Paedophiles in Society

Also by Sarah D. Goode

UNDERSTANDING AND ADDRESSING ADULT SEXUAL ATTRACTION

TO CHILDREN: A Study of Paedophiles in Contemporary Society
Paedophiles in Society
Reflecting on Sexuality, Abuse and Hope

Sarah D. Goode
University of Winchester, UK

Foreword by Deborah Donovan Rice

Executive Director of Stop It Now! USA

Palgrave
macmillan
© Sarah D. Goode 2011
Foreword © Deborah Donovan Rice 2011
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First published 2011 by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goode, Sarah D.
Paedophiles in society : reflecting on sexuality,
abuse and hope / Sarah Goode.
p. cm.
Includes index.

1. Pedophilia. 2. Child sexual abuse. I. Title.

HQ71.G654 2011
306.77—dc22 2011001479
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
To all those who have helped; to all those with the courage and
vision to make things better; to all those who have the guts
to stand up and speak out and to call it as they see it; to all
those who put children first and who remember that children
are not little adults, they need our protection; to all those dis-
parate voices speaking out different truths but working together
for good sense, integrity, maturity and compassion; to all those
who may not even agree with each other but who fundamen-
tally are pointing in the same loving direction; to Andrew Blake,
Andrea Driver, Emily Droisen, Judith Golberg, Fran Henry,
Judith Herman, Liz Kelly, Jim Kincaid, Tink Palmer, Judith
Reisman, John Stoltenberg; to children – mine, yours, all our
children in the future and all the children we once were.
Contents

Foreword by Deborah Donovan Rice ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgements xiv

1 Encountering Paedophiles in Society 1

Introduction 1
1 Michael Jackson 5
2 Madeleine McCann 7
3 Kevin Brown 12
4 The scope and structure of this book 18

2 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 22

Introduction 22
1 Playing and chatting 25
2 File-sharing 28
3 Wikipedia: a platform for paedophiles? 31
4 ‘Pro-paedophiles’ and ‘anti-paedophiles’ online 43
5 Conclusion 53

3 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 54

Introduction 54
1 Popular culture and ‘the paedophile’ 60
2 The concept of ‘pederasty’ 67
3 Contributions from anthropology and biology 71
4 Conclusion 83

4 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of

Kinsey 86
Introduction 86
1 The Kinsey study and ‘sex offending’ 88
2 The man behind the book 95
3 The data in Kinsey’s Chapter 5: ‘Early Sexual
Growth and Activity’ 98
4 Challenges, bowdlerizing, and the Kinsey Reports
sixty years on 114
5 Conclusion 122

vii
viii Contents

5 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 126

Introduction 126
1 The Sandfort study and ‘age of consent’ 127
2 ‘Boys on their Contacts with Men’ 131
3 Other studies on adult sexual contact with children 143
4 Conclusion 154

6 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 158

Introduction 158
1 Finding children sexy 161
2 Culture, sex and the ‘Axial Age’ 168
3 The impact on women and children: sexual abuse and
exploitation 174
4 The impact on women and children: bodily mutilations 180
5 Conclusion 190

Epilogue: Living with Paedophiles in Society and

Finding Hope 193

References 205

Index 219
Foreword

Prepare to move beyond accepted notions about the sexual abuse of

children in evidence in the media, in the classroom and in the halls
of government. The author calls on her reader to grapple with the
underpinnings of our current framework for thinking about this social
problem. Much like an investigative reporter, she sorts out the threads
of scientific research, ideological and religious history and cultural dis-
courses which have influenced and continue to shape our response to
what is a pervasive threat to the wellbeing of our children.
Not shy about calling out the disconnections between our espoused
views of valuing children and our actions which indicate otherwise, she
challenges us on a personal and professional level to be more careful
about how we proceed in considering how best to prevent sexual abuse
of children. Focusing on protecting children and punishing those who
abuse them, as she states, can leave out the point of view of the child.
Often the policies and laws which are enacted privilege the adult needs
over those of the child.
There is plenty for the mind to grapple with here and there are stories
that speak directly to the heart. This blend of cited research juxtaposed
with observations of the culture and reports of direct experience by indi-
viduals makes for a compelling read. Not something you find very often
or necessarily expect in professional literature. In my work in the pre-
vention of sexual abuse of children, I find this more holistic approach
refreshing.
At the same time, the author adds new dimensions to our thinking
with her bold assertions, carefully researched and deeply considered.
Creating the space for numerous difficult questions to be brought to
light gives the reader a chance to safely question and come to her or his
own conclusions. How does our use of language impact on our under-
standing of the subject? How far are we willing to go to be open to new
concepts that may challenge our supposed ethical point of view? I found
myself welcoming the challenge and adding some of my own previously
unconsidered questions.
The author successfully dispels some of the confusion so prevalent in
our cultural responses to sexual abuse of children. As one example, in
discussing pedophiles, she asks that we de-link adult sexual attraction

ix
x Foreword

to children from adult sexual contact with children. This will be seen
as a radical concept by some. However, this clarification based on her
research points to a way forward beyond the ‘us and them’ polarity.
It is this place of fear and paralysis that so many people find them-
selves in when faced with everyday situations where a child may be at
risk – caring but not knowing what to do, as reported in Stop It Now!’s
report: What Do U.S. Adults Think about Child Sexual Abuse? Measures of
Knowledge and Attitudes among Six States (online, June 2010).
I find myself in a hopeful frame of mind, with potent recommenda-
tions made by the author which I will continue to consider and discuss
with colleagues, friends and family. Above all, are we as individuals will-
ing to work to create the communities which value children enough to
make every effort to prevent and stop the abuse? Embracing the depth
of empathy espoused within these pages is one way forward.

Deborah Donovan Rice

Executive Director of Stop It Now! USA
Preface

This book is not like any other book you may have read on paedophiles,
or adult sexual attraction to children, or child protection. It is not about
the medical, forensic, psychological, psychiatric, legal or criminological
aspects of these phenomena. Those issues are adequately dealt with in
other texts. Instead, this book is about ordinariness, about culture and
society around us and about how people in everyday life think about
and make sense of men being sexually attracted to children (the book
says something too about women sexually attracted to children but the
focus is predominantly on men).
We know that paedophiles exist, although we don’t yet have a clear
idea of how many there may be. As far as we can tell from the small
number of studies so far, in every group of a hundred men there will be
at least a few – maybe two or three, maybe more – whose main or only
sexual interest is in children. In addition, around one in five of all men
find themselves, at least sometimes, sexually aroused to children.
How does society respond? This book argues that we respond with
confusion and bafflement. There is little consensus on how to react
when, for example, Michael Jackson is accused of sexually molesting
boys, or Roman Polanski is arrested for the statutory rape of a minor.
The massive public distress when 3-year-old Madeleine McCann disap-
peared from a holiday resort in Portugal in 2007 shows us, however, that
our confusion is not caused by indifference. We care deeply. The protec-
tion of children matters to us, but we are just not sure how to make
sense of it or what to do about it.
One of the most important innovations of the last few decades has
been the internet. The internet has both been shaped by paedophiles
(through, for example, ‘darknet’ sites for the dissemination of child
sexual abuse images) and has itself profoundly shaped the experience
of being a paedophile in contemporary society. The internet is capa-
ble of acting as an amplifier for the ‘paedophile voice’, and this book,
through a study of the online editing of the term ‘child grooming’ by
paedophile activists, illustrates the ways in which knowledge is socially
constructed and technical terms such as ‘paedophilia’ or ‘grooming’
become absorbed into popular culture.

xi
xii Preface

Popular culture comprises all the ways in which a society shares and
shapes its understanding. As the book argues, popular culture reflects
the confusion felt over paedophiles. Newspapers, internet jokes, popular
cartoon series, Hollywood films – all provide examples of different and
conflicting responses to paedophilia. Drawing on history, anthropology
and biology provide insights but leave us not much clearer.
Academic and cultural understandings of paedophilia tend to diverge
into a ‘sexual liberation’ discourse and a ‘child protection’ discourse.
In order to understand why this might be so, the book discusses the most
influential text on human sexuality in the twentieth century, Alfred
Kinsey’s Report on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, and examines in
detail what Kinsey actually said about ‘childhood sexuality’. Kinsey’s
work is of central importance in understanding contemporary views on
paedophilia and adult sexual contact with children and his views have
continued to be put forward in numerous books and articles. This book
provides an overview of a selection of works (academic, lay and pro-
fessional) which advocate a tolerant or positive view of adult sexual
contact with children. The influence of such books is little-recognized
but, I argue, has fundamentally shaped the perception of paedophiles in
society.
A central thesis of this book is that paedophiles are not ‘outside’ cul-
ture or society. Rather, it is argued that they are part of our everyday
human existence and that sexual attraction to children is part of human
sexuality. This may help to explain both the powerful rage and fear we
feel at the very word ‘paedophile’ and, at the same time, the paradoxical
prevalence and tolerance of ‘pro-paedophile’ arguments within society –
and thus our cultural bewilderment over how to respond. I propose that
what is needed is to disaggregate the discourse on ‘sexual liberation’
(the acceptance of sexualities alternative to penetrative heterosexuality)
from the acceptance of child sexual abuse. This, in turn, requires us to
make a careful distinction between the two phenomena of ‘adult sexual
attraction to children’ and ‘adult sexual contact with children’ and, in
order to do that, we need a more sophisticated understanding of norma-
tive adult male sexuality and the ways in which it has historically and
culturally been constructed to be abusive and non-empathic.
This book is written to be a challenging and thought-provoking
response to contemporary anxieties over paedophilia and child sexual
abuse. It is written primarily for students and academics studying aspects
of the phenomenon of paedophiles in contemporary society, but it will
also be of value to others; for example, to adults who are themselves
experiencing sexual attraction to children; to those who, as children,
 Preface xiii

had sexual contact with an adult and now seek to understand that expe-
rience more clearly; and those who live with, care about or work with
paedophiles. It aims to satisfy a need for information on paedophiles
which does not assume that they are monsters, mad, evil or ‘other’, and
which seeks to locate paedophiles in their everyday context, in society.
Acknowledgements

Aspects of this book are based on the Minor-Attracted Adults Daily

Lives Project, an internet-based survey conducted during 2006 to 2008.
My analysis and writing-up of this research was supported with peri-
ods of funded and unfunded research leave from the University
of Winchester and with funded research leave from the Arts and
Humanities Research Council. I express my profound gratitude for this
support.

