PIE – documentary evidence 4 – UP, ‘Childhood Rights’, and Paedophilia – some questions and answers

[NOTE OF WARNING: In absolutely no sense whatsoever does the printing of the below material constitute any type of endorsement; in fact the very reverse]

Below is a range of material from PIE’s first journal Understanding Paedophilia, the predecessor of Magpie. I have copied the most significant material from those issues I was able to access.

Vol. 1 No. 2, June/July 1976

Cover pic: tearful Mark Lester, from film Run Wild, Run Free (1969)

p. 2. ‘Notices’
Ed: Warren Middleton (p)
Research Director: Humphfrey Barton (p)
Regular Correspondents; Steve Barker (p), USA, Graeme Parrish (p), New Zealand, Bernard Beafort (p), France, Richard Docker (p), Australia, J E Rekustad, NAFP/Norway.
Regular Contributors: Keith R Hose, John Bradshaw (p), Humphfrey Barton, Dr Frits Bernard, Dr Edward Brongersma, Warren Middleton, Tom O’Carroll.
[‘(p)’ indicates a pseudonym]

Dr Edward Brongersma, ‘Love In Education: The Unapproachable Risk’, pp. 2-4

Cyril Halley (p), ‘Lewis Carroll Revisited’, pp. 4-5
[…]
Lewis Carroll spent his life sublimating what he regarded as ‘abnormal desires’. Yet his love for children was hardly surpassed in his own, or any other age, and his contributions to world literature certainly need no further appraisal. He died at Guilford on January the 14th, 1898, and his gravestone carries the name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson made immortal… HERE LIES THE REMAINS OF LEWIS CARROLL, AND CHILDREN THE WORLD OVER CAN REMEMBER THEIR LOVING FRIEND.’ (p. 5)

Review of William Kraemer (ed), The Forbidden Love: The Normal & Abnormal Love of Children, reviewed by Humphrey Barton (p) (a lecturer in sociology at a British university), p. 5.

Alan Stanley, ‘Angels of the Lyre’, p. 6. Reviewed by Warren Middleton.

‘It’s the Magnificent Six’, p. 7
New EC:
Keith Hose – re-elected to serve as National Chairperson for the coming year
Warren Middleton – re-elected as National Vice Chairperson/PIE Magazine Editor
Tom O’Carroll – elected as PIE General Secretary/responsible for the formation of local groups/PIE members’ contact service/Publicity
David C Grove – elected as Director of PIE’s forthcoming children’s rights campaign/responsible for distribution of mail
Charles Napier – elected as Treasurer/responsible for recruitment of new members.
Peter Righton – elected as Organiser of prison-hospital visits/general correspondence/PIE befriending.
Want applicants for Legal adviser and Director of Research.

‘PIE has asked U.P. to convey their thanks to all who attended the AGM, especially Miss Nettie Pollard of the NCCL, and PIE member No. 149 who came direct from France for the event.’ (p. 7)

‘Concern over List 99’, p. 7
NCCL concerned about an envelope which has gone missing, containing a ‘secret’ government file, a DoE blacklist of 1000 people said to be unfit for the teaching profession.
Nettie Pollard has appealed for anyone who thinks they may be included on the list to come forward.

‘Judge Slams Sex Law’, p. 7
Justice Neil McKinnon, QC attacked age of consent law as ‘An attempt to protect fully mature young women against their own natural inclinations’. After 22 year old Jonathan Groves and his brother David were in court having admitted having intercourse with two 15-year old schoolgirls. Jonathan received conditional discharge, and David a suspended 9 months jail sentence.

‘P.C. ‘Whacko’ Quits’, p. 8
Ex P.C. Anthony Betteridge, 36, fired after admitting to five charges of assault, indecent assault and gross indecency with young boys.

‘PIE’s New Campaign’, p. 8
An inquiry into physical/chemical castration of sex offenders.

Vol. 1 No. 3, Aug/Sept 1976

Cover ‘The Modern Ganymede: Bjorn Andresen’, photo from Death in Venice

Douglas Sarff (‘NewsWest’ Editor), ‘Sex Begins At A Very Early Age: The Work and Theories of the Guyon Society’, pp. 2-4
Reprinted from an American gay journal

Tom O’Carroll, ‘News Report: The PIE Survey’, pp. 4-5
A questionnaire, basic things
In 2 years PIE has attracted over 200 members. 96 took part in the survey. Two were women.
Of men, 68% attracted to boys only, 13% to girls only, 19% to both.
One in five of male paedophiles were married. Much higher for heteros (75%) than homos (7%)
Majority (59%) also attracted to adults. (p. 4)

‘Your Letters’, pp. 5-6
One from ‘Charles Gerriovenski’, saying similar things to in later issue
Also from a former headmaster, ‘Michael Gooch’, who received a 12 month suspended sentence for ‘offences’ involving young boys.

Reviews of Desmond Stewart, The Vampire of Mons; John F Trimble, Paedophilia; Dr. George P Rossman, Paederasty: Sexual experience between Men and Boys. Reviewed by John Bradshaw (p), David Grove, Humphrey Barton (p) respectively., p. 6.

Grove bio, p. 6. Born in 1904, spent most of childhood in China, then studied history at Wadham College, Oxford. Lived in various parts of the world, including being Assistant Deputy Officer (Deputy Magistrate) in Nigeria. Enlisted in Welsh Guards, then into teaching career in 1939. Now retired.

‘Looking Around’, p. 7.
Review of Visconti Death in Venice.
[….]
‘Visconti had long toyed with the idea of bringing Mann’s masterpiece to the screen, but when reality supplanted the dream, eh was almost defeated by the casting of Tadzio, a part demanding a boy of rare beauty and exceptional charm.
His searches for this ‘perfect’ boy took the director all over Europe. But the gods appeared to favour him, finally rewarding his efforts in Scandinavia. Bjorn Andresen, his beautiful Swedish prodigy, seemed tailor-made for the casting, and with characteristic flair the delighted Visconti proclaimed him “the most beautiful boy in the world.”’
[….]

‘Dr Humphrey Barton gave a highly successful paper on paedophilia at the Manchester Gaysoc/British Sociological Association’s conference in early September.
The conference was well attended by other notables including Glenys Parry and Ken Plummer.
Nice one Humphrey!’ (p. 7)

‘The PIE-Do-File’
Author Yul Duersted has been withheld permission to publicise Pie in any of his future works. (p. 7)

PIE formally established two years ago in October by three members of Scottish Minorities Group under chairmanship of Michael Hanson. (p. 7) [This was a mistake – it was three, not two, years previously]

‘Exit Jenkins, Enter Rees’, p. 7
Asking if Merlyn Rees likely to be sympathetic. Not sure.

Vol. 1 No. 4 (1977)

Picture of Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver on front.
Editor: Warren Middleton
Research Director: Dr. Humphrey Barton (p)
Regular Contributors: Keith R. Hose, John Bradshaw (p) , Dr. Frits Bernard. Dr. Edward Brongersam, Tom O’Carroll, David C Grove, Dr. Humphrey Barton, Warren Middleton
Regular Correspondents; Steve Barker (p), USA, Graeme Lovejoy (p), New Zealand, Bernard Beaufort (p), France, Richard Docker (p), Australia, J E Rekustad, NAFF – Norway

Address given as 1, Elgin Avenue, London W9.
Printed by the Wellington Bureau, 23, Craven Street, Charing Cross WC2.

Special thanks with news item ‘fighting for justice’ on p. 10 of this issue – thanks Miss Nettie Pollard and the Executive Committee of the NCCL; Mr Mike Rowland, Mr John Gallagher and the EC of the Labour Campaign for Gay Rights; Jo Richardson, Labour MP for Barking; Mr Michael Burbidge of Icebreakers; Mr Antony Grey, ex Director of the Albany Trust; the staff of the People’s News Service; Mr Johannes Werres, editor GAY NEWS GERMANY/BOY LOVE NEWS; Mr Michael Mason, news editor GAY NEWS; Dr. Arabella Melville and Colin Johnson, editors of LIBERTINE; the PEACE NEWS collective; Mr Andy Leighton and staff of IT; and last but by no means least, to Mr Keith Hose, Mr Tom O’Carroll and the remainder of PIE’s EC. (all p. 2)

Dr Frits Bernard, ‘The Phenomenon of Paedophilia’, pp. 2-3

‘Out into the Open: Keith Hose explodes some myths’, pp. 4, 11

‘Paedophile was not a word in my dictionary when I recognised myself as homosexual. I expected people to accept the relationships that I’d had with 11 year old boys at school when I was 16; but they didn’t.

It wasn’t always a disapproving reaction; often it was viewed as something best not talked about. And because I wanted to accept my homosexuality, and because I was also attracted to adults, I conned myself into thinking that because sex with children under 13 was difficult, then I shouldn’t seek out such relationships, and should take relationships as they came. But that was unrealistic. It is very rare that relationships just happen. You either go out and look for them, or you put yourself in a position for them to happen.

I used to get very depressed about my relationships with the boys at school. I felt there was something missing, and it was this gap which drove me to identify myself as a paedophile. This was just before PAL (Paedophile Action for Liberation) and PIE (Paedophile Information Exchange – purely a newsletter at first) started up about two years ago.
**
A lot of gay people don’t want to talk about paedophilia because they feel that paedophiles deserve severe social oppression. Some of them are frightened that the image of homosexuality is being openly associated with paedophiles. This is silly because people outside the gay movement will be able to see that there are a certain proportion of gays who identify themselves, to different degrees, as paedophiles, and a certain proportion who don’t.

If paedophilia remains hidden, then the myth that all homosexuals are attracted to younger people will continue. But this tries to compartmentalise paedophiles as a less worthy section of the gay community and ignores the positive aspects of paedophilia, and the existence in most pre-pubertal children, of a sexuality which various pieces of research have proven. (p. 4)
[Then various statistics]

PIE quoted these findings in its evidence in its evidence to the Home Office Criminal Law Revision Committee (5) and gave other reasons why we ask for wide changes in the law.

We tried to show the harm and suffering caused, not by the paedophilic relationship as is popularly imagined, but by the use of the criminal law which sends the adult to prison, and which can mean the severing of a long standing mutual relationship. The child and the parents can suffer just as much as the paedophile.

The child who successively seeks out adults as sex partners – or other children as sex partners for that matter – can be taken away from his/her parents, whether they approve of the relationship or not, and be put into care.

PIE argued from the point of view that if a child gets pleasure from a sexual relationship and seeks one out, then he/she should be allowed to engage in such relationships, and should not be regarded as being in ‘moral danger’. The danger and harm as evidenced by the research findings comes, not from a mutual relationship with an older person, but from the deeply rooted feelings fo society that sexuality does harm because it’s ‘wrong’.

We suggested abolition of the age of consent from the criminal law because we believe it is ridiculous for the law to say that below 16 or below 21 people are incapable of giving consent. They are certainly capable of giving consent, but whether this can be communicated to other people is another matter. Therefore, we suggested that the criterion should be ‘communication of consent’, and since we are talking about simple verbal terms of whether someone liks something or wants something, we suggested that below the age of 4 a child could not communicate, although this may not be true in every case.

Law from having relationship with children under 4, and in the case of children over 3 and under 10, a similar civil injunction could also be made if there was a complaint made by those close to the child (parent or guardian, doctor, social worker and so o) where it was proved by the administrators of the Children’s Acts that there was doubt as to whether consent could be communicated.

For children between 10 and 18, we said there should be no legal restrictions in cases which did not involve proven physical/psychological harm. Ten is the legal age of responsibility, and if a child is deemed responsible for its criminal acts, then it should also be responsible for its own sex life.
[…]

The Criminal Law Revision Committee will not be publishing its report for a couple of years, but already there are encouraging signs that attitudes are beginning to change. The National Council for Civil Liberties asked in its evidence for the age of consent to be lowered….. (p. 4)

Charles Gerriovenski, ‘A Paederastic Experience’, pp. 5-6

Talking about his relationship with an 11/12 year old boy for about a year, and how it lost him his job.
[…]
‘….The boy – I will call him Peter – had an exceptional singing voice. I was his teacher, and we worked and lived together for three years before sex reared its by no means ugly head.
He made the initial move, though I think he would not have done so had he thought it might have been rejected; let’s say it happened mutually. One evening when he came to say ‘good night’, he seemed unable to communicate verbally, but simply clutched my hand and wept. Wen I asked what was wrong his sobs redoubled. I held his head in my hands and stroked his back, just as a parent would comfort a child who’d hurt himself. I lent him my handkerchief and he went off to bed without saying anything significant.
[…Mentions that he was married…]
Peter had strong musical leanings, and, during that year – his singing matured wonderfully (we did some splendid recordings together), although his other schoolwork showed neither improvement nor deterioration. I waqs a little disappointed that he did not appear to develop socially. But I suppose most of his efforts in this direction were devoed to our relationship.

On the sexual front, we expressed our desires fully, and it was a wonderful experience to climax in an atmosphere of love and relaxation, instead of what is most children’s introduction to sex – guilt-ridden, frantic ‘wanks’ behind the pavilion, eyes constantly skinned for unwanted onlookers. In my locked bedroom, we were able to put the fear of interruption on one side and make love to each other slowly and tenderly as becomes love’s first bloom.

His first few orgasms were enjoyed quietly, but they soon became as voluptuous as any adults. From our third meeting, we both ‘came’ on every occasion, except once, when we lay in each other’s arms for half an hour or so. (Though naked, we did not feel a need for orgasm, yet were as spiritually refreshed afterwards as at other times).

Once he had become an active partner, he showed his true colours as a lover, displaying a combination of consideration and passion which was natural and unforced. We both preferred giving to taking, yet were not afraid to accept what was given wholeheartedly and really enjoy one another.

Physically, Peter was similar to many other boys I have known – small and sturdy with deep chest and powerful limbs. His round, intelligent face expressed both humour and passion. More unusual, perhaps, was an exceptionally fine and shapely pair of buttocks. Full fleshed without being coarse, they jutted proudly behind him

As a sexual partner, I found him immoderately attractive. His hairless skin was suntanned and silky, his flesh both firm and yielding, his kisses rousing. But despite these advantages, I never looked upon him as ‘object’, and I always encouraged his emerging individuality as a person in his own right….. [end p. 5]

What sexual techniques were used?
First and foremost, we were always gentle with each other. In fact, he would usually refer to our activities in a phrase he himself coined: “being gentle together”.

Basically, we kissed, cuddled, nuzzled, hugged, stroked, embraced and fondled while standing, lying, sitting or straddling. At some point in the proceedings we’d shed our clothes, and when our kisses and caresses had roused us, we’d take turns to masturbate one another. On these occasions we would usually lubricate each other with cold cream.

After a few weeks, we experimented with other forms of love play such as inter-femoral thrusting and genital kissing. All in all, our practices were remarkably similar to those of adult heterosexuals, except for penetration. This I never attempted as the disproportion of size would seem to be inescapably painful for him.

On one particularly memorable occasion, Peter was unusually lusty and, as soon as we were undressed, he fetched the pot of cold cream, came over to my bed and ‘oiled me up’. Returning the compliment I concluded by gently sliding back his foreskin. He immediately climbed over me, insinuated his knees between mine, encircled me tightly in his arms and, using one of my well lubricated groins as his love channel, proceeded to bring himself to a climax entirely under his own steam. Needless to say, I did not lie idly by. I kissed his head and hair while fondling his ears and neck. But my main contribution was to hold him by his buttocks, one in each hand, to help him to an even rhythm. Indeed, it seemed that my role was increasingly to play the woman for him, and this encounter was the nearest we ever came to peno—vaginal intercourse.
[…..]
Eventually, in the long summer holidays while separated from me for two months, he told them [his parents] all about it. My career was at an end. I was prosecuted, fined and barred from the classroom, and was lucky not to find myself imprisoned. I was only saved from this by the most wonderful support from a number of colleagues, old boys and parents to whom I told the facts, and who, realising the essentially non-violent and mutual nature of our liaison, rallied round and wrote letters the court, or gave evidence in person.

I feel no resentment towards Peter for my ruined career and his part in it. I went into the affair with my eyes open, but without realising that a boy of integrity – and I could not give myself to any lesser person – would be likely to want to consult his parents. What, after all, could be more natural? In Greek times, the parents of such a boy would’ve been proud he had formed such a fruitful relationship. It’s not his fault that current mores condemn it and our laws declare it illegal. Our legislation on the subject is inflexible, indiscriminatory and illiberal, and is based on a most cowardly principle: if something exists that can easily be abused, it should be banned altogether.

‘Protest and Reply’, p. 7 (reproduced here)

Reviews of Morris Fraser, The Death of Narcissus, p. 8.
And of film Bugsy Malone.
Bugsy Malone and his Moll have a beauty so magical and bewitching that it makes one think of Oberon and Titania. But they are also a Hansel and Gretel pair, human and typically ‘good’.
The director, with a huge cast of children, most of them pre-pubertal age, has produced a serious satire on the behaviour of adults using the 1920’s Chicago hoodlum scene as his medium. Social satire and irony are everywhere. There’s even a moral message at the end: gangsters throw away your guns, and by inference, super powers your atom bombs.
But children, and adults too, can enjoy the spectacle for fun. Paedophiles should not miss it. The camera, as if unwittingly, brings out the freshness, directness and eagerness that belongs to childhood, and childhood alone. (anonymous reviewer)

Profile of Keith Hose, p. 8. Also of Frits Bernard.
Hose was 25 at the time.

‘Your Guide to Under Age Sex’, p. 9
Mentioning three men receiving prison sentences for ‘unlawful sexual intercourse’ and ‘indecent assault’ upon a 14 year old girl – David Roberts (22), Derek Taylor (26) and Geoffrey Simonds (28).

‘Fury Mounts’, p. 9, about groups calling for ‘stiffer penalties’ against those convicted of sex with minors.
Mentions convictions of David Goff (29) and Keith Caldwell (31), sentenced to 4 years for seizing a 12-year old girl, dragging her to an embankment, raping her and leaving her tied to the railings.

And campaign by Bournemouth housewife, Mrs Christine Jolliffe.

‘Fight for Justice’, p. 10

‘Jo Richardson MP, the National Council for Civil Liberties and the Labour Campaign for Gay Rights are among the several individuals and organisations that have protested to the Lord Chancellor, on PIE’s behalf, over a judge’s comments at a recent Old Bailey trial.

They are demanding that the judge be disciplined, and are supporting the Exchange in its claim that the remarks may well have been a “serious breach of legal ethics.”

When sentencing Andre Stephen Thorne (21) to 3 years for theft and the attempted blackmail of a PIE applicant, the judge, Mr Justice King-Hamilton, said that PIE had “access to potential dynamite,” and added: “On the face of it, some sort of an offence is being committed by the person or persons running this organisation (THE SUN, Feb. 4th).. I wonder if the membership forms are collected from members of the public for the purposes of blackmail (SOUTH LONDON PRESS)?

PIE’s reaction was fast and furious. Secretary, Tom O’Carroll drafted an immediate letter to THE GUARDIAN; and on March the 17th, Deputy Leader, Warren Middleton despatched a press release announcing that the group would lodge the “strongest possible protest” with the Lord Chancellor and the Home Secretary.

Soon after, PIE’s Chairperson, Keith Hose, contacted the NCCL, finally requesting Jo Richardson (Labour, Barking) to table a question in the Commons. She declined, but has since filed an official complaint with Elwyn Jones.

The first of the protests, from the NCCL (29/3/’77), described the comments as “extremely unfortunate” and accused the judge of “misusing his position to make comments which were unwarranted and without any apparent foundation.”

Prompted by the reply which, said a Council official, was “totally unsatisfactory,” the NCCL then approached Lord Beaumont of Whitley asking him to raise the matter in the Lords. But he, too, declined.

Now, the Council is seeking the advice of Lord Hailsham, himself a former Lord Chancellor, and will act in accordance with his reply.

Meantime, PIE’s own protest will be lodged in July at an, as yet, unspecified date.

‘Surrey Witch-Hunt’, p. 10
About a special squad to combat sex offences in Surrey, Chief Constable Mr Peter Mathews [sic].

‘Probe at Youth Centre’, p. 11
A high level probe is underway into allegations of staff misconduct at Britain’s top centre for problem children.

The inquiry was ordered by the Health Department after two MP’s – Sir Bernard Braine (Tory, South East Essex) and Mr Peter Bottomley (Con. West Wolwich [sic] ) – had received complaints by staff at the maximum security St. Charles Youth Treatment Centre, Essex, and from the parents of a teenaged girl who claimed she was put on the pill at 15 and allowed to sleep there with her boyfriend.

The centre, which was opened six years ago in Brentwood, is staffed by a highly experienced team of teachers, youth workers and social therapists. It caters for children in the age group 10 to 18 who’ve been placed there by the courts, or by councils which have them in care.

A staff spokesman blamed the trouble on a minority of colleagues. He accused one of them of “having an affair with a girl” and said it was a “common practise for some staff to look through a peep-hole into her room while they made love.” The man had since deserted his wife and was now living with the girl.

Among other claims under investigation are (a) that boys and girls were allowed to sleep together; (b) a report of a 17 year old boy who was savagely beaten by a teacher; (c) a lesbian relationship between a staff member and a pupil; and (d) that girls were allowed to bring back ‘pick-ups’ after a night out on the town.

The centre’s Deputy Director, Mr Alan Dunton, said he was not in a position to discuss the allegations. “I am proud of our work in dealing with some of the most disturbed children in the country.”

‘NCCL Conference’, p. 11 – reproduced here.

p. 11 – but about contributor Mr ‘Charles Gerriovenski’ – a pseudonym. He ‘was a much respected member of staff at a boys’ boarding school until an affair with one of his pupils forced his dismissal.
Since then, he has been self-employed, but hopes, one day, to return to the career he loves.
A PIE members, Mr Gerrivoenski is married with three children.
Please note: The activities described in Mr Gerriovenski’s article are illegal and cannot be endorsed by UP.

Back page (p. 12) – ads for The Leveller, Peace News, Libertine magazine (editors Colin Johnson, Dr. Arabella Melville), Forum, ‘it’, and ‘Boy’ magazine (published COQ International A/S, Norre Farimagsgade 65-67, DK-1007 Copenhagen K), and NCCL (186 Kings Cross road, London WC1X 9DE)

‘Stop Press – Stop Press’, p. 12
AGM took place at Islington HQ of London Friend on May 28th.
Resignations from EC: Hose (as Chairperson) and Peter Righton (as Community Liaison Officer).
Full national EC election results: ex teacher/journalist Mr Tom O’Carroll, new Chairperson
Former lecturer/assistant JP Mr David C Grove new Secretary
Ex-teacher Mr Charles S. Napier, Treasurer (returned)
Social Worker Mr Jonathan Simon, new Organiser Local Groups
Private Businessman Mr Warren Middleton (p), Magazine Editor (returned)
Teacher Mr David Brownough (p), new Newsletter Editor
University lecturer/sociologist Dr. Humphrey Barton* (p), new Research Director (*subject to confirmation)

Then the following is a summary of the contents of PIE publication Childhood Rights:
Childhood Rights

Vol. 1 No. 1
PIE c/o/ Release, 1 Elgin Avenue, London W9.

Editor: David Grove for Paedophile Information Exchange.

Four pages. Short sections on ‘Revaluation’, ‘Though for the Day’, ‘The United Nations Scene’, ‘The Christian West’, ‘The Victorian Inheritance’, ‘Process Thought’, ‘Neither Wrong nor Holy’, ‘What would Gulliver Think?’, ‘New from the Front’ (to do with corporal punishment), ‘Europe’, (more on corporal punishment), ‘Intimidation and Mystification produce Alienation’ (on people being born ‘multisexual’), ‘The Facts about Corporal Punishment in Schools’

Vol. 1 No. 2
‘The Forbidden Speech’
‘Introduction’, p. 1. On Brongersma affair from 1977. Told that he will be ‘unwelcome’ at the Conference at Swansea.

‘On Loving Relationships Human and Humane’, pp. 1-4, by Brongersma.

And letter from Brongersma, p. 4.

Vol. 1 No. 3
Letters of support from Brongersma, Frits Bernard, Michael Ingram, p. 1.
Ingram: ‘I wish you well in your project to produce a paper on childhood rights, and hope you will keep me on your mailing list.
I hope that in sexual matters you would develop the following theme, one which concerns me greatly. The law defines as ‘corruption’ any act of a sexual nature with persons under the age of consent. The law, as well as society, has yet to face the fact that ‘corruption’ any act of a sexual nature with destruction of, or the damage of, not ‘indulgence in’; and many children are corrupted in the sense in which I have defined it, not only by their teachers and parents who take a negative attitude towards sexual functions, but also by those who get hysterical if a child is found out in some sexual play, those who use police and doctors to dramatise sexual experiences that have taken place, and those who make sexual sins the only sins worth mentioning.
While I welcome your project, and authorise you to publish this little note, I do so only on condition that I am not in any way made to support or condone sexual acts between adults and children.
From the Rev. Michael Ingram, O.P., Child Counsellor. (p. 1)

And letter from A.J. Ayer supporting their anti-corporal punishment campaign (p. 1).
And from Baroness Wootton of Abinger, and Jo Richardson, MP (all p. 1)

J.Z. Eglinton, ‘Boy-Love: Fantasies, Realities, Legalities’, pp. 1-2

Other bits and pieces.

And here is a summary of the material in the PIE publication Paedophilia: Some Questions and Answers (London: PIE, 1978)

[All questions given as they appear in the document; answers are my summaries of what is printed]

Asks

1. What is paedophilia?

2. What do you mean by “children”?
[between birth and puberty]

3. Are paedophiles exclusively attracted to children?

4. What age-group attracts paedophiles?
[Usually 8-15]

5. Are all paedophiles male? Are they all homosexual?
[No to both]

6. Are they ever married? What about paedophile feelings within the family?
[Some are]

7. Would most paedophiles like to be “normal”?
[some would, others think it is harmless and integral to their personality]

8. Have they chosen to be paedophile?
[No more than anyone else has chosen sexual feelings]

9. Is paedophilia an illness?
[Matter of opinion. Points out that medical profession used to view homosexuality as an illness]

10. Is it possible to change paedophiles?
[All psychiatrists can do is make them happier]

11. Surely paedophiles must be immature people?
[Asks what maturity is?]

12. Why aren’t they attracted to partners of their own age?
[Some are; otherwise no-one really knows. Why does question matter?]

13. What attracts paedophiles to children, and especially to children of certain ages?
[same factors as for other sexual/emotional preferences]

14. Is it true that paedophiles assault children?
[Almost never. Attacks legal term ‘indecent assault’]

15. Surely paedophiles force children into sex?
[Says ‘Again, almost never’. Points out that children are interested in sex from an early age, citing Kinsey, and Lauretta Bender and Abraham Blau, the Reaction of Children to Sexual Relations with Adults (1973), on how the child often initiates things]

16. Bu the adult most often be the seducer, obviously?
[Disputes that ‘seduction’ implies ‘sin, corruption or other anti-sexual concepts’]

17. Surely many children are not capable of sexual activity before puberty?
[Points out that puberty is about reproduction, not the age when sexual pleasure begins]

18. What do paedophiles do sexually to children?
[Depends upon sex and age of participants. ‘Fondling, kissing and mutual masturbation are the most usual activities’]

19. Why do we hear so little about women paedophiles?
[Prosecutions are rare, ‘probably because women can express their sexual feelings towards children in a far less obvious way than men. Mothers can be extremely sensual with their children, for instance, without attracting untoward attention, as indeed can women in such professions as social work, child nursing and teaching.’]

