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Old and new ways to admit your wrongs
By Mark Kendall
The Press-Enterprise

From Catholic confessionals to the sets of TV talk shows, people find ways to admit wrongs and move on.

You'd be surprised how often people confess to serious crimes, says Riverside police Sgt. Mark Boyer, who supervises homicide investigations.

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In fact, a person who kills may be more likely to confess than someone who only wounds the victim. It's the strain of having killed. "The emotional pressure is overwhelming," Boyer says. "They can't stand it. They have to tell somebody about it."

People typically confess when they're brought in for questioning and confronted with the evidence. But in rare cases criminals will come in on their own and spill their guts because they're wracked by guilt. Others own up to avoid hurting others. For example, a child molester might confess to avoid putting family members and the child through the trauma of testifying.

You never know. "The ones that surprise you are the ones that you think are real hardened career criminals and they get emotional in an interview and break down and cry," Boyer says.

The statute of limitations may have run out on that little shoplifting "prank" you pulled off as a teen-ager. But a tinge of regret lingers on.

So fire off your confession -- and perhaps your residual guilt -- in an e-mail message.

Ted DeCorte of Las Vegas is collecting these confessions for a book: "Things I Never Told My Mother." The idea came when he was talking with his sister and some friends about the blowout party they threw when his parents were gone. His mom heard the conversation and was stunned -- all these years she never knew about the party. DeCorte started collecting similar anecdotes, and last month started asking for them on his Web site: http://www.geocities.com/MadisonAvenue/Boardroom/4278

The idea was to be light-hearted, and most of the stories he gets are childhood or teen-age shenanigans. In one, though, a woman confessed that she didn't tell her father she loved him before he died. In another, the daughter of an abusive alcoholic mother told about a time her mother slapped her across the face and sent her to her room for the weekend. The girl got even, damaging her mom's car by putting something in the gas tank. The mom later cleaned up her act, but the daughter never told her of the gas-tank incident.

Right now, DeCorte is simply taking submissions, but later he may publish some on the site so everyone can read them.

"We seem to be obsessed with the dirty laundry of . . . ourselves and of people in high places," said DeCorte, a 46-year-old vice president for a dental HMO. "This project fits right in with the times."

Roman Catholics who have committed serious sins must go to confession -- properly called the rite of reconciliation -- in order to return to a state of grace, says Monsignor Donald Webber, a spokesman for the diocese that encompasses Riverside and San Bernardino counties. "It's a time in our lives in which we make a decision to turn away from sin, to lead good lives," Webber says.

A person tells the priest his or her sins, expresses contrition, is assigned penance and receives forgiveness. Penance is the action part of the process; it may mean saying prayers or a reparation such as giving back the thing you stole.

Confessions are confidential. But in the early days of the church, it was common for people to confess publicly, revealing their sins for all to hear. "Over time it became more personal and private," Webber says.

A different form of public confession carries on in TV land.

In the latest talk show twist, "Forgive or Forget" lets people confess their wrongs. Victims choose either to forgive or to hold the grudge.

The host, Mother Love, confesses she's not entirely sure why people decide to do this on national TV. Maybe people think "if I come on TV and say it in front of all the people then you would know I'm sincere," says Mother Love, once a Los Angeles radio personality.

Many forgiveness seekers are people who have cheated on a mate, or former drug addicts who abandoned their children. Then there was the guy who in high school urinated in a soda can and gave it to a girl to drink. She took a sip as everyone else watched and laughed. But she forgave him when he apologized on the show three years after the incident.

The show airs at 3 p.m. weekdays on KCOP Channel 13.

People forgive about half the time -- that's the suspense of the show. Mother Love believes people need a way to be held accountable for their actions and to get rid of guilt. "We all know there's things we've done that are wrong and we want to feel sorry for them," she says.

So has Mother Love ever needed to confess a big wrong? "Nah," she says, adding that perhaps she did when she was younger, but today she's learned to say she's sorry right away. "I would never, ever, ever do anything deliberately to hurt another human being," she says.

Published 8/9/1998 Press Enterprise, Riverside, CA