I would like to acknowledge the kind encouragement of Lisa Isher-

wood, Philip Jenkins, Jim Kincaid, Jeffrey Masson, Linda Watson-Brown
and Ethel Quayle while this book was being written; Judith Reisman
for corresponding so helpfully on the Kinsey material; Tim Tate for pro-
viding a copy of Kinsey’s Paedophiles (Tate, 1998); Adam Stapleton for
drawing my attention to the recent work of Patrick Califia; John Ross
for generously permitting me to use quotations from his book Formosan
Odyssey: Taiwan Past and Present; The British Psychological Society for
kindly granting permission to quote from their definition of sexual
grooming; David for continuing to provide information and advice
from his own perspective as a paedophile, the anonymous reviewer at
Palgrave for advice and encouragement, Jill Lake and Jo Wilkinson for
helping get this book into print, plus all the other dear people who have
been there when I needed them!
A few aspects of this discussion have been previously published in my
book Understanding and Addressing Adult Sexual Attraction to Children: A
Study of Paedophiles in Contemporary Society (2009). This book builds on
and extends the arguments presented in my earlier work.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders, but in the
event that any have inadvertently been overlooked, the publisher will
make amends at the earliest opportunity.

xiv
1
Encountering Paedophiles in
Society

Introduction

This book is about paedophiles; that is, it is about adults who are
sexually attracted to children or minors below the legal age of sexual
consent. This sexual attraction may be to children who are moving
through the changes of puberty, or who have just emerged from puberty,
or it may involve much younger children, in some cases even toddlers or
babies. The sexual attraction to children may be the only sexual interest
experienced or it may be part of a much wider sexual desire, including
for people in other age-ranges as well, so that a ‘paedophile’ may also
be sexually attracted to adults and may be married, but nevertheless
still maintain a sexual interest in children. Paedophiles may be sexually
attracted to girls, to boys or to both sexes. While the great majority of
adults who self-define as ‘paedophile’ are men, some women also may
be paedophiles. The identification or diagnosis of paedophilia is depen-
dent on the social context, on the definition of ‘adult’, of ‘minor’ and of
‘sex’. In this book, the state of ‘being a paedophile’ is taken not as a med-
ical, clinical or forensic condition but primarily as a social fact, a sexual
attraction which the individual experiences and which – whether it is
acted on or not, whether it is shouted from the rooftops or kept entirely
hidden – will profoundly shape the sense of self, relations with others,
and place in the world.
Paedophiles do not exist in isolation: they exist, as we all must, in rela-
tion to those around them. Their experiences, and our experiences as we
attempt a deeper understanding of this phenomenon, are shaped by the
prevailing social and cultural environment. This book is therefore also
about society. It is about how people individually, in groups and in soci-
eties, attempt to make sense of and address this particular sexual desire.

1
2 Paedophiles in Society

For example, how does contemporary Western society make sense of

‘the paedophile’ and the phenomena of adult sexual attraction to chil-
dren and adult sexual abuse of children? Within just one generation,
awareness of child sexual abuse has been transformed. Up until the
1970s, popular awareness of child sexual abuse was all but non-existent.
Similarly, until the 1990s, the word ‘paedophile’ was almost unknown
outside the medical profession: it was an obscure technical term describ-
ing a condition most people had never even imagined. All that changed
radically in just a few years. The concept of a ‘paedophile’ is now embed-
ded in everyday life at the level of popular culture – how ordinary people
think about, talk about and share stories about adults behaving sexually
with children.
In order to understand paedophilia in contemporary society, it is
essential to grasp how deeply, and how rapidly, this medical diagno-
sis has moved from obscurity into the heart of Western thinking and
Western culture. The term ‘paedophilia’, although originally derived
from a medical textbook on sexual pathology first published in 1886
(Krafft-Ebing, 1998), is by no means simply a clinical definition as, for
example, is ‘urolagnia’ (sexual interest in urination). Over the last two
decades, this term has moved out of the medical texts and into daily
life in an extraordinary way. For cultural observers and laypeople alike,
paedophilia has become not simply a description of an individualized
sexual disorder but a way of thinking about, talking about, and worry-
ing about huge issues of our culture, our sexuality, and our children.
Alongside fears over drugs, terrorism, urban gun crime and other mani-
festations of social breakdown, fears over paedophilia point beyond any
one specific example or situation to a wider social malaise.
Sociologists and cultural theorists employ the term ‘discourse’ to
describe how a society uses language to think about and develop shared
meanings. The concept ‘paedophile’ has become part of this public dis-
course within contemporary Western culture in which we think about
and construct meanings for our shared sense of confusion and unease –
and also, perhaps underlying that, our shared fascination. It is a cliché
that ‘sex sells’, as newspaper editors know only too well, and sex com-
bined with taboo, risk and horror sells even better. It is not merely
the ‘paedophile’ but the ‘evil paedophile’ who features routinely in
news stories. Sound-bites about ‘stranger danger’, ‘paedophile sex rings’,
‘monsters’, ‘sex fiends’ and ‘beasts’ spring to mind as soon as a child is
harmed or disappears. For example, one three-month review of Britain’s
highest-selling daily paper, The Sun, together with its stable-mate, The
News of the World, in 2005, found only two articles referring to ‘child
 Encountering Paedophiles in Society 3

sexual abuse’ but an astonishing 94 articles using the word ‘paedophile’,

including a stream of references to ‘perverts’, ‘pervs’, ‘nasty pervs’,
‘sickest’, ‘vile’, ‘nauseating’, ‘outrage’ and ‘horror’ (Goode, 2008a: 221).
Alongside, and buttressed by, these articles on evil paedophiles and
sadistic child-murderers in the newspapers are fundraising appeals from
children’s charities, drawing on stock images from this same terrifying
public discourse in order to urge people to dig deeply into their pockets
for the sake of child protection. These portrayals reached a crescendo
during the first decade of the twenty-first century, at the same time as
the publishing world witnessed the rise of a new phenomenon: ‘misery
lit’, a entire genre of books devoted to agonising portrayals of tormented
childhoods, many of them involving sexual abuse. During the heyday
of these tearjerkers, whole supermarket shelves were stocked with noth-
ing but ‘misery lit’ and entire sections of bookshops were set aside just
for them. Within a few brief decades at the end of the twentieth and
beginning of the twenty-first centuries, a new public discourse had been
shaped, combining a complex and potent blend of childhood, sex and
evil; a discourse expressed most violently in the ‘anti-paedophile riots’
in Portsmouth in southern England during the hot and febrile summer
of 2001, when mobs of people – many of them working-class mothers –
spontaneously demonstrated in the streets, chanting, waving banners,
daubing slogans, and terrorising local residents known or suspected of
sexually abusing children.
Thus, from the 1970s onwards, a particular mix of ingredients has
formed the cultural discourse around paedophilia: a mix including
courageous and pathbreaking accounts – initially by women and more
recently by men – of the profound damage caused by child sexual
abuse, first through a political analysis of women’s position within soci-
ety and subsequently through more individualized and sentimentalized
narratives within the genre of ‘misery lit’; an increasing tendency by
newspapers to report sexual crimes against children; awareness-raising
by children’s charities; and a sense of overwhelming, even hysteri-
cal, fear and rage which briefly expressed itself, in Britain especially,
through street-activism and organized mob violence. The British Gov-
ernment responded, much as the United States and other countries also
responded, with an increased emphasis on surveillance and bureaucracy,
for example by establishing a sexual offenders’ database and setting up
systems to vet and bar offenders from working with children.
What this discourse suggests is that there is now a consensus, a shared
social understanding, of what a ‘paedophile’ might be and how soci-
ety should respond. The rhetoric of fear and hatred which has been
4 Paedophiles in Society

prominent over the last decade or so, and the heavy-handed legal and
statutory policies put in place, all give the impression that society is
united in its loathing of paedophiles and the sexual abuse of chil-
dren. This book argues, however, that such a consensus is illusory and
in reality there are multiple competing discourses both on adult sex-
ual attraction to children and on adult sexual contact with children.
Examples of this come into play most acutely when ‘the paedophile’ is
someone well-known to the public.
In many newspaper reports, ‘the paedophile’ is faceless and obscure,
and all the more terrifying for that. At other times, however, the face
is already famous, so that when a member of the public thinks of the
word ‘paedophile’, the first image which springs to mind is likely to be
of a recent celebrity scandal. Almost every month such examples will
change, as more well-known individuals are caught downloading child
pornography or are accused of having behaved inappropriately with an
under-age child. These examples obscure as much as they inform. They
leave us still puzzled, bewildered even, about what paedophilia is, what
it means to ‘be a paedophile’, what adult sexual attraction to children
means in real life and in everyday experience. The example of the film
director Roman Polanski epitomizes the confusion felt by many people.
In Polanski’s case, the facts are clear. In 1978, he pleaded guilty to sex
with a minor, a 13-year-old girl whom he had photographed with the
consent of her mother (New York Post, 2009). It appears that, after the
photographic shoot, Polanski gave the child champagne and a sedative
drug and then orally, vaginally and anally raped her (The Smoking Gun,
2003). After the trial and before sentencing, Polanski escaped justice
by fleeing from the United States to France. There is no doubt, there-
fore, about whether Polanski sexually abused a child. He did. He should
therefore, according to the public discourse on paedophiles, be univer-
sally reviled. However, when the Swiss authorities cooperated with the
United States to arrest and extradite Polanski in 2009 so that he could
finally be made to face the consequences of his actions, there was a pub-
lic outcry led by some of the most senior figures in France and by many
of Polanski’s fellow celebrities in the United States (Knegt, 2009). This
example demonstrates some of the many tensions and ambiguities sur-
rounding this topic, and the ways in which adult sexual contact with
children is both condemned and condoned.
In order to begin to grasp some of these issues, and investigate some
of the confusion we have as a society about adults sexually attracted to
children, in this chapter I would like to introduce you to three peo-
ple who each exemplify an aspect of paedophilia, helping us in the
 Encountering Paedophiles in Society 5

process of exploring what paedophilia means and how we respond to

it in contemporary society.
In Section 1 is the first of these three people, the world-famous
singer and celebrity, the late Michael Jackson. In Section 2 is a dis-
cussion of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a little girl, and
in Section 3 we meet Kevin Brown, a self-confessed paedophile and an
activist for paedophile rights. Section 4 then provides a brief overview
of the structure and contents of the book.