20. Won’t paedophile experience harm children physically?
[Suggests there are few hard facts to show this. Cites Wolfenden report on Homosexuality to show that it is rare for physical injury to result from buggery. For girls, hymen may rupture, but real damage extremely uncommon.]

21. What about the risk of a young girl becoming pregnant?
[Only possible after menstruation begins]

22. But shouldn’t we protect children from VD?
[Same for adults]

23. What about the psychological effect on the child?
[Says that if agreeable, no ill effect at all. Citers Bender/Blau as showing that many pre-pubescent children who had sexual contacts with adults seemed to benefit from it]

24. Do paedophile contacts predispose children to become paedophile or homosexual?
[No – though that view is widely held]

25. Surely children are innocent?
[Innocent as meaning chastity is an invention of puritans]

26. Do children really know what they’re doing?
[Often know more than they are given credit for]

27. But are children capable of “consenting” to sexual activity?
(a) Can children take a moral decision at an early age?
[Says that sexual activity is morally neutral]
(b) Surely children can’t always tell adults what they want?
[Even babies can express their wishes]
(c) How can a young child deter an adult?
[Just as with rape or use of drugs or physical force. Too many hang-ups make it harder for children to speak up without feeling embarrassed. But children refuse things very easily]
(d) What if the adult persists, and gets the child to agree to something it doesn’t really want?
[Then adult should be liable to legal action and social condemnation]

28. Isn’t there the danger of a paedophile being a child-murderer?
[No, no reason to associate it with hatred or sadism]

29. Surely the best advice is “never talk to strangers”?
[Children rarely attacked by strangers]

30. Are paedophile relationships illegal?
[Yes, where sexual acts involved]

31. But surely these laws are necessary to protect children?
[Laws have caused greater harm and led to children being humiliated, separated, ostracised, feeling guilt. Same with some parents. Care orders have been brought against children who have sought out sexual relationships]

32. What is the effect of the law on the paedophiles themselves?
[Humiliated, ostracised, harassed, imprisoned and put in solitary. Often commit suicide]

33. What is the worst defect of the present law?
[Makes loving and caring relationships, and those involving force or coercion, seem the same]

34. Should the age of consent be abolished altogether?
[‘Yes. Consent is important, age is not.’]

35. Wouldn’t lowering or abolishing the age of consent lead to an increase in child prostitution?
[Tighter sanctions against child prostitution may be needed. But it happens because society prevents people from being together]

36. What of the dangers of child pornography?
[Nothing wrong with child erotica as long as child happy to take part.]

37. Can’t children learn about sex among themselves?
[They do, but adults can help a more thoughtful approach]

38. Shouldn’t parents have some control over their children’s sex lives?
[Parents already have much power, but loving ones will allow their children to experiment]

39. Can a paedophile relationship last?
[Points out that after adolescence, rejection is not necessary – unpossessive friendship remains]

40. Teachers, clergymen, scoutmasters and youth workers are thought to be particularly prone to child-love. Are they, and should paedophiles be excluded from youth work?
[Naturally paedophiles are drawn to areas working with children – stopping them would deprive these fields]

41. Does paedophilia lead to the breakdown of family life?
[Family will survive as long as it deserves to. Paedophile relationship can help those in unhappy families]

42. What are paedophiles doing to help each other?
[PIE. ‘Founded in 1974 it is seeking to dispel the myths connected with paedophilia, and trying to show that most paedophiles desire gentle, loving and mutually pleasurable relationships. The group believes that attitudes towards young people should change so that the existence of their sexuality and other feelings are recognised and accepted. Its aim is to make public scientific, sociological and similar information about paedophilia to show how the lives of children and paedophiles are distorted by society’s prohibitive values. PIE also tries to provide a means whereby paedophiles can communicate with one another and so help reduce the feleing of guilty isolation which is often a feature of their lives’]

43. How can I help?
[Understand paeds are ordinary, decent, sensible people. Allow them to express themselves openly, without fear. Realise children should have some degree of control over their own lives. Look back at one’s own childhood and ask if ever drawn to an adult. Acknowledge that as an adult may have suppressed unconventional sexual feelings. Think of sex in all its forms as pleasant and likeable]

Appendix 1: The Law

Details on Laws, first in England/Wales, then Scotland/NI. Definitions of Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, Unlawful Sexual Intercourse and Buggery.

Incidence of paedophile offences. Numbers of convictions, from Home office research Unit Bulletin No. 3, Spring 1976 and Criminal Statistic for England and Wales, 1973.

Asks ‘Has Paedophile activity always been outlawed in Britain?’

Age of consent for females went up in late 19th century, from 12 to 13, then 13 to 16. Then 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act created offence of “gross indecency between males”.

Is it outlawed in all cultures?
Points out that Kiwai of New Guinea think young males should be sodomised during puberty rites to “make them strong”.
Also cites how Napoleonic Code loosened previous connections between laws and morals. In Holland all kinds of sexual relations with children were legal until 1886, when age of consent raised to 16. Sim in France until counter revolutionary activity by Church. But since 1960s Western European countries have been lowering their ages of consent.

Address given as PIE, P.O. Box 318, London SE3 8QD

[EDIT: I am now also able to include a full scan of Paedophilia: Some Questions and Answers, which is given below]

PIE - Some Q and A 1

PIE - Some Q and A 2

PIE - Some Q and A 3

PIE - Some Q and A 4

PIE - Some Q and A 5

PIE - Some Q and A 6

PIE - Some Q and A 7

PIE - Some Q and A 8

PIE - Some Q and A 9

PIE - Some Q and A 10

PIE - Some Q and A 11

PIE - Some Q and A 12

PIE - Some Q and A 13

PIE - Some Q and A 14

PIE - Some Q and A 15

PIE - Some Q and A 16

PIE - Some Q and A 17


PIE – documentary evidence 3 – from Magpie 9-17 (trigger warning – contains disturbing material)

[NOTE OF WARNING: In absolutely no sense whatsoever does the printing of the below material constitute any type of endorsement; in fact the very reverse]

[ADDENDUM: The Mail have located the NCCL ad in question and scanned and reproduced it here. I have reproduced it below]

Continuing from my last post, I reproduce here the most significant material from the PIE publication Magpie, Issues 9-17, generally without comment. I must warn readers that there is a good deal of extremely troubling and disturbing material reproduced here (more so than in my last blog post) so please be wary before reading further. Researching this journal is one of the most unpleasant activities I have ever undergone; I am presenting the material here so that no-one can be in any doubt about the nature of PIE, and disturbing connections about many high-level individual’s connections to the organisation will be seen to be as serious as they truly are.


Issue No. 9. No date given

‘..we have been featured not only in the Observer and Sunday Times reviews of the year, but also in the latter’s Christmas quiz.’
Talking about how ‘Our achievements during 1977 have been considerable’
Suggests both society and them have been forced to re-examine their attitudes.
‘Take the matter of child pornography. The whole issue sprang into prominence at the same time as we were being press-exposed. In at least one newspaper we were on the same page as an investigation into child-porn and so we could have been associated with it, or with its purveyors. Many leading figures have been called upon to take a stand on this subject, and unless we make our own position clearer we will continue to be connected, by default. Yet to formulate an acceptable policy on this matter is far from easy. Personally, I find most porn offensive, but I recognise that for many of our members it is the only way to release their pent-up emotions with relative safety. To take a stand, to formulate a policy devoid of hypocrisy is fraught with problems.’ (La Gazza Ladra, p. 2)

Ken Palmer, ‘Convenor’s Spot: For the Love of Children’, p. 3 (Palmer is Convenor of Winchester CHE). This article cites the work of Brongersma.
‘The greatest crime in the criminal calendar should be cruelty, either physical or mental. Frequently the law in its present state is most cruel in its effects ironically to the very persons it is designed to protect. Where love is uppermost in every human relationship there can be little real evil and the weight of such love should receive full consideration where adult sexual relations with children are known.’

‘Read All About It’, p. 3
Community Care 9/11/77 (letter from Tom O’Carroll; 2 hostile reactions); 16/11/77 (letter); new Society 20/10/77 (letter from Keith Hose); New Statesman 16/9/77 (Dr Maurice Yaffe, ‘Paedophilia – the forbidden subject’; Private Eye 16/9/77 (Auberon Waugh’s Diary); The Observer 28/8/77 (Dutch MP Backs child sex); 4/9/77 (Britain ‘intolerant’ on child sex – interview with Brongersma); Sunday Times 4/9/77 (Priest to reveal startling facts about paedophilia – ‘an unbiased account of Dr. Ingram’s paper to the Swansea Conference); Socialist Challenge 7/9/77 (PIE and the Press); 15/9/77 (Sexuality and PIE – letter from David Grove), 29/9/77 (Civil rights); peace News 7/10/77 (Where Fascism and Sexism met Beyond Law reform); Socialist Worker 29/9/77 (The Press and Free speech); 8/10/77 (letters, pro-PIE); Zero Oct-Nov issue No. 3 (The Case for PIE); Gay News Issue 128 (Pie meeting that NF tried to silence. Doctor protests – on Brongersma letter to Swansea; ‘Facing the Front’ – GN editorial; letters, Issue 129 (letters) 130 (letters) 131 (‘Forbidden Speech’ – ‘an excellent critique of Dr. Brongersma’s speech, published in last issue of Childhood rights, by Dr. Richard Norton); Libertarian Education no. 23 winter 77 (Press Reaction); Police Review 30/9/77 (Personally Speaking – ‘a long, fair and objective article by C.H. Rolfe’) (p. 3)

Tom O’Carroll, ‘Tom Tom’, pp. 4-6
‘We who believe there is nothing wrong with children being involved in sexual acts have no reason to share this position [that porn ‘depraves and corrupts’]. What we must concern ourselves with is that children only take part in sexual activities that they really desire – – whether the act is on celluloid or not is a very secondary consideration.’
[…]
‘Some years ago, after seeing my first half dozen boy films at a single sitting, what struck me most forcefully, apart from an uncontrollable urge to wet my pants, was that the degree of involvement and enthusiasm of the young participants varied immensely. Whereas some appeared to be genuinely rampant and “hungry for action”, others were limp, listless and indifferent.
This had nothing to do with age. I remember a boy of only 10 or so in a happy state of total commitment to his work, right through to its completion – – the quiver of climax was unmistakable – – while the 15-year-old who was sucking him looked as thought he’d rather be smoking a cigarette, which for much of the film he was. On the other hand I’ve seen a randy 12-year-old girl excitedly wanking her little five-year-old brother who, although effortlessly and endlessly stiff as a tiny spring-mounted poker, wore the detached, meditative air of one whose thoughts were precociously turned towards Zen Buddhism.’ (pp. 5-6)
[…]

‘Constantine [Larry Constantine, who gave a paper at the Love and Attraction conference in Swansea] talks about the benefits of a legal industry, open to inspection. I would go further and suggest that part of the reason for the exploitation of children in porn is not only the illegality but also the profitability, albeit the latter is to some extent a function of the former. As well as monitoring the industry, why not take the profit incentive out of it? Why not have government sponsored porn by way of competition? Via the Arts Council, it would be possible to create bursaries for artists working in the field of erotic photo and cinema featuring children, thus encouraging the emergence of really first rate, non-commercial porn.’ (pp. 5-6)

Keith Spence, ‘Chicken à l’Americaine’, pp. 6-7
Suggests Bruce Altman’s book ‘Raising Chickens – – A Beginner’s Guide’, could be an instruction manual for paedophiles.

Keith Hose, ‘Proud to be an Animal’, pp. 8-9
[…..]
‘They [antagonists in Gay News] would argue that we have women members because paedophilia is a male phenomenon caused by looking at relationships in a sexist way; in terms of dominance and submission. A violent reaction from women against this sexism is only natural they argue, women are all too aware of how they suffer from this attitude in men and do not want children to suffer in the same way. In fact desocialising children away from the traditional roles of male and female is the only hope; so leave the children alone for us to change them, they conclude.

My arguments however, are the other side of the same coin. I too am against sexism, but do not believe that paedophilia is caused by looking at relationships in a sexist way. Not all paedophile relationships are about dominance and submission, and adults will still be attracted to children, and children to adults, when and if we do reach a world free of sexism and other forms of exploitation.’ (p. 8)
[…..]
‘Our antagonist’s supposition that the women there were reacting against male sexual domination, may have some element of truth in it if we remember that to a lot of people sex only means coitus, sexual relationships involve one partner dominating the other, and children are lesser people than adults. With these beliefs sex with children means adults forcibly buggering or raping them. Add to that the deliberate misinterpretation of PIE’s Evidence to the Criminal Law revision Committee and the concentration on infants by the media, despite the fact that few of PIE’s members are sexually attracted to babies, and you can quite sympathise with their emotional, if mistaken, reactions.
Strangely, I found myself agreeing with a point made in Auberon Waugh’s article about paedophilia which was printed in a recent issue of the ‘Spectator’ (“Suffer the little children” – 1st October 1977), that there is a class difference in the way people react to paedophilia. While I may not agree with Auberon Waugh’s hypothesis as to the cause of the difference in class attitude, it is undeniable that it exists. Most of the demonstrators outside PIE’s first public meeting were working class, and coming from a working class background, I myself was aware, even at fifteen, that if I did not obtain a higher education I would be trapped into working in a ‘factory floor’ environment; my sexuality and personality would have to conform. I felt a middle class environment would give me more freedom.’ (p. 9) (etc)

‘la France.. Some general Impressions on France for Boy Lovers’, p. 10 (by Member 173)
This suggests that France is, ‘an unrewarding place for child-lovers is reasonable, up to a point’.
Mentions a ‘well known paederast, Gabriel Matzneff’, essay ‘The Under Sixteens’
Stricter families.
No established group like PIE in France.
But mentions FRED – Front Revolutionnaire pour une Enfance Differente’
And that Libération is ‘a paper very tolerant to paedophiles’
French boy: ‘I suspect that he is more of an adult than his English counterpart, less interested in sport and more concerned with being clever and a man of the world, and if he doesn’t share the stunning good looks of the Italian or Britisher, I challenge anybody to doubt his sophistication and seriousness compared to his counterpart across the water.’

Nathaniel Jacobs, ‘A Professional Learns to Listen’, p. 11
Talking about experiences as a professional counsellor with a Mr J. in prison, ‘Even though my acceptance of boy-love is limited, I sense the pain and rejection that fills the being of Mr. J. when he cannot, with sanctioned approval, practice the physical lovemaking he desires. Furthermore, just because I cannot accept the sexual ingredient does not imply that I heap condemnation upon the practice; nor do I consider Mr. J. a recalcitrant and sinner and cast him aside as being despicable and abased.
Quite the contrary, Mr. J’s love for children is transcendent the physical. He loves with the love of spiritual dimension. If I could but tap the mainstream of his compassion then my heart would also respond with a thunderous indignancy at a world which systematically destroys her children and protects them from those, such as Mr. J. who would give to them a love unconditional and free.’
[….]

Brongersma, ‘Paedophilia: the Act’, pp. 12-13 – with picture of young boy.

Another crossword, p. 15

Cartoon, reproduced from Spectator, boy saying to his mother, ‘Mummy, when I grow up can I be a paedophile?’, p. 15.

Quotes
‘Often a beautiful boy with scarlet lips
Asks me laughingly: what is your religion?
I answer him; in your love I find my faith,
My paradise, my God, and my eternity’
(Ibrahim Ibn Sahl. 12th century) (p. 15)

Back page (p. 16), lists of ‘Europie’, 12 in France, 3 in Italy, 1 in Netherlands, 3 in West Germany, 2 in Norway.

Issue No. 10. No date given.

Picture of young girl on front, with title ‘HAPPINESS! (before the arrest)’

La Gazza Ladra, p. 2 – on sacking of Tom O’Carroll from OU job.

‘Dear Sir,

‘Letters’ is a most acceptable way for members to express their opinions. Usually I don’t, but this time I am so shocked and distressed as a paedophile, and lover of music, that I will sound off.

On February 9th the Director of the ‘London Boys Singers’ was a troubled man. He attended the Magistrate’s Court, accused of ‘Indecency’ with a 10 year old boy.

I know none of the facts of his story, but can well imagine the innocence with which this act of love and affection had taken place.

No doubt Mr. Doggett, considering his social position, found his contact with the law enforcement people to be unacceptable to him. He was bailed, pending trial. He went to a pub and talked a while, wrote some letters to friends and relatives and then threw himself under a train.

If this man chose death as a means of protecting his beliefs towards Paedophilia, I wonder how many of those, who consider the bloody futile laws of this land to be correct and proper, would be willing to support their theories with their life?

It is of the utmost importance that Paedophiles be permitted to express themselves without oppression. It is the ONLY way to be sure that tragedies of this nature will be averted in the future.

My most sincere condolences to the members of the London Boy Singers.

Your loss is total.

Paul Andrews. [Treasurer of PIE]’ (p. 4)
[I will post more about Doggett in a later blog post]

Warren Middleton, ‘As I see it…A Question of Strategy’, pp. 4-5.
Angry that Tony Smythe, director of National Association for Mental Health (MIND) said he didn’t think PIE was the best group to advance children’s sexual rights.

Brongersma, ‘Paedophilia: the Person’, pp. 6-7
[……..]
‘The ideal of many paedophiles is a lasting intimate relation with one and the same child. The prejudices of society render this very difficult or even dangerous, save in those cases where the parents agree.’ (p. 7)
[…]
‘Other paedophiles may be so afraid of the pain that lasting relations inevitably inflict on the adult partner, or are in the impossibility under social pressure to establish such a relation, that they stay promiscuous and have sex with an often incredibly large number of children.’ (p. 7)
[….]
‘Nichols in the U.S.A. (Ethics, Goals and Responsibilities to be Encouraged in the Man-Boy Relationship, 1971), Himmelein in Germany, Etz in Austria and others proposed a kind of ethical code for boy-love, emphasizing the duty to respect the boy’s personality, not only in the sexual relations but in every way, to help him to grow up, to educate him, to be firm with him when necessary, not to spoil him, to prepare his way to a responsible heterosexual life, to comradeship, to society as a whole.’ (p. 7)

‘Photos Needed’, p. 7
‘If you have good, original non-nude photos of children that you would allow us to publish in MAGPIE, please send them along. We particularly need pictures for the front page, but photos of any size can be used. We’ll return them. Thanks.

‘J Z Eglington’, p. 11
Mentions on subway in NYC, August 1976, ad for Bronx Zoo, a pic of ‘a frecklefaced boy of 11 or 12’
And ads for Allan’s Frankfurters, which have been called ‘Bun Busters’.

Shops on 7th Avenue South selling picture postcard depicting nude boys, photographs by “Attilla” and others for Atlantis Studios, Box 56, Village Station, NYC 10014. Not pornographic. Models 11-15 in age.

And on ‘Eatable Undies’.

Loving account of a showing in the University of Miami Film Society of Death in Venice.

POST home delivery ad campaign posters, April-May 1977 in Denver ‘have been showing a handsome blond newsboy of 12 or 13, quoted as saying “I deliver a LOT more than the News’

And ads on automobiles in Cal, Tennessee and Kentucky, ‘Have You Hugged Your Kid Today?’

p. 12 (back page), crossword. Call for writings.

Says that cover picture ‘is of a 12 year old boy full of joy and happiness despite being form a home where is own mother didn’t know his correct age, and where his father is a thief and a drunkard. This picture of inner peace was made just weeks before the police brutally interrogated him, jailed his benefactor and returned him to the “custody of his parents” with a statement that he “requires psychiatric counselling”.’

Issue No. 11. May 1978

This issue can be read complete online here.

Boy of about 10-11 leaning against a pole on front.

‘Alan Doggett – Memorial Service’
A letter in Magpie 10 reported and commented on the recent suicide of Alan Doggett three weeks before he was to conduct the London Boys Choir, together with massed choirs of other children at the Albert Hall. On the night of that concert the programme contained an insert describing Alan Doggett’s years of dedicated service and paying tribute to his friendliness, integrity and loyalty.
Shortly after this date a requiem mass was said for him at the Holy Cross Priory in Leicester by the Reverend Father Michael Ingram.
On Saturday 20th May a memorial service will be held to commemorate Alan’s life and work. It will start at 3 p.m. and will be held at St. Barnabas Church, Addison Road, London, W14, taking the form of a choral evensong, performed by the London Boys Choir.
These religious functions, one Roman, the other Anglican must be seen not only as ceremonies of intercession and remembrance, but also as containing an element of protest. It would seem to be true that in today’s society religious organisations provide almost the only vehicle whereby such a protest can be made.’ (p. 2)

We have for sale a limited number of copies of a 99 page booklet by Den Nichols, called “Towards a Better Perspective For Boy-Lovers”. Published in 1976 in the United States in its preface to ‘serious minded adult males who feel an existential attraction to young boys”. Copies are £1 each, including post & packaging; orders to PIE. (‘Special Offer’, p. 2)

The article ‘NCCL Supports PIE’s Right’s was reproduced on my earlier blog post here.

‘Dear Sir,
The figures show that “enlightened” Britain has a mania for sending people to prison. Our prison population per head is vastly larger than any other European country. According to one BBC expert’s estimate (Nov. 16th) there are about eight thousand children incarcerated in England. Yet Mr. William Whitelaw calls for more imprisonments, more severe sentences and “short sharp shocks”. At the same time 80% of boys and 35 to 40% of girls commit another offence within two years of release. In other words the custodial treatment of the young offender is completely ineffective if its aim is to change his antisocial desires and acts. It is of course more succes- sful if regarded in the light of a punish- ment. It also protects society for the period of custody.
Many people involved with the problem are aware of this inadequacy and of the destructive effect of the court – and custody experience. Some express bafflement. It is not surprising since the only solution in most cases is one that society finds it almost impossible to pro- vide and that is love. Adults mostly seem to love only their own children, the only arrangement regarded as normal. Many are unable to love and cherish any children even their own. There are no wellsprings of affection available to rescue these children and it is not surprising that statistics show the only hope for the recidivist is a successful marriage. Non-conforming and bitter children are even more likely to be starved of affection and, most damaging, to be treated with no consideration for their dignity. The evidence is all around us that violence is more acceptable to society than love. Court sentences show that. People have always tried to prevent love by others but have made sure if they were powerful enough, that society condoned or at least tolerated their own foibles. Thus the Victorian ‘gentleman’ could have the working class girl-with dire consequences to her but none to him if they were found out, and every form of pro- stitution was available to him. Like the present day anti-porn lobby he was very concerned with the morality of others.
John Le Carre with his penetrating view of life writes in the ‘Observer’ that the affection-starved youngsters at his prep school went from bed to bed like sticky frogs looking for a pond. “There at last we embraced like the infants we were not allowed to be”. ‘ For punishment – love of course was a punishable offence – we had the . . . choice of several small riding whips”.
Science should be leading us to ask as a matter of course – “But what does the evidence show us?”. It is disheartening to find so distinguished a leader of society as Mr. Whitelaw favouring instead an emotive prejudice, either through a lack of understanding or political expediency. We need a more enlightened and scientific approach to the problem of law and order and the soul destroying effect of our overcrowded prisons.
Yours sincerely,
313.’ (p. 3)

‘Dear Editor,
I have been watching the progress of Magpie with interest since its inception last year, and I must say that it improves greatly with each issue, not only in quality of print etc., but also what started out as broadsheets, appealing for ideas and opinions, has developed into an intelligent, thought provoking publication. I read with interest Tom’s article on child-porn (issue no. 9) and thought you and other members may be interested to hear one or two comments.
Firstly, I think the inclusion of erotic pictures in Magpie would be a contradiction of P.I.E.’s objectives and would fuel the fires of our principal enemys namely the National Front and the Mrs. Whitehouse’s of this world.
Personally, like many other members. I suspect, I find magazines such as Male International, Kim, Boys Express etc., quite acceptable and I am not in the least offended by their contents. However. I feel that Magpie, for all its limitations, must he our vehicle for ideas, our means of communication, but more so, our shop-window to the world, our best advertisement for ourselves.
By producing an “educational” rather than “sensational” magazine, paedophiles will, I believe, gradually begin to come across as a caring rather than corrupting breed.
Only by striving to achieve a cloak of respectability will we be able to gain a place in society, we will never reach our goal by adopting a “don’t give a damn what you think of us” attitude. This, I think is where the Gay Liberation Front failed to gain support because the media and most of the public have a built in defence against these kind of tactics. You go out there saying “Bang ! Crash ! – Here we are, and we don’t care” and what happens – cries of “My God, how dare you do this ?” from the Press and T.V. etc. The result being that, far from furthering the cause – you frighten would-be members off ! No, I think to continue the magazine in its present format is far the wisest thing – after all we can all get hold of these other publications if we really want them. If anything, there could be a little more variety, perhaps more girls – and I am sure many members would not object to seeing boys in the 12 – 18 age group too. I think the inclusion of short stories or a serial would be a good idea, perhaps members could submit their own contributions, and I don’t see why members couldn’t contribute their own favourite photographs too – provided of course that they fit in with the objectives of the magazine.
I feel that articles written by such people on Dr. Brongersma are invaluable to our cause and I can only hope that you continue to publish his articles. There must be few among us who are not interested in nuts and bolts of paedophilia, and the inclusion of such items must surely increase our under- standing of ourselves.
It must also bring about new tolerances from the public, which at the end of the day will mean the gradual re- shaping of society’s attitude towards us.
Yours 214.’ (p. 3)

Brongersma, ‘Paedophilia: The Effects’, p. 4
[….]
It is said, rightly, that we’re not allowed to sacrifice children in order to solve our adult sexual problems. This was meant as a warning to the paedophile. But it is equally justified to address this admonition to parents and educators who have an emotional negative attitude to sex. How many children have been sacrificed, tortured, abused, troubled or even driven to suicide by adult prejudices against masturbation, now proven to be stupid nonsense and generally considered to be devoid of the least foundation? Let’s take care that the same doesn’t happen with the negative ideas most people foster against other sexual activities of children!

The child is definitely not a non- sexual being, but has its sexual impulses right from its birth. Babies may masturbate, even to orgasm, without behaving abnormally. The young child has, as everyone knows, strong sexual interests. Then follows the so-called latency period in which sexuality seems to sleep. But now we know more about other periods of western history and other non-western cultures, we must confess that this latency period is only the result of our suppressing culture and that the child of six to twelve, if left to its true nature, abounds in sexual play. Then the sexual impulse comes to a turbulent life in prepuberty, to reach in the years of puberty itself a force never equalled during the rest of its life.

The image of the a-sexual “innocent” child is not the outcome of scientific observation, but only of wishful imagination. We ought not to sacrifice children to this invention of people abhorring sexuality, that is: human nature as it is created. Of course the sexual life of a child is in a process of development, as every other aspect of its life. It should therefore be approached with care and consideration. It should not be suppressed or ignored. The child needs its sexual play, as all higher animals do, to prepare itself for a complete adult sex life. The cultural suppression of the child’s sexuality lies at the root of many divorces and unhappy marriages.

