afternoons when shade was a blessing from the humid heat.
“Sam, it’s none of my business,” I said, “but you’re making your interests in that kid Ronnie pretty obvious.”
A breeze swept past as Sam turned to face me.
“Does that offend you?” he asked.
His voice did not reflect any emotion – no guilt, no embarrassment.
“Not really,” I replied. “I’ve been in prison too long to let prison sexuality bother me. I avoid it as much as possible because, like drugs and gambling, it only leads to trouble.”
Sam laughed—an infectious, hearty laugh that caused blood to rush to his face.
“You’re about one judgmental sonuvabitch,” he said, pausing “but that’s one of the reasons why I like you. Your views are etched in stone, as they say.”
His laughter roared again. I could not resist. I joined Sam’s laughter. Then it stopped as suddenly as it erupted. A silence tinged with human expectancy ensued.
“I’m not a ‘prison homosexual’, Billy,” Sam said, breaking the silence. “Whatever that means – and I’m sure you have a precise definition for it.”
“You don’t know why I’m in prison, do you?” he asked.
The question had never been significant – until that moment.
“I’m a child molester,” he said, staring straight into my eyes without the slightest shame or apology.
“That’s right, a child molester,” he continued. “All young boys – all between the ages of 8 and 10.”
I had no verbal reaction. I just stared at the man who had become a friend. The crime did not fit the man. Intelligent, career successful, beautiful wife, wonderful son, good home, social standing – and all of it had been thrown away to molest boys. I had read a little about but never understood the sexual predilection for young boys by Afghans, Greeks and some Catholic priests, but that predilection didn’t fit a small town American college professor.
“Why?” I asked.
It seemed like the only logical thing to say.
“I was molested when I was eight years old by a close uncle,” Sam answered without hesitation.
The response seemed to point to the same excuse pattern – an adult molested as a child assuming a license to molest children.
“And I liked it,” he continued. “I loved my uncle, and I loved it when he fucked me.”
Sam paused, letting a nosy ex-cop named Clarence Price pass – the smell of stale nicotine lingered after he walked by. I said nothing as I stared at Price’s unseemly appearance wondering how he had ever been a cop.
Sam resumed his explanation.
“There is a dirty little secret about child molestation the adult world will not – perhaps cannot – accept. Children like sex. They are much like adults – they do not like to be physically or sexually abused, but they do like sex with adults. Many become not a victim but a reciprocal partner in the ‘molestation.’ That secret scares the hell out of adults.”
It took a few moments to digest Sam’s explanation about his pedophilia.
“I’m going to respond to this issue with prison crude,” I replied. “You may have explained to me why Plato liked to butt-fuck boys, but that does not explain why you did it. You loved your wife. She loved you. She is a beautiful woman. She gave you a great son. She gave you her trust, her loyalty. Tell me how you could betray all that just to have sex with boys, no matter how much they may have liked it and encouraged you to do it to him, as you suggest. How could that sex be better than what you had at home?
It was obvious Sam had already asked – and probably answered – the question for himself.
“No one was ever better than my wife,” he said. “Our sex was good – it had passion. We made love together.”
Sam’s voice choked noticeably.
“But it lacked the power,” he whispered, turning to stare at the huge, thick pines in the distance beyond the prison fence. Vultures circled, hovering above. I wondered if they were watching us.
“I did not ‘rape’ or hurt those boys,” he continued. “I had sex with them. The power of that act – an unforgivable deed, most would say – was to make them like it, to develop their natural need and desire for sex as my uncle did with me. There’s power in bringing them to that point of desire, pleasure – feelings that adult sex cannot produce.”
Having been locked up all my adult life, I had no frame of reference for what Sam was saying. It seemed like intellectual psycho-babble bullshit to me.
“I suspect,” Sam said, interrupting my thoughts, “that this ‘power’ is why most men rape women. Rape goes beyond a physical need for sex – it goes to the power derived from making a woman the victim, not to the act of rape but to her own sexual desires; to take her from being an initial victim to a willing participant in the sex, and, I suspect, that’s why most men will often sodomize a woman during the rape.”
A softball rolled to a stop at our feet. The young juvenile ran over to retrieve it. Sam picked it up, smiled, and pitched it to the teenager who probably would contract AIDS once placed in the general inmate population where the demands for his body would become more aggressive.
“Do you like being fucked in the ass or fucking another man in the ass?” I asked, bringing Sam back to the moment.
Sam’s smile turned to a half-laugh.
“I’ve never had sex with another man as an adult,” he replied. “Never had the physical desire to do so. But I did enjoy the anal sex with my uncle.”
Male sex is an integral component of prison life. It is woven into the fabric of the prison experience.