1. Michael Jackson

For many people around the world, the case that has exemplified ques-
tions around ‘paedophilia’ or ‘child molesting’ – and one that has hit
the global headlines the most in the past few years – has been that of
Michael Jackson, known to his many fans as ‘The King of Pop’ and
to others, less star-struck, as ‘Wacko Jacko’. Jackson, who was born
29 August 1958 and died 25 June 2009, began his career in popular
music at the age of 5. His album, Thriller, released in 1982, has sold
well over 100 million copies and is the best-selling album in the world.
By the time he reached his 40s, Jackson had achieved the status of
‘The Most Successful Entertainer of All Time’, according to the Guinness
Book of Records. To many people, he was a hero, an icon, someone who
represented beauty, talent, genius . . . and wounded vulnerability. Often
appearing frail, childlike and even victimized himself, Jackson – with
his curious, surgically altered face and fragile cross-gendered beauty –
aroused emotions of staunch protectiveness and fierce loyalty among
his many fans. Among those less enamoured, his quirky behaviour
and sexual ambiguity appeared less as the sign of genius and more as
pathological, perhaps even ‘creepy’. When allegations of sexual abuse
of children first began emerging, therefore, popular interest was both
intense and prolonged.
Jackson allegedly was first accused of child molestation in 1990, when
he paid $2 million to the son of an employee at his Neverland Ranch
after the 12-year-old had accused Jackson of fondling him (Rashbaum,
2004). This initial allegation and payoff did not emerge publicly, how-
ever, until much later, after further allegations had been made. The next
accusations appear to have been made in December 1993, when Jackson
was accused of having shared his bed with a 13-year-old boy, Jordan
Chandler, and having initiated sexual contact with him. Like the earlier
complaint, this case too was settled out of court, in January 1994, for a
sum believed to be in the region of $25 million (Vineyard, 2004).
6 Paedophiles in Society

Subsequently, the ‘Michael Jackson molestation case’, as it came to be

known, began in earnest with a search of his property, Neverland, and
his high-profile arrest in November 2003. In April 2004, the singer was
indicted on ten criminal counts, alleging 28 acts involving child abduc-
tion, false imprisonment and extortion, against a 13-year-old boy, Gavin
Arvizo and his family. The trial centred on Jackson’s behaviour towards
this child and another boy. It seemed indisputable that Jackson indeed
sought out pubescent boys for company and spent considerable time
with them, including in his bedroom and also in his bed. It also seemed
plausible that certain individuals wished to trade on Jackson’s dubi-
ous, even ‘creepy’, reputation and make money out of him by receiving
huge sums in compensation for alleged crimes. The jury were asked to
decide, on the evidence, whether Jackson had in fact committed sexual
abuse. In January 2004, one commentator, writing on The Smoking Gun
website (a commercial, New York-based site specialising in obtaining and
making available documents under the Freedom of Information Act)
reviewed a series of law enforcement and government reports, grand
jury testimony, and sealed court records and commented:

If the harrowing and deeply disturbing allegations in these doc-

uments are true, Jackson is a textbook pedophile, a 46-year-old
predator who plied children with wine, vodka, tequila, Jim Beam
whiskey, and Bacardi rum. A man who gave boys nicknames like Doo
Doo Head and Blowhole and then quizzed them about whether they
masturbated and if ‘white stuff’ came out. A man who conducted
drinking games with minors and surfed porn with them on a laptop
in his Neverland Ranch bedroom, noting that if anyone asked what
they were looking at, the kids should just say they were watching The
Simpsons. A man who frequently talked sex with his little compan-
ions and explained that ‘boys have to masturbate or they go crazy.’
A man who told one pajama-clad boy that he wanted to show him
how to ‘jack off.’ When the tipsy child declined the demonstration,
Jackson announced, ‘I’ll do it for you,’ and buried his hand in the
boy’s Hanes briefs, size small. And a man who emphasized to his lit-
tle friends that these activities were ‘their little secret’ and should not
be disclosed to anyone, even if a gun was at their head. (The Smoking
Gun, 2005: online)

After much pre-trial media hype, the actual trial itself began
28 February 2005 and continued until the summer. On 13 June Jackson
was cleared of all counts, the jury finding there was reasonable doubt
 Encountering Paedophiles in Society 7

about what had really happened. By August of that year, however, two of
the jurors had publicly announced that they regretted the not guilty ver-
dict and that they believed Michael Jackson to indeed be a paedophile
who had molested children (MSNBC, 2005).
Between 2005 and his death in 2009, a slew of books attempted in var-
ious ways to explore (or cash in on) Jackson’s trial. These books include
Geraldine Hughes’ Redemption: The Truth Behind the Michael Jackson Child
Molestation Allegation (2004) on the original 1993 allegations; FREAK!
Inside the Twisted World of Michael Jackson, by David Perel and Suzanne
Ely, in 2005, as well as the possibly more balanced Be Careful Who You
Love: Inside the Michael Jackson Case, by Diane Dimond, also in 2005.
The following year, Lynton Guest’s The Trials of Michael Jackson was pub-
lished and, in 2007, The Michael Jackson Conspiracy by Aphrodite Jones,
the comprehensive Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of
Michael Jackson, by Darwin Porter, and the cultural critique On Michael
Jackson by Margo Jefferson. Meanwhile, other books such as the 2007
Michael Jackson: For the Record by Chris Cadman and Craig Halstead, and
the 2009 In the Studio with Michael Jackson by Bruce Swedien continued
to focus on ‘the man and his music’ rather than his trials. Since his death
there will no doubt be many more books on the market, adding to the
eulogies accorded him at his funeral.
What is interesting is that, of all the many books on the market deal-
ing with Michael Jackson, there are only two which seem to have taken
the perspective of the alleged victim rather than Jackson himself. The
first, Michael Jackson was my Lover: The Secret Diary of Jordie Chandler,
was authored by Victor Gutierrez in 1997, while All That Glitters: The
Crime and The Cover-up, was written by Raymond Chandler, a lawyer and
the uncle of Jordan Chandler, and published in 2004. As with Polanski,
Jackson’s status as a major artist and celebrity overshadows the experi-
ences and emotions of the children at the heart of the court cases, and
these books go some small way towards helping us to shift our gaze back
to the child, rather than seeing the adult as the main victim deserving
our sympathy.

2. Madeleine McCann

The case of Michael Jackson reminds us of the complex responses shown

by society to alleged paedophile crimes. There is no straightforward
and unambiguous condemnation of wrongdoing, as one might expect.
Instead there is confusion, denial, resistance to the very idea that a man
known and loved by millions of fans might be capable of anything
8 Paedophiles in Society

more than naive foolishness. It is instead much easier to believe that

Jackson himself was the hapless victim, the dupe of money-grubbing
hangers-on and conniving lawyers. In the case of the disappearance of
Madeleine McCann, also, we see reactions that perhaps we would not
have expected, including a quite surprising level of confusion, denial,
resistance and contested attempts to allocate blame. In both these sto-
ries, we – the public – would like there to be clarity, with obvious villains
and innocent victims, but there is not. The discourses proposing such
straightforward narratives are not maintained: they shift and alter at
each step.
When I first began to write this book, in May 2007, there was one
story dominating the headlines. This was the unfolding case of a lit-
tle girl, Madeleine McCann, from Leicestershire, England, who was
abducted from a holiday resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal, where her fam-
ily were staying. At the time of her mysterious disappearance, on the
night of Thursday 3 May, she was just nine days away from her fourth
birthday.
Photographs of the little girl and her stunned and distraught parents
covered the British and Portuguese media. There was huge and continu-
ing interest in the case, not only in Britain and Portugal but also across
Europe and in English-speaking countries such as Australia, where par-
allels were drawn with the case of Azaria Chamberlain, the baby who
disappeared in the outback and was believed murdered by her mother
until her clothes were found in a dingo’s lair. Within days of Madeleine’s
disappearance, newspapers were reporting that the prime suspect was ‘a
paedophile’ (Telegraph, 2007) or that she had been abducted ‘to order’ by
an international paedophile ring (Times, 2007). The case of Madeleine
(or ‘Maddy’/ ‘Maddie’, as British tabloid newspapers dubbed her) gar-
nered huge public sympathy and support from every quarter of British
society. International footballers including Cristiano Ronaldo, John
Terry and David Beckham made impassioned pleas for help. Madeleine’s
parents met with Pope Benedict XVI, who blessed a picture of the lit-
tle girl and promised to pray for her safe return. Churches throughout
the world offered prayers. In Britain, MPs in the House of Commons
wore yellow ribbons as a mark of concern for Madeleine, as did the
England cricket team for its Lords’ Test match against the West Indies.
In July 2007, the singer Bryan Adams dedicated his concert on Malta
to Madeleine, advertisements asking for help in finding Madeleine
were aired in cinemas before the showing of the popular film Shrek
III, and author J. K. Rowling arranged for posters of Madeleine to be
made available to booksellers all over the world at the time of the
 Encountering Paedophiles in Society 9

launch of the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows.
Offers of help poured in and a fund of up to £2.6 million was pledged
for rewards leading to Madeleine’s safe return. An official website was
quickly established to publicize the search, and within a short time of
the disappearance many unofficial web-pages had also appeared to show
support and sympathy for the McCann family, for example on social
networking sites including Facebook and MySpace. Madeleine’s disap-
pearance even made an impact in the virtual world, with the website
Second Life containing virtual posters advertising the search for Maddie.
At least three books have been published so far on Madeleine’s disap-
pearance. There has also been a British documentary and a planned
Hollywood movie on the case. Meanwhile, child kidnapping storylines
in popular British soap operas, EastEnders and Coronation Street, due to
be shown in May 2007, were cancelled and the release of a Hollywood
movie, Gone Baby Gone, directed by Ben Affleck and centring on the
abduction of a 4-year-old girl, scheduled for release in December 2007,
was delayed to April 2008.
What is it about this story which so gripped the public imagination?
For all of us who are parents, it is our worst nightmare: finding an empty
space where our child should be. Madeleine represents innocence and
brings out in us our protectiveness. But the story of Madeleine provokes
darker questions about society and about human nature too. Who took
her? Was she murdered by her own parents? Was she kidnapped to order
by a criminal adoption agency? Was she, as newspapers suggested, taken
by an international paedophile ring?
Madeleine has still not been found and no firm clues have yet been
discovered. Some observers have noted that the idea of a paedophile ring
based within Portugal is not far-fetched: a serious scandal came to light
in 2002 when a number of high-profile members of Portugal’s social and
political elite were arrested on charges of child sexual abuse spanning
decades and conducted in collusion with staff in Casa Pia, the country’s
oldest and most-respected state-run orphanage (Mitchell, 2003). After
alleged victims came forward to speak out about the abuse, the former
Secretary of State for Families, Teresa Costa Macedo, revealed that she
had known about the abuse at Casa Pia since 1982, when she first sent
a dossier of evidence to the police. She received death threats and the
police closed the case in 1993, destroying all the evidence (Mitchell,
2003). Mrs Costa Macedo also revealed that the then-President, Gen-
eral Antonio Ramalho Eanes, was told by child victims of the abuse
in 1980 but did not act (Mitchell, 2003; Tremlett, 2004). Portugal is a
10 Paedophiles in Society

struggling economy within the European Union and this may make it
more vulnerable to police corruption and to exploitation of its children.
One report commented:

Portugal has increasingly been under the scrutiny of anti-paedophile

groups who have denounced its lax laws and uninterested courts
for creating a paedophiles’ paradise in Europe. Belgian and Dutch
paedophile groups are reported to have operated in Portugal, with
foreigners travelling to the island of Madeira to seek out young chil-
dren. Investigators from the Swiss-based Innocence in Danger group,
which claims children regularly disappear from the poorer streets of
Portuguese towns and cities, say they too have been harassed and
threatened. (Tremlett, 2002: online)

Years later, after Madeleine’s disappearance and with the Casa Pia court
case, begun in 2004, still grinding on (not until September 2010 did the
case end, with seven defendants receiving convictions), another news-
paper article drew similarities between the Madeleine McCann case, the
Casa Pia scandal and the crimes of Marc Dutroux in Belgium during the
mid 1990s, for which he was tried and eventually sentenced in 2004:

Pedro Namora, a former Casa Pia orphan who witnessed 11 rapes

on fellow orphans, during which they were tied to their beds, sym-
pathizes with the McCanns. He believes elements in the force have
conspired to suppress both scandals, fearing damage to the coun-
try’s reputation. ‘Portugal is a paedophiles’ paradise’, said Mr Namora,
now a lawyer campaigning on behalf of the Casa Pia victims. ‘If all
the names come out, this will be an earthquake in Portugal. There is
a massive, sophisticated network at play here – stretching from the
government to the judiciary and the police. The network is enor-
mous and extremely powerful. There are magistrates, ambassadors,
police, politicians – all have procured children from Casa Pia. It is
extremely difficult to break this down. These people cover for each
other, because if one is arrested, they all are arrested. They don’t want
anyone to know.’
. . . [Mr Namora] believes the case, which he brought to light in
2003, will underscore Portugal’s growing attraction for paedophiles,
which has seen six children disappear in recent years. One reason for
this attraction is that the law was quietly relaxed last year, ahead of
the forthcoming trial, meaning that repeat offences against the same
child would merit only a single charge – and a lesser sentence.
 Encountering Paedophiles in Society 11

. . . Amid allegations that paedophile networks have become

endemic in Portugal – the European police force Interpol has named
the country as one of the worst offenders in Europe – there are fears
that the Casa Pia scandal will come to eclipse Belgium’s notorious
Marc Dutroux case, in which the arrest of a notorious paedophile
and child murderer revealed a sordid picture of judicial and political
corruption. (Malone & Allen, 2007: online)

The sexual attacks, taking place over a period of at least twenty years
against many of the most vulnerable children at Casa Pia, some of them
blind and many of them deaf and unable to speak about their ordeals
(Popham, 2003), shocked the Portuguese people, just as other countries
before and since have been shocked by revelations of systematic sexual
abuse of children and its cover-up by those in authority. The allega-
tions of corruption and indifference by those who ought to care pose a
challenge to the very principles by which a country is run:

Underlining the challenge the system faces, Marcello Nuno Rebelo

de Sousa, a law professor and social commentator, said: ‘It is not just
solving the Casa Pia case, it’s believing in democracy. It is believ-
ing we belong to Europe, not just because we are in the European
Union, but because we have a democratic system where justice works.
Portuguese society looked in the mirror and said, “we are ugly”.’
(Popham, 2003: online)

These two narratives – Michael Jackson and Madeleine McCann – are

two parts of the jigsaw puzzle building a contemporary picture of ‘the
paedophile’. Jackson, Polanski and other celebrities show us that, while
unknown paedophiles typically excite hatred, those who are known to
the public are more likely to receive a sympathetic and lenient reception
even in cases where rape has clearly taken place. There are counterex-
amples, such as that of the British comic actor Chris Langham, who
was convicted and imprisoned in 2007 for downloading child pornog-
raphy and who encountered a veritable storm of public hostility and
rage, but in general what the experience of well-known figures involved
in aspects of sexual behaviour with children shows is that the pub-
lic, when confronted with a famous face, cannot believe that such a
person could truly be a paedophile or sex offender, no matter what
the evidence. Such denial and avoidance of reality is a psychological
process for dealing with emotional discomfort and has as its corollary
the projection of hostility away from ‘us’ (well-liked figures such as
12 Paedophiles in Society

Polanski or Jackson) and onto the Other, the scapegoat figure of the ‘evil
paedophile’. These processes of denial and projection will be explored
in more depth throughout this book as part of the study of conflicting
attitudes to paedophiles in society.
While (some) paedophiles have arguably become overblown figures of
extravagant hatred and loathing in the public imagination, scapegoats
representing all that is evil and frightening about modern society, the
suffering of Madeleine McCann and the many children of the Casa Pia
orphanage, among many other silent victims, remind us of the sombre
reality underlying public disquiet. Child sexual abuse and the disappear-
ance of little children such as Madeleine McCann tell us uncomfortable
truths about society, and about civilization in the twenty-first century.
The story of Madeleine McCann, since she disappeared in 2007, has
crystallized for many people some of the most deep-seated fears in con-
temporary society: fears of risk, danger, loss, uncertainty, insecurity and
lack of control. Madeleine McCann, the real, small, flesh-and-blood
child, has become a cipher, standing in for all the horrors inflicted on
children around the world. Harm to children arouses visceral responses
of protectiveness. In acts against children we see both the evil and the
compassion which lie at the heart of the human condition. For many
people, the story of Madeleine McCann sums up the mysterious dread
and horror which have become associated with the word ‘paedophile’.
This leads us to the third person to be introduced in this chapter, Kevin
Brown, because Kevin is proud to be known as a paedophile. For Kevin,
the connotations of the term ‘paedophile’ are not negative, they are
positive and he has risked his life campaigning for the human and civil
rights of paedophiles.

3. Kevin Brown

Kevin’s story starts on 23 February 2005 when he phoned up a popular

radio show in the United States and described himself, live on air, as a
paedophile and a member of NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy
Love Association. The radio show was hosted by Rick Roberts, a well-
known conservative whose programme is known as ‘The court of public
opinion’. The programme airs on KFMB San Diego in California, but is
accessible around the United States. At the time there was a continu-
ing controversy about the posting of the names and details of convicted
child sexual offenders on websites which could be accessed by members
of the public, leading to possible harassment and attacks by vigilantes.
For example, there had recently been a case in which a man, Lawrence
 Encountering Paedophiles in Society 13

Trant, had attempted to murder two convicted sex offenders living near
him, after he identified their addresses from the internet (MacQuarrie,
2004). It was within this context that Roberts announced a $1000
‘bounty’ for anyone with information on paedophiles and particularly
members of NAMBLA.
Kevin, a husband and father in his thirties living in the United
States, who describes himself as a paedophile or ‘minor-attracted adult’,
decided to take up the offer of the bounty and phoned up during the
programme to claim his $1000 and also make the point that he was
proud to be a member of NAMBLA. This unusual step was prompted by
Kevin’s desire for honesty – a desire which later led him to contact and
communicate with me over a period of four years during my research
into this subject. Kevin had decided he would use the $1000 to fund a
play he was writing, called Adam’s End, which dealt with the situation of
‘a decent man who was liked in his community and that community’s
reaction to him when they discovered his pedosexuality’. However, as
Kevin was soon to discover, ‘My art has become my life. I will never
explore that topic on stage’ (Inquisition21, undated: online).
Feeling that he needed to ‘make a stand’ on behalf of fellow-
paedophiles, Kevin phoned the radio station without the knowledge
of his wife. He was not given the $1000. Instead, the consequences of
that phone-call were to shatter his family. As one commentator wrote,
‘knowing that Roberts was engaged in the raising of a lynch mob, Kevin
Brown phoned him live on radio, announcing his own status as a poten-
tial quarry’ (Inquistion21, undated: online). He found himself having
a hostile (if predictable) conversation live on air with Rick Roberts, in
which Kevin explained how he ‘took the risk of telling people [he was a
paedophile] and lost friends over doing that, but it was fair, I think you
would agree that if you had an acquaintance or a close friend that was
a pedophile and you had children you would want to know that fact
about them.’ Roberts replied, ‘Well, first of all I wouldn’t have a friend
that’s a pedophile. Second of all if I could verify he was a pedophile,
I would make sure that the nearest law enforcement agency knew about
him...’ to which Kevin could only respond, ‘Well, and that’s exactly
what happened’ (transcript of radio conversation from Brown, personal
communication, 2006).
That might have been the end of this episode on the radio but, during
the conversation, Kevin’s little child could be heard in the background.
Roberts got Kevin to clarify that he was a father and so, from a small-
scale local difficulty, it now became highly publicized that Kevin, an
‘out’ paedophile, had a small child living at home with him. Within
14 Paedophiles in Society