A sexual relationship between a child and an adult does not harm the child, may be even beneficial, provided the adult partner is considerate, loving, affectionate. The confusion of tongues about the influence of such relations is produced by the fact that nearly all studies on this subject are founded on criminal cases, throwing on one heap together, rapes and violent assaults with cases of accidental contacts devoid of any traumatic or lasting effect, as well as with cases of intimate loving relations. If we don’t discriminate between the deeds of people who, under the stress of sexual abstinence throw themselves on a child while in reality preferring an older partner, and the deeds of paedophile people with erotic preference for a child, we will come nowhere. Most statistics and “scientific” deductions are calculated upon this chaotic mixture of very dissimilar situations and therefore worthless.

All acts of violence and compulsion are, by their nature, traumatic and should be fought as morally bad and criminal. But what is the influence of an erotic relationship to which the child is spontaneously consenting or which it solicited itself?

In order to deal with this question we have, to start with, one popular prejudice to clear away: boys are perverted by sexual contacts with adult males and are “made” homophiles themselves. This widespread belief was at the origin of many penal laws, but it is completely unfounded. On few points there is much unanimity among expert commissions that studied this subject (Wolfenden, Cardinal Griffin in England, Speijer in Holland) and authoritative scientists: nobody becomes a homophile by seduction. Homophilia. if it is not an inborn quality, finds its origin in the first years of human life; if a boy is not a homophile at five or six years of age, he’ll never become one, regardless of how many homosexual acts he may participate in. This is shown best by boy- prostitutes and other boys who have sexual contacts with males for years on end while maintaining their sexual preference for girls.

Apart from this outdated prejudice, scientific literature enumerates many bad effects on children as a result from sexual approaches by adults. But this doesn’t help us to gain insight in this matter, in so far as this literature – as stated above – doesn’t make any clear-cut division between approaches which may be characterized as assaults (and therefore more or less traumatic) and those which are expressions of love and affection, experienced as such by the child (and therefore not traumatic).
[….]

It is pedagogically important, however, to see that this state of affairs is not protecting children but rather is a menace to their well-being. There is no reason to think lightly about the terrific damage inflicted on children who are subjected to parental outbursts of rage or dismay and to police enquiries on the discovery of the fact that they had, often at their own instigation and in any case with their own consent, affectionate erotic relations with an adult lover. When parents come to know that their son or daughter has had such relations, they should, in the very interest of their child, proceed with the utmost caution. Their first duty is to try to understand the real feelings of their child, not giving way to common prejudices.

It asks for some psychological discernment to see that – and why – some experiences in this field may be a source of fear and anxiety to one child, while to the other they are something unique, fantastic and delicious. Children who haven’t been brought up in an un- healthy fear of everything sexual, who have had sexual play with comrades, who were not taught to be disgusted by the body and its functions and who don’t have an abnormally weak sexual impulse, will mostly react positively when approached by a sympathetic adult. In more than 50% of the cases they even take the initiative themselves.

Nowadays there are more and more expert authors who have an open eye for the positive effects such an affectionate relation may have. No wonder! Could real love, affection, sympathy, tenderness ever have a bad effect on the evolution of a human being? The ancient Greeks had their wisdom about this and in our present day the official Speijer Commission, appointed by the Dutch government, came to the conclusion that “in a number of cases (heterosexual as well as homosexual) initiation by an adult may result in a better evolution of the boy or girl concerned”. The German scientist Prof. Schlegel advances the opinion that sexual contacts with an adult may be as necessary at puberty as maternal love and tenderness in the first period of life. Mature sexual behaviour has to be learned by children’s sexual play as many ethnological researches show. If our society had better understanding of this, our adolescents would enjoy more sexual liberty and be less tempted to aggressive behaviour.

‘Everyone knows the “Child Protection Bill” will pass. It is another misnomer, like “indecent assault” when applied to mutually desired and consenting happenings. This Bill is not designed to protect children (where does “childhood” end anyway?) but to “oppress” them. It seems that when you are a child, everything is illegal. You certainly can’t have sex with anyone. When I was fourteen and horny as hell, it was maddening to know that I was only allowed by law to do it to myself, by myself, and then only in secret from my parents because they even thought that was wrong. It was illegal for me to have sex with a man – I had to be ‘ protected”. Now that I am grown up. and have finally reached the “age of consent” it is illegal for me to have sex with a fourteen year old boy. He has to be protected. So I’ve lost out both ways, first as a boy. then as a man. If only I had known that it was legal to be photographed in an “indecent” pose! I might have had some pictures to look back on. 1 knew I had a beautiful body at that age – I used to admire myself in the mirror. But now a boy will have to keep himself under wraps until he is hairy and ugly. I still don’t know what I was supposed to have been protected from as a youngster. I wanted sex and couldn’t have it. and I am still mad at society for it. [….]’ (Paul Green, ‘Protection or Overprotection?’, p. 5)

Article ‘Pedofili i Norge – A Better Society’, translated from the BULLETIN of the Norwegian Paedophile Workgroup, p. 6.

‘Child Porn’, p. 7

“Porn’s evil men
on the run” (newspaper banner headline)

“I cannot understand the
mentality of people who
produce such muck”
(MP quoted in newspaper)
I’ve been looking at some “such muck”
pictures of naked boys
with beautiful bodies

traceried rib cages
knees like rounded nuts
a delicate black flash of pubic hair

and happy faces
not particularly exploited
(no more than by capitalism, advertising or education)

Sirs, your “campaign” is motivated by hate
of sex, of the human nude, of the possibility of deviance.
You, who refuse to contemplate the existence of more than one view,
you are the “evil men”.

[With picture of Pied Piper next to it]

Richard James, ‘A Jubilee Song’, p. 7

‘The disturbed boy quivering in his teacher’s hands
and scraping at their flesh with his nails, because he
knows he can expect nothing
but entertains fantasies of smashing everyone’s heads
— what have we done for this?

The poor harmless paedophile imprisoned
for a reciprocal love, and scalded as a “nonce”
(but Mrs. Whitehouse says who considers the children?)
— what has he done for this?

My own poor grown-up gay lover from the East End of London
accustomed by dad’s beatings to being out of work
behind with the rent, and your name in the local paper
— what have you done for this?

A black boy and a white boy, two friends
happily making love to one another, the one buying wranglers jeans
because they above all things turn his lover on
— may we go through hell-fire and high water that we
may be worthy of these

and may we all at last have peace. ‘

‘You show me yours…’, pp. 8-9

‘Remember playing Doctors ? As kids, most of us discover this marvelous excuse for touching and exploring another human body. The work of many social scientists and researchers have uncovered an abundance of early sexual experience – in sharp contrast to the common disclaimers from parents and teachers alike that the years before puberty are not sexual, not REALLY.

Statements about children being uninterested in sex are becoming less and less credible. The belief that preadolescence represents a period of sexual latency or inactivity is being rejected along with several other Freudian teachings. In their place we find a new understanding of sexual development as a lifelong process that begins at birth.

Birth — 2 years
Boys are often born with erections, and although there is no documentated evidence, there is no reason to suppose that girls do not enter this world in the same state. All of the sexual response equipment is present and operative on day one – it is the reproductive systems that do not develop until puberty. One study of nine male babies (aged 3 – 20 weeks) reported that the number of erections varied from five to forty per day. Fretting, crying and stretching usually accompanied the erection, which was followed by playful and relaxed behaviour.

During the first four weeks of life, the infant girl sustains an extraordinary though temporary degree of sexual de- velopment. Her genitals are swollen and red because of the remaining maternal hormones which produce a momentary masturbation. Her vagina also shows physiologic patterns, including secretion, similar to those of an adult woman. With all that equipment ready for arousal, it’s no surprise that genital play is one of most infants earliest experiences. A psychologist studied one infants genital play during his first and second years. The infant watched his penis bounce up and down when he sucked his stomach in. He let the bath water run over his penis until it became erect. He stimulated himself intensively once a week, and explored his genitals with moderate interest three times each week. He put his favourite stuffed toy between his thighs and squeezed, while having a partial erection.

Infants in the first year of life are not generally capable of the direct, voluntary action we call masturbation, but occasionally, infants do specifically stimulate themselves. The Kinsey report found six boys under the age of one year, and twenty three girls under the age of three years who masturbated to orgasm. There is no reason to think that these children were abnormal because they displayed their sexuality. More likely they were simply the ones who were spared the harsh lessons usually delivered when children touch themselves “down there”. Although a mother stimulates the infants genitals when bathing etc., she also often scolds and slaps hands when infants do the same thing. Such a young mind cannot understand this inconsistency, but it does set the stage for developing the negative attitude towards sexuality that plagues many an adult.

Modern psychologists now consider that erotic genital play is a good indicator of whether the infant is getting enough physical affection. Research shows that infants who receive large amounts of affection display high levels of genital play. Because giving adequate physical affection involves the possibility of arousal, the first outsider included in our sexuality is usually a parent. How parents handle these encounters is important to the infant, and possibly to society as well. An American psychologist, James Prescott, suggests that societies which promote physical pleasure among children are peaceful. Those which punish pleasure are violent. He believes that a society can reduce future levels of war and crime by providing more physical affection between parents and children, and more sexual pleasure for children.

3 to 7 years
An explosion of sexiness follows the hazy sensuality of infancy. Now children bloom into romantics and dive joyfully into a period of unrestrained emotional and physical affection: hugging and kissing etc. Children of this age will often copy what they have seen – at home, on television, etc.. and this is when they begin to bring other kids into their sexual adventures. The game of “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine” seems to be a favourite everywhere.

Cohorts get involved in cuddling, handling, and sucking each others sex organs, and attempts at intercourse – both anal and genital, hetrosexual and homosexual. Homosexuality is a normal part of growing up for both boys and girls, and is usually just a stepping stone on the way to adult hetrosexuality.

Many youngsters are often intro- duced to more advanced sexual play by slightly older children. Like so many other aspects of life, here the old teach the young. One young girl remembers “He (age II) asked me (age 5) if I wanted to play doctors. Thinking it was all in fun, I said yes. He informed me that he was the doctor and I was the patient. I was pregnant, and he was going to operate. He undid my pants, took them off, and did the same to his. He tried to have intercourse, but did not suceed”.

Another girls first experience was more scary than fun — “Bill and I, (both aged 5 years) were close friends, and the two of us went over to Tom’s house to play. Tom (aged 9 years) locked us in the bedroom. We could only go if we exposed ourselves physically to each other. We undressed, and Tom immediately fondled Bill’s penis, and then tried to touch my vagina. I either cried or screamed, and he stopped. I think where I became con- fused, was that at home, nakedness was common, accepted, and associated with good thoughts “.

Kindergarten age girls often try putting objects on or into their genitals. One woman recalls “Some afternoons we would lock ourselves in a bedroom and take our pants off. We took turns laying on the bed and putting pennies, marbles, etc., between our legs. Two other girls liked to pretend they were boys, and used a pencil for a penis. As the ritual became old hat. it passed out of existence”.

8 to 13 years
Until fairly recently, these years have been considered a period of sexual quiescence, a time when sexual interest takes a little time off before the big push at puberty, but in societies which allow children sexual freedom, youngsters increase their sexual activities during these years. This implies that the low levels of sexual activities expected then are more a function of old fashioned repression than of natural development. In fact, preadolescence may be a time when all we have learnt about sex comes into focus. If guilt has been the environment of sex. then fantasies of torture, masochism and sadism may erupt. Throughout these years, kids investigate every possible source of sexual pleasure. The techniques of gratification they discover are endless. “Circle jerk”, or group masturbation is a common one amongst boys. They sit in a circle, and masturbate to orgasm, often awarding special praise to those who “shoot” fastest or furthest. Climbing ropes or poles can often have a very gratifying effect!

America has produced several secret societies which foster sexual freedom between children, and between children and adults. One which has gone totally public, is the Guyon Society, whose members allow their offspring whatever sexual expression they want. The Child Sensuality Circle, a semi-public organisation based in San Diego, is one of five major groups seeking sexual freedom for children, and are now broadening their focus to cover the general liberation of children – legal and social as well as sexual An American doctor sums up with a view which is slowly becoming more and more acceptable to society:
“Personally. I like the idea of adult sex without children involved, but for the child’s sake, and for society’s sake, we’ve got to start allowing our children more sexual freedom instead of constantly burdening them with guilt and misinformation”. ‘
(adapted from an Article in Forum)

[Cartoon of a boy on a bench saying to an older man, holding a newspaper with a headline ‘Child Sex Attack’, ‘Would ya like a sweet, Mister?’. Drawn by Dominik.]

And a cutting: ‘’NO PIE’ BOY SACKED BY SCHOOL’, sent in by a reader – comment ‘progressive education rules OK?’ (p. 9)

Keith Spence, ‘I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE and it works’, p. 10

‘I met him at the local swimming-pool. He was by himself, practising jumping feet-first off the spring-board with a single-mindedness that suggested Olympic training. 1 guessed he was about twelve years-old – his long, coltish body was still softened by the last traces of puppy-fat, but the way he stood and moved showed that he was growing up fast. He had silver-birch-blonde hair dropping to his shoulders, and grey eyes that sparkled when he laughed. And freckles. I’m kinky for freckles. He was absolutely my kind of kid.

For half-an-hour we jumped, dived, splashed, wrestled, ducked, bombed, and generally behaved in a thoroughly irresponsible fashion: and all without speaking a word. But finally, when we had dried and changed. I decided that the time had come to put our friendship onto a more regular basis.

“Do you want a coke?” I asked.

“Ferlot?” he said. “Vad sayer du?”

“A coke” I said, pantomiming desperately. “To drink. Do you want? Do you speak English?”

“Ferlot” he repeated, “jag forstor inte. Nu maste jag go. Hcj-do”. And he grinned maddeningly, waved once, and was gone.

If you think England is frustrating for paedophiles, you should try living in Sweden for a bit.

Admittedly the problems are rather different. In England, where children are only allowed contact with adults for purposes of punishment, and can’t take their socks off in public in case they start an orgy, the difficulty is to meet kids at all. Here in Sweden, making friends with them is laughably easy. The problems – – at least for a thick foreigner like me – – come from being forced to communicate almost entirely through sign-language. After three months, my Swedish vocabulary is still limited to such earth-shattering remarks as “There are three cats underneath the table” and “My hat is blue but yours is yellow”, which I’m sure will come in useful one day, but are not really very appropriate as the basis for a deep romantic relationship. The frustration is compounded by the fact that Swedish children are the most heart- shatteringly beautiful in the world: so that quite often, when walking down the street, the sight of one can literally stop you in your tracks and leave you gasping for breath. And as if this were not enough, the long-suffering paedophile visitor to Sweden also has to face the torment of various depraved Scandanavian practices, of which the most fiendish is undoubtedly the bastu or sauna. This institution is a large hot room, regularly patrolled by troops of highly uninhibited naked children. The result is that one sits there for far too long, turning the colour of raw beef, because one’s physical condition makes it impossible to walk out with any degree of dignity. It’s hell. I tell you! Sheer hell!

Actually, while sitting in the bastu last week, gazing at and being gazed at by a couple of faun-like children whose incipient adolescence was spectacularly in evidence, 1 found myself wondering what daft old Mrs. Whitehouse would have thought about it all. Here were two boys who, being Swedish, would have been accustomed to nakedness – – their own and other people’s – – from a few months old. They would already have received a thorough, factual and liberal sexual education. They would certainly have been encouraged to question and to experiment: that is how children are normally brought up in Sweden. Yet Swedish children are not promiscuous, nor has their health and happiness been ruined by whatever nameless horrors it is that Mrs. Whitehouse so abjectly dreads (to the best of my knowledge she has ‘never exactly specified what it is that she fears from allowing children to understand and acknowledge their sexuality. Whatever it is. it hasn’t happened in Sweden). On the other hand, children aren’t frightened by the changes in their bodies, nor in any way ashamed of them.

I suppose the secret is that children in Sweden are respected, and their rights are acknowledged in a way they have never been in Britain. That much is obvious as soon as you step into a Swedish school. Swedish children come to school because it is fun, and because they understand that it is important for them to learn. Once there, they are not urged to be ‘better’ than the other pupils – – there is no top (or bottom) of the form. Instead, the cleverer pupils help the less clever ones, and any academic achievement is the achievement of the class as a whole. Swedish school-children learn, before anything else, to co- operate, to tolerate, and to trust each other. Teachers are friends and equals, and one teacher may stay with the same class, every lesson, for two or three years. There is no compulsion, no formality. Christian names are always used, even to the headmaster. Above all, there is no fear: Sweden has a strict law that nobody – – not teachers, not police, not even parents – – may ever strike a child. A teacher who hit one of his pupils would be dismissed on the spot, and would probably appear in court. There are, in fact, no punishments at all in Swedish schools. The system isn’t based on punishment, it’s based on mutual respect and co-operation. And – – I’m sorry, Mr. Rhodes Boyson, but you’re wrong. It works.

Of course, as a refugee from England granted asylum in Swedish schools, it has taken me a little time to get used to the way things are done here. It’s a bit disconcerting to see a fifteen-year-old boy at the back of one’s class contentedly smoking a pipe, for example; or to have two fourteen-year-old girls politely excuse themselves from a lesson be- cause they have to cook supper for their boy-friends. And then there- was the class of ten-year-olds who were so excited at speaking English with a real Englishman that they barricaded the door at the end of the lesson and refused to let me out. Imagine being kidnapped by 22 Swedish children! I was quite rude to the Swedish teacher who rescued me. Of course, too, the system does have its drawbacks. It is criticised for not giving enough encouragement to unusually gifted children: and for not teaching pupils ambition (a questionable virtue anyway). Also, it would fail disasterously if it didn’t have total dedication from Swedish teachers- – a teacher who didn’t love kids unquestioningly and unconditionally could destroy an entire class. (That doesn’t happen. And a strike by Swedish teachers is unimaginable). But the few risks and disadvantages are a comparatively small price to pay for the joy of seeing a whole generation growing up free from aggression, loneliness, mistrust or fear.

In Sweden, one by one, the sacred cows of the ‘professional educators’ are being quietly herded off to the knacker’s yard and slaughtered. Discipline? Forget it. Rigid rules should only be needed when people can’t think for themselves; here they respect kids’ common sense instead. Religious instruction? That went long ago. The nuclear family? Sweden must have the world’s highest proportion of unmarried and seperated parents: but because such things arc treated without rancour or guilt, the children don’t often seem to suffer. Youthful innocence? Yes – – but here it means absence of shame, not absence of knowledge. And “Protection of Children?” Emphatically, yes! Swedish children are protected, by law. from violence, pain, destitution, exploitation and discrimination. I only wish the same could be said of Britain. Well – – alright. Perhaps I’m getting a bit carried away. And I can’t pretend that Sweden hasn’t got its problems – – they exist here as they do anywhere else. But after the joyless, loveless emotional waste-land which is childhood in Britain, the vividness and happiness of Swedish kids is strong medicine. Sweden may not have all the answers – – but it’s a damn sight closer to them than any other country I’ve visited, and working in Swedish schools is an enthralling experience. Now all I need is a decent phrase-book. Does anyone know the Swedish for “Will you come to the cinema with me on Saturday?” ‘

David Remfrey, ‘Images of Childhood’ – picture of two young girls sitting at a table, one pouring something like a cup of tea

‘I hope I was not the only one among us to visit the exhibition of drawings and paintings by David Remfry at the Mercury Gallery, Cork Street, London. Entitled Images of Childhood these paintings and drawings, mostly of little girls, have a calm beauty and subtle eroticism of great appeal. More often than not posed against a blank wall, barefoot on carpet, barekneed on chairs, simply dressed or not at all, playing hide and seek in a birthday suit behind the jardiniere, these children are caught, frozen in mid-dance, reclining on day beds, leaning listlessly, lost in sadness, pouring tea or simply playing, exempt from time yet dimly aware each day is one day nearer the gates of the Garden of Eden. Full of foreboding for the end of childhood, knowing they must grow up and what growing up means, these still nymphets are filled with unease and recall those many portraits of the Virgin looking wistfully at the Christ Child, as a mother protective, yet as the Mother conscious of, and resigned to, the Cross. For all their charm and apparent innocence, these paintings never lapse into sentimentality, and never do so because the subjects are clearly as aware as the painter of their potential appeal. Yet the eroticism is muted, not blatant as in Balthus’ paintings of pubescent girls, curiously English, reserved, belonging indoors, unrequited. It is precisely the eroticism of paedophilia, the attraction of the unattainable, the charm of cool remote children, the yearning to touch the untouched, tenderly. The distance between us and childhood, children, is the hallmark of paedophilic yearning, the rosegrey dream which dooms us, for when it is eclipsed in intercourse, there is the worm in the bud. Despair inevitably follows, not at once in the flush of passion, but later in twilight when we dimly perceive that our dream can never be incorporated in the smooth precise flesh of any child, not because children grow up, but because they must never cease to be distant. This is our dilemma: the child possessed is no longer child. Possessed, and a sword shall pierce the heart. So Remfry’s children, solitary especially in company, remain aloof, retain their distance, which is precisely their presence, and beckon us. only to ask us to go.’
C.J. Bradbury-Robinson (p. 11)

‘Hero and Lover’, p. 12

‘Both boys and girls can benefit from a responsible paedophile relationship with an adult friend that they can look up to, talk out their problems with, play with and learn from. The boy sees his man friend as a model to emulate in his self-development. The girl may see her man friend as more of a romantic hero. Likewise the lesbian paedophile relationship is based on the emulation self-development concept and the woman/boy relationship of one of romantic fulfillment. The responsible paedophile should not take advantage of this hero-worship just to satisfy sexual drives, but rather to be a supplemental teacher/parent in all phases of the child’s development. This should include basic friendship, teaching of ethical values, guidance and, ideally, dealing with matters of love and sensuality. With the adult as hero, he/she has the responsibility to place the welfare of the child first. A hero must live up to his honour. ‘

A further crossword, p. 12

Issue No. 12, December 1978 [Note that this was the issue preceding that in which NCCL took out an advert]

‘Magpie Comment’, p. 1
On Whitewash, who want to see PIE banned. (Whitehouse, presumably)

Compare themselves to IRA – ‘we do not use bombs and bullets to back up our arguments’

Apparently Tory MP Bill Benyon (an anti-abortionist) ‘bravely issued a press statement some time ago supporting Tom O’Carroll’s right to free speech in connection with paedophilia’

Demonstration outside British embassy in Oslo, Norway, about press and police harassment of PIE.

‘Lift PIE Ban, Gay News Told’.
WHS had refused to stock Gay News because of too much paedophilia.

‘News of the World’
Tom O’Carroll made complaint to Press Council about NOTW article in which he was dubbed ‘The nastiest man in Britain’ – about alleged errors of fact in the article.

‘David Grove Resigns’, p. 2 – becomes second life member, after Keith Hose, after Grove resigned as Secretary. Had joined in 1975.
Grove produced Childhood rights, running an anti-corporal punishment campaign, backed by Baroness Wooton and A.J. Ayer.

Review from Time Out of film “Montreal Main”. About an unemployed artist-photographer, Frank Vitale, who falls in love with 12-year-old Johnny. (p. 2)

‘Drug abuses’, p. 2. On two convicted paedophiles, who with help of National Association for Mental Health, are suing D of Health and doctors at Broadmoor for effects of hormone treatment – grew breasts which had to be surgically removed.

Item on p. 3:
‘Recent weeks have seen a veritable plethora of good viewing for “child sex persons” (a quaint term of endearment).
On TV: Truffaut films – L’enfant sauvage, Les Quatre Cent Coups.
Mark Lester molesting Britt Ekland in Night Hair Child.
More Truffaut, incl interview
Theatre: Annie; Bar Mitzvah Boy, revival of Oliver; cinema Fellini Satyricon; Tenderness of the Wolves, Lord of the Flies, and Blood Relatives, with Donald Sutherland, and Donald Pleasance as manic paedophile.

‘Pie Criticised Again – But This Time It’s Friendly!’, p. 4.
Review by Patrick Micel, of Libertarian Education, of Paedophilia: some Questions and Answers. Reprinted. Says that the pamphlet makes it seem to safe and easy, which it will never be. Says paedophilia ‘is sexist – a man will be imprisoned for acts thought laudable in a woman, particularly if the woman is the mother of the child concerned’
‘My last word to PIE is: be realistic – demand the impossible’

Various pictures of boys, aged c. 7-11, p. 5.

‘Feminism & Sexuality’, p. 6.
[…]
‘In the same way that countless women grow up, are married and go through their whole lives without realising that the attraction they feel for other women is, in fact, sexual and they are really gay, many women do not identify their feeling of love and attraction to children as sexual. Perhaps they don’t really enjoy sex with men, but get enormous pleasure from cuddling, caressing and bathing children. They get satisfaction from this but don’t see their natural spontaneous feelings as anything to do with paedophilia. A friend of mine, whose girlfriend had a baby, enjoyed a close loving relationship with the child and DID see it as sexual. They had a lot of fun together.

In Mexico mothers and grandmothers often lick their babies’ genitals to soothe them to sleep. The babies obviously like it. Is this a sexual assault? Should they all be arrested? It’s well known that babies and small children need to be touched and held a lot, otherwise they suffer severe emotional problems that can continue throughout their lives. So when do we define a touch as sexual?
And indeed, should we make that distinction at all?’

Column, p. 6, mentioning that hetero paedophilia insufficiently covered – will try to put this right.

Tom O’Carroll, ‘Is PIE Sexist?’, pp. 7-9
[…]
‘It has to be recognised that within the feminist movement there is an element for whom to be anti-sexist is ultimately to be anti-sexual, in a way which would make it impossible by definition for any man to have an acceptable, non-sexist paedophilic relationship. Arguably, most paedophiles are women, who get their buzz out of the intimacy of motherhood, but men who fancy kids are increasingly being labelled sexist, and it is a tag which is being attached specifically to the contents of this very magazine.’ (p. 7)
[…]
[As Gree Blachford, writing in Gay Left, has pointed out: “in our specialised society we objectify people all the time. When we purchase goods, we make the sales clerk into an object to satisfy our needs.” The important point is that in our society, it is thought to be demeaning for a woman to make herself available as an impersonal object for the satisfaction of a man’s sexual needs – by posing for a porn photo, say. In view of the fact that (following Blachford) objectification is otherwise acceptable, by elementary logic it is the sexuality that is problematic.’ (p. 7)

[More on this – arguing that many feminists see the sex act itself as inherently demeaning or degrading, pp. 7-8]

‘Feminists persist in feeling that objectification does matter. That it matters a great deal. They see that in a sexually guilt-ridden society the “degradation” of women in porn reinforces man’s view of his own superiority in the “natural” order of things; it reinforces the servile, passive nature of feminity [sic]. They are right, though they over-estimate the influence of such reinforcement: in Arab countries where no pornography is allowed, one finds the status of women much lower than it is here. Porn rankles so much with feminists here not so much because it is the cause of female oppression, no, even because it significantly adds to that oppression, but because it is such a [for them] visible symbol that the oppression exists. Nevertheless, it should be insisted that the cultural bias against women in our society is transmitted from the nursery onwards, in sexist education – by the time a boy is exposed to his first porn pix his attitude to girls I largely determined. What’s more, I believe that the solutions proposed by some women – which essentially lie in censorship and the total rejection of all male sexuality – are not only draconian, but take us back to an even more anti-sexual society than we have now. To a new Puritanism.

To understand this, one has to realise that an important element within the feminist attack is really directed not just against man in our society – the society and its values can be changed – but against the innate nature of the male sex, against the cardinal, biological nature of man. It is an emotional rejection of the penis, and of penetration. For some women to be fucked is always rape, no matter how unchauvinistic the individual man may be, no matter how sensitive or even “feminine” he is. He is a man, and that is bad enough – though it would be hard to formulate a more sexist notion than that! Theirs is the kind of thinking that defines all men as potential rapists – an idea which may be philosophically hard to deny, but which is hardly a celebration of the potential joy of sex either.

