
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 6, 1990                   TAG: 9006060084
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RANDI HENDERSON THE BALTIMORE SUN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

OBSCENE CALLERS OFTEN FIGHT INNER BATTLES BY TELEPHONE

He is the subject of horror movies and scary fiction, the stereotype of a bad guy. He is the heavy breather on the other end of the telephone line, the anonymous dirty-mouthed verbal abuser.

You know him - or her - as the obscene phone caller. Modern psychiatry calls the condition that motivates his actions "telephone scatalogia" and even though there has been little academic research devoted to his condition, he has been in the news lately.

Thousands of women didn't need the recent news about former American University President Richard Berendzen's indecent phone-calling to remind them of how frightening obscene or indecent phone calls can be.

"My whole experience made me crazy as a bedbug," said Stacey Blazer, a 27-year-old Olney, Md., woman who founded an organization, People Against Telephone Terrorism and Harassment, after receiving dozens of obscene and threatening calls over an eight-month period. "I went from being a happy, outgoing person to a trembling, weeping, terrified wreck. I can't get over it. I will never be the same person again."

Blazer - whose harasser was apprehended, tried, convicted, sentenced to 18 months probation and called her again within a week of sentencing - is critical of both the telephone company and police for minimizing the threat of obscene phone callers. "It's just not taken seriously," she charged. And she was outraged by the 30-day suspended sentence that Berendzen received for the calls he made to women running day-care centers in Northern Virginia.

"His sentence sent a message to all those creeps out there - you'll just get your hands slapped," said Blazer, who added that she identified with Berendzen's targets because she, too, runs a day-care business.

But Dr. Fred Berlin, director of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic in Baltimore, where Berendzen was treated, said that the educator's penalty was in line with other offenders with no previous criminal record. He added that sexual abuse in Berendzen's childhood - offered as a mitigating explanation for the phone calls - is not necessarily a common thread in obscene phone callers.

Steven Sobelman, a Towson, Md.-area psychologist who for 10 years has treated obscene callers referred to him by the Baltimore County police, has developed a psychological profile of callers. "You're looking at a fairly immature personality," he said. "This is a person who feels hesitant to make direct contact. They generally have a feeling of entitlement, it's almost like they're so angry inside for some kind of rejection or abuse, either real or imagined, that they feel they are entitled to their due."

Larry Fishel, a social worker who is chairman of the Central Maryland Sexual Abuse Treatment Task Force, described obscene phone callers as "generally passive-aggressive, sneaky personalities. They don't do well in direct confrontation and feel safe with the phone."

Fishel added that "you can't rule out sexual abuse in the backgrounds of obscene phone callers. We do know that men who have been sexually abused act out in bizarre ways, especially men who were sexually abused as boys by women," as in the case of Richard Berendzen.

Repeated, anonymous scatalogical calls are usually made by men, but women can also make obscene phone calls - often to other women. "A lot of these calls are not really random," said Lt. Gary D'Addario of the Baltimore City Police Department. "Many times it's women fighting over a man."

by CNB