days, child protection services had taken the child into care. Subse-
quently, his wife divorced him and he became embroiled in a lawsuit
which cost him his job, his home and his financial security. Why did
Kevin do it?
Kevin had put his reputation, his friendships, his economic security,
his family and even his physical wellbeing and his life on the line. Sub-
sequent to this ‘outing’, Kevin was physically attacked on a number of
occasions. He told me he was prepared to die and believed he would die
as a result of his actions. What drove him to such an extreme measure
appears to have been a deeply held conviction that one should be honest
in one’s dealings and that one should campaign for what one believes
in. In Kevin’s case, this included the civil rights of ‘minor-attracted
adults’.
I got to know Kevin during my research into the experiences of
‘minor-attracted adults’ and, over several years, Kevin wrote me numer-
ous and lengthy emails and we also had a few telephone conversations.
In his correspondence with me, he explained that he had realized
that he was incapable of concealing his sexual orientation from others
because doing so would require maintaining a façade, allowing people
to assume his normative heterosexuality. He felt that this would be dis-
honest to those he cares about the most. In the interests of honesty,
therefore, he decided to selectively tell people when appropriate. For
example, if he and his wife socialized with a couple who had children
‘and the circumstance was likely that I would be around their children
unsupervised’, he ‘did not wish them to find out by other means at some
point and carry suspicion about my activities; I have in the past, repeat-
edly, had people tell me that they felt it was more suspicious to find out
by rumour than by me.’ (Brown, personal communication, 2006). He
therefore told them that he was sexually attracted to children.
The result of this personal policy, he discovered, was that ‘most people
will react well, and some will not, and will gossip widely’. Thus, through
selective self-disclosure and his self-initiated ‘outing’ on live radio, Kevin
Brown gained a high profile as a known paedophile. For Kevin, ‘a moral
life led me to the conflict that I am in currently, and it was unavoidable’.
(Brown, personal communication, 2006). Having been put in a situation
where he was known as a paedophile, and having had his own child
removed from him, Kevin responded by initiating a civil law suit. This
law suit was regarded by Kevin as a ‘class action’ on behalf of all self-
defined ‘minor-attracted adults’ to defend their legal and civil rights to
privacy and family life. At the same time, he also saw the law suit as
defending the physical safety of NAMBLA members.
 Encountering Paedophiles in Society 15

Kevin explained to me in his emails that a deep value he hoped to

pass on to his own child was to ‘stand up for what is right’. He wanted
his child to be ‘the one to stand up for the mentally handicapped, the
obese, the ostracized in school’. He felt that ‘minor-attracted adults’, as a
class, were a persecuted minority denied their legitimate legal, civil and
human rights. He spoke about a ‘very small group in our community
[of “minor-attracted adults”] that is organized and aware of our enemy’s
actions and intents’. These enemies, as he saw it, had two goals. One
was to pursue ‘civil commitment statutes’ throughout the United States,
thereby depriving any known ‘minor-attracted adults’ of their liberty.
The other was to act as a lynch-mob, ‘engaging in violent acts against
us and setting a precedent for local prosecutors to not pursue criminal
charges for their actions.’
While standing up for what is right is always laudable, Kevin’s young
child may, of course, not wish to adopt quite such a kamikaze attitude
as his father but has been pushed regardless into the fray. What per-
haps strikes one most, however, is Kevin’s use of the word ‘enemies’.
We are in very different territory here from that of Michael Jackson or
Madeleine McCann. Jackson apparently had some vague notion that it
was acceptable to take young boys into his bed, whether sexually or
platonically (Niven, 2009), but he certainly never offered any politi-
cal analysis or defence of his behaviour, and little Madeleine appears
to have been swept up in some tragic encounter with unquestionable
evil for which there can be no defence. But here Kevin is positing two
opposed camps: the good guys (paedophiles or ‘minor-attracted adults’)
on one side; the bad guys (legislators, campaigners and local vigilantes)
on the other. Kevin, as a political activist, presents a view of paedophiles
as a sexual minority campaigning for rights, in many ways equivalent
to the Gay Pride campaigns of the 1970s in which lesbians and gay
men won legal and civil rights comparable to the rights of mainstream
heterosexuals. In this political campaign, others such as NAMBLA have
gone further and argued, not overtly for the rights of adults to have
sex with children, but rather for the rights of children to have sex with
adults. Kevin is not here campaigning on a sexual libertarian platform
but a civil rights one, insisting that a clear distinction be made between
the status of paedophile (an involuntary sexual orientation which does
not of itself lead to any crime) and the status of sex offender (which
requires that the person must have acted on their desires and actually
committed a sexual offence against a child). Kevin is not directly argu-
ing for the rights of convicted sex offenders (although he is arguing
for their protection from vigilantes). Fundamentally, Kevin is proposing
16 Paedophiles in Society

that paedophiles can lead law-abiding lives in the community, being

open about their orientation and working out appropriate child-safety
plans with those around them so that children are not put at risk.
By having his child taken into care simply because it became known
that he was a paedophile, Kevin’s concern was that if the ruling against
him set a legal precedent, then in future any adult who admitted that
they were sexually attracted to children, no matter how law-abiding
their lifestyle might be, would be at risk of losing their children to foster-
care. He estimated this would initially affect ‘one to two hundred men a
year’ in his state and then would go on to affect paedophiles all over the
whole United States. As things turned out, Kevin did not lose custody of
his child and his family survived the incident more or less intact. How-
ever, the ‘goals’ of his ‘enemies’ remained: civil commitment processes
are now in place in the United States so that convicted child sex offend-
ers, once they have served their term in prison, may not be released but
committed indefinitely, possibly for the rest of their lives, within secure
mental health hospitals. Meanwhile, outside in the community, vigi-
lante activism against known paedophiles (whether offenders or not)
remains a source of fear and threat. Does this matter? Is there any
legitimate case that can be made for the civil rights of paedophiles?
The three very different case-studies presented here show some of
the huge range of ways in which contemporary society currently thinks
about adult sexual attraction to children and sexual abuse of children.
To begin with, the case-studies chosen show the depth of our confusion
over this topic. In each case, there is a disjuncture between the narratives
presented and what may actually have happened. Michael Jackson may
have been a paedophile – someone sexually attracted to children – or
he may not. He may have been an innocent and misunderstood victim
of other people’s prejudices and cupidity, who genuinely behaved in no
more than a child-like manner, like Peter Pan in his Neverland. Jackson
was never convicted of any sexual crime against children. The narratives
around him explore paedophilia, while at the heart of the narrative, the
truth about Jackson’s own sexuality may never be known.
Similarly, the narratives around Madeleine McCann’s disappearance
revolve around the concept of paedophilia and sadistic, predatory
abduction for sexual abuse but there is still no clarity over what actually
happened to her. We do not know if she is alive or dead. We do not know
who took her, or why. Links have been made with known sexual abuse
offences such as the Casa Pia scandal but these are speculative. In our
need to make sense of the mystery, narratives of paedophilia stand ready
to fill the gaps in our knowledge, much as narratives of child-stealing by
 Encountering Paedophiles in Society 17

gypsies, Jews, witches, fairies or aliens might provide explanations at

other times or places. The narratives provide the comfort of a cosmol-
ogy; they suggest we can know what is going on and can make sense of
it. In the absence of incontrovertible knowledge, they are as scientific as
we can get. And then these narratives are disrupted again by individuals
like Kevin, who struggle to show us a radically different and challenging
version of what it might mean to be a ‘paedophile’. In this case, the dis-
juncture may be that society perceives a crime where there is not one.
In Michael Jackson’s case, crimes were alleged which the court decided
were false; in Madeleine McCann’s case, a crime has clearly taken place
but the details of what crime (abduction? murder?), who committed it
and why, remain unknown. In Kevin Brown’s case, while the presence
of a paedophile within the narrative is abundantly clear, the presence of
a crime is less clear. Nevertheless, a crime was presumed either to have
already taken place or inevitably to be about to take place, which was the
reason for removing his child to a place of safety. As Rick Roberts said,
when Kevin protested his innocence on radio and claimed he would
never harm a child, ‘Tick tock, baby, it’s only a matter of time’.
Thus these case-studies begin to allow us to explore some of our con-
fusion over this subject, our difficulty in accepting that someone we like
might be abusing children, and our willingness to apportion blame or
indeed to turn a blind eye in order not to face horrific realities. Finally,
they show the moral and legal awkwardness we get into when trying
to respond appropriately to protect children – and when attempting to
discriminate between those who sexually offend against children and
those who merely have a sexual attraction to children and may never
act on that attraction. All these responses and more will be explored fur-
ther in the following chapters. We will return to Roman Polanski and
Michael Jackson in particular, as they enable us to explore our con-
fusion over how we think we respond to ‘paedophiles’ in society and
how we actually do respond. The abuse suffered by the children of the
Casa Pia orphanage (and possibly also by Madeleine McCann since her
disappearance) remind us again why understanding paedophiles is of
such urgency and gravity. The book attempts to hold in tension our
need as a society for empathic understanding of adults sexually attracted
to children with the need never to underestimate the harm caused by
adult sexual contact with children; it is only when both needs are met
that children can be fully protected. It is therefore important to allow
space for ‘the voice of the paedophile’ and this is where Kevin Brown
and his peers are significant. I have published my findings from pri-
mary research in a separate book (Goode, 2009) and it is there that
18 Paedophiles in Society

you will find ‘the voice of the paedophile’ most clearly articulated. This
book builds on that research and provides a deeper understanding of
the cultural context within which paedophiles and the rest of us live in
society.