Some radical women – Germaine Greer is a notable one – do understand this happier potential. She has realised that there is liberation to be had not in retreating from men, but in going out and fucking them, in seeing the positive virtue of female sexual aggression (using the word in the original sense of coming forward, of taking initatives – not to be confused with destructive or sadistic impulses), of being active rather than passive in the se act itself. Her views are clearly pro-sexual, pro-fun. (p. 8)

[….]

‘Jane Gale (a woman, be it noted), put it well: “sexual acts between children are often considered exploratory and are consequently acceptable. Between child and adult the act is not considered exploratory, but rather a power relationship as the adult has a greater life experience and a greater propensity for evil and by his superior physical and mental strength may harm the child far more than another child could. It must be remembered that the adult, if he has a greater propensity for evil, also has a greater propensity for good. If a relationship should be deemed unacceptable because of the unequal distribution of power, then mot heterosexual adult relationships are unacceptable. The greater life experience of the adult may be more beneficial to the child than a relationship with someone of his own age.” (University of Kent, M.A. thesis) (p. 9)

[….]

‘Surely, I thought, we of all people, in PIE, should be in the forefront of raising levels of consciousness, among our own members, as well as others, as to the dignity and rights of young people – an emphasis requiring a very different vocabulary. I then went on to ask myself what this vocabulary should be. After all, the word “kids” and even “children” has patronising overtones. Shouldn’t we always use a dignified phrase like “young people”? One only has to make the suggestion to realise what sort of blind alley it leads us into: that of intense, earnest moralising talk, over-solemn and, as ever, hedged around by guilt – for woe-betide then the “backslider” who in an unwitting moment lets slip a “sexist” word.

I hope that in future PIE, and in particular Magpie, will pay attention to serious issues of children’s rights and to changing the oppressive attitudes to kids which some of our own (often well-intentioned) members may unconsciously have. Equally, our critics must realise that we are a tiny organisation, and that not many among us have had contact with “liberated” ideas through either the feminist or gay movements: most are very isolated. Our members include authoritarian teachers who believe that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. We have vicars and scoutmasters whose task includes the positive inculcation of oppressive establishment ideas. In no sense are we a cohesive radical group of like minds. (p. 9)

[…..]

p. 10 – lots of pictures of boys, c. 9-11, playing on skateboards.

‘The Paedophiles’, pp. 11-13. Reprint of a cover story appearing in The Hague Post (De Haagse Post), March 18, 1978.

Michael Berkel speaking with some children, a mother and with paedophiles.

Talking to a boy about why he likes a relationship with a man 30 years older (p. 11)

Talking to a man called Frans, a widower, and father of three children. Then talking to one of his sons, asking what he thinks of his father having a paedophile relationship with 14-year old Sander – asking such things as what he thinks of seeing his father and Sander lying in bed together (pp. 11-12)

‘”Don’t you find it strange to find your father and Sander lying in bed together?”
The son: “Why should I find it strange?”
Frans: “At first he was quite jealous of Sander. Suddenly someone his own age was taking his place in the home. But now all’s well and they no longer quabble with each other. Then, too, Sander is such a wonderful kid. I met him in the amusement arcade. He was playing one of the flipper machines and I said, ‘Hey, you don’t know what you are doing’. Immediate contact. Later we got some ice cream. Since then we have seen each other every day. We were like a pair of cooing doves. Whoever came to visit us was shoed away. We do everything sexually and emotionally that grown-ups do. We got out together. I take him with me on family visits, that sort of thing. No, my family doesn’t understand it but they have accepted it.”
Sander: “He never says things I don’t understand. You just don’t notice that he is so much older.”
Frans: “but now Sander’s family has moved out of the neighbourhood and I don’t see him so often. That’s hard on me, and it makes me very sad. Sometimes during the week he drops by to see me at work. My co-worked knows about us. And I see him weekends.” (p. 12)
[etc]

‘The Mother’

“According to Article 250 of the Criminal Code you are guilty of promoting lewd contact with minors. You provide the opportunity.”

Hetty (40) laughs. “Yes, in many eyes I’d be a dangerous mother figure. But that makes no difference to me. I still do it. Look, I’m not encouraging it, but I forbid nothing. I just let the child decide.”

“How open are you about it? Aren’t you afraid that it will be discovered?”

“Yes, I certainly am. Not because I will be embarrassed, but because I am in the midst of a divorce and I have not yet received final custody of the kids. If my ex-husband heard about it he would take advantage of it, I’m sure. He would probably try to take the children away from me. He would succeed because the child protection people don’t approve of these sorts of relationships. Thus we can’t be open about it. Sometimes the children’s neighbourhood friends ask Menno (12) whether he can go play with them and he says, ‘No, I’m going away on a visit’. He says that a lot because he spends most weekends with Kees. Then my heart skips a beat and I think maybe the boys will talk about that at home, and about Menno’s friend Kees, who has already been convicted once.”

“You’re very much of a libertine?”

“What is a libertine? If you have confidence in a relationship, why would you destroy it?
“I have known Kees two years. We came together when I had just left my husband. Kees helped me with all kinds of things. He became a personal friend. After the divorce I had the feeling that I was losing contact with Menno, my young son. H became so alienated from me. When I told that to Kees he said, ‘Send him to me for a while so I can talk with him. He can spend the weekend at my place’. Then I thought, ‘That’ll be good for Menno, to get out of the house’. I hoped that Kees could have some influence on him. Menno was away one day, then the weekend then the following weekend. And I thought, ‘Poor Kees has his own work and now he has to care for another man’s child. Isn’t that asking too much of him?’ I told Menno, ‘Don’t go to him this week’.
“As soon as Kees heard my son wouldn’t be coming he showed up at my door. He looked mad and he told me, ‘Why don’t you let Menno come? I know, because you know I’m a paedophile. A Child molester, as you’d say’. I used to sometimes hear that word at school but I hardly knew what it meant.
“Since then Menno has gone to Kees almost every weekend. I saw that so much empathy had grown up between them that I foud it normal that they spent so much time together. I noticed that mennow as a lot more open towards me, too. He started to talk with me again. It was striking how he changed. My oldest son commented on it, too. Menno had lost his trust in people and through Kees he has regained it.”

“Doesn’t it trouble you that they carry on sexually with each other?”

“I know nothing about the sexual aspects of their relationship. I haven’t asked. To tell the truth I don’t think I need to know. But if it happens I believe it is actually a great advantage for a child to have someone like that to guide him. To me it is a natural thing. If it grows out of a foundation fo warmth and friendship, how can it be wrong?”

“How do you bring up your children?”

“I have always brought them up in a sexually open manner. I have never failed to love them physically. I don’t hide my feelings. I myself at one time made love regularly with my brother. Until I was about 15 and my mother said, ‘You are getting too old now to crawl into bed with each other in the morning’. Then it suddenly became creepy, while before it felt completely normal. I believe as a parent you have a duty to help your children to reach sexual maturity. It is no disgrace if a father gets an erection playing with his daughter. But I’d better keep still about that because now we’re talking about incest and incest is a much greater taboo.”

“Are you yourself sexually interested in children?”

“When my eldest son gets all cleaned and combed and dressed up to go to a party I find I get a kick out of it. I am in education and I am thrown together with a lot of children of 11 or 12, but I don’t feel the same thing with them. Certainly not intellectually. They have no opinions of their own, know next to nothing, and I have asked Kees whether that isn’t a detriment to him, too, as a paedophile. But he tells me it is just as in a relationship with parents: the child himself must do something to you. You don’t fall for every boy who happens to be of that age.
“What I did find offensive was the way my ex-husband treated the children. If he wanted they had to climb into bed with him and take off their pyjamas. He made them even when they didn’t want to. You could see it embarrassed them. In the relationship between Kees and Menno these things happen naturally.”

“Would you advise other parents to pursue the same course you have?”

“Ive thought about that recently. I believe it can be a terrific protection for a child. A security. Certainly that’s so in Menno’s case because I also see it as something of a compensation for the fact that he no longer sees his father. Yet Kees is not a true father figure. There is not one bit of authority. No one is the boss. I think that later, when Menno starts going around with girls, sex will be less difficult for him, so he is already farther ahead. None of that kids’ sex play.”

“Isn’t kids’ sex play part of growing up?”

“Inexperience can be a bitter pill. You can save a lot of frustration when things don’t go right at first.”

“Professor De Levita, the child psychiatrist, has written that whenever a child is seduced into a premature sexual partnership, the growth process of that child can be destroyed.”

“Look, you can’t of course, be certain that this relationship is okay. You can only let your intuition speak. I see what I see, and for that I don’t need to read any books by psychiatrists. Menno has changed for the better. He’s less egocentric. Recently there was a TV programme on homosexuality and he went out himself and fetched Kees: “’Come here and look; there’s something you’ll find interesting’. He never would have done that before. As a mother you notice how such a relationship influences a son. If it hadn’t had meaning for Menno he wouldn’t have kept going back to Kees. That I am sure of. All this nonsense about children not being ready for it. Anyone can see that children are very much concerned with their bodies. Later they are always talking about it, or they buy condoms to go experimenting with.
“I have taught in a district of farm children. They wanted to know all sorts of things they didn’t dare ask. Then we made cards with questions on them and threw them into a hat. Then their bewilderment showed up, frustrations and miseries which the children lived with. Whether you always had to keep your clothes on when you did it, or who had to b on the top. They were very much concerned with such matters, but there was always that phrase, ‘had to’. It would be so much the best if these things just happened by themselves. And that’s happened in Menno’s case.”

“Don’t you have any reservations about this?”

“No. Truly. I am quite sincere. I have no reservations, but I am very much afraid that it will be a damnably long time before this sort of interview becomes superfluous. We’re talking about kids, right, and people involved emotionally with kids are condemned. However, things are improving – faster and faster, now, I understand. There is even an association of ‘Good Uncles’ being formed.” (pp. 12-13)

Crossword, pp. 13-14.

p. 14 – plug for next issue of Magpie including ‘Goodies for Girl-Lovers!!!’

p. 15 (back page)
Next to pic of a girl of about 7-8:
‘This is no time to sit on the fence! Magpie urgently requires your photographs, especially of girls. They should preferably be black and white, but we can still use colour snaps. Sorry, no nudes, nor anything which could be construed as too “racy” or overtly salacious. Use the photographs in this issue as a guide. Send your prints to the editor, and please specify if you wish them to be returned. We shall send £5 to the member who submits the best photograph each issue in the opinion of the EC.

Picture of c. 10 year old boy lying forwards suggestively on a fence, legs on either side of it.

Issue No. 13, April 1979

Editorial, p. 2. Usual stuff, dressed up in language of rights of children.

Underneath, the symbol of the International Year of the Child.

‘Further information on activities in Britain throughout the Year, plus suggestions for events you can organise yourself (don’t all rush at once!) are contained in the January edition of “Child’s Play”, available from: CHILD’S PLAY, FRANCIS HOUSE, FRANCIS STREET, LONDON SW1. (p. 2)
Published by ‘Child’s Play Information Centre’, which is funded by ‘Make Children Happy charity’. Supposedly ‘geared towards playleaders and youth workers, and covers book reviews, play schemes, campaigns and courses. A central information library has also been set up, (tel: 01 828 9055). Why not let MAGPIE know of any events you organise yourself… with photos?’ (p. 2)

‘Gay News Breaks its Silence’
‘At long last the big battalions in the gay scene have woken up to the existence of PIE’s QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS booklet. There have been reviews in both Gay News and in the CHE journal Broadsheet.
The Gay News review (25th January ’79 no. 159) by Jeffrey Weeks, himself an historian of the gay movement and a leading light of the Gay Left collective, is both full and positive, saying that the booklet has made “a useful starting point for a rational debate”.
The Broadsheet (February ’79) review is much more combative, but does at least endorse the main aim of the booklet – that of dispelling the ignorance, fear and prejudice which surround paedophilia – and concedes unequivocally that “it is important to have it established that the disruption of a paedophile relationship which the child desires is as destructive as the relationship itself can be creative and valuable”.
The winter issue of Gay Left also contains a lengthy and interesting editorial on paedophilia, to which PIE will be making a response in the spring issue.’ (p. 3)

p. 4 ‘It’s All Happening in…. Boston! A Report from Chairperson Tom O’Carroll on an American “New Deal” for Paedophiles’

Mentions DA trying to start a witch hung against gays, but also ‘formation of a brand new paedophile organisation covering the whole North American continent.’
About Boston-Boise Committee and Tom Reeves.

‘A Boy Lover’s Jamboree’, p. 4.
Report on Boston conference on May[sic]-Boy Love and The Age of Consent, held in December last year.

‘Boston: Is There a Lesson for PIE?’, by TOC
Mentioning how ‘Reeves was able to mobilise the support of much of that [gay] community (of which he feels himself to be a part) in sharp distinction to the relative isolation faced by PIE.[…] It would be nice for PIE to get the support of gays in the same way. But where would that leave the little boy and girl lovers? More importantly, where would it leave the revolution aimed at children being free to grow up in a society free from sexual guilt?’ […] (p. 5)

‘Thoughts on the Theme of Love’, by Cliff
Passages from Coleman, Keats, Blake, Kaufmann, Barford, and Miller (p. 5)

‘The Brownie Annual ‘79’, reviewed by Edward Dipfinger (Dip. Ed)
‘To be honest, I only buy Brownie annuals for the colour photographs of little girls with flat chests. And the 1979 Annual has rather a lot of these. But for the lover of girl-children with a tiny bubble of hot mischief in his loins there is a sort of hopeless beauty about nearly everything either inside or on the front cover of a brownie Annual. Of course, I realise very clearly that the Annual (by its nature) deos not invite grown-ups. Yet the paedophile’s cup of tea is often his elevenses – to repeat a joke I overheard a lollipop man permit himself one sunshine afternoon many school terms ago – and Brownies are eleven years of age, or younger… so there ought to be something in the annual to interest most hets. Personally, I always find Brownie Annuals extremely readable and worthwhile. Full of ideas and chock-a-block with up-to-date inside info on pack holidays and revels, the Annual never fails to please.
Robert Moss, the puttering fussy editor of the annual, is consistently dull and naïve. His vision of childhood is prim and sane, far too prim and sane to handle this delightful sub-species of Girl Guide, and so his book keeps drifting into unexpected havoc. It is absolutely loaded with those hints and jokes which tease like a U-film whisper.
Patience, a little wit, and perhaps an ounce or two of imagination, are the only gifts one needs to read between the lines… to peep behind the fig-leaves, as it were. It is easy and it is fun. And who said ripeness was next to rottenness?’ (p. 6)

‘Indecency in the House’, p. 7
About a Private Members Bill sponsored by MP Hugh Rossi, making it an offence to display ‘indecent’ material anywhere in public, with exception of museums, art galleries, and television.
‘Allan Gloak, a gay magazine publisher, said “this bill is dangerous. If it ever becomes law there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s going to be used for a censorship crackdown”.’ (p. 7)

‘Pie Victim of the child porn act’, p. 7
About how a ‘girl-lover’ from Blackpool, a former PIE member, received a fine of £400 + £200 costs after police found child porn mags and photos in his car. ‘Possession in itself is not a crime under the Act, but the defendant was said to have had the offending material with a view to showing or distributing it, and this is illegal.’
Resulted from the NOTW reproducing a contact ad from Magpie last year (‘Male, interest in girls 6-13, would like to correspond & meet others’), and the police tracing him. He said ‘But I cancelled his membership because all the members appeared to like little boys. I know I like girls and that is wrong but I hate anyone who messes about with little boys.”
Comments under from Magpie – detesting both the law and its implementation, and also the hypocrisy of the man.

‘Sex without Shame’, TOC, p. 8
About book of that name by Dr Alayne Yates. She thinks parents should encourage children to have sex, and that ‘intercourse could begin at four years, and that many incest relationships, including those between father and daughter, can be a positive experience’

‘Statuesque Kids’
‘Are there any interesting statues of kids near you: in local parks/museums/galleries? We are hoping to run, possibly next issue, a photo guide to the best in child statuary. Your help would be appreciated.’ (p. 8)

Letter ‘Is Pie Sexist’, reply by a female member to Tom O’Carroll’s article, pp. 9-10.
[….]
‘As you point out, children’s rights are important to PIE. It is absolutely vital. Unless children have some control over their own bodies and their own lives, there will always be possibilities for adults to take advantage of, and exploit, children, sexually (just as they exploit children and use their power over them in so many other ways now).

If PIE is to be an organisation working towards a better society and sexual liberation, it must work towards a state where children can give free and informed consent to sexual relations, and where they will be taken seriously and respected if they say no.
I think (maybe wrongly) that you confuse “enjoying yourself in bed and maybe playing roles” with male sexual aggression. What people of any age mutually enjoy sexually has nothing to do with sexism or oppression, but this is very different from a society that is largely based on sex roles: Male = aggressive; breadwinner; sexually active – Female = passive; dependant[sic]; sexual receptacle for the Male. Neither men nor (especially women really fit into these moulds, and many are trying to break out: hence women’s liberation, gay liberation.

The ethic of male sexual aggression leads to, at worst, rape, at best, men using women – usually their wives – as objects of their sexual needs. The majority of heterosexual men are not really interested in learning how to make love to women, and even less in learning how to be made love to. Surely it is the sexist idea that sex equals penetration by the male that gives rise to a lot of the fears that people have about paedophilia. The “general public” see a helpless 4-year old being penetrated by an aggressive masculine male. Of course, no-one in his right mind would try to have intercourse with a 4-year old child. This doesn’t mean that a loving sexual relationship with a child of 4 is impossible. It just means that it would consist mainly of perhaps cuddling and stroking, and that the paedophile would be more likely to be female than male.

And it’s not only children who like cuddling and stroking. Most women enjoy it, and so probably would most men, but in our society it is considered unmanly to allow yourself to be cuddled. Sexism again!’ (p. 9)

[More stuff about general sexism. But opposing censorship of pornography]

‘Cambridge Conflict’, p. 10
University’s Vice-Chancellor, Sir Alan Cottrell, asking questions about advertising Paedophilia. Some Questions and Answers in student publications. SU president Charles Burch said to a local paper ‘I am quite impressed by the responsible way in which the PIE has written its booklet.’ (p. 10)

p. 11. Stories about slave-like working conditions for children in Bangkok. A Muslim child barred from school for declining to wear the school tie on religious grounds. Loss of Gay News blasphemy case. Story of a boy, Matthew Hall, who collected 2 ½ tons of cigarette packets towards a haemodialysis unit, a kidney machine. Report on schools and dealing with unmanageable pupils – pointing out that corporal punishment is on decline.

J. Pebble, ‘Child Porn (or Algebraic Paedophilia?): a heterosexual viewpoint’, pp. 12-13.
Arguing against those positions which oppose child porn on economic grounds or other arguments about exploitation, saying that these are just as rife in other areas – arms, drugs and advertising industries. Cites Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil).

p. 14. Has ad for NCCL.

5.jpeg

Also short piece about NUT sending a letter to Shirley Williams complaining about publication and distribution of “Blot” by National Union of School Students, which has articles on masturbation and promiscuity.

‘Castration Law in U.S.’, p. 15.
Mrs Joyce Lewis, in Maine, has proposed castration of both men and women for offences against children. Men would have nerves removed which enabled them to have erections; women would have ovaries removed, causing vagina to lose its elasticity, making intercourse painful. But may founder on grounds of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’.

David Grove, ‘The Oppression of Children’, p. 15
Mentioning child labour, floggings, etc. Citing Wordswhort:
“…trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home,
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shade of the prison house begin to close
Upon the growing boy… “

‘This fits in with other appropriate ideas, such as (a) this world is not reality, (B) we are really spirits, not bodies, (c) sexual activity is something which eventually sullies and degrades our angelic nature.
This type of romantic-idyllic thinking provides a very convenient background for the oppression of children. The truth is that the “growing boy” (or girl) is jolly lucky when he/she is at last old enough to escape from it.’ [etc]

Second part of ‘The Paedophiles’, pp. 16-18
Interview with Guillaume Sommer, sociologist in his 40s.
‘Boys start to become attractive to me around 12. If I hear a break in his voice, then it’s perfect. An intense pleasure. Acne. His look becomes suspicious. Then it comes to me. Then I feel a humility and a compassion. Something like, boy, it’s getting serious. Now it’ going to happen. It is also in the movement and the shape of such a boy. Why can’t I fall for a boyish looking girl? No, it’s the smell of the boy’s room. The bravuar [sic].
I always divide boys into angels and saucy little kids. I was, myself, as a child, one of the angels. A very good boy. Very inhibited. Never squabbled. Never showed my emotions. I came from a Christian home. You didn’t cry. I didn’t let myself get involved in paedophilia until I was in my 30’s. Around puberty I had violent loves for boys around 12. I could sometimes walk around in the shallow end of the swimming pool with a boy in my arms and the water washing over his chest. I never got an erection doing that because I didn’t connect the pleasure I got that way with sex.
In my twenties all that subsided. I also had feelings for girls. I was almost through school when my repressed paedophile feelings came back with a vengeance, toward a young cousin. I had an enormously erotic response to him. His parents let us go on a vacation together. For two weeks we shared a bed, and I didn’t dare touch him. That only increased his attraction for me. After that I came regularly every weekend to his house, but in a year and a half nothing happened that you could call sex. It was a passion: it played in my fantasies.
I know I once masturbated and that then the image of that boy haunted me. I was shocked. That is wrong, I thought: I must go to a psychiatrist. I went to a medical psychiatric office. A psychiatrist from the Rutger Society told me, “Yes, a wife with a penis, that’s what you want”. [etc] (p. 16)
[….]
‘I believe the war made a paedophile of me. It’s my Concentration Camp Syndrome. I think I belong to the most deeply hurt generation, the men in their 40’s who lived in camps as children, who were too little to understand it and weren’t able later to assimilate it. First I was with my mother in Soerabaja (Indonesia), in a woman’s camp. I had my mother all to myself because my father was already gone. When I turned 12 I had to go to a separate boy’s camp. We were taken there in a cattle truck. A man came between me and my mother. Why didn’t she attack the Japanese? Why didn’t she try to hold onto me? I must be brave. I mustn’t cry. My mother delivered me over to an aggressive man. That was not the first time.
I have nothing against women, but they are treacherous beings. Every time I form an attachment to a woman some man with aggressive impulses ploughs right through it. My father, for example, or that man who took out my tonsils, or the man who ran into me as I fled across the street to my mother. That pattern repeated itself, in the war in its most concentrated form.’
‘How do you connect that with paedophilia?@
‘During my analysis it came to the surface that somewhere a reversal of roles took place. As you yourself become a man you identify with the aggressive man, but, because I had an aversion to him, I projected myself into a young boy with whom I could form a relationship. A sort of atonement, a making amends with that boy who is really yourself. As if I was trying to say, ‘Young fellow, I’m really not so aggressive. I really care for you a lot. I care more for you than for a woman. I want to protect you from the things that happened tome when I was your age’.
I provide myself satisfaction with respect to myself as a 12-year-old boy. I have always fallen hard for 12-year-olds. I have also tried it with women, but that was more because society expected it of me. If you really enter into the advances, into an attachment with a woman, then there is an aggressive man in the scene. I see men, as perhaps you do, too, always as aggressors. Great convocations,. Crowds of men in grey suits. I become very frightened of them. [etc]
[….]
‘Winny [a boy of 12] is here every day. After dinner he always drops by. He has his own key to the house. He lives close by. I have known him for seven years. However, the love affair between us began just recently. It is a great pleasure. I sit in that chair and I put him on my lap, and with his arm about my neck we chat, about what school he will go to after he finishes secondary school, that sort of thing. I enjoy it intensely. I don’t baby him. I don’t speak in a different language. He has an attitude which makes me think he sees us as equals.’ (p. 17) (Guillaume is 45)
[….]
‘When a child comes here every evening for about six years and teaches me how to make love to him. I would be careful about qualifying children as different form adults. We live in an outspoken paedophile culture. The whole mythology of a child: the child is an angel, holy and innocent. Whoever doesn’t love children is an egotist. At the same time they are unruly creatures who must be quickly moulded into honest citizens. Sexual strivings in children – and by that I also mean body pleasure and free emotional expression – are forbidden. To me paedophilia is a product of a society in which sex is set apart. Paedophilia involves itself in forbidden things, and therefore it is forbidden. When an adult has a relationship with a small girl, isn’t people’s first reaction: ‘That penis is much too big.’ That comes from our fixation in sex and emotions upon sexual organs.’(p. 17)
[…]
‘What sort of image do you have now? What do you think I do with children? Rape them? Violate them? Murder them? I kiss them. They kiss me. I caress them. They caress me. When we want to we masturbate together, but sometimes that doesn’t happen in our relationship for weeks on end. Then a platonic contact prevails. No, I can’t find one scrap of evidence that this has undesirable consequences for the child.’ (p. 18)

‘Precious Metal-Hunter’, p. 19
’13-year old James Bolton, of King’s Lynn in Norfolk, is offering a free service with his metal detector to anyone who has lost items in the area. Now where did I leave that damnation cuff-link?’

Another item about a new article by Brongersma (p. 18)

‘Het’s Corner’, p. 19.
pics of pre-pubescent girls at school, aged probably 7-10. And some drawings, including one of a baby girl in nappies.

TOC, ‘How To Make Love… To Children’, p. 20

London Film-Makers’ Co-operative held an evening of films on Nov 10th. Purpose ‘To promote an educational discussion about film-making and the politics of sexuality’.
Films: Michel d’Hondt, Propaganda. – about children playing, with sexual overtones.
Mattyn Seip, Ijdijk (1963) – about an encounter between a man on a motorbike ‘and a boisterous youn blond boy’
Seip, Schermerhorn (1966) – about a continuing relationship between a man and a boy of about 15.

‘Feedback’, p. 21
Various letters from V.M., and members Nos. 275, 428, 426, 230, 39, 442.
No 426 suggesting that in some punk there are paedophile themes – lead singer of Buzzcocks was wearing a badge saying ‘I Like Boys’, and mentioning their 1978 hit ‘Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t ‘ve)?’. The Snifters, single ‘I Like Boys’. And band Raped (who changed their name to ‘Cuddly Toys’ after much criticism), had a single called ‘Pretty Paedophiles’.
No. 230 finding scenes with erotic overtones between children in Wuthering Heights and Romeo and Juliet.

Rev Olyobm ‘Once Below a Time’, poem in style of Dylan Thomas, p. 22.

Cliff, review of film ‘Nighthawks’, about comprehensive schoolteacher who prowls pub/club/disco scene by night, ‘only of peripheral interest to paedophiles’.

Crossword, p. 23

p. 24, back cover, two more pics of boys around 10-11.

Issue No. 14, Oct-Dec 1979

Cover ‘no longer alone!’. Picture of a Sri Lankan boy, maybe about 10.

p. 2. Picture of boy of about 11-12 sitting looking at the camera a bit provocatively.

‘The Continuing Crisis’, problems of money, p. 2
‘Light at the End of the Tunnel’, p. 2 – about some report recommending abolition of age of consent, report called Pregnant At School. Not much detail. Just saying that legality of sex acts should depend

‘First triumph for new conspirators’, p. 3
About Conspiracy Against Public Morals, a group formed to support PIE in its legal battle. CHE have affiliated to CAPM. A motion at a conference in Brighton for abolition of age of consent found widespread support, though no vote was taken. Give conspiracy defendants were remanded after a short hearing at Bow St magistrates court on Sep 4.

