Do we still believe this kind of apology?

Religious sex offenders are the worst, indicates the available data.

Why believe an apology from Phillip Garrido, the man accused of kidnapping and raping Jaycee Dugard in 1991? Is there anything credible about his claim of some resolution via religious experience (or any other claim like that)? The facts reported by John Simerman of the Contra Costa Times speak to this instance:

Promises of a religious transformation date back decades for Garrido, who served 11 years of a 50-year federal sentence for the 1976 kidnapping of a South Lake Tahoe woman he raped. Standing before a Nevada judge during sentencing on the rape charge, he told the judge he was expecting a spiritual rebirth after troubles with LSD and marijuana use.

Certainly we have learned by now that even spiritual vocations are no inoculation against sexually predatory behavior, as the almost 500 complaints of sexual abuse against the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) seems to suggest. As if the ongoing, decades deep, multinational, Catholic and Protestant clergy predation scandal were not already enough.

Have we learned?

Some of us have far to go toward dealing realistically with this issue and its cousins.