4. The scope and structure of this book

The function of this chapter has been to provide a discussion of some

well-known examples which people often discuss when the subject
of ‘paedophiles’ comes up. As this chapter indicates, we know that
paedophiles exist in society; we just don’t know how to respond to
them.
The argument throughout the following chapters of this book is that
we must understand them in new ways and respond to them in new
ways. Previous books covering the topic of paedophiles can be broadly
divided into two contrasting types: apologist texts which argue – to a
greater or lesser degree – for tolerance of paedophiles while downplay-
ing the harm they have caused to children; and more mainstream texts
which focus on the ‘demonization’ of paedophiles and attempt to cri-
tique this demonization while firmly acknowledging the harm of child
sexual abuse. In these texts, paedophiles (those adults who are primar-
ily or exclusively sexually attracted to children) are typically discussed
as being psychiatrically ill or criminal and are presented in relation to
a model of the paedophile as ‘the Other’ or as ‘monsters’, as people
very much outside the norms of society (Salter, 2003; Pritchard, 2004;
Schultz, 2005; Thomas, 2005; Corby, 2006, Ward et al., 2006) or con-
versely as misunderstood victims, even as rebels or heroes, again outside
normal society but occupying in some senses a positive counter-cultural
role (Wilson & Cox, 1983; Brongersma, 1986; Sandfort, 1987; Feierman,
1990; Li et al., 1993).
Even where the phenomenon of adults sexually abusing children is
located more obviously and directly within an everyday social con-
text of home and family (for example, see Driver & Droisen, 1989;
Cox, Kershaw & Trotter, 2000; Itzin, 2000) this does not always con-
tribute positively to our understanding of paedophiles, as such adults
are typically theorized not as ‘paedophiles’ per se but as opportunists
who sexually assault children because they can. The characterization
of child sexual abuse as explicable through an analysis of male sex-
ual violence reflects the reality that there has been a pressing need to
contest powerful and damaging myths about sexual abuse (for example,
that ‘little girls are seductive’ or that adult sexual contact with children
 Encountering Paedophiles in Society 19

is not harmful). It also reflects the fact that there has rightly been a
reluctance to endorse distinctions between forms of sexual assault –
between ‘incest’, intra-familial assault, and assault by strangers, and
between sexual abuse of children and of women – and rather to empha-
size the underpinning coherent logic of male sexual violence running
through all these varied manifestations. However, such theorizations fail
to address certain key aspects of what it means to be ‘a paedophile’ and
thus still leave significant gaps in our understanding.
Crucially, previous work has not adequately addressed the distinction
between sexual attraction and sexual behaviour. There is almost noth-
ing written on men who are sexually attracted to children but choose
not to act on this attraction; simply attempting to locate such men
within a continuum of male violence does not do justice to their experi-
ences. More generally, portraying paedophiles as (contested) ‘monsters’
or as (contested) ‘sexual radicals’ means that they are seldom located
within their everyday context as individuals who are quite ordinary and
undistinguished other than by their sexuality.
It is the role of sociologists to locate individual everyday experience
within its social context. The phenomenon of ‘the paedophile’ has been
studied extensively and written about by clinicians, psychiatrists, psy-
chologists, sexologists, legislators and criminal lawyers but considerably
less by sociologists. In fact, sociologists have traditionally seemed to
remain a little shy of it, as indeed of sex in general. Professor Ken
Plummer, the doyen of the sociological study of sexuality in Britain,
recently commented that sexuality ‘is still largely isolated from the [soci-
ological] mainstream because most people who do any other aspect of
sociology, don’t bother about us, they leave us to get on in our own
little ghetto.’ (Taylor, 2008: 7). This theoretical isolation is even more
applicable in the case of paedophilia, despite extensive concern over
the prevalence and impact of child sexual abuse, its portrayal by the
media (Silverman & Wilson, 2002; Kitzinger, 2004; Critcher, 2003) and,
more recently, critiques which re-visit and re-interpret ‘sexual abuse’
narratives (Reavey & Warner, 2003; Woodiwiss, 2009). Thus, while some
areas within sociology such as media studies, gender studies, queer stud-
ies and childhood studies have all made valuable contributions to this
field, ‘the paedophile’ as a problematic remains under-theorized. This
book directly addresses this gap in our knowledge, primarily by stressing
throughout the book that paedophiles are very much an integral part of
society and cannot be understood without that context. Three overlap-
ping but distinct concepts are recognized within this work: the concept
of the paedophile as this individual is socially constituted through those
20 Paedophiles in Society

everyday occurrences which go to make up their life-experiences and

self-identity; the concept of sexual attraction which is experienced by
adults towards children; and the concept of sexual contact which is
committed by adults against children. All these concepts are distinct
from any notion of children’s sexuality, and this point is brought out
in Chapters 4 and 5. Holding these three concepts separate helps to
provide an original analysis of paedophiles and thereby opens up new
theoretical possibilities and new ways of responding to the challenge
which paedophiles present to society, allowing the final chapter and the
Epilogue to explore the connections to, and implications for, human
sexuality more generally.
Chapter 2 begins the process of locating paedophiles within society
through an exploration of the importance of the internet, putting for-
ward the case that the internet has both been shaped by paedophiles
and has itself profoundly shaped the experience of being a paedophile
in contemporary society. As well as a brief overview of functions of
the internet generally, this chapter also provides a case-study based on
Wikipedia and enables the reader to delve into the online world of pro-
and anti-paedophile sites, exploring the way in which paedophiles use
the internet to put forward ‘pro-paedophile’ arguments.
Chapter 3 moves on to a discussion of popular culture, looking first
at examples from the media and then examining how concepts taken
from the disciplines of history, anthropology and biology have become
incorporated into popular discourse in an effort to shape and make
sense of adult sexual attraction to children and adult sexual contact
with children. This chapter concludes by arguing that what we have
currently is a ragbag of disconnected concepts around paedophilia, and
to suggest that we can begin to understand this better through an anal-
ysis of two main but conflicting discourses on ‘sexual liberation’ and
‘child protection’. This leads on to Chapter 4 and a study of what was
without doubt the most important work on human sexuality in the
twentieth century and is still unsurpassed in its influence, particularly
on academic, professional and lay notions of ‘child sexuality’. The two
Kinsey Reports (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior
in the Human Female), although little-read today, nevertheless underpin
sexological concepts of children’s sexuality and responses to adult sexual
contact with children. This continuing impact of Kinsey’s work is then
explored in Chapter 5, which provides examples of work following on
from Kinsey and thus brings into focus the body of academic and profes-
sional literature which presents a positive view of adult sexual contact
with children.
 Encountering Paedophiles in Society 21

Chapter 6 widens the perspective of the book by turning to explore

connections between paedophilia and normative adult male sexuality.
As noted earlier, a central thesis of this book is that paedophiles are not
‘outside’ culture or society but rather that they are part of our every-
day human existence. That being so, sexual attraction to children is
part of human sexuality. This theme is developed by looking first at
how children are experienced and presented as ‘sexy’ in everyday con-
temporary culture and then by going back to the ancient past and
the rise of the major world religions at the end of the Bronze Age in
order to understand how ideology shaped civilizations to denigrate the
material world, bodies, women and sex. We have got ourselves into a
pickle sexually, with a heritage of normative adult male sexuality which
has been historically and culturally shaped to be hostile, abusive and
non-empathic.
The book concludes with an Epilogue which presents an optimistic
view forward, arguing that both knowledge (popular discourse) and
sexual response are socioculturally constructed and thus can – and
do – change over time. The book proposes that we can distinguish
between two fundamental concepts often buried beneath the one word
‘paedophilia’: adult sexual attraction to children and adult sexual con-
tact with children. As the distinction between these two concepts is
drawn, we may come to recognize and accept that adult sexual attrac-
tion to children may simply be a part of the continuum of adult
(male) sexuality. The book also proposes that a more sustained and
sophisticated analysis of the discourses on ‘sexual liberation’ and ‘child
protection’ will identify ways in which these two currently conflict-
ing discourses need no longer be opposed to each other but can be
integrated to provide a richer, more nuanced and imaginative response
to the complexities and challenges of human sexuality, strengthening
the protection and care of children while enabling a more honest and
mature acceptance of paedophiles in society.
2
Encountering Paedophiles on the
Internet

Introduction

In Chapter 1 we saw how society attempts to make sense of situations

where adults are (or seem to be) sexually involved with or attracted to
children, and examples were given to show how popular culture has
made us all aware, as a society, of what a ‘paedophile’ is, even though
this cultural representation of a ‘paedophile’ may differ from reality.
In this chapter we dive into the farther reaches of the internet, to explore
what’s out there and how it has affected all our lives. The aim is to
understand the role of the internet in enabling paedophiles to contact
one another and to influence wider society through online postings.
The importance of the internet cannot be overstated. It has opened
up extraordinary new social, political and economic possibilities. When
the American scientist Joseph Licklider first dreamed of a ‘Galactic Net-
work’ at MIT in the early 1960s, he could have had no idea of where
his original musings would take us. First the internet (the ability of
remote computers to connect to each other) and then, developed from
that, the world-wide web (the ability to search for and retrieve doc-
uments and files over the internet) have had a significant impact on
almost all groups of people, but perhaps most on those who were previ-
ously isolated. Thus it could be argued that the one social change that
has most dramatically affected the phenomenon of paedophilia in this
generation is the internet. The internet has made possible anonymous
communication across any distance, suddenly enabling – for the first
time ever – people who want to keep their identities and actions secret
to communicate easily and safely with other like-minded people.
It is easy to forget sometimes what a very recent innovation the inter-
net is. It has become a key part of so many people’s lives in a remarkably
short space of time. Of the global population of almost seven billion

22
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 23

people, the most recent (2011) estimates from the Internet World Stats
website suggest that around two billion now have access to the internet.
Over 77 per cent of the population of North America are online, as are
over 60 per cent of the population of Australia and Oceania, and well
over half (58 per cent) of Europe (Internet World Stats 2011).
As we all know, in the twenty-first century the geeks have indeed
inherited the earth, and for those of us who are not geeks this is some-
times a bit confusing. Nevertheless, to understand the impact of this
intersection of the human and the technical, and the huge changes it
has brought about, it is useful to become familiar with at least some of
the key technologies. If you are already entirely familiar with IRC, news-
groups and P2P file-sharing (maybe you even played on MUDs back in
the old days), you’ll probably want to skip the next section. If the last
sentence made no sense to you at all, you’ll almost certainly want to skip
the next section – but please don’t! At least we no longer have to learn
hypertext mark-up language (HTML) before making websites! This is a
very basic introduction to how we got from a few researchers playing
about writing code for machines the size of the average living-room, to
the current phenomenon of the average Western adult (and child) log-
ging on every day and ‘chatting’ (often intimately) with people they’ve
never met who live perhaps thousands of miles away – or just around
the corner.
The internet began as the ARPANET (the network of the Advanced
Research Projects Agency, a US military organization) and by 1971 it
had 23 hosts (separate computers hundreds of miles apart, connected
by code transmitted over telephone cables). Its first international con-
nections (to England and Norway) were established in 1973 and in
1976 Queen Elizabeth II became the first head of state to send an email
message – but who did she send it to? We are not told.
By 1977 the ARPANET had over 100 host-computers connected to
it, by 1982 it was over 200, by 1983 (when the internet as we know
it today replaced ARPANET) it was over 500, by 1984 it was 1000, by
1986 over 5000, by 1987 over 10,000, and by 1989, eighteen years
from its start, the number of internet hosts reached 100,000. By this
point, the internet was still a closed system, only available to those in
government or academic settings, but now the big telecommunications
companies began to take an interest and to run commercial internet ser-
vice provider (ISP) access for the general public. Once commercial access
was available, the internet exploded.
The world-wide web was established at the research centre Cern
in Switzerland, with the first web-page going live in December 1990
24 Paedophiles in Society