Conspiracy Against Public Morals, a broadly-based action group, has been formed to support PIE in its legal battle – and already the Conspiracy has scored its first success, by securing CHE’s affiliation to the campaign, at its annual conference in Brighton.

The Conspiracy, which aims to draw attention to the civil rights aspects of PIE’s case, and the unfairness of the law on ‘public morals’, is seeking support not only from gay organisations, but also from civil liberties and progressive legal groups, a wide range of sexual reformers, and those opposed to moral censorship.

The Conspiracy‘s Brighton triumph owed much to a speech by barrister Adrian Fulford, which Gay News declared to be the best made at the conference. The motion that followed it, calling for CHE’s affiliation to CAPM, was passed unopposed.

At the same conference, a motion in support of ending the age-of-consent laws also found widespread support. no official vote was taken – it was decided to leave the issue in the hands of the executive – but an informal show of hands indicated a 2 to 1 majority in favour of abolition.

In a brief hearing at Bow St magistrates court on September 4, the give conspiracy defendants were remanded on bail until November 22. […]’ (p. 3)

[This article provoked an investigation by the Mail, who wrote a major article about Fulford, now a High Court judge and an Adviser to the Queen: see Martin Beckford, ‘High Court judge and the child sex ring: Adviser to Queen was founder of paedophile support group to keep offenders out of jail’, Daily Mail, March 8th, 2014]

‘Roger Dodges Old Bailey Charge’, p. 3
Roger Moody, occasional contributor, acquitted of buggery against a 10-year old boy.

‘PIE Top 20’, pp. 4-5.
Selection of non-fiction books on and about paedophilia.

‘Norway – ‘It’s a knockout’ says Tom’, p. 5.
Went to conference with German, Swedish and Dutch delegates called ‘Amnesty for
Love and Attraction’ in Oslo, organised by Norwegian Paedophile Group, NAPF.
Much of it in English.
Papers by psychologists Thore Langfeldt of Norway, and Frits Bernard.
New international group to be set up, provisionally entitled Amnesty for Child Sexuality (ACS).
Tom went to see a Danish film called You Are Not Alone, about a school rebellion against sexual oppression imposed by teachers. ‘The main feature was a loving relationship between two boys, one about 15, the other 11 – and very much pre-pubertal. The erotic scenes between these two were astonishingly frank for a publicly licensed film, and at the same time beautifully tender.’

“Girl of Six” [under a picture of a girl of around 8-9 sitting in a chair]
‘You cuddled me and kissed me,
Mussed my hair, and smiled:
The woman in the child.’
Clark Ashton Smith (p. 5)

Mention of TOC’s forthcoming Paedophilia: The Radical Case (p. 5)

‘PIE no longer alone as major report says abolish age of consent’ – more about Pregnant At School, published by National Council for One Parent Families. Mostly to do with problem of juvenile pregnancy.
‘The sixty four thousand dollar question for any proposal to do away with a specific age of consent is what do you put in its place? How is the ability to consent to be determined? The report relies on criteria of physical and psychological maturity, with each case being considered on its merits. Thus a male would risk prosecution for having sex with a girl – or a mentally handicapped woman – of any age, if the female was found to be incapable of giving true consent. On the other hand, in theory at least, a physically well-developed (does this mean pubertal? – the report offers no definition) 10-year-old who plainly knew her own mind could consent.
Cases of alleged sexual assault, the report suggests, could be tried under existing laws ‘relating to criminal assault, sexual offences and the welfare of young people.’ In fact, although the report does not say so, some of these laws themselves presume that children under specified ages cannot consent, even to minor sexual activities, and would need to be amended in order for the report’s recommendations to be workable.’

Clipping from Capt Cook, Account of a Voyage Around the World (1769) on how a young man around six feet high ‘performed the rites of Venus (intercourse) with a little girl about 11 or 12 years of age’, in front of several people, and it seemed perfectly normal, with various women giving instructions to the girl how to perform her part.

Ad for Midwest Gay Academic Journal, p. 8

‘Chemical Castration makes a Comeback’, p. 9 – on how an Old Bailey judge forced this on a 53-year old caretaker who had a relationship with a boy of 13, if he wanted to avoid a stiff prison sentence. Castration has been banned in Holland.

Ralph, ‘The Child Protectors’, pp. 10-11
Teacher, then housemaster-tutor, eventually ‘in a well-known south east England public school’. Then returned to college and qualified in social work.
Looked after a nine-year old boy Phil, like a son.
Phil brought a 13-year old boy who was gay back. Ralph eventually received a four year jail sentence. Held back from suicide because of a letter from Phil, who was 14 when he returned. Heard about PIE whilst in prison. Then porn squad came to him. Phil ended up being boycotted by all his friends.

Toby, ‘Men with a Creche on Kids’, p. 15.
Just a book about organising a crèche, but feeling very much at ease around kids, in ways which sound sinister – quoting one man ‘My main feeling about the crèche is how important it is to have kids staying the night so that one really gets to know and be involved with them. If they go back to their parents in the evening (worse still if their stay is only for one afternoon) they never really commit themselves to being involved with you in the crèche and still want their parents at the slightest difficulties’.

Feedback, pp. 12-13
Usual sorts of things. Reply by Roger Moody to the piece by a woman member before.

‘World Contact Groups’, p. 14

‘Tu-Tuc-ing in to child-love’
‘How pleasant to see that there are gays who aren’t frightened of being associated with paedophilia, writes Serge, from Germany. At the Tuc Tuc café in Hamburg, the gay clientele have played hosts to an exhibition of paedophilc art – drawings, paintings and high-quality photos, together with poems on child-love.’ (p. 15)

Stop Press, p. 16
About NCCL publication First Rights – changes in criminal law as it affects children, abolition of corporal punishment, right for pupils and parents to see school records, and increased rights for young people in care.

Issue No. 15, Spring 1981

Cover, ‘Tom Jailed’, with lots of clippings.

‘Mid Trial Summary (PIE 4 Crown 0)’, p. 2.

Edward Brongersma, ‘The Dutch Experience’, p. 4

‘E.C. Appeal 1980’, p. 11. By Steven Adrian, Chairperson.
By time of appeal membership had dwindled to 150.

Article by Lesbian feminist Pat Califia, ‘Women against the New Puritans’, pp. 12-14
Arguing against Robin Morgan in particular, who had said that boy-love was a euphemism for rape (p. 12)

‘Morgan’s specious redefinition of rape could undo years of laborious public education. There is a clear difference between a consensual sex act which takes place between two people of different social status and a sexual assault (which can easily take place between people of equal social status). Her concept of rape implies that all kinds of relationships are inherently non-consensual – sex between men and women, between people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds, between people of different socioeconomic levels, between able-bodied and physically challenged people, and even between partners who differ greatly in size and strength.’ (p. 13)

[…]
‘WAVPM [Women Against Violence in Pornography and the Media]’s theory does not explain why an adult man would prefer boys (who have more social and physical power than girls) if he is motivated simply by a fear of powerful partners. It also does not explain why women have sexual relationships with girls. Yet this theory, which might explain heterosexual paedophilia, is being used to attack gay men.
What is missing from all this sanctimonious cant is the fact that some adults and young people care so deeply about each other that they are willing to risk long prison sentences, social stigma and violence to make contact with each other. Morgan is right: sexuality and emotions cannot be separated from each other without doing something horrible to the human spirit. But whatever makes her think that tenderness is not present in cross-generational relationships? The shrink establishment used to say that about lesbian relationships – that they were hopelessly neurotic because two women couldn’t really love each other.
I think it is interesting that so much of the new, ostensibly feminist morality dovetails with the old, Judeo-Christian morality. The American left is used to dealing with its own sectarian elements. The women’s movement is not. But we do have a conservative wing that is trying to turn feminism into a campaign against pornography, boy-lovers, sadomasochists, drag queens, transsexuals and prostitutes. It cannot be mere coincidence that so many groups of people who have already been outlawed, depersonalised and termed sick are being turned into symbols of women’s oppression.’ [etc] (pp. 13-14)

Also on p. 13:
‘When is a Paedophile not a Paedophile? When she is a Woman’
‘I find my daughter movingly, passionately beautiful: when I see her running naked, or coiled sleeping, I feel something which is not (I hope) lust, but alarmingly akin to it – a physical delight and recognition: and a desire to elicit from her a similar response.”
Thus Sara Maitland, feminist and writer, in a new book on motherhood (Why Children? Edited by Stephanie Dowrick and Sibyl Grundberg, Women’s Press, 1980).
And they say only men are paedophiles. . .’

‘Is the Far East going West’, pp. 15-16, 22. Mentions Tom Faret of Norwegian paedophile group NAFP.
[….]
‘Even so, conditions in the slum districts made a deep impression on us. Birth control instruction is now given in the schools, but it is stil usual for there to be 8 – 10 children in a family. Consequently, it is common for several children to sleep in the same bed, and it is perhaps because of this that the Filippinos have a completely different and more natural outlook on physical contact than we are used to. All this, of course, contributes to the fact that prostitution is pretty widespread. Every hotel boy and taxi driver do their best to offer their “chicks” to tourists. Even the poshest hotel have their “massage ladies” – it’s just that the price is higher the posher you live. Call boys right down to 12 years of age offer their girl friends or themselves quite openly to tourists in Manilla.
For those not interested in commercial sex we would recommend a trip to one of the smaller towns in the Philippines where there are fewer tourists. Here it is easier to come into contact with the local population, and we found it quite easy to build a really friendly relationship in a very short time. We went to a town called Bacolod on the island of Nigros and stayed there for eight days. In this comparatively short time we became known to a large number of people of all ages and both sexes. The standard of the hotels is good and the prices are very low. We often invited a large number of our friends to dinner at a good restaurant; everyone ate and drank as much as they wanted to, and the bill was seldom more than 50 Kr. (£5.00). A single room at our hotel was about the same price. That we had many guests in our room caused no eye-brow raising. We were invited to the homes of the boys we knew best and met their parents and family. Apparently, the parents thought it was a great honour that their sons had become so well-known to us. They told us how clever junior was at giving “massages”. . .
No minimum age for sex, nor any anti-homosexual laws, in Philippines.

‘Lolita on Stage’, p. 21. About Edward Albee’s stage adaptation.

Issue No. 16, Autumn 1981

Cover – more clippings about trial.

‘Hackney’s Decent People’, p. 2
The dirty tricks brigade were out in force during the Greater London Council’s recent elections. Under the heading – A Warning to the Decent People of North Hackney. Do You Want a Pervert to Represent You at County Hall? – they leafleted the London borough with a crude piece of trash directed against the Labour candidate, Gerry Ross.
Gerry was said to have a “shady and sinister past,” to be a “prolific writer and advertiser in . . . . Magpie,” to be a “close acquaintance of tom O’Carroll,” and “constant companion of Peter Bremner.”
‘Total fabrication’
Peter, a member of PIE’s Executive Committee comments, “It’s a total fabrication, of course; a primitive attempt by the lunatic fringe of the right wing to smear Mr. Ross.” Was Gerry a constant companion? “I don’t think I’ve ever met him in my life, though I’d like to. Gerry Ross is a well-known councillor in Hackney, and I respect his political views. But I can understand his anger at the leaflet. It claims, in one forged news cutting, that he was a defendant at the first PIE trial and a second so-called cutting comes from a fictitious newspaper. Who wouldn’t be angry about that?”
Increased majority.
The leaflet has been referred to the police for action on criminal libel. We are pleased to report that Gerry was elected councillor for North Hackney with a greatly increased majority.’ (p. 2)

‘Paradise Lost?’, pp. 3-4 (‘by a friend of PIE’)
On Sri Lanka.
[…]
With improved tourist facilities and cheap charter flights, more and more boy lovers have found their way to the island, spurred on in no small measure by its exposure as a BL paradise in such widely-circulated publications as SPARTACUS Gay Guide.
‘Predominantly now it was German tourists who came to find the boys for pleasure. And they came in their hundreds. Many acted with prudence, discretion and responsibility, but by no means all. It is a sad fact but it can be quite clearly understood that many of these sexually distraught boy lovers, with their frustrations bottled up inside them while in Europe, and with only one or two weeks to enjoy themselves, should fairly explode when they reached Sri Lanka and have sex and more sex with any boy who cared to come along (a tentative parallel could perhaps be drawn with sailors coming in on shore leave!) and, unaware of (or simply insensitive to) the cultural and economic gulf between them would shower money, cigarettes, watches and pocket calculators onto the boys. This easy money attracted more and more boys to follow tourists and to tout and pester them openly, and it seemed it would only be a matter of time before the authorities would have to act to prevent their precious tourists from this nuisance. Also, the blatant exhibitionism of the paedophile and gay tourist men and their boys offended the sensibilities of many local people. (Even I was guilty of that in the beginning, I’m Ashamed to admit.)

Well, it all began with the police arresting the boys and charging them with soliciting, or vagrancy. The topic began to be raised at international level in conferences on tourism. Remember that the western media had picked up on the item in Spartacus by John D. Stamford concerning the “rape of the third world”. In reply to one such question at a conference in Colombo, the Minister of State, Anandatissa deAlwis, tried to play it down with statements such as, “Why do tourists come here? Because there are beautiful girls and beautiful boys!” and “homosexuality existed here long before tourism”. However, his heroic stand was short-lived.’ (p. 3)
[…..]
Tim Bond, c. 34, from Christian children’s welfare organisation, Terre des Hommes came with a copy of Spartacus Gay Guide. Then wrote a report in which he condemned boy prostitution.
‘By April the local press was beginning to quote that most illustrious of all newspapers(!), the News of the World, by merely repeating, with no first hand knowledge of the facts, the fetid headlines and verbiage. By early May they caught onto another NOTW slant: “PIE’S DIRTY EYE ON LANKA” proclaimed the WEEKEND newspaper; “HAVEN OF SIN” said CHIC on page 3 in two-inch block caps. In earlier months, the local papers had referred to European paeds honestly as “coming here to satisfy their sexual needs” (as opposed to the more British perverted lusts). I could read no real hostility between the lines. But now, in imitation of the British rags, sexual pleasure was being equated with evil and sin. The NOTW’s suggestion that PIE might have connections with the Mafia (Heaven forbid!) were given wide coverage in the press. Some of the NOTW’s other wild speculations were transcribed into fact by WEEKEND on May 10: “PIE is responsible for preparing hard core child porn films and distribution among members as well as assisting the membership to procure children for their activities. PIE is said to have been supplied with ‘snuff’ films, showing children sexually tortured to death, by the Mafia.” It made my stomach turn to read it. I am familiar enough with PIE to know that they would outright condemn any kind of sadism or violence against children. How can this be paedophilia – love of and for children? But with libellous and inflammatory statements such as these appearing in the national press, is it any wonder that all BL tourists would be treated with great suspicion?
Last year, a resident guest, known by most people as “Charles White” was brutally murdered in his home in Colombo. He was a boy lover and had many personal contacts around the world. WEEKEND, in referring to PIE, claims that the police in Colombo stumbled onto a link when they came across some letters in his home written in English and French to which he had replied about the possibilities of “perverted activity here”. Some of the letters were from Morocco, and it is alleged that some of his Moroccan contacts had connections with the Mafia and “international sex rings”. The report then admits that, in fact, no direct links with PIE were shown in the Colombo letters. [etc]

‘Gayle Rubin, ‘Sexual Politics: The New Right & The Sexual Fringe’, p. 5. Edited version of an article for The Leaping Lesbian

‘At a time when feminists are called lesbians, when homosexuals are portrayed as “child molesters”, and when “child molesters” are presented as the four horsemen of the apocalypse, it would seem suicidal to try to defend the more exotic sexual minorities.

I would like to argue the exact opposite. It has never been more imperative that the women’s and gay movements develop more sensitivity to the problems, humanity, and legitimate claims of stigmatised minorities. If not, we will be contributing to a sexual witch-hunt. The actions of the “pro-family” forces at Houston are only the most widely-publicised aspects of the current sexual reaction. A more subtle and insidious repression is occurring elsewhere. It is in the pattern of arrests as well as in the “results” of referenda. It is in the new laws to regulate pornography and sexual behaviour that have been speeding through legislative bodies. It is in the New Journalism of self-conceived sexual muck-raking.

Although the reaction is aimed at feminism and gay liberation, both the women’s and gay movements are relatively strong and enjoy some measure of popular support. Lovers of young people, and others, are easier targets. There has been a marked increase in the tempo of arrests for sex “offences”. Many people have lost jobs and face sentences ranging from minor to many years in prison. While feminists and garden-variety gays are not exactly secure, it has been the more legally-vulnerable, more stigmatised, and less easily-defended groups which have sustained the highest casualties.

The issue which exemplifies these trends most dramatically is that of sex between adults and young people. “Boy-love” seems to be for Anita Bryant what communism was to Joe McCarthy. Gay men are reluctant to defend paederasts for fear of being confused with them. Feminists are wary of the subject out of a concern to end the sexual abuse of young people, and out of an awareness of the ways in which social power infects intimate relationships, thus neither feminism nor gay liberation was prepared to respond when a national hysteria over the sex lives of the young developed in the months preceding the Miami vote.

The lack of sociological sophistication displayed by both the media and the police was unnerving. There was a lot of talk of “national conspiracies” to draft boys into white slavery. From such data as actually appeared, it could be deduced that the “conspiracy” consisted primarily of the kind of contacts through ads, letters, and word of mouth, which characterises virtually every sexual sub-culture in the country. The “national conspiracy” was no more than the rudimentary social organisation of a sexual sub-group. By such criteria, the personal ads in “The New York Review of Books” would constitute a national conspiracy.

The campaign may have increased public awareness over the real abuse and exploitation to which many young people are subjected, but the most visible and immediate results were considerable less salutory [sic]. The media campaign shared with the sex statutes the concept that sex in general, and homosexuality in particular, are inimical to the well-being of the young. By emphasising “protection” of the young and ignoring the rights of the young, the campaign undoubtedly set back the aspirations of youth liberation. Youth liberation has argued for some time that young people should have the right to have sex as well as not to have it, and with whom they choose. The statutory structure of the sex laws has been identified as oppressive and insulting to young people. A range of sexual activities are legally defined as “molestation”, regardless of the quality of the relationship or the amount of consent involved. A crackdown on statutory molestation is not the best way to defend the rights of youth.

The incipient political mobilisation of paedophiles has been another victim. Over the last few years there have been occasional articles in the gay press which claim that most relationships between men and boys are consensual, loving, and beneficial to the young people involved. It has been argued that such relationships are to be distinguished from abuse, just as rape is to be distinguished from love in other contexts. There are journals of paedophile liberation, out of print classics of boy-love are being reprinted. . .

The “kiddie porn” campaign made the position of this movement rather untenable, and it manipulate concern over the welfare of young people to rationalise new legal attacks upon sexuality. Politicians cannot afford to oppose much of the new legislation, but groups like ACLU have criticised many of the proposed laws for containing dangerous restrictions on civil liberties and freedom of expression.

The recent career of boy-love in the public mind should serve as an alert that the self-interests of the feminist and gay movements are linked to simple justice for stigmatised sexual minorities. Such groups have been mobilising in the margins of the sexual left for some time, but their presence can no longer be ignored nor their claims dismissed.

There are also other reasons why we should pay attention to stigmatised sexual expression. For the existence of political organisations for groups like paedophiles is a manifestation of a deeper change. An increase in sexual awareness is evident from the imagery of movies, music and advertising, and this imagery is now diversifying. There have been TV programmes with lesbians, gay men, trans-sexuals and prostitutes. Ads play upon semi-conscious fantasy, and new wave rock characteristically celebrates, among other things, sex offenders, transvestitism, and anal sex.

Some of this newer erotic imagery can be attributed to the reaction against feminism, as for instance the ads which suggest violence against women. But much of it represents a return of some of the diversity of human sexuality from the shadows to which it has been banished. This return of the repressed contains a lot of untamed energy, some of which is feeding the wave of sexual reaction we have witnessed in recent months. Thus far, it has been primarily the Right which has responded to this profusion of erotic form, but it would be a great loss to leave it to the reactionaries to orchestrate a societal response to this widening of sexual consciousness. The women’s movement has always been suspicious of sex, and for good reason, since sexuality is the locus through which women’s oppression is managed. But rational paranoia can easily become a form of erotophobia.

The sexual fringe is a scary place, and those who do not live there are advised that it is a dangerous place to visit. But the fringe is also a repository for various examples of sexual expression which have been rejected by society. Much of it is worth reclaiming, and there is so much to learn out on the fringe. Both the mobilisation of the sexual fringe, and the increasing politicisation of sexuality challenge feminism to develop a politics which can be pro-sex while remaining anti-sexist. (p. 5)

John Parratt (Warren Middleton), ‘As Much A Martyr as Wilde: An Account of the PIE Re-Trial and the Imprisonment of Tom O’Carroll’, pp. 6-8

‘By repeatedly narrowing the line of fire, these too, were clearly favourable to the prosecution and had the added effect of excising any possible mention of Sir Peter Hayman, Britain’s former High Commissioner to Canada who, under the pseudonym of ‘Henderson’, had been a member of PIE. Whether this was done by accident or design we shall probably never know.’ (p. 6)

Other names of PIE members
Cyril Hall
Michael Dagnall (former editor of Magpie)
D.B. had also been an editor of contact pages
And Trevor Wade, who had been acquitted.

Keith Hose
David Grove, former secretary

Peter Bremner, ‘Tom in Prison’, p. 8

Issue No. 17. Spring 1982

Peter Saxon, ‘PIE Goes to Paris’, p. 3.
On the paedophile movement in France – GRED (Groupe de Recherche pour une Enfance Differente)

‘International Cooperation’, p. 5
GRED keen to establish greater contact between paedophile groups in different countries.
Mentions that possibly paedophile groups will be represented at this year’s conference of ILIS (International Lesbian Sisterhood)

John Finnin, ‘Zambia – a first glimpse’
Picture of a young Zambian boy – maybe about 5-6.
[…]
‘Scores of children walk barefoot in the streets, the wiser ones selling cigarettes or local curios which, more than likely, have been stolen or come by illegally. Their features are ebony black with high cheekbones and a stratling smile with rows of pearly white teeth.’
[…]
‘Boys of all ages can be seen daily in the big cities holding hands and caressing one another openly. This has no sexual overtones, but is generally regarded as displaying affection, and is looked upon as healthy. At times one can see grown men displaying similar actions.
By the time they have reached puberty, boys in most parts of the bush must go through an initiation ceremony which involves circumcision. [etc]
[….]
‘Boys often have sex with each other. It is considered natural, and not unusual to see two youngsters masturbating each other quietly behind their hut, or at the side of a dirt track road deep in the bush. Boys often walk about with their hands in one another’s pockets. It is not too difficult to imagine that fathers sleep with their sons and older men with other boys.
Thank God that the paranoia nad hysteria of the western culture towards sex among the young and old alike has not yet reached Zambia.’

Editorial: ‘The Spartacus strategy’, pp. 7, 24
Spartacus is a gay soft porn company based in the Netherlands. Publish magazine, non-pornographic, PAN.
Suspicious towards PIE.

Jane Rule, ‘making ADULTS easier to seduce’, pp. 8, 19. Lesbian writer, born Plainfield, NJ, 1931.
‘As a society we are so fearful of sexual initiation we pretend that by ignoring it, it will not take place. What we really want is not to know when or how it odes. We no longer frighten our children with threats of insanity and death as results of masturbation. It is, instead, clumped with picking one’s nose, belching, farting – something not to be done in public, by implication not to be done by nice people at all – but we give our children enough privacy so that the guilty pleasure can be discovered and practised not only alone but in the company of other unsupervised children. Children caught may be shamed, the more sexually aggressive children ostracised, but it is not, as it used to be, a cause of brutal retribution.
[….]
If we viewed sex as a basic appetite normally satisfied and gradually cultivated, we would not need to keep our children isolated and in ignorance for so long, building in them what we have ourselves experienced: intense fear and desire which, so long uninstructed, produce dangerous stupidity. Of course we don’t want dangerously stupid adults initiating our children. Fear of that leaves the children to themselves, not out of our conviction that children are, in this matter, the best teachers, but by default. We have so little trust in what we have to teach that we not only abdicate our responsibility, but label criminal any adult who might attempt instruction.

There are adults who do sexually exploit, damage and kill children. It makes no more sense to deal with the question by taking them as the norm than it would to take rapists as the norm for heterosexual relationships between adults. To say that any sexual activity between adults and children is exploitative because of the superior size and power of the adult is really to acknowledge that, overall, relationships between children and adults are unequal. Why we feel more concerned over children’s sexual dependence than over their physical, emotional and intellectual dependence says more about us as sexual incompetents than as responsible adults. (p. 8)
[…]
We must also examine the motives of all interaction between adults and children – how much has ever been done “for their own good”, how much we simply reinforce our own values – before we are too purely suspicious of anything but disinterested altruism in adults who relate to children.

More important than judging the quality of other people’s experience and relationships is the exercise of our own memories. Certainly my own initiation came long before I was legally adult. Though a number of males around my own age offered to participate, a woman ten years my senior was “responsible”, at my invitation and encouragement. The only fault I find with that part of my sexual education was the limit her guilt and fear put on our pleasure, the heterosexual pressure even she felt required to put on me. What she did “for my own good” caused both of us pain. If I were to improve on that experience now, it would not be to protect children from adult seduction but to make adults easier to seduce, less burdened with fear or guilt, less defended by hypocrisy.

If we accepted sexual behaviour between children and adults, we would be far more able to protect our children from abuse and exploitation than we are now. They would be free to tell us, as they can about all kinds of other experiences, what is happening to them and to have our sympathy and support instead of our mute and mistrustful terror. There are a thousand specific questions, all hard to answer, but we can’t begin dealing with them until our basic attitude changes.

Children are sexual, and it is up to us to take responsibility for their real education. They have been exploited and betrayed long enough by our silence.’ (p. 19)

‘Tom: Attacked Three Times in Three Weeks While Under Protection’, p. 9

Roger Nash, ‘How NZ Truth Killed Gavin Mitchell’, pp. 10-11.

Piece on Brooke Shields and nude photos of her in the bath when she was 10 – a 1 000 000 dollar damages claim brought by actress and her mother against photographer Garry Gross, who took the photos in 1975 for a Playboy Press book Sugar and Spice.
Judge dismissed suggestions that pics were pornographic. P. 11.

Various other pieces. Big interview reprinted from Australian gay magazine CAMPAIGN, interview with 12-year old boy, pp. 16-19.


PIE – documentary evidence 2 – from Magpie 1-8 (trigger warning – contains disturbing material)

[NOTE OF WARNING: In absolutely no sense whatsoever does the printing of the below material constitute any type of endorsement; in fact the very reverse]

Many people have sought to suggest that PIE was a minor organisation of no particular significance. As promised in my previous post, I will write a proper extended post on the organisation and its history (and ideology) later; but as time is limited at the moment, I propose simply to copy without comment (comment will come in that later post) a series of writings from and some information about Magpie: The Journal of the Paedophile Information Exchange, of which seventeen issues were produced from March 1977 to Summer 1982. These should give an idea of what the organisation was saying quite openly, and should leave no doubt that it was far from harmless.

