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.

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.

---