(its address was http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.

html). By 1991 there were 600,000 hosts and ten web-pages. The follow-
ing year, 1992, there were one million internet hosts and fifty exciting
web-pages to browse! The next year it’s two million hosts, the year
after that three million, the year after that four million. When America
Online and Compuserve got in on the act, in 1995, access more than
doubled and by 1996, the number of hosts was up to nine million
and the next year 16 million – the same year that the millionth inter-
net domain name was registered. By the year 2000, 304 million people
were online and the ten-millionth domain name had been registered
(Anderberg, 2007). The internet and the world-wide web had become a
global phenomenon and transformed our lives in under thirty years.
Although it isn’t necessary to know all the tiny details of the history
of how we got from there to here, having a broad overview does help our
understanding of what exactly has changed, and what the impact has
been on people’s daily lives. Tracing the history of the internet from its
beginnings in the 1960s to now will help us gain a clearer sense of which
technologies have been most relevant in changing child pornography,
for example, from something that was almost non-existent to some-
thing that is now ubiquitous, or in changing the experience of many
paedophiles from one of utter isolation to one in which they can share
their experiences with hundreds or thousands of other people. There are
a great many books written now on web studies, cyberspace, online com-
munities, ‘cybersociety’ and the like. Some of the books, particularly the
earlier ones, concentrated on fears over ‘the rise of the computer state’
and increased surveillance (Burnham, 1983; Campbell & Connor, 1986).
More recent works have tended to celebrate the wonderful opportunities
the internet provides for new forms of media and new forms of commu-
nity. There has been less emphasis on the hidden aspects of the internet,
the ‘darknet’, where private deals take place and illegal activities can
flourish.
If it is indeed true, as Spiderman discovered, that ‘with great power
comes great responsibility’, then it’s probably also true that with great
anonymity comes great irresponsibility. If we do not know who some-
one is, we cannot hold them accountable for their behaviour, or for
the negative consequences that may arise from the expression of their
beliefs. There are few, if any, sanctions which can be successfully
deployed against anonymous individuals who may hold a number of
user-names and identities and perhaps operate from a number of dif-
ferent accounts, servers and computers. An understanding of how the
internet has increased our capacity to interact anonymously also helps
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 25

us to understand some of the threats as well as the benefits of the

internet.
This chapter is divided into four sections, each dealing with a specific
aspect of the online experience. Section 1 looks at playing in cyberspace
and explores online communication; Section 2 examines file-sharing
and the ‘darknet’; Section 3 uses the example of an article on ‘child
grooming’ on Wikipedia to illustrate how self-defined paedophiles dis-
seminate their own ‘point of view’; and Section 4 provides information
on ‘pro-paedophile’ and ‘anti-paedophile’ websites.

1. Playing and chatting

Let’s start with the fun stuff, playing with MUD – no, not that lovely
squelchy brown stuff you enjoyed as a toddler, splashing about in your
welly-boots, but something else that was equally fun for a lot of people.
MUDs were interactive multiple-user adventure games which often drew
on the hugely popular 1970s fantasy gaming world of Dungeons and
Dragons, and they started almost as soon as internet connections could
be made across the Atlantic, from England to the United States.
From the beginning, MUDs were non-commercial and were placed
by their developers in the public domain, meaning that anyone was
free to join and to develop further versions. MUDs, like Dungeons and
Dragons (D&D), involved developing enormously intricate and complex
fantasy worlds inhabited by warriors, shamans, princes and powerful
wizards, having magical adventures that could last for weeks or even
months at a time. Both D&D and MUDs gave participants a chance to
develop a powerful shared alternative reality, one in which physically
weak people had the chance to play at being conquering heroes and
indomitable warriors, and shy individuals could take on the mannerisms
of imperious regal lords or seductive lovers. Fantasy-games like these
began to allow people to develop online persona quite different from
their real-life personalities and identities, and interact with other peo-
ple, in real-time, using these imagined personas. Unlike lonely fantasies
in one’s bedroom, these multi-user games are social and public, enabling
other people to ‘meet’ and to interact with the invented persona, but
unlike role-playing ‘in real life’ (off the computer screen), such personas
need have no relationship at all to the actual physical body of the partic-
ipant (Turkle, 1997). Out of the MUD came forth, eventually, complex
multi-media fantasy-worlds such as Second Life, where individuals can
take on new personalities, or avatars, and publicly explore parts of their
inner lives which they might never have even known about otherwise.
26 Paedophiles in Society

As well as playing, a favourite human activity is talking, and discus-

sion boards, in the form of bulletin board systems (BBS), came in at
the very start of the internet, until they were largely overtaken by more
sophisticated methods of cyber-talking such as email, newsgroups and,
more recently, chat-rooms, blogs and tweets. BBSs began as a kind of
virtual equivalent of the typical cork-board that any organization has
up in the corridor or in the staff-room – a place to stick up photocopies
of messages, post-it notes, invitations, circulars, pictures of your new
baby or a car for sale, and general information for everyone to browse.
They were often free, run as a hobby by the ‘sysop’ (system operator)
and, because they ran over telephone-lines, they were restricted to fairly
small geographical areas, so that people tended to know one another.
However, as internet service providers (ISPs) set up cables and, later,
broadband to connect more and more computers, more people were
able to join and BBSs really took off. Pretty soon, people were able to use
BBSs to access email and Usenet. Thus, for many people, their first taste
of internet access came originally through their account on a discussion
board. Today there may be millions of BBSs (now more typically known
as discussion boards, online or community forums or message boards).
Unlike the friendly informality of most boards, some BBSs, known
as ‘elite boards’ or ‘WaReZ boards’ had a different style. They were
membership-only and were used exclusively for distributing illegal
copies of software. The largest of these operated like an exclusive club,
with members joining by invitation only. In the 1990s, bulletin boards
became probably the most common way to share child pornography.
These ‘pedo boards’ relied on individuals posting links to temporary
websites where child pornography would be available (over a matter
of hours or days) to download for free. In return, other posters were
also expected to share their own ‘collections’ of child pornography.
The subculture of ‘pedo boards’ is well-discussed in Beyond Tolerance:
Child Pornography Online (Jenkins, 2003), where it is claimed that bul-
letin boards ‘effectively serve as communal centers for the whole traffic
in child porn’ (p. 64). Law enforcement, or monitoring by the admin-
istrators, seems to have had very little impact on these boards. More
effective has been hacking activism by anti-paedophile vigilantes who
are sometimes able to post up information on the pornography users’
actual identities, to deter them.
A safer way to communicate securely is through newsgroups, which
are ‘virtual’ bulletin boards, not attached to any part of the world-
wide web and thus not accessed directly through web-pages. Unlike
bulletin boards, there is no registration process. Newsgroups started in
1979, long before the internet or the world-wide web, and are run on
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 27

separate systems to the rest of the internet. Most people access news-
groups through their ISP or email provider, such as Outlook Express,
or through an interface such as Google Groups. The earliest form was
Usenet, which still exists and hosts around 100,000 newsgroups where
individuals can post comments and share files on topics of interest. Early
on, the newsgroups were divided into eight major categories (such as
those for science or recreation) plus an additional category ‘alt.∗ ’ for
‘alternative’ topics. It is sometimes suggested that ‘alt.∗ ’ in fact stands
for ‘anarchists, lunatics and terrorists’, as this category is where most
fringe and sometimes illegal activity is found. Newsgroups identified as
‘binaries’ include sharing of photographs. Child pornography was said
to be available in various ‘alt.binaries’ groups, with individuals putting
online series of photo sessions (usually 100–150 pictures plus thumb-
nails) culled from pay-to-view sites back in the early 2000s (online
comment from Beckett, 2009). Even avoiding alt.binaries sites, it is not
difficult to find what appear to be advertisements for child pornography.

Example of a newsgroup post

alt.anime.shoujo
Description: Japanese animation targeted to young girls, and its
origins.
20 Oct 2007, 05:03
Hi there. Looking to trade pics and mpegs of young lolitas and
beastiality porn. Have hundreds of them to trade. Even have pics
of nude little boys. If you are interested in trading please email me
at Excaliber2 . . . @webtv.net
(available at http://groups.google.co.uk/group/alt.anime.shoujo/
topics?lnk=gschg, accessed 15 February 2008)

For many people interested in more mainstream topics, newsgroups

may be less exciting than the more recent technologies like internet
relay chat (IRC). IRC allows text-based conversation in real time and
thus started the whole modern ‘chat movement’. First developed by a
student in Finland in 1988, IRC took off in 1991 when news on Iraq’s
invasion of Kuwait could be found only through an IRC link, after
radio and television broadcasts were cut off. From IRC has emerged
instant messaging and chat-rooms (which may also offer web-cam to
supplement the on-screen text). Chat-rooms are provided by major orga-
nizations such as AOL. Such forms of communication tend to be fairly
28 Paedophiles in Society

free and easy, often gossipy and flirtatious. They provide the opportunity
for chatting more discreetly in ‘private rooms’, and are only lightly mod-
erated, but do not offer a particularly high level of security. Alongside
chat, there are now the burgeoning social networking sites (SNS) such as
Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and so forth, which offer further advantages
over the basic chat technology.
However, for those who wish to pursue hidden or illegal activities,
newsgroups continue to provide a much more secure means of commu-
nication. While some newsgroups are moderated by administrators (and
thus offer some check to illicit activity), it is easy to find ones which
are not. Alongside the security of sophisticated pseudonymous servers
(‘nyms’) to prevent anyone being able to track the websites visited,
it is also possible to use secure email accounts which use encryption
and ‘anonymous remailing’. An anonymous remailer is a server com-
puter which receives messages with embedded instructions on where
to send them next, and which forwards them without revealing where
they originally came from. Commercial companies providing these ser-
vices can be easily found on the internet, for example at the following
sites (accessed 15 February 2008), http://www.sendfakemail.net, www.
ultimate-anonymity.com, or www.mixminion.net. Anonymous remail-
ers may be used for postings when giving very personal and potentially
stigmatizing information, such as for example on the support group
alt.support.depression, and can also be used simply as a political state-
ment on the right to privacy and opposition to surveillance (Donath,
1999).