Issue No. 1, March 1977

‘‘Magpie aims to provide paedophiles with their own journal, and to further the understanding and acceptance of true love for children in today’s society.

Magpie does not promote or otherwise encourage unlawful acts, sexual or otherwise.

All opinions expressed are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor, or of PIE.

Magpie welcomes critisism [sic], contributions, advice and comments from its readers.

Reprints from Magpie are welcomed, please credit your source.

Magpie is published each month by the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), the national paedophile organisation and research group. Correspondence for the magazine should be addressed to the Editor, whilst all other communications should be addressed to the Secretary.

Our address is:-

PIE,
c/o Release,
1, Elgin Avenue, London, W9.’

‘Magpie is intended to provide members of PIE and their friends, with a regular up to date service of news about PIE and information about other matters of interest to paedophiles. Magpie will report the activities and decisions of the PIE Executive Committee, news of PIE local groups plus any other articles of letters of interest which may come to its notice.

‘Whilst I applaud the efforts of Warren Middleton in producing ‘Understanding Paedophilia’ and I congratulate the Editor of ‘Palaver’ on his latest production, with respect to both these people, I feel that news should be forthcoming on a regular basis. To this end, Magpie will be produced each month – provided that nothing untoward happens to the Editor to prevent this! To achieve regularity, Magpie will, I fear, have to be of somewhat simple appearance; I cannot hope to emulate the sophisticated layout and quality of the other two publications. However, I trust it will not be of too dull a content. ‘ (La Gazza Ladra, ‘What’s This’, p. 1)

‘On the 3rd of March, Tom O’Carroll gave a talk about paedophilia and PIE to the Winchester branch of CHE [Campaign for Homosexual Equality]. This was his third public speaking engagement; if he did as well on the first two occasions as he did this time, then he has impressed and enlightened many people. Certainly his audience were impressed and eve the most hostile questioner was won over by his performance . . Congratulations!’ (‘Secretary speaks to CHE’, p. 2)

‘Ideas, please’

You may remember that at the last AGM it was decided that we should invite one or more prominent people to become ‘Honorary Vice-President’ of PIE. A number of names have been put forward and some of these have been written to, although as yet no one has taken us up on our offer!

One of the people written to was Bryan Gould MP – chosen largely because of the speech he gave to the CHE [Campaign for Homosexual Equality] Conference in Southampton last year. Although he declined to accept, his reply is worth reporting. It reads:-

“Thank you for your letter and for your invitation to become an honorary Vice-President. I am afraid that I have so much on my plate at the moment that it would be unwise of me to take on any further responsibilities for the time being. I should be less than honest with you however if I were to give you the impression that lack of time is my only difficulty. As you say, yours is an unpopular cause, and whilst I have a good deal of sympathy for your objectives, I do not think it would be fair to my wife and family for me to take a public stand on it. They suffered somewhat as a result of my speech to CHE and while I am robust enough to take the comments, correspondence etc., my wife in particular reacts badly to it. I am sorry to have to send you such a disappointing reply.”

Now, if an MP, who depends upon votes and public good-will, can give us such a considerate reception, there must be someone, somewhere who would be prepared to help us in this way. Any ideas please? (p. 4)

Issue No. 2, March 1977

An article detailed a trip by outgoing chair Keith Hose to Holland:

‘At the end of last year I decided to take a holiday in Holland with a friend. This was not the first time I had been there, but unlike previous visits, I arranged to call on our friends in the Dutch paedophile movement. As a direct consequence I was left with a feeling of elation at the progress made in social and legal attitudes to paedophilia in Holland, and a desire to be part of what is going on there.

Unlike PIE, the Dutch paedophile organisation is not autonomous, and it is only part of a bigger organisation, the NVSH. The NVSH, so I was informed by Dr Bernard (an important member of the paedophile sub-group), was started some years ago to encourage contraception. Over the years the group took under its wing other sexual liberation causes, including the campaign for childrens’ sexual rights, and in 1971, paedophilia. Although the NVSH is an independent organisation with its own membership and democratic process, it has for the past few years been largely government financed. A popular organisation, it had over a quarter of a million members only a few years ago, it has a strong influence on public attitudes to sex.
[…]
‘More or less, there is a paedophile group in every major Dutch town, and in addition but separate, there are many more groups of the NVSH fighting for this liberation of childrens’ sexuality. Reading the leaflet I had picked up in the Den Haag paedophile group, I telephoned the contact number given – which I found to be the home telephone number of the Convener. Rudely, but without choice, I assumed he spoke English, and I asked if we could come to see him. Warmly he invited us into his home.

When we arrived there, we could hardly believe our eyes. For there above his door, in full view of the street, was a most outrageous paedophile poster. We had seen both this poster, and a poster of the childrens’ sexual rights sub-group before, but we did not expect to see either on display above the entrance to a paedophile’s home. Naturally, once inside, we asked our host if he had ever had any trouble with his neighbours concerning the poster, especially in view of the fact that his home was right next to a school. But no – he insisted that all his neighbours were very friendly.’ (‘pedofeely’, pp. 5-7 (all material here from p. 5))

There was a plug for an international conference on ‘Love and Attraction’ to be held at University College, Swansea, September 5th to 9th 1977, adverts for ‘Boy Love news’ from Germany (p. 7) a feature on what to do with arrested or having photographic material confiscated (‘Survival’, p. 8), reports on arrests (pp. 9-10) and a guide to world paedophile groups with contact addresses: Studiegroep Pedofilie, Belgium; Landelijke Werkgroep Pedofilie, Netherlands; Paedofil Gruppe, Denmark; NAPF (Pedofil Arbeidsgruppe), Norway; Paedophile group, Sweden; Schweizer Arbeitsgruppe Paedophilie (SAP), Switzerland; DSAP and DAP, West Germany; Rene Guyon Society, Childhood Sensuality Circle, (CSC), Hermes and Gay Pederast Liberation Front, all USA; and mentions of provincial groups in some of these countries as well.

Issue No. 3, May 1977

This contained the item about NCCL taking up the case of PIE, as mentioned in my other blog post, then had an article by Tom O’Carroll, ‘Of Chickens and Chicken Hawks’, looking at an article by an NBC journalist on boy prostitution, more ads and features as in issue 2, and then a reprint from Forum entiled ‘Child Foot Fetishist.

On the back page (p. 8) was a feature called ‘One Man’s Booklist’, the comments accompanying which I summarise as follows:

Chuck Selwyn, Andrea, sibling and father-daughter incest
Sherman Sands, Funky Faculty, female teacher seduces schoolchildren and teenage girls seduce principal. ‘ridiculously unreal’
Paul Roan, When Miss Warren Comes. Mostly lesbian, some hetero stuff between female teacher and pupils.
Paula Welch, Darling Daughter, ‘mother lets her lover have her minor daughter, much voyeurism, coprolalia as stimulant, etc.’
Paula Welch, Daddy’s Girls, incest, mother daughters father
Paula Welch, I Can’t Stop – similar to Funky Faculty
Denise Bryant, as told to Roger Blake, Mother and Daughter. Autobiographical documentary by divorced school teacher with 13 year old daughter.
Rina Marshal, as told to Dalton Edwards, Don’t Ever Stop. Autobiography of a nymphomaniac, including childhood experiences.
Four Way Incest, with intro and comments by Roger Blake. Documentary told by aunt, uncle, niece and nephew all involved with bisexual incest.
Wayne Gibson, as told to Dalton Edwards, The Oversexed American. Autobiography of male world traveller with many experiences with both young boys and girls.
Frank Sheffield, The Meat Rack. Male homosexual autobiography, exploits including many affairs with minor boys.
Incest Experiences, with intro and comments by John F Trimble. 9 case histories of adult-child incest.
Freaked Out, with intro and comments by Dalton Edwards. Like above, also paedophilia and child-child relationships.

Issue No. 4, June 1977

This issue contained procedural information about the organisation, and stories from Keith Hose, who had to go to New Scotland Yard, was asked about ‘a certain famous member of PAL’ and whether certain other people were PIE members (Hose apparently refused to divulge names), also about an Andre Thoren trying to blackmail a potential member of PIE, and the organisation being attacked by a Bournemouth woman, Christine Jolliffe, and how Tom O’Carroll had sought and gained much publicity for PIE (pp. 3-4)

There is an ad called ‘Girls for Boys’ School’, about a school for boys, Sexey’s School (sic), Lusty Hill, Burton, Somerset, taking 22 girl pupils in September, apparently quoted from The Times (p. 4).

Tom O’Carroll wrote a long item about the NCCL Gay Rights Conference and the issue of Chemical Castration, apparently ‘consented’ to by prisoners, but this was under duress (Tom O’Carroll, ‘NCCL Gay Rights Conference. Chemical Castration’, pp. 5, 7).

One letter asked where pictures could be processed safely, ‘Not pornography, just good natural pictures’ (p. 6). Fears were given how the murder of a 4-year old girl could be linked to paedophiles, and there was a report about a case in the Appeal Court involving three men who had had sexual intercourse with a 14-year old girl (pp. 6-7).

A ‘Non-Fiction Book List’ mentioned various PIE publications, and also Kinsey, aDutch book Sex mit Kinderen, Parker Rossman, Sexual Experience between Men & Boys, Timothy d’Arch Smith, Love in Earnest; Brian Reade, Sexual Heretics; J.Z. Eglinton, Greek Love; Thorkil Vanggaard, Phallos; and Paul Gebhard et al, Sex Offenders.

Issue 5, July 1977

The cover of this issue had a picture of a young boy (maybe around 8) in shorts on the cover.

There were reviews of films Walkabout, Fireworks/The Queen/Children, Satyricon, Fear Personified, Run Rabbit Run, and Child Art on p. 2, all dissected for paedophile elements. Then the first article in this journal appeared by Father Michael Ingram (who was later convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse during the time when these articles were written). I will copy a large section of this:

‘‘There seem to be few things that arouse the horror, anger and sometimes hysteria of society than the thoughts of children having sexual activity, especially with adults. Society’s attitudes are mirrored in prisons where those found guilty of offences against children need to be protected from other prisoners. But a cold examination of the facts indicates that much of this anger seems to be irrational and groundless, and that the reaction to discovery of the act can do more damage than the act itself.

Take the case of an eleven year boy whose parents overheard him tell his brother about a man who was ‘having sex’ with him. There was a family scene, mother crying, father packing up and down and vowing he could ‘kill the bastard’. The police were called in. the boy was interrogated over and over again by both parents and police. The boy was taken to the police station where he was told to lower this trousers. A doctor examined his penis, retracting the foreskin. The boy was made to bend down while a doctor put a lubricated rubber sheath on his finger which he inserted into the boy’s rectum. The man was charged, denied it and the boy was examined by the magistrates. The man was remanded on bail, so in order to prevent the boy meeting him again, he was sent to stay with relatives in Ireland until the trial three months later.

What seems to have happened was that the boy was rather deprived of affection from his parents who were cold and undemonstrative. He had often allowed the man to cuddle him, and this sometimes led to the man feeling him inside his trousers. If one can make a strong attempt to mask the disgust this might evoke, and consider the possible damage done to the boy by being starved of love at home, by enduring the anger, fearful interrogation, and most of all by submitting to the formal repetition by the doctor of the acts which were causing all the trouble, one can see that the offender was the last one from who the boy needed protection. As a psychiatrist involved in the case put it, “If he hadn’t been buggered by the man, he certainly had been by the doctor”.

The offender in this case was sent to prison, where he pretended to be there for larceny. He was put in the ordinary wing. His secret was discovered and he was beaten up, suffering severe injuries. He lost his job, was cut off from his family and his voluntary social work. He had done a great deal for his local community, especially for the children, and all this was forgotten. At the age of twenty-six he was a ruined man because he showed too much love for a little boy.

Nine years later the boy is now twenty, cold, repressed, afraid of sex, isolated and friendless, depending on anti-depressants to make his moods tolerable.

In the last nine years there have been considerable changes in police and legal practice, and nowadays the needs of the child are more taken into consideration. My experience is that parents also are less inclined now to ‘bring in the law’, but even so, much is left to be desired. Even recently, a little girl who was making allegations against a man was visited at her home by two uniformed police officers, when it had been explicitly promised that only plainclothes officers would be sent. But meaningful changes in the law will only be accomplished once public opinion has been changed and public fears allayed. Our society still thinks that children have no sexual feelings unless unnaturally aroused by depraved persons. We still think of adults whose love for children sometimes has sexual expression as being unspeakably degenerate and corrupting. We still reflect the legal idea that a young person under sixteen can not meaningfully consent to a sexual act, and we still think that children can be persuaded by adults to commit sexual acts against their will.

The most important thing it seems to me, and with this all readers would agree, is that our first duty is to protect a child from harm. What is controversial is the method by which we achieve this.

In the first place we need to recognise that children do have sexual feelings, and these feeling like all other childrens’ feelings are expressed in play. A lot of children will play at ‘peeping’ games, stripping games, competitions to see who can pee the highest and furthest, ‘knackering’ (boys grabbing or punching each others genitals), and even exploratory sexual acts. They are often interested in adults’ bodies and, from the age of about nine or ten, in adult’s sex lives. They are quite capable of indulging in sex games with willing adults, and even of provoking or initiating them.

In a study I have made of 57 boys who were ‘indecently assaulted’, 8 of them resisted the assault, which was discontinued for that reason. The rest appear to have been willing for it to take place. Thirty-eight of the boys returned to the same man for more, and three were promiscuous and made money by it. Eleven of the seventeen men involved in the study claimed that most of the children, if not actually initiating the activity, were at least seductive. In most of the cases, the sexual act was part of a more extensive demonstration of affection. The child appeared to need a lot of love.

In twenty out of the 50 families from which the boys came, the boys admitted to being frightened by their fathers, who were violent and/or given to drink. In 17 cases the father was absent due to death, divorce, or unmarried mother. In nine families the father was clearly dominated by his wife, was of weak character, and took no notice of his growing boys.

Nine of the boys felt rejected by their mothers, two mothers had deserted the family, 29 were suffering from depression and anxiety severe enough to need medical treatment. Only six boys had satisfactory relations with their fathers, and only eight with their mothers, (and this 8 included the six who had good relations with their fathers). All eight of these children rejected the act, told their parents about it, and, characteristically, the parents did not get upset, did not call in the police, and the only thing they did was to ask the present author to discuss the matter with their children.

All the acts in the above study are homosexual acts. Being a man, girls are not usually referred to me in cases like this. Statistically, heterosexual acts are much commoner (about three to one) and my findings may not be typical. But they do closely resemble results produced by other studies. They do not go to show that all children who get involved in sexual activity are disturbed and come from bad family backgrounds, but that such children do tend to be the ones who get involved because their need for affection is matched by the willingness of the man to give it.

But this has very unfortunate repercussions. There are many children in need of affection, for example, in children’s homes, and it is no longer possible for caring adults to show this affection in any meaningful way except for feeding and providing material goods. A man I once interviewed had been an assistant in a childrens’ home for seventeen years. He was adored by the children, they sat on his knee for stories, he kissed them goodnight, cuddled them whenever they seemed to need it. It was often suspected that he ‘went too far’ but there was no evidence, and one or two people in fact deliberately closed their eyes to the possibility. But he did not get promoted, and when he applied for other posts he never got them, in spite of the fact that he was such a wonderful assistant. Finally, his staff was joined by a middle-aged single woman who went on a witch-hunt once her nose started twitching, and evidence was unearthed that sent the man to prison for three years. The children in the home were left desolate and now, four years later in that same home, staff do not touch the children.

There is no evidence that sexual contacts with adults do any damage, psychological or moral, to the children any more than the ‘rude games’ that many of them play. There is considerable evidence that parental distress and police intervention do cause a great deal of harm, and there is overwhelming evidence that deprivation, especially deprivation of physical love, damages personalities and is a significant factor in the development of sexual disorders in later life.

I do not think that children should be encouraged to have sexual relations with adults, and I do think that problems could arise from them, given the unequal needs of the partners, but all the evidence I can muster indicates that children will take from a relationship what they need, and will grow out of it when they are ready. Of the 57 cases I studied, thirteen rejected the man and the act shortly afterwards, fifteen rejected it after some lapse of time, and of the rest I have no information. Only the 3 promiscuous ones stated that they did not regret the act, and they would do it again given the chance. All three have now grown up and are practising homosexuals.

What seems to be necessary, therefore, is an effort to inform the general public about the groundlessness of their fears, of the need for calm when an act is discovered, and a sense of balance about a child’s needs and vulnerability. Children need to be brought up in an atmosphere in which these topics can be discussed as calmly as school or play. In one family a boy announced that someone had ‘played with his willy’. His mother said “Did he, dear? Are you going to see him again?” “No. I don’t think so.” “I suppose you are right, it is better not to play at sexy things until you understand them when you get older.” Another mother said, “Oh, did he? Well I don’t think it is wise for you to go on seeing him at his house. If you want to see him again, invite him round for tea.” This was done. The matter was discussed with the man and the boy, and the mother and father said they felt their son was too young for such things. The mother of an older boy (aged 13) said, “Well I think you ought to ask advice about this. You like Father Ingram a lot, why don’t you go and ask him what he thinks? He understands these things better than your father and I.”

These reactions all seem to be healthy, but are only three compared with a whole lot of hysteria and rage that I have been called in to calm, usually too late to prevent the damage.

It is probably necessary to have a minimum age of consent, but I suggest it would be better to be flexible and prohibit sexual acts whenever there is an age difference of say, two or three years, when one partner is below the given age. This would be enough to protect children from emotional exploitation. Prosecutions should only be initiated if there has been violence or undue pressure, or indications of other forms of moral corruption, and so on. Medical examinations should be prohibited except when the child complains of pain, or when damage is suspected. Interviews should always be done by plainclothes officers in the presence of the parents when the children are very young, but with older children, the choice of speaking in the presence or absence of the parents should be left to the child. I have often found that older children prefer not to discuss things with their parents. But above all, society should not cut off from children the contribution that can be made to their welfare by those whose only fault is that their love leads to acts that society fears without reasonable cause, and whose importance diminishes in comparison with what their love can do.’ (The Rev Fr Michael Ingram, O.P. ‘”Filthy”’, pp. 5-6, reprinted from Libertarian Education)

Tom O’ Carroll would write underneath:

‘To the weary traveller, the Priory of the Holy Cross, Leicester is a haven of warmth and welcome; in the best traditions of the mediaeval Church, the wayfarer is plied with good, wholesome victuals and no shortage of drink either – and one’s host, the good Father Michael, is the very embodiment of that spirit of hospitality: convivial, affable, a man of charm and engaging conversation. All in all, a stout fellow!

I happen to believe that Michael Ingram, of the Dominican Order of preachers, represents the best of the 20th century Church too, though there are doubtless those in the Vatican who do not agree, for he has ‘advanced’ views on such subjects as birth control and abortion, and to my ignorant mind at any rate (untutored in theology, and therefore a suspect guide), his views on the Meaning of Sin and the Authority of the Church come exciting near to – dare I say it – heresy!

Established as a heavyweight intellectual – he was recently invited to deliver a series of lectures on sexual ethics to Harvard University no less – he nonetheless has work as a child counsellor in Leicester which keeps his feet firmly on the ground.

This work with children began when he studied child counselling as an associate student with the Tavistock Clinic, followed by work among deprived children in Camden, and later Leicester.

It has to be in this context that he has made an extensive, and largely positive, study of paedophile relationships between men and boys. The outcome of this study is to be a paper presented at the forthcoming Swansea Conference of the British Psychological Society on “Love and Attraction.”’ (p. 6)

A columnist by the name of Ray Halliwell wrote the following:

‘When I joined PIE some ten months ago, I wasn’t sure I had done the right thing. It wouldn’t have surprised me in the least to find half of Fleet Street on my doorstep one morning. If it had happened, I would have had a heart attack. However, since attending a PIE meeting last September, I made a decision – to ‘come out’.

At home I worked out a plan of action. Leave a copy of “Understanding Paedophilia” on the sideboard. A subtle hint here and there. Of course everyone thought I was going a bit crazy or something. Then it happened – one of my friends got the message – I had something to tell him. “I’m sexually attracted to boys,” I said. “Oh,” he replied. That was just about the last thing I had expected. The truth was that my real friends had long suspected that I was homosexual, and they were more interested in the price of a pint than the fact that I was paedophile. So far so good. Next thing I knew was when a spanner got thrown in the works when I was offered a job in a new town and accepted.

Now came the big problem. How to tell the new people? You can’t very well walk into the local and say, “hello, I’ve just moved here – nice weather – I’m paedophile, you know.” So I thought I’d wait until someone asked before I told thema bout myself. Of course no one did and I’ve now got myself into a situation where people assume that I am heterosexual. So I am starting all over again. Maybe I could try wearing a PIE tee-shirt or next time I get the urge to rush up Nelson’s Column and shout “I like boys, so what!” I should do it. Who knows, maybe I can make a success of this coming out thing yet.

Finally, on the off-chance that “horrified of Halifax” or “Disgusted of Dewsbury” or some neurotic gossip columnist is reading this piece, I have a word of advice for them.

I’ve no desire to change my sexual orientation and I am happy the way I am, thank you very much. There will always be people like me in the world to brighten up your day – that’s nature. If this fact disturbs you, I can recommend a very good psychiatrist.’ (Halliwell, ‘Coming Out’, p. 7).

There was a further Non-Fiction book list, and also a poem entitled ‘Children. North-South-East-West’ (p. 8)

Issues No. 6, August 1977

This had on the cover a picture of a young boy with their hands over their face. Importantly, this issue also featured an advert for a ‘Seminar on Paedophilia’ by the Dutch Dr Edward Brongersma, who would become closely involved with the paedophile movement. This was to take place on Thursday, 1/9/77 at Shaftesbury Hotel (p. 2).

In a long review of the film ‘Les Amitiés Particulières’ by Keith Hose (pp. 4-5), he wrote

‘The film portrays the younger boy as partly unrealistic, idealised character; a paederastic fantasy. He is beautiful, camply seductive, confident, cultured and mature. The book however, is not immune from this either, but whether one would call this a criticism, I am not sure. I still disagree with those who would say that a twelve year old boy can never have this degree of sophistication.’

Then the following was written by a Cyril Halley, entitled ‘Lament’, writing about the loss of a loved one who he will never see again:

‘The scene I shall ever remember was her languid expression, her listless gaze, as she went away, out of the room and out of my life.’
[….]
‘I shall never know either, how deeply Julie loved me, or indeed if she even loved me at all. We never discussed the question of love although I had said quite a few times when she needed consoling, “I love you, Julie, you know that.” She allowed me to kiss her on occasions and seemed to like a fuss made of her. She let me cuddle her and she was mildly jealous if I showed affection to another; but for all that I shall go through life continually thinking that my undying love was unrequited.
It was on Saturdays that Julie used to come and see me. She arrived at about 8pm and left at eleven. These three hours per week are imprinted on my memory. The lateness of the hour often made her sleepy towards the end of her stay, and then she slept in my arms, showing a loving trust that makes all else in life superfluous. The tender memories flooding back as I write this narrative are filling me with a sense of hopeless frustration.’
[….]
Her vision is before me now, holding the palm of her hand to her mouth to suppress excitement or uttering, as only she had not quite heard what was said to her.’
[…]
You see dear reader, my beloved Julie is only eight years old.’

An piece of fiction by Charles Napier, entitled ‘Spy-dophilia’, was a thriller involving a gay Los Angeles private eye, David Brandstetter (pp. 6-7).

On the back cover was a map of local groups, claiming 65 members in the London area, and many others all over the country (p. 8).

Issue 7, September 1977

This was the first properly typeset issue. There was a message on p. 2 from the convenor of the French group of PIE:

‘La première reunion du groupe francais a eu lieu recemment. Les autres reunions auront lieu chaque premier samedi du mois chez le member No. 234. Les personnes interessees de se joinder a nous sont pirees de prendre contact avec le member No. 234 en ecrivant a l’adresse de P.I.E. a Londres.’

In ‘Notes & News’ (p. 2) there was reference to a long article by Tom Crabtree in The Guardian. Then there were reports of how the ‘Love and Attraction’ conference at Swansea was moved, and how NUPE forced the conference organisers to eject Tom O’Carroll, who was also physically attacked. Also about how there was apparently much press hysteria, death threats, sackings, and a near riot in central London. After a meeting was planned at Conway Hall on Sep 19th, about 120 people, PIE members and press, went, ‘braving a barrage of abuse, blows and missiles rained on them by a crowd outside, at least partly organised by the National Front’ (p. 2).

On p. 3, there were letters from a John Page (who talked about living in ‘an age of utter barbarism which has been created largely by Christianity and Judaism combined’), an A. Paedophile (which included ‘Let us not equate “paedophile” with “child molester”. True paedophiles love all people, and especially the youngsters.’; and ‘I contribute to the NSPCC’) and a Nicholas J. Ferguson, London (who wrote ’One of the self-made ‘rules’ of responsible paedophiles is not to ‘share their young friends around’’. So no pooling of photographs, collections of diaries or letters) (p. 3).

Charles Napier wrote a poem about the now almost-mythological figure of Tom O’Connor (p. 4). And an article by Dr. Frits Bernard, who would become a regular contributor, referred to as ‘Psychiatrist, Sociologist, Writer’, said the following about the age of consent, mentioning that in some countries it is at age 12:

‘Some take as the criterion for drawing the boundary line the onset of puberty, the first menstruation or the first ejaculation. In my opinion this is a biologically acceptable criterion (it is a fact that can be observed) but represents no psychologically valid attitude. The affection of a girl or of a boy for a man or woman before reaching puberty and after passing this boundary, should be no different in terms of experience. Orgasms without ejaculation can give the same gratification as with ejaculation.’ (Dr. Frits Bernard, Psychiatrist, Sociologist, Writer, ‘Paedophilia. What are we talking about?’, p. 5).

The following letter appeared on the same page:

‘Dear Sir,

I was interested to read in MAGPIE No. 5 that you had received a copy of the Spartacus Holiday Help portfolio on paedophiles and their vacations. I wrote to the address you gave for further information, enclosing an international reply coupon, but have received no reply – – this was more than five weeks ago. I suppose it wouldn’t be possible to let me know what information was given on the two countries coming out top of the list, i.e., Sri Lanka and the Philippines? I am sure that this would be of interest to other members as well.

Your sincerely,
157

Brighton,
24 Aug. 77’

An article by a Robert Mitchell, on the search for the murderer of a young boy in West Yorkshire, argued against the Chief Constable’s position that all paedophile relationships should be eliminated because of this case. ‘Lots of friendly and loving people will be humiliated and tortured – kicked and punched in police cells; imprisoned for many years in order to “mark society’s strong disapproval”; in prison bashed and gang-raped, and driven to attempt suicide; and upon release have to live dogged by a criminal record’). Another by Ray Halliwell was about taking out a subscription to ‘Boys International’ and not feeling he had to hide it (p. 7).


Issue No. 8. No date given.

The cover featured a picture of a boy with something like a coke bottle, in swimming trunks.

