In unusually explicit testimony Thursday, serial rapist Thomas Duvall opened up about his long and violent past, admitting that he still has sexual fantasies about teenage girls that he assaulted more than three decades ago.
At the same time, Duvall, 61, displayed bursts of emotion and remorse in the courtroom, insisting that he is capable of managing his sexual impulses after years in treatment and is prepared to move into a supervised home in the community.
"I have paved my own road to where I am today," said Duvall, occasionally wiping away tears. "I have no more excuses in life."
Duvall's testimony shed new light on the extremely brutal nature of his past crimes, while providing a view of the steep challenges that sex offenders face when they seek even supervised release from Minnesota's sex offender program. In this case, Duvall's candidness in therapy has been used as ammunition against him during a contentious, four-day trial before a state Supreme Court appeals panel considering his petition for release.
Duvall's case also underscores lingering questions about whether a sex offender's thoughts and fantasies, which are sporadic and difficult to interpret, should be the subject of a court trial. Offenders are less likely to be honest about their deviant impulses or mental health problems if they believe such information will later be used to keep them confined, treatment professionals warn.
Attorneys for the state and Hennepin County, which oppose Duvall's petition for provisional discharge, have seized on the content of Duvall's personal journals, or "fantasy logs" — which he was encouraged to maintain as part of his treatment at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) — as evidence that he retains violent impulses and remains a risk to the public.
The logs contain more than 500 pages of Duvall's inner thoughts, stretching from 2014 to 2017, in which he describes sexual fantasies about teenage girls, female body parts, and past victims. The logs also show that Duvall has continued to masturbate to "deviant themes," a state administrator testified Thursday.
The trial marks the second time that Duvall's personal journals have been used against him in court, and it highlights a paradox of Minnesota's program for civil commitment of sex offenders who have completed their prison terms. On the one hand, offenders are encouraged to be honest about their sexual thoughts as part of their treatment, and cannot progress through the MSOP without such transparency. But such information can be used against them in court if they petition for release.