2. File-sharing

As well as communicating, it is clear that another major function of

cyberspace is to facilitate sharing, and in particular the sharing of files,
whether those are software, photographs, audio or music files or film.
File-sharing as a huge internet phenomenon began with Napster which,
like IRC, was the brainchild of a student, Shawn Fanning. In 1999,
Fanning designed a piece of software to combine the instant-messaging
system of IRC, the file-sharing functions of Microsoft Windows and
Unix, and the search capacities of a number of search engines, to seek
out and download music files. The Napster software was free to down-
load – and suddenly, peer-to-peer file-sharing meant that anyone could
access any music, regardless of copyright. Within a year, Napster was
prosecuted and re-launched as a fee-paying service, after the music
business objected to all this free music-sharing (Brosnan et al., 2002).
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 29

But after Napster came more sophisticated systems such as Gnutella.

This avoided a centralized system (where enquiries were made centrally
and anyone who had the file could then pass it on), to a de-centralized
process in which all the information in the system is stored, not cen-
trally, but in the ordinary users’ individual PCs (known as ‘nodes’).
Thus the information is effectively scattered throughout the system, so
that files can be searched and accessed without the need for a central
store or for any human intervention in the searching process. This is
therefore an anonymous system: because it makes use of members’ per-
sonal computer hard-drives to store and transmit files, it becomes almost
impossible to know who has sent or who has received any particular file.
The next step on from Gnutella is Freenet. Freenet is a file-sharing
system set up by its originator, Ian Clarke, in order to counter online
censorship. It uses encryption so that files are resistant to ‘traffic
sniffing’ (finding out what is being sent). Anyone can publish infor-
mation easily, without having to buy a domain-name as they would
when posting files on a website. Thus, although file-sharing originally
began as activity among friends or acquaintances, files can now eas-
ily be shared among total strangers anywhere in the world. As with
bulletin boards or newsgroups, where posters are directed to tempo-
rary websites to download files, anonymous file-sharing may also take
place outside the main system, via Freenet freesites or internet-based
websites. These are likely to be restricted access, allowing small com-
munities to share files privately. Parts of the internet such as these,
which are not accessible to the general public and are not searchable
by search engines, are known as the ‘darknet’ or the dark web. While
much of the darknet contains innocuous material such as Facebook
profiles, which are not available to search engines, it is also in the
darknet that the dissemination of child sexual abuse images can take
place. Ian Clarke does not appear concerned about this aspect of
Freenet. As he reported in his blog, after being interviewed by a
journalist:

I told him what I tell everyone, which is that like most people I wish
CP [child pornography] didn’t exist, but there are many ways to get
it other than Freenet, and I don’t think people should be denied the
freedom to communicate just because a small minority might use it
for something we don’t agree with. (Clarke, 2009: online)

Unlike ‘most people’, however, Clarke has carefully set up and main-
tains a site where child pornography is known to be distributed (Leurs,
30 Paedophiles in Society

2005). Child pornography is also, of course, not only ‘something we

don’t agree with’ but is a very serious crime. This does not faze
Clarke. Referring to an article in the British newspaper, The Guardian
(Beckett, 2009) which had suggested that the police are able to ‘get
round’ the ‘anonymity things’, Clarke responded that:

either they are mistaken, lying, or they know something about

Freenet and Tor [another encrypted site] that neither I, nor any-
one I’ve ever met or heard from, has discovered. This is extremely
unlikely, I know many of the best security people in the world,
and none of them work for the British police. (Clarke, 2009:
online)

This brief overview of the online world demonstrates the multi-

ple ways in which the internet, over a space of three decades, has
radically changed people’s recreation, communication and ability to
share information. Crucially, it has facilitated the sexualization and
exploitation of children. As Jenkins suggests, it was only the devel-
opment of bulletin boards and newsgroups in the 1980s that revived
the market for child pornography. Online file-sharing developed from
the first ‘pedo boards’ in the early 1980s which, by the 1990s, were
almost certainly the most important route for distributing such images
(Jenkins, 2003). This continues with the most recent versions of Freenet
and other parts of the ‘darknet’, which not only enable ‘the largest
online child pornography-oriented videotheque’ (quoted in Leurs, 2005:
32) but also, as Jenkins (2003) and Leurs (2005) found, provide a
forum for ‘child lovers’ to share views and justifications for their
actions.
As well as secure and anonymous file-sharing, the internet also pro-
vides anonymity through pseudonymous servers (‘nyms’) and secure
email accounts which use encryption and ‘remailing’. All these provide
the technological basis for a world in which, for the first time, those who
find children sexually attractive can exchange illegal images in almost
complete security while also discussing their sexual desires with oth-
ers. Sexualized images of children have also expanded away from direct
photography and film into other forms. The online paedophile pres-
ence has profoundly shaped the content and form of the internet and,
in turn, the internet has shaped the experiences and self-perceptions
of paedophiles. The following section explores this further, examining
how the ‘online paedophile community’ has used the internet to present
‘pro-paedophile’ arguments.
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 31

3. Wikipedia: a platform for paedophiles?

As Chapter 1 demonstrated, there is a high level of cultural

confusion over the subject of paedophilia and, from a psychoanalytical
perspective, it can be argued that one way in which this confusion
is dealt with, and to some extent resolved, is through the psycho-
logical strategies of denial, avoidance, projection and scapegoating.
We see this manifested, for example, through denial of the prevalence
of paedophiles in society and concomitant surprise when the internet is
used to facilitate the exchange of child pornography. Contrary to such
denial, I argue that paedophile desire is deeply integrated within our
social and cultural systems; thus we should in fact expect to see the
internet used in this way, and we need to confront and address that
reality. This section provides another example of paedophile visibility
on the internet, through the way in which self-identified paedophiles
have edited particular entries on the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.
Given the increasing significance of the internet as a direct, imme-
diate and immensely popular source of information, Wikipedia plays a
pivotal role in constructing and disseminating a shared understanding
of paedophilia and issues related to it. Typing the word ‘paedophilia’
into Google or other search engines regularly brings up the Wikipedia
encyclopaedia site at approximately the third entry. Google results are
presented in order of the number of hits a site receives, and therefore
a site which is consistently displayed in the top few results retrieved
by Google (which is the most popular search-engine on the internet)
demonstrates that Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on the
internet for people exploring this term, and therefore the entries pro-
vided by Wikipedia on paedophilia and related topics are likely to be
highly influential. Both the spellings ‘paedophilia’ and ‘pedophilia’ pro-
duce this result, as do the alternative terms ‘paedophile’ and ‘pedophile’.
The Wikipedia entry also provides the searcher with links to related web-
sites and to related terms within the Wikipedia site. Because the content
of Wikipedia is not fixed but is ‘open source’, the links, related terms,
entries and encyclopaedia articles change all the time, dependent on
editing.
The significance of Wikipedia as a ‘first port of call’ for informa-
tion on paedophilia has not gone unnoticed by the online paedophile
community – nor, indeed, by the online anti-paedophile community,
which has posted quotations from pro-paedophile activists, for exam-
ple on the ‘Wikipedia Campaign’ page at the anti-paedophile activist
Wikisposure.com website. In these quotations, one pro-paedophile
32 Paedophiles in Society

activist, BLueRibbon, explained that the reason for spending so much

time at Wikipedia is because the Wikipedia article on paedophilia is the
top result for that term on Google, thus clearly making it an important
platform for pro-paedophile activity.
Another poster, Student, comments on the topic of whether one
should declare oneself as a paedophile on the editors’ ‘user pages’.
Student, like BLueRibbon, explains that the most important function
Wikipedia serves for the pro-paedophile community is directly through
the paedophilia articles. What matters most, Student suggests, is that
firstly they present a positive view of paedophilia and secondly that they
have external links directly to the pro-paedophile support and activist
community. Compared to editing the paedophilia articles, ‘outing’ one-
self on the user pages is a much less important issue. Student stresses
how important it is that any paedophiles who are ‘newly daring’ to
search online terms related to paedophilia or look them up directly
in Wikipedia, in an effort to understand themselves better, are able
to get the information Student regards as unbiased and are presented
with links to the various pro-paedophile support forums or sites which
Student endorses. This applies also to the non-paedophile community,
Student suggests, as Wikipedia can provide a widely recognized channel
of authoritative information, thereby influencing the mainstream. Stu-
dent concludes his exhortations to other paedophiles who might wish
to be involved in editing Wikipedia by emphasizing that, if need be, one
should ‘lie and hide’ rather than be prevented from editing.
There are numerous articles within the Wikipedia site, constantly
changing, which could be explored in relation to the topic of
paedophilia. One in particular provides a very clear example of how
online knowledge is negotiated and how highly influential views can
be presented. The example I have chosen to explore this process is
the article on ‘child grooming’. This article is significant because it is
a clear example of a highly contested term, which does not even exist
as an entry in other encyclopedias or dictionaries. This section explores
how this article was edited, challenged and changed over a 14-month
time-span from its initial inclusion in March 2005, and finishes with a
review of what happened to this article, and other articles on the topic
of ‘paedophilia’ up to the end of 2008.
Wikipedia is a free-to-access online encyclopaedia, described in its
strap-line as ‘the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit’. A wiki is
a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit
content with few constraints. It is used for collaborative writing and
for producing user-maintained databases for searching information. The
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 33

word ‘wiki’ means ‘quick’ or ‘fast’ in Hawaiian and was coined by

Ward Cunningham, the computer programmer who created the first
wiki in 1994 and installed it on the web in 1995. This provided the
software which subsequently resulted in the design of the Wikipedia
encyclopaedia set up by Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001.
Wikipedia began as an English-language website which is also now
becoming available in a wide range of other languages. The English
language version, by 2011, had over three-and-a-half million articles.
Having only been set up in 2001, it was already attracting daily hits
running into the millions from 2004 onwards and, in 2010, attracted
some 684 million visitors, with the number of people editing English-
language articles rising from only 26 in 2001 to around 39,000 in 2011.
(All statistics and quotations in this section are taken from various
pages within Wikipedia itself, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