‘Spartacus Guide’
In the last issue of MAGPIE one of our readers asked us to reprint the information given in the Spartacus Holiday Guide for Paedophiles, and this we agreed to do.
However, in the light of what we now know about Spartacus, we have reluctantly decided that it would not be helpful to our members and readers for us to do such a reprint, the information given being at best superficial and at worst inaccurate.’ (p. 2)

Tom O’Carroll, Review of film The Bad News Bears, dir. Michael Ritchie (1976) (p. 2)

[…]
‘There I was, at prime time, a mid-evening performance in the opening west end week, and the place was deserted except for a few scattered Paedophiles (don’t ask me how I know!) who wanted to see how much Tatum had grown up since !”Paper Moon” and to have a good ogle (and what’s wrong with that?) at the baby Bears of the little league baseball team.’
[…]
‘For me, the star performer wasn’t Matthau or O’Neal, although Tatum still looks pre-bra enough to be physically interesting. No, the palm must go to a little guy whose name I can’t remember – He is supposed to be a symbolic non-entity in the film, so I guess that fits – who was not only a lousy player at the start of the story, but he stayed that way. He was always the one left on the bench, the substitute, the nothing guy. When the other kids picked on him he hadn’t the guts to fight back, and the most ambition his feeble spirit could muster was the thought of being associated with the winning team’
[….]

A letter from a Charles Gerrivoenski (of whom more in a later issue) praised Frits Bernard’s article, and talked about warning a 12-year old boy not to tell his parents about their sexual relationship, mentioning a ‘clash of loyalty’.

‘Read All About It’, p. 3.
Mentioning articles in Guardian, 12/9/77 (half page article based on interview with Keith Hose), Community Care, 28/9/77 (“PIE is not getting a fair hearing”), 12/10/77 (reader’s letter), 19/10/77 (four pages on PIE and its aim, based on interview with Tom), new Society 8/9/77 (Marginal Note on PIE’s attempts to hold an open meeting), 6/10/77, “TV parents” – about children’s TV preferences; Peace news 23/9/77 (PIE in the sky – a report of NUSS support of PIE); Time Out 9/9/77 (“Untouchable subject” – on PIE and its aims); The Sun 10/9/77 (“Priest in Sex Row Hits Back”); Spectator 1/10/77 (“Suffer the little children”), Medical News 21/9/77 (Article by Eric Trimmer based on findings and fumings at Swansea Conference)
Quote from the end of the last:
‘Up in the Press room at the university on the day I met a very charming and lively little boy who was passing his time making paper aeroplanes out of abstracts of delegates papers. I asked his father, one of the Department of Psychology, if he was hiding him up there in case Tom O’Carroll was about. “Good God no Man” he replied in an accent straight out of Milk Wood, “he’s such a little horror at home I’m hoping they do meet up. Might cure both of them”. (p. 3)

Article by Member 136, ‘As I see it…’, p. 4:

Talks about members being adherents of the Kid’s Lib.
‘I believe P.I.E. would be better employed in devoting its major efforts to radically reducing the penalties imposed on Paedophiles and also to reducing to a minimum the distress inflicted on the child in the case by seeking to change the investigative and court procedures. [….]
Recent articles in Magpie have suggested that contributors are vaguely but grudgingly aware of the existence of parents but would prefer to dismiss their right to any claim upon their children. I think this is a stupid view to take and one that does our case no good. Perhaps this article will re-dress the balance a little and perhaps give rise to some constructive controversy.’ (p. 4)

Michael Ingram, ‘Laws of Consent’, pp. 5-6
This proposed equalising homo- and hetero-sexual ages of consent. ‘In the discussion which follows you might like to express your opinions as to whether 16 is the best age.’ (p. 5)
The duty of the law to protect the simple from exploitation, so Ingram suggested that the age of consent might be flexible, ‘and that parents who feel that their daughter under the age of, say, 18 is being exploited should be able to invoke the law by some means to prevent it.’
Laws should apply equally to men and women.
Either laws should apply to children, and contraceptive information only be given to parents, and doctors forbidden to prescribe pill to under-age girls, or laws should not apply at all to under-age children.
‘It might be possible to devise a system whereby the consent laws become more flexible, and prohibit intercourse, or sexual activity between persons who [sic] age difference is greater than two or three years when one of them is below the given age of consent.’ (all p. 5)

An article by Keith Spence, ‘Reflections in a square eye’, p. 8, portrayed paedophiles somehow transgressing social norms, talking about:

‘the fundamental honesty of Paedophile relationships, which can find their natural course without constantly needing to conform to an established stereotype.
So – let conventional people hide behind their rules and standards. Keep your images. I’m happier without a reflection, thanks. Anyone know of a nice, succulent jugular?’

P. 9 feature a picture of a young boy, maybe about 4-5.

On pp. 10-11, there was the first of what would become a regular crossword, with all clues to do with paedophilia. Here are some examples of the clues:

Across clues 20. ‘How your boy must have felt when his dad found out his first letter traded south. (3).
24. The older boy’s penis may be, but still he yearns! (6)
38. Gay little Leslie sings both ways, to a point! (7)
47. Morocco would be no place for a boy-lover who suffers from it! (10)
(p. 10)
Down clues, p. 11
E.g. 4. Balls to the doctor! All boys have them set up twice. (6)
12. Sounds like the boy to sustain morally, but you can’t make love to this one! (4)
37. An Irish kid who is apt to get screwed up. (3)

A map on the back showed 9 branches in Australia and one in New Zealand.

Later issues featured even more disturbing material – I will post this tomorrow.


NCCL and PIE – documentary evidence 1

[ADDENDUM: The Mail have located the NCCL ad in question and scanned and reproduced it here. I have reproduced it below. I missed the fact previously that in Understanding Paedophilia, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1977), p. 12, there was an earlier NCCL advert, two years before the one previously noticed. This is now mentioned above (and was already mentioned in my PIE Documentary Evidence 4 blog post)]

Earlier this year, I was able to do some research amongst the documents published by the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) as held under restricted access at the British Library. I will publish a blog post later about what they reveal about the PIE itself, but for now, following the media storm which has come about in the wake of the Daily Mail pieces beginning last week, about the connections between Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt during their time at the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) in the 1970s and 1980s, I will print here that documentary evidence I have concerning the nature of the link between the two organisations, without comment.

First, to confirm some dates: according to the site of NCCL (renamed Liberty in 1989), the organisation was founded in 1934. Patricia Hewitt became General Secretary in 1975, serving in this position until 1983, when her position was taken over by Larry Gostin. Harriet Harman was legal officer for the NCCL from 1978 until being elected to Parliament in 1982, whilst her husband Jack Dromey was on the executive committee from 1970 to 1979.

Lucy Robinson’s book Gay Men and the Left in Post-War Britain: How the Personal got Political (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011) contains one of the most extensively researched accounts of PIE and their entryist action in terms of infiltrating civil liberties, leftist and gay organisations. PIE grew out of the earlier organisation Paedophile Action for Liberation (PAL). Robinson traces the following:

The first UK based group was Paedophile Action for Liberation (PAL) some of whom had been involved in the GLF. PAL published the newsletter Palaver. This group were singled out in the Sunday People campaign that labelled them ‘the vilest men in Britain’ on 25 May 1975. PAL were exposed as the enemy within. Although the article contained no allegation of actual sexual assault it made it clear that PAL members represented an evil that every parent must be warned about. The manner in which the article was researched, and the treatment of those it accused was so severe that both the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) and Gay News acted as advocates and witnesses for the PAL members. The advocates were threatened themselves. PAL’s closure was inevitable and it eventually ‘tottered to death’ in 1977. (pp. 129-130)

The related organisation PIE was founded out of the Scottish Minorities Group by members Ian Campbell Dunn and Michael Hanson in October 1974, and was at first based in Glasgow (Robinson, Gay Men and the Left, p. 130; Tim Tate, Child Pornography: An Investigation (London: Methuen, 1990), p. 128 confirms the date – see below). Their first chairperson was Keith Hose, who was succeeded in May 1977 by Tom O’Carroll (‘Notes & News’, Magpie, Issue 4 (June 1977), p. 2). I will return to aspects of their history and activities in another blog post. Robinson puts it as follows:

PIE developed its own form of entryism. In order to build alliances with other identity groups, it tried to make connections with various liberal, professional and liberational organisations. PIE contacted amongst others, GaySocs, Gay News, the National Association of Youth Officers, Peace News, groups of trainee social workers, Release, Probation Services, NCLCC, MIND as well as academic departments. The contradictory and arbitrary divisions in British law around age meant that campaigns around paedophilia fed into a variety of issues relating to young men and women. This was particularly fostered in the Gay Youth Movement, with whom PIE made public statements of solidarity. (p. 132)

[Lucy Robinson’s book erroneously gives the date of formation of PIE as October 1975 rather than October 1974, the date given by Tim Tate. This is confirmed by the fact that there were already reports questioning money going from the Albany Trust to PIE in January 1975 (see letter from the Albany Trust to The Times, January 18th, 1975, as reproduced here).]

In a Chairperson’s report for 1975-76, Hose reported that the passing of a motion at the Campaign for Homosexual Equality’s conference in Sheffield, August 1975:

..in which the delegates held that paedophilia was an important subject. The result of which was the first positive publicity ever achieved on the paedophile issue in a British national daily newspaper in which the guilt free paedophiles viewpoint was expressed. Positive articles appeared in the Guardian, the Times Educational Supplement, Time Out and Gay News. This achievement, although slightly marred by an attack by John Torode a few days later, was magnified by the resulting discussion of the issues in both CHE and which appeared in the national press as a consequence of the motion. (PIE Chairperson’s Report 1975/76 (copy held in British Library), p. 1)

There followed these sections relating to NCCL:

At a meeting of the Gay Rights sub-committee of the NCCL that I attended, changes were proposed to the draft NCCL evidence, including an incorporation of a few of the ideas and a couple of research quotes from our evidence. Copies of our evidence were sent to the executive of NCCL before their decision on their policy in this area was reached, and some of the proposals of the gay rights sub-committee were adopted. The section on paedophilia in the report would undoubtedly not have been as positive had it not been for our lobbying. Our report therefore had some effect on the NCCL evidence, which because of the sensational press coverage, has done more to raise the issue of the ‘age of consent’ than any other document. As a source of positive ideas and arguments towards paedophilia our report will continue to influence researchers, pressure groups and paedophiles who read it for a long time.

Presently we are near to the completion of the first stage in two other areas of work. We are compiling evidence on the ‘treatment’ of paedophiles with anti-libidinal drugs, that is chemical castration. We are particularly interested in those who are or were sex-offenders and who were treated with drugs such as Androcur, Benperidol, Oestrogen, etc. However, any information on this particular ‘treatment’ or any other maltreatment (including aversion therapy, physical violence etc) of paedophiles in or out of prison, is useful. We have started a campaign against this chemical castration, and we attempted to pass a motion calling on the NCCL AGM to condemn the practise [sic] on sex-offenders, but a move to refer the motion to the Executive Committee of NCCL was passed marginally. It is important therefore that we collect enough evidence to force this committee to use their organisation to campaign against chemical castration in the coming year. I spoke for the motion openly as a paedophile and this and another paedophile proposal certainly went a long way to educating NCCL members attending the meeting about paedophilia. (ibid. pp. 2-3)

A PIE journal began to be published entitled Understanding Paedophilia in 1976 (the British Library have an incomplete collection of issues of this journal, so the information I present here may not be complete). A June/July 1976 issue confirmed PIE’s Executive Committee as Keith Hose, Warren Middleton, Tom O’Carroll, David C. Grove, Charles Napier, and Peter Righton (‘It’s the Magnificent Six’, in Understanding Paedophilia, Vol. 1, No. 2 (June/July 1976), p. 7). The same article included the following:

PIE has asked U.P. to convey their thanks to all who attended the AGM, especially Miss Nettie Pollard of the NCCL, and PIE member No. 149 who came direct from France for the event. (ibid)

Another article in this issue wrote of how NCCL were concerned about the disappearance of an envelope which had gone missing, containing a list of 1000 names which constituted a Department of Education blacklist of those deemed to be unfit for the teaching profession. Nettie Pollard from NCCL appealed to anyone who thought they might be on the list to come forward. (‘Concern over List 99’, ibid. p. 7).

A 1977 edition of UP (which included an article by on individual graphically detailing his relationship with an 11-12 year old musical boy, and how they enjoyed orgasms together – Charles Gerriovenski, ‘A Paederastic Experience’, UP, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1977), pp. 5-6) contained some information important in the context of NCCL, specifically the following:

29.3.’77

Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) is an organisation which is campaigning for law reform, and which offers counselling to paedophile people. It is an organisation which conducts its business in a lawful way and we have no evidence of its being at all involved in criminal activities. It is certainly not involved in blackmail.

As a result of the theft of some of PIE’s documents, a blackmail case arose. In the case, Regina V Thorne (3rd of the 2nd ’77), Thorne was charged with blackmail involving the use of the documents. Thorne was not a member of PIE, and he was in no way involved with the organisation and running of the group.

[Thorne was charged in 1998 with sexual offences against 8-year old boys in Thailand. A webpage here suggests he may have gone on the run prior to trial.]

Mr Justice King-Hamilton, at the time of sentencing the case, remarked: “I wonder if membership forms are collected form members of the public for the purposes of blackmail?”

We feel the judge’s comments were extremely unfortunate and that they may have done serious damage to PIE’s reputation. We feel, moreover, that the judge was misusing his position to make comments which were unwarranted and without any apparent foundation.

We should be grateful for your comments on this.

Nettie Pollard,
Gay Rights Chairperson For The NCCL

13.4.’77

I am desired by the Lord Chancellor to acknowledge your letter of the 29th March about Judge King-Hamilton.

It would be constitutionally quite improper for the Lord Chancellor to comment on remarks said to have been made by a judge in the course of a trial and prompted, doubtless, by the evidence given at that trial, and inferences drawn therefrom.

A.M.F. Webb
For HM’s Lord Chancellor

20.4.’77

Thank you for your letter of the 13th April.

After consideration of the letter, we feel it apposite to ask if the Lord Chancellor feels it part of a judge’s proper function to allege that people who were not defendants at the trial have committed serious criminal offences without giving them an opportunity to answer these allegations, and without arranging for any investigation.
We refer to our previous comment that no evidence has been produced to suggest that the Paedophile Information Exchange, the organisation that was the subject of Justice King-Hamilton’s comments, is involved in any criminal activity.

We look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.

Nettie Pollard.
(‘Protest and Reply’, ibid. p. 7)

Also the following:

Jo Richardson MP, the National Council for Civil Liberties and the Labour Campaign for Gay Rights are among the several individuals and organisations that have protested to the Lord Chancellor, on PIE’s behalf, over a judge’s comments at a recent Old Bailey trial.

They are demanding that the judge be disciplined, and are supporting the Exchange in its claim that the remarks may well have been a “serious breach of legal ethics.”

When sentencing Andre Stephen Thorne (21) to 3 years for theft and the attempted blackmail of a PIE applicant, the judge, Mr Justice King-Hamilton, said that PIE had “access to potential dynamite,” and added: “On the face of it, some sort of an offence is being committed by the person or persons running this organisation (THE SUN, Feb. 4th).. I wonder if the membership forms are collected from members of the public for the purposes of blackmail (SOUTH LONDON PRESS)?

PIE’s reaction was fast and furious. Secretary, Tom O’Carroll drafted an immediate letter to THE GUARDIAN; and on March the 17th, Deputy Leader, Warren Middleton despatched a press release announcing that the group would lodge the “strongest possible protest” with the Lord Chancellor and the Home Secretary.

Soon after, PIE’s Chairperson, Keith Hose, contacted the NCCL, finally requesting Jo Richardson (Labour, Barking) to table a question in the Commons. She declined, but has since filed an official complaint with Elwyn Jones.

The first of the protests, from the NCCL (29/3/’77), described the comments as “extremely unfortunate” and accused the judge of “misusing his position to make comments which were unwarranted and without any apparent foundation.”

Prompted by the reply which, said a Council official, was “totally unsatisfactory,” the NCCL then approached Lord Beaumont of Whitley asking him to raise the matter in the Lords. But he, too, declined.

Now, the Council is seeking the advice of Lord Hailsham, himself a former Lord Chancellor, and will act in accordance with his reply.

Meantime, PIE’s own protest will be lodged in July at an, as yet, unspecified date.
(‘Fight for Justice’, ibid. p. 10)

There was also a report from the NCCL conference:

Drug experiments on paedophiles and attitudes towards the ‘age of consent’ were two of the central issues discussed at the NCCL’s first gay rights conference on May the 14th at the National Institute for Social Work, London.

Over 200 delegates from various professions, counselling organisations and gay groups attended, and among the official speakers were representatives from PIE.

In a motion deploring the use of chemical castration on non-violent offenders, PIE’s national Secretary, Mr Tom O’Carroll, attacked what he called the “dubious ethics” employed in getting paedophiles to accept ‘treatment’ which could effectively “mutilate their bodies and personalities.”

He went on to criticise the hormone implant treatment being carried out by Dr. Henry Field and associates at Wormwood Scrubs where inmates were ‘persuaded’ to “barter their ‘balls’ for freedom.” “Under such duress, true ‘consent’ is meaningless,” he said.

But his chief concern was for the future: “What worries me is how Dr. Field and his ilk will be free to carry out experiments which go much further, possibly in the direction of psychosurgery – burning out part of the offender’s brain to mentally castrate him.

“We must force the Home Office into answering question after question about what they are up to. Whether they are trying new techniques; if so, which ones, and to what extent.”

PIE’s motion, which was successfully carried, puts added pressure on the NCCL to collaborate with the Exchange in calling for a national inquiry into the issue.

On the age of consent, civil servant, Mr Michael Burbidge told conference delegates that he disagreed with those who believed that such a concept was “necessary to mark off to young people, or their older partners, the limits of parental and societal tolerance.

“This position fails to see the law as more than a piece of paper. They don’t grasp that for a tiny minority of people, the law is suddenly transformed, devastatingly, into police and social worker interrogation, and into the humiliation of private acts being publicly paraded in the courts and press.”
(‘NCCL Conference’, ibid. p. 11).

Then, on the last page (p. 12), there was an ad for NCCL (186 Kings Cross road, London WC1X 9DE), alongside ads for The Leveller, Peace News, Libertine magazine (editors Colin Johnson, Dr. Arabella Melville), Forum, ‘it’, and ‘Boy’ magazine (published COQ International A/S, Norre Farimagsgade 65-67, DK-1007 Copenhagen K).

In March 1977, PIE launched a new publication, Magpie, a type of paedophile’s magazine with news, features, film and book reviews (plundering such things for any possible paedophile elements), guides to sex tourism in other countries, contact details of sister organisations in these countries, advice on what to do if facing arrest or loss of job, and so on. In the third issue, there was a feature about NCCL taking up the case of PIE, quoting the former organisation as saying:

PIE is an organisation that is campaigning for law reform, and which offers counselling to paedophiles. It is an organisation that conducts its business in a lawful way and we have no evidence of its being at all involved in criminal activity. It is certainly not involved in blackmail. (‘Notes and News’, Magpie, Issue 3 (May 1977), p. 2).

The June issue of Magpie reported a speech given to PIE’s Executive Committee by Nettie Pollard, Gay Rights Organiser of NCCL (mentioned above), and also how NCCL kept lists of suitable lawyers (‘Notes & News’, Magpie, Issue 4 (June 1977), p. 2), whilst O’Carroll detailed his submission to the NCCL conference in the issue of chemical castration being carried on in prisons (Tom O’Carroll, ‘NCCL Gay Rights Conference. Chemical Castration’, ibid. pp. 5, 7)

The 11th issue of Magpie contained the following piece on NCCL and PIE:

At the recent Annual General Meeting of the National Council of Civil Liberties a motion was passed which is of particular importance to PIE, bearing in mind the events of last August and September. Accordingly we reprint this motion. No. 39. in full.

“This AGM reaffirms the right of free dis- cussion and freedom to hold meetings for all organisations and individuals doing so within the law. Accordingly, whilst reaffirming the NCCL policy on the age of consent and the rights of children; particularly the need to protect those of prepubertal age, thus AGM condemns the physical and other attacks on those who have discussed or attempted to discuss paedophilia, and reaffirms the NCCL’s condemnation of harassment and unlawful attacks on such persons”.

PIE is affiliated to the NCCL and we have long advocated that our members should join as individuals so they may participate in and benefit from the activities of this large and long established organisation. The address of NCCL is 186 Kings Cross Road. London. WC1. (‘NCCL Supports PIE’s Rights’, Magpie, Issue 11 (May 1978), p. 2).

Then in Issue 13 of Magpie, April 1979, NCCL actually took out an ad (on p. 14).

5.jpeg

This was an issue which also contained such text as the following:

To be honest, I only buy Brownie annuals for the colour photographs of little girls with flat chests. And the 1979 Annual has rather a lot of these. But for the lover of girl-children with a tiny bubble of hot mischief in his loins there is a sort of hopeless beauty about nearly everything either inside or on the front cover of a brownie Annual. (‘The Brownie Annual ‘79’, reviewed by Edward Dipfinger (Dip. Ed), Magpie, Issue 13 (April 1979), p. 6)

It also contained lots of material purporting to represent the Year of the Child, and suggestions for how paedophiles might organise related events.

In September 1983, NCCL Legal Secretary Marie Staunton issued a statement in defence of the organisation’s links with PIE, saying the following:

Unless something is unlawful, people should not be prosecuted for the opinions they held.
The NCCL is campaigning to change the law to lower the age of consent to 14. An affiliate group like the Paedophile Information Exchange would agree with our policy. That does not mean it’s a mutual thing and we have to agree with theirs.
The question is not whether this group seeks respectability. Their opinions are their own.
(Gordon Grieg, ‘Child abuse: Brittan orders police review’, Daily Mail, September 2nd, 1983 – viewable in full here).

I will not offer further comment here, but will detail more about PIE and their own timeline in my next blog post.


UPDATED – Yes, Labour politicians need to answer questions about PIE and NCCL, but so do the Tories about Morrison, and the Lib Dems about Smith

In Edwina Currie’s diary entry for July 24th, 1990, she wrote the following:

One appointment in the recent reshuffle has attracted a lot of gossip and could be very dangerous: Peter Morrison has become the PM’s PPS. Now he’s what they call ‘a noted pederast’, with a liking for young boys; he admitted as much to Norman Tebbit when he became deputy chairman of the party, but added, ‘However, I’m very discreet’ – and he must be! She either knows and is taking a chance, or doesn’t; either way it is a really dumb move. Teresa Gorman told me this evening (in a taxi coming back from a drinks party at the BBC) that she inherited Morrison’s (woman) agent, who claimed to have been offered money to keep quiet about his activities. It scares me, as all the press know, and as we get closer to the election someone is going to make trouble, very close to her indeed. (Edwina Currie, Diaries 1987-1992 (London: Little, Brown, 2002), p. 195)

Currie Diaries

The following are the recollections of Grahame Nicholls, who ran the Chester Trades Council (Morrison was the MP for Chester from 1974 to 1992), who wrote:

After the 1987 general election, around 1990, I attended a meeting of Chester Labour party where we were informed by the agent, Christine Russell, that Peter Morrison would not be standing in 1992. He had been caught in the toilets at Crewe station with a 15-year-old boy. A deal was struck between Labour, the local Tories, the local press and the police that if he stood down at the next election the matter would go no further. Chester finished up with Gyles Brandreth and Morrison walked away scot-free. I thought you might be interested. (cited in ‘Simon Hoggart’s week’, The Guardian, November 16th, 2012)

Sir Peter Morrison (1944-1995) was known, according to an obituary by Patrick Cosgrove, as a right winger who disliked immigration, supported the return of capital punishment, and wished to introduce vouchers for education. He was from a privileged political family; his father, born John Morrison, became Lord Margadale, the squire of Fonthill, led the campaign to ensure Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister in 1963, and predicted Thatcher’s ultimate accession to the leadership (Sue Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’, Daily Mail, July 12th, 2014, updated July 16th). The young Peter attended Eton College, then Keble College, Oxford. Entering the House of Commons in 1974 at the age of 29, during the first Thatcher government he occupied a series of non-cabinet ministerial positions, then became Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party in 1986, replacing Jeffrey Archer after his resignation, and working under Chairman Norman Tebbitt.

Morrison was close to Thatcher from when he entered Parliament (see Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 837), working for her 1975 leadership campaign and, after she became Prime Minister, putting her and Denis up for holiday in the 73 000 acre estate owned by his father in Islay, where games of charades were played (Jonathan Aitken, Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 158-160, 279-281). After being appointed as Thatcher’s Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1990, he ran what is generally believed to have been a complacent and lacklustre leadership campaign for her when she was challenged by Michael Heseltine; as is well-known, she did not gain enough votes to prevent a second ballot, and then resigned soon afterwards. Morrison was known to some others as ‘a toff’s toff’, who ‘made it very clear from the outset that he did not intend spending time talking to the plebs’ on the backbenches (Stephen Norris, Changing Trains: An Autobiography (London: Hutchinson, 1996), p. 149).

Jonathan Aitken, a close friend of Morrison’s, would later write the following about him:

I knew Peter Morrison as well as anyone in the House. We had been school friends. He was the best man at my wedding in St Margaret’s, Westminster. We shared many private and political confidences. So I knew the immense pressures he was facing at the time when he was suddenly overwhelmed with the greatest new burden imaginable – running the Prime Minister’s election campaign.

Sixteen years in the House of Commons had treated Peter badly. His health had deteriorated. He had an alcohol problem that made him ill, overweight and prone to take long afternoon naps. In the autumn of 1990 he became embroiled in a police investigation into aspects of his personal life. The allegations against him were never substantiated, and the inquiry was subsequently dropped. But at the time of the leadership election, Peter was worried, distracted and unable to concentrate. (Aitken, Margaret Thatcher, pp. 625-626).

An important article by Nick Davies published in The Guardian in April 1998, also made the following claim:

Fleet Street routinely nurtures a crop of untold stories about powerful abusers who have evaded justice. One such is Peter Morrison, formerly the MP for Chester and the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. Ten years ago, Chris House, the veteran crime reporter for the Sunday Mirror, twice received tip-offs from police officers who said that Morrison had been caught cottaging in public toilets with underaged boys and had been released with a caution. A less powerful man, the officers complained, would have been charged with gross indecency or an offence against children.

At the time, Chris House confronted Morrison, who used libel laws to block publication of the story. Now, Morrison is dead and cannot sue. Police last week confirmed that he had been picked up twice and never brought to trial. They added that there appeared to be no trace of either incident in any of the official records. (Nick Davies, ‘The sheer scale of child sexual abuse in Britain’, The Guardian, April 1998).

In an article in the Daily Mail published in October 2012, former Conservative MP and leader of the Welsh Tories Rod Richards claimed that Morrison (and another Tory grandee who has not been named) was connected to the terrible abuse scandals in Bryn Estyn and Bryn Alyn children’s homes, in North Wales, having seen documents which identified both politicians as frequent, unexplained visitors. Richards also claimed that William Hague, who was Secretary of State for Wales from 1995 to 1997, and who set up the North Wales Child Abuse inquiry, would have seen the files on Morrison, but sources close to Hague denied that he had seen any such material. A former resident of the Bryn Estyn care home testified to Channel 4 News, testified to seeing Morrison arrive there on five occasions, and may have driven off with a boy in his car (‘Exclusive: Eyewitness ‘saw Thatcher aide take boys to abuse”, Channel 4 News, November 6th, 2012).