“Let me tell you something, Sam,” I said. “My experience with life and sex is limited. I’m just a country bumpkin’ from North Louisiana. I’ve had more experience pickin’ cotton than I’ve had with sex.
Sam’s laughter temporarily broke my verbal stride.
“But, seriously,” I continued, “sex between two males – and I don’t care if it’s man on man, man on boy, or boy on man – is homosexuality. I’m not opposed to homosexuality. That’s a free choice, but, sexually speaking, the practice involves just two physical acts – one anal, the other oral. Perhaps these acts can be expressions of love or gratification. I don’t know. But I’ve never viewed ‘prison homosexuality’ as sex of choice but more as a substitute for sex, like masturbation.. I’m not opposed to free sexual choice of any stripe, even in this hell hole. People do all sorts of sexual things together. That’s their free choice, so long as it’s consensual.”
The Catholic priest/pedophilia scandals brought the “man-boy sex” issue into the arena of public debate. Many moral and legal scholars in the church do not view “altar boy” pedophilia as homosexuality. I cannot make the distinction. Male on male sex is homosexuality, no matter the age of the participants. A priest who engages in anal or oral sex with an altar boy is a homosexual. He becomes a pedophile only because of the age of the boy. It may not be “politically correct” to link young boy pedophilia to homosexuality but that is precisely what it is, just like pedophilia with underage girls is heterosexuality.
“I like you, Billy Sinclair,” Sam said. “I really do. I find it absolutely amazing that you’ve spent your entire adult life in prison, yet you remain so untouched by it all.”
He paused, extending his hand for a shake.
“I’m sorry if I disappoint you,” he continued. “I am what I am, the way I am. I did what I did. Perhaps it is the sin of my life. I hope this sin does not come between our friendship. I admire and respect you. I’ve learned so much from you. You have more character and integrity in your little finger than all those people who want to see you die in prison.”
We remained friends.
But after standing by him for five years, visiting him twice a month, Sam’s wife divorced him. The divorce came on the heels of a parole denial. The parole denial devastated him. He had placed a great deal of faith in Kelly Ward. He believed the warden would help him make parole because of his work on the “sex offender manual.” But Ward did nothing to help him (and perhaps he couldn’t). Sam faced a parole board dominated with crime victims that had absolutely no sympathy for “child molesters.” The board refused to even seriously consider Sam request for parole release.
Then came the divorce. Not even Prozac could stave off the brutal bouts of depression and anger that consumed him. His wife visited him one last time, telling him she planned to marry a successful commercial helicopter pilot.
“How could she!” Sam raved. “How could she! A goddamn helicopter pilot! She’s taking everything – our house, the savings, everything.”
And she did take everything. She walked away from Sam into another life.
She did the right thing. She waited until their son was out of high school and in the military before she walked away.
Sam was released from prison three years later through mandatory “goodtime” parole supervision He had served one-half of the 15-year term. He periodically wrote to me over the next couple years. He worked at a number of menial jobs before landing a manager’s position at a McDonald’s in Baton Rouge. But as soon as his parole officer learned Sam would have frequent contact with children, he forced him to quit the job.
Sam moved back to DeSoto Parish. He moved in with his elderly mother. He found a job in Bossier Parish at a “check cashing” business. His letters reflected a growing depression. The parole officer removed his personal computer from his mother’s residence, accusing Sam of downloading child pornography.
It was at that point that Sam’s letter assumed a religious bent, expressing peace and happiness. But I didn’t buy it. The old demons were stalking him, and he foolishly thought he could exorcise them with religion. If religious faith was a cure for the disease of pedophilia, the Catholic Church would not be reeling from so many “pedophile priest” scandals.
Child molestation, like armed robbery or any other criminal act, is the product of a free-willed choice. No matter how addictive a human desire may be, the individual retains the power of choice – a power that is stronger than any human desire.
Religion did not save Sam Teague.
In 2003, he chose to molest again. This time he had a crime partner – a religious counselor who brought young Christian boys to Sam. This time the number was close to three dozen – and this time the news media played up the story. The local District Attorney called Sam “the worst child molester in DeSoto Parish history.”
Sam was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. His conviction for child molestation was reversed and substituted with a conviction for indecency with a child. He was resentenced. I do not know what that sentence was.
Sam may or may not still be in prison.
What do I think of Sam Teague?
It did not surprise me that he molested boys again. I remembered the “look” he had for that young juvenile inmate in N5. Sam simply caved to the weakness of desire over the power of choice.
I will choose to remember Sam as a friend – not as a pedophile. I am no closer to understanding how so much human talent could be wasted because of a desire to fuck a young boy in the butt.