Morrison’s successor as MP for Chester, Gyles Brandreth, wrote that he and his wife Michelle had been told on the doorstep repeatedly and emphatically that the MP was ‘a disgusting pervert’ (David Holmes, ‘Former Chester MP Peter Morrison implicated in child abuse inquiry’, Chester Chronicle, November 8th, 2012). The journalist Simon Heffer has also said that rumours about Morrison were circulating in Tory top ranks as early as 1988, whilst Tebbitt has admitted hearing rumours ‘through unusual channels’, then confronting Morrison about them, which he denied (Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’).

Recently, Thatcher’s bodyguard Barry Strevens has come forward to claim that he told Thatcher directly about allegations of Morrison holding sex parties at his house with underage boys (one aged 15), when told about this by a senior Cheshire Police Officer. (see Lynn Davidson, ‘Exclusive: Thatcher’s Bodyguard on Abuse Claims’, The Sun on Sunday< July 27th, 2014 (article reproduced in comments below); and Matt Chorley, ‘Barry Strevens says he told Iron Lady about rumours about Peter Morrison’, Mail on Sunday, July 27th, 2014). Strevens claimed to have had a meeting with the PM and her PPS Archie Hamilton (now Baron Hamilton of Epsom), which he had requested immediately. Strevens had claimed this was right after the Jeffrey Archer scandal; Archer resigned in October 1986, whilst Hamilton was Thatcher’s PPS from 1987 to 1988. Strevens recalls Thatcher simply thanking him and that was the last he heard of it. He said:

I wouldn’t say she (Lady Thatcher) was naive but I would say she would not have thought people around her would be like that.
I am sure he would have given her assurances about the rumours as otherwise she wouldn’t have given him the job.

The accounts by Nicholls and Strevens make clear that the allegations – concerning in one case a 15-year old boy – are more serious than said in a later rendition by Currie, which said merely that Morrison ‘had sex with 16-year-old boys when the age of consent was 21’ (cited in Andrew Sparrow, ‘Politics Live’, The Guardian, October 24th, 2012). A further allegation was made by Peter McKelvie, who led the investigation in 1992 into Peter Righton in an open letter to Peter Mandelson. A British Aerospace Trade Union Convenor had said one member had alleged that Morrison raped him, and he took this to the union’s National HQ, who put it to the Labour front bench. A Labour minister reported back to say that the Tory Front Bench had been approached. This was confirmed, according to McKelvie, by second and third sources, and also alleged that the conversations first took place at a 1993-94 Xmas Party hosted by the Welsh Parliamentary Labour Party. Mandelson has not yet replied.

In the 1997 election, Christine Russell herself displaced Brandreth and she served as Labour MP until 2010, when she was unseated by Conservative MP Stephen Mosely (see entry for ‘Christine Russell’ at politics.co.uk).

In 2013, following the publication of Hoggart’s article citing Nicholls, an online petition was put together calling for an inquiry, and submittted to then Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State Christopher Grayling. Russell denounced the ‘shoddy journalism’ of the Guardian piece, recalled rumours of Morrison’s preferences, but said there was no hint of illegal acts; she did not however rule out an agreement that Morrison should stand down (‘Campaigners ask for inquiry over ex-Chester MP’, Chester Chronicle, January 3rd, 2013).

Despite being a Labour Party supporter and member, I agree with those who say that the allegations concerning Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt during the time of their positions in the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) and the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE – about which more in a later blog post) are not trivial; the fact that the PIE was able to remain affiliated to NCCL for an extended period, despite many newspaper reports about activities of its leading members, some of whom were imprisoned during this period, raises serious questions. But equally if not more important to investigate is the allegation that a very senior Tory politician who was a close personal acquaintance of a Prime Minister, was known by various others to be a pederast, and may have been involved in an awful organised abuse scandal. A new police inquiry was announced by Home Secretary Theresa May in November 2012, which became Operation Pallial; a heavily redacted version of the Jillings Report was published in July 2013. In the meantime, allegations fly all over the internet about senior politicians and the child abuse scandal at Elm Guest House in Barnes, as currently being investigated in Operations Fernbridge and Fairbank (the most reliable reports on this can be found at the Exaro website); some of this is internet conspiracy theorising, and the provenance of some sources is questionable, but major names are floating around the cyber-ether, whilst the police have confirmed that one visitor to the house was the late Liberal MP Cyril Smith.

If Labour have explaining to do concerning Harman, Dromey and Hewitt, then so do the Tories about Morrison and the Liberal Democrats about Smith; some of these allegations are not yet proven, but that is all the more reason to address them.

In particular, questions now need to be asked of Lord Tebbit, Teresa Gorman, Edwina Currie and other senior Tories, not to mention Christine Russell and others in Chester Labour Party, of what was known and apparently covered-up about Morrison. The identity of Morrison and Gorman’s agent (I could find no mention of a name in Gorman’s autobiography No, Prime Minister! (London: John Blake, 2001)) must be established and she should be questioned if still around. If money was involved, as Currie alleges was told to her by Gorman, then the seriousness of the allegations is grave. And Lord Steel must be properly held to account (and other senior Liberal Democrats questioned) about what was known about Cyril Smith, and whether they acted in such a way as to enable him to continue to abuse with impunity


Philip Pickett arrested on 15 charges, and interview with Clare Moreland in The Times

On Wednesday, February 12th, the following press release was made available by City of London police (copied here from the blog post on the subject on Slipped Disc):

Man charged over historic sex offences

City of London Police has today, Wednesday 12th February, charged a 63-year-old man with 15 historic offences, relating to nine separate victims.

These charges include eight counts of indecent assault, three counts of rape, two counts of false imprisonment, one count of assault and one count of attempted rape.

Philip John Pickett, from Lyneham, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, a former freelance teacher at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama is accused of,

Rape (contrary to section 1(1) of the Sexual Offences Act 1956), which occurred between 1st October 1977 and 30th November 1977.
Rape (contrary to section 1(1) of the Sexual Offences Act 1956), which occurred between 1st October 1977 and 30th April 1978.
Rape (contrary to section 1(1) of the Sexual Offences Act 1956), which occurred between 1st September 1978 and 30th September 1978.
Attempted rape (contrary to section 1(1) of the Criminal Attempts Act 1981), which occurred between 1st January 1988 and 30th January 1988.
Indecent assault (contrary to section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956), which occurred between 1st January 1974 and 31st December 1974.
Indecent assault (contrary to section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956), which occurred between 1st January 1974 and 31st December 1975.
Indecent assault (contrary to section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956), which occurred between 1st September 1978 and 30th September 1978.
Indecent assault (contrary to section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956), which occurred between 1st January 1977 and 31st December 1979.
Indecent assault (contrary to section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956), which occurred between 1st January 1980 and 31st December 1981.
Indecent assault (contrary to section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956), which occurred between 1st January 1983 and 31st December 1984.
Indecent assault (contrary to section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956), which occurred between 1st January 1988 and 31st December 1988.
Indecent assault (contrary to section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956), which occurred between 1st January 1988 and 31st December 1988.
Assault occasioning actual bodily harm, which occurred between 1st January 1971 and 31st December 1974.
False imprisonment which occurred between 1st October 1977 and 30th November 1977
False imprisonment which occurred between 1st January 1988 and 31st December 1988.

Mr Pickett, who was a freelance teacher at the school between 1972 and 1997, has been bailed to attend City Magistrates Court on 28th February.

Anyone with information that may assist with this investigation is encouraged to contact City of London Police on 020 7601 8177/8175 or via the 101 non emergency number, you can also email: investigation@cityoflondon.police.uk. Alternatively you can contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

As charges have been brought, I would request that no-one comment here upon this case until after a trial is over.

[UPDATE: A report in the Oxford Mail on Tuesday March 18th, 2014 indicates that Pickett’s trial has been postponed from October 2014 to January 2015 so that the musician can finish touring. Defence barrister Jonathan Barnard said at the Old Bailey ‘My client is a world famous musician and therefore earns his living on a job to job basis and has tours across the globe throughout the autumn – but the season slows down in the new year’. The Crown agreed on the grounds that ‘the allegations are at the latest 20 years old and the earliest, 40 years old’.

Once again, I request no comments upon the case until after the end of the trial.]

On another subject, for the first time since the Michael Brewer, Clare Moreland, head teacher at Chetham’s, agreed to be interviewed by Richard Morrison for The Times yesterday. Morrison himself wrote the following in April of last year:

As a teenager in the late 1960s and early ’70s I had four music teachers who shaped my life. Three were perverts – a not especially large percentage of paedophiles for a musical boy to encounter in that era. The first, the organist at the church where I was a choirboy, placed a clammy hand on his organ pupils’ thighs if they made pedalling mistakes – which was often in my case, since the clammy hand itself induced nervousness (as it was perhaps intended to do). The second, my piano teacher, a professor at a London conservatoire, regularly touched the breasts of both my sisters, who also studied with him. The third, my university tutor, liked to stand right behind male undergraduates as we struggled through keyboard harmony – then run his fingers through our hair.

Since all three are long dead I see no point in ‘outing’ them now. And at the time, msuical children – especially choirboys, or those in hothouse music schools – simply accepted this low-grade but continual molestation from teachers as par for the course. I must also say that each of my teachers was an outstanding musician. They taught me a lot, and their groping did no lasting harm. In that respect I was lucky.’ (Richard Morrison, ‘Music teaching’s dark past is in danger of destroying its future., BBC Music Magazine, April 2013, p. 25).

The interview in The Times (behind a paywall), contains the following passage:

In the eye of the storm has been Claire Moreland, the head teacher since 1999. On legal advice she has said nothing to the press since the crisis began. She broke her silence to talk to The Times. Looking pale, and with her voice often tremulous, she nevertheless defended vigorously the school’s actions over the past year.

When did she first know something was wrong? “I learnt about the possible police investigation of Mike Brewer in late 2011 and I was asked to keep that in confidence,” she replied. “The police came back to see me in 2012 and said they would be carrying out an investigation. As you know the Crown Court case started just over a year ago.” And when did it occur to her that this would be a much larger problem than just one isolated case? “It became increasingly apparent – given the context of the other cases of historic abuse recently come to public attention, the timing and outcome of the Brewer case, and the tragic suicide. We knew that this was bigger when we heard from the police that they were launching a much wider investigation.” (Richard Morrison, ‘Does Chetham’s have a future?’, The Times, 12/2/14).

But this does not appear to concur with a report published two weeks ago in The Independent:

In letters obtained by The Independent, a former Chetham’s pupil wrote to Mrs Moreland and said her “cries for help were met with disbelief”.

Mrs Moreland, who was not head teacher at the time the assaults were said to have occurred, replied in 2002. She said: “Legislation over the last two decades and an increasing awareness of issues surrounding teachers and students means that all schools these days are well-equipped to deal with any allegations.”

In 2002, Professor Gregson replied to another complainant, saying: “I do believe there is a more balanced view which, whilst not condoning [the teacher’s] past, does treat it in a more forgiving manner.”

In a reply to another woman, Mrs Moreland said in 2002: “We have excellent pastoral care systems at Chetham’s and naturally do our utmost to ensure that all the children in our care are extremely wel looked after at all times.”

Operation Kiso is currently looking at sex abuse allegations dating to as recently as 2006, however.

The investigation began after Michael Brewer, the former director of music at Chetham’s, was jailed for six years last March for indecently assaulting a pupil. His victim, Frances Andrade, killed herself after giving evidence against him at his trial, having been accused of lying during cross-examination.

Mrs Andrade had written to Professor Gregson in 2002 regarding sexual abuse claims. Professor Gregson accused her of writing an “emotive letter” that was “potentially libellous”. Mrs Moreland has insisted the sexual abuse allegations are “historic” and that child protection policies at Chetham’s have changed. (Paul Gallagher, ‘Elite music school Chetham’s loses pupils in backlash at allegations of historic sexual abuse’, The Independent, 28/1/14).

Nowhere in the Moreland interview is there any sign of concern for what former pupils might have suffered; the only concern seems to be to rejuvenate the reputation of the school. This attitude should be seen for what it is.


MPs in terms of gender, ethnicity and state/private education – some figures and reflections

This week, at Prime Minister’s Question Time, Labour leader Ed Miliband tore into David Cameron for the representation of women in his party, pointing to the all-male frontbench in front of him, in contrast to his own. Miliband did not care to mention the ethnic make-up of that front bench, perhaps because of fear of alienating xenophobic Middle England from which he needs to gain votes, or perhaps because his own wholly white front bench on display that day would score no better. At present, the cabinet consists of 22 members, of whom 18 are male and 4 female. Not one member belongs to an ethnic minority. The shadow cabinet contains 25 members, of whom 14 are male and 11 female, with 2 members from ethnic minorities. What is not visible, but no less important, is the representation of different educational backgrounds amongst both cabinets. Of the cabinet, 12 were educated in the state sector, 10 privately; of the shadow cabinet, 19 were state-educated, 5 privately; for one member it is unclear. The difference in the break-up of either cabinet in terms of educational background is as stark as that for gender and ethnicity. With this in mind, I decided to assemble some wider statistics concerning the MPs in the three major parliamentary parties, not least to draw attention to the least commented-upon form of discrimination and favouritism, to do with the vast over-privileging, above all in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties, of those who were privately educated. This is a subject frequently evaded by many leading politicians in any of the parties; the New Statesman have recently referred to ‘education’s Berlin Wall’, a term even taken up by Education Secretary Michael Gove, though as an NS leader pointed out, the privately educated Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt declined to comment on the subject.


UK Population by Gender and Region

According to the 2011 census, as provided by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), the population of the UK was 63,182,000 million people, made up of 31,028,000 million men and 32,154,000 million women. In percentage terms this means 49.1% men, 50.9% women. Between the four regions, this breaks down as follows:

England: 53,012,456 – 26,069,148 (49.2%) men; 26,943,308 (50.8%) women.
Scotland: 5,295,000 – 2,567,000 (48.5%) men; 2,728,000 (51.5%) women.
Wales: 3,063,456 – 1,504,228 (49.1%) men; 1,559,228 (50.9%) women.
Northern Ireland: 1,810,863 – 887,323 (49%) men; 923,540 (51%) women.

Total Population of mainland (England, Scotland and Wales): 61,370,912 – 30,140,376 (49.1%) men; 31,230,536 (50.9%) women.

Total Population of UK: 63,182,000 – 31,028,000 (49.1%) men; 32,154,000 (50.9%) women.

Percentages of UK population represented by region:
England: 83.9%
Scotland: 8.4%
Wales: 4.8%
(Mainland: 97.1%)
Northern Ireland: 2.9%.

The gender discrepancy can mostly be explained by different life expectancies, certainly amongst the existing population who are now aged over 50, as the differences in numbers become more pronounced and regular in the upper age bracket. As can be seen, the overall discrepancy is relatively consistent amongst the regions, except for Scotland, where it is around 3% (compared to 1.6-2% elsewhere, smallest in England).


UK Population by Ethnicity and Region

The ethnic break-up of the United Kingdom as a whole can be compiled from individual results for each region. In England and Wales, according to the 2011 report by the ONS, 86.0% of the population are classified as White (divided into ‘White British’ and ‘Any Other White’, with populations of 80.5% and 4.4% respectively). After this, the next largest groups are Indian (2.5%), Pakistani (2.0%) and Black African (1.8%). Overall, Asian and Asian British groups account for 7.5%, whilst Black African, Caribbean, Black British and others account for 3.3%. 14% of the English and Welsh population can be considered as belonging to non-white ethnic minorities. Wales itself is the least ethnically diverse region (closely followed by South West England), with 95.6% white population, 4.4% ethnic minorities. Using the population figures above (England 53,012,456; Wales 3,063,456; England and Wales 56,075,912), this amounts to numbers of approximately 2,928,663 white, 134,793 ethnic minorities in Wales. In England and Wales combined the figures will be 48,225,284 white; 7,850,628 ethnic minorities. Thus in England alone the figures are 45,296,621 (85.4%) white; 7,715,835 (14.6%) ethnic minorities.

The 2011 census results for Scotland show that 96% of the population are classified as White. Of the remaining 4% (Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Other Asian, African, Caribbean, Black British, Arab, and Other), the largest ethnic minority is Pakistani (1%). Asians make up around 3% of the population, and Black African, Caribbean and other around 1%. Thus from a total population of 5,295,000, approximately 5,038,200 are white, 275,000 ethnic minorities.

The representation of ethnic minorities in Northern Ireland is much smaller than in the rest of the UK, with 98.2% of Northern Ireland residents classified as White. From the remaining 1.8% split (in descending order of prominence between Chinese, Irish Traveller, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Other Asian, Black Caribbean, Black African, Black other, Mixed and Other). The largest ethnic minority in Northern Ireland, Chinese, accounts for just 0.35% of the population. Thus from a total population of 1,810,863, approximately 1,778,267 are white, 32,596 ethnic minorities.

If these figures are weighted relative to the population of each region, the following figures are obtained:

England: White 85.4%; Ethnic Minorities 14.6%.
Wales: White 95.6%; Ethnic Minorities 4.4%.
Scotland: White 96%; Ethnic Minorities 4%.
Northern Ireland: White 98.2%; Ethnic Minorities 1.8%.

From this, figures can be calculated for the mainland (population 61,370,912) and the UK as a whole (population 63,182,000). The population of the mainland, from the figures above, is approximately 53,263,484 white; 8,125,628 ethnic minorities. For the UK as a whole, the figures are approximately 55,041,751 white; 8,158,224 ethnic minorities. In percentage terms, this amounts to:

Mainland (England, Scotland and Wales): White 86.8%; Ethnic Minorities 13.2%.
UK: White 87.1%; Ethnic Minorities 12.9%.


UK Population by Education

Historical statistics for state or private education in England and Wales can be found in a 2012 report by Paul Bolton. They show a proportion of pupils educated at independent and direct grant schools falling from 8.1% to 5.7% between 1963 and 1978, then rising again, peaking around 1990 at around 7.4%, then falling slightly to around 6.5% in the years approaching 2000, then rising slightly again over the next decade, with a small fall from around 2010. The following figures are provided for percentages of pupils at independent schools at five yearly intervals from 1950 (from 1963 they apply to England alone):

1950: 4.6%
1955: 4.7%
1960: 5.3%
1965: 7.5%
1970: 6.5%
1975: 5.9%
1980: 5.9%
1985: 6.5%
1990: 7.4%
1995: 6.8%
2000: 6.7%
2005: 7.0%
2010: 7.1%
2011: 7.1%
2012: 7.0%

For those aged roughly between 25 and 70 in 2010, who thus were educated from age 7-18 between 1947 and 2003, I will take an average percentage from the figures from 1950 and 2005, which works out at around 6.2% of those in such an age range who were privately educated. For Wales the figure in 2011 was 1.9% and for Scotland in 2013 , 4.5%. Applying a weighting to these figures in line with that for the average over this period compared to the present number in England (thus 6.2/7) gives the following figures

For those aged between 25 and 70 in 2010:
England: 6.2% privately educated
Wales: 1.7% privately educated
Scotland: 4.0% privately educated

These three sets of figures can then be weighted according to the population of each mainland region (England 83.9%, Scotland: 8.4%, Wales: 4.8%), thus calculating (6.2*83.9/100) + (1.7*4.8/100) + (4*8.4/100) = 5.6% of the mainland UK population born aged between 25 and 70 in 2010 who were privately educated, and thus also 94.4% who were state educated.


Figures for MPs

The House of Commons website with data on elected MPs (see here and other pages linked to at this site), and the study of MPs compiled by the Smith Institute following the 2010 UK general election serve as the basis for most of my calculations. A few seats have changed hand following by-elections, but as these types of changes have generally been atypical of changes at general elections, I will use the figures from immediately after the election for my calculations. The following are the figures for those elected by party, with the brackets after the numbers giving the number of re-elected MPs, followed by the number of those newly elected.

Conservatives: 306 (166 + 140)
Labour: 258 (190 + 68)
Liberal Democrats: 57 (46 + 11)
Others: 28 (20 + 8) [Independent MPs: 1; Green: 1; Scottish National Party: 6; Plaid Cymru: 3; Democratic Unionist: 8; Sinn Fein: 5; Social Democratic & Labour Party: 3; Alliance: 1]
Speaker: 1
Total number of MPs: 650
Total number of MPs in three main parties (Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats): 621

I will concentrate solely on the three major parties, as the numbers of MPs represented by any of the others are generally too small to be able to discern meaningful trends. There are three measures of the representativeness of the MPs in each of these three parties which I will apply – in terms of gender, ethnicity (belonging or not belonging to an ethnic minority), and state/private education. The results are revealing.


MPs: Representation of Gender

Number of male/female MPs by party after 2010 UK General Election:

Conservatives: Male 257 (84.0%); Female 49 (16.0%).
Labour: Male 177 (68.7%); Female 81 (31.3%).
Liberal Democrats: Male 50 (87.7%); Female 7 (12.3%).
All three main parties: Male 484 (76.7%); Female 137 (23.3%).

These can be expressed relative to the numbers in the mainland UK as a whole (49.1% men, 50.9% women) by taking the taking the ratio of the representation in each party to that in the nation, converted into a percentage. So, for example, the ratio of male Liberal Democrat MPs (87.7%) compared to the percentage of the male mainland UK population (49.1%), expressed as a percentage, is 87.7/49.1*100 = 178.6% over-representation.

The figures for representation are thus as follows:

Conservatives: Male MPs 171.1% over-representation: Female MPs 31.4% under-representation.
Labour: Male MPs 139.9% over-representation: Female MPs 61.5% under-representation
Liberal Democrats: Male MPs 178.6% over-representation: Female MPs 24.2% under-representation:
All three main parties: Male MPs 156.2% over-representation: Female MPs 45.8% under-representation.


MPs: Representation of Ethnicity

Number of white/ethnic minority MPs by party after 2010 UK General Election:

Conservatives: White 295 (96.4%); Ethnic Minority 11 (3.6%)
Labour: White 242 (93.8%); Ethnic Minority 16 (6.2%).
Liberal Democrats: White 57 (100%); Ethnic Minority 0 (0%).
All three main parties: White 594 (94.1%); Ethnic Minority 27 (4.3%).

(It is worth noting here that the Liberal Democrats have only once ever had an ethnic minority MP, Parmjit Singh Gill, who only held the seat of Leicester South for less than one year after winning a by-election in July 2004, to be defeated in May 2005 – see http://www.theguardian.com/politics/person/6766/parmjit-singh-gill )

Using the same principle of measurement as for gender, representation can be calculated as follows, on the basis of percentages of 86.8% white, 13.2% ethnic minority for mainland UK:

Conservatives: Whites 111.1% over-representation; Ethnic Minorities 27.3% under-representation.
Labour: Whites 108.1% over-representation; Ethnic Minorities 47.0% under-representation.
Liberal Democrats: Whites 115.2% over-representation; Ethnic Minorities completely unrepresented.
All three main parties: Whites 108.4% over-representation; Ethnic Minorities 32.6% under-representation.


MPs: Representation of Educational Background

These calculations are a little more complicated than the previous two, because of the need to produce averages of those in the wider population who were educated in the state or private sector over a period of time (because of the varying ages of MPs). The Smith Institute gives the following figures for state and private (fee-paying) education of MPs elected or re-elected in 2010:

Labour: State 88%; Private 12%
Conservatives: State 46%; Private 54%
Liberal Democrats: State 59%; Private 41%
All MPs: State 66%; Private 34%

This can then be expressed as ratios relative to the figures for the population aged between 25 and 70 as given above. On the date of the 2010 General Election (May 6th), there were 15 MPs elected who were aged 70 or over – 13 Labour (Gerald Kaufman, Dennis Skinner, Stuart Bell, Joe Benton, David Winnick, Austin Mitchell, Paul Philip Flynn, Glenda Jackson, Ann Clwyd, David Allen Keen, Geoffrey Robinson, Michael Meacher and Frank Dobson) and 2 Conservatives (Peter Tapsell and Alan Haselhurst). The two Conservative MPs were both privately educated; of the 11 Labour MPs whose schools are known, 9 were educated in the state system, 2 at independent schools; the Labour figures roughly tally with the averages for the party, whilst the Conservative sample is too small to be significant. The youngest MP elected in 2010 was Pamela Nash, who was aged 25 at the time, so there were no MPs aged under 25.

The representation of state and privately educated persons in parliament can thus be easily calculated in the same manner as above, by taking a ratio of the percentage represented in parliament to the percentage in the nation as a whole, always using figures for those aged between 25 and 70 in 2010 (state educated 94.4%; privately educated 5.6%). Figures here are used just for the mainland, as no Northern Ireland MPs are not part of the sample.

The figures for each party then are:

Labour: State educated 93.2% under-representation; Privately educated 214.3% over-representation
Conservatives: State educated 48.7% under-representation: Privately educated 964.3% over-representation
Liberal Democrats: State educated 62.5% under-representation: Privately educated 732.1% over-representation.
All three main parties: State educated 70% under-representation: Privately educated 607.1% over-representation


Conclusion

In the three main parliamentary parties, by far the most over-represented group is the privately educated – 607.1% of their representation in the population as a whole. This is followed by male MPs, 156.2% of their representation in the population as a whole, and white MPs, 108.4%. If one looks however at under-representation, then ethnic minorities fair worst in terms of numbers of MPs, at just 32.6% of their representation in the population as a whole. This is followed by female MPs, at 45.8%, and then the state educated, at 70%. In all of these three measures, whether considering over- or under-representation, the Labour Party come out best, with the smallest under-representation of female, ethnic minority and state-educated MPs; the Liberal Democrats are worst in terms of under-representation of female and especially ethnic minority MPs; whilst the Conservative Party are worst in terms of massively disproportionate numbers of the privately educated, over-represented to a huge 964.3%, the worst of any type of over-representation.

Of the 49 Conservative women MPs, I was able to establish the education of 42: of these, one was home-schooled and another had a military education; of the remainder 17 were privately-educated, 23 state-educated, so the privately-educated are less disproportionately represented amongst female than male Conservatives (though still very much over-represented with a figure of around 42.5% privately educated (I will calculate similar figures for female Labour MPs at a later date, when time permits). Only 2 out of 49 (4.1%) female Conservative MPs belong to ethnic minorities (though this is still larger than the representation of ethnic minorities in the whole parliamentary party), however; for Labour the figure is 7 out of 81 (8.6%) (again larger).

There are wider questions to address and more detailed breakdowns of figures to consider (for example, the relationship between representation of ethnic minority MPs and constituencies with larger minority populations, not least in London and other major urban centres). But it is clear that more work is needed on all three fronts of Parliament is to be reasonably representative of the nation as a whole. Labour have gone the furthest to increasing the number of female and ethnic minority MPs, but both categories remain underrepresented; there have been some real moves by the Conservatives to do the same in recent times, which should not be ignored, but there is still a long way to go; as for the Liberal Democrats, their record on both is abysmal. But I have yet to hear of an initiative to redress the balance of state versus privately educated MPs (least of a problem for Labour, though even they should not be complacent); until the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats address this, Gove’s appropriation of the ‘Berlin Wall’ term is hollow and the both parties’ claims to representativeness are wafer-thin. It should be pointed out that it would be possible to have cabinets and shadow cabinets which contained roughly equal numbers of men and women, with members from ethnic minorities commensurate with their representation in the UK population; but if large percentages of these people remain privately educated, then they are still drawn predominantly from a mere 5.6% of the population, and claims to equality are meaningless.

I am not a professional statistician, and do not rule out the possibility that in the above there may have been some miscalculations, or that some of my methodologies might be open to question. I welcome any corrections in these respects; if I feel these to be appropriate, I will happily modify figures and if necessary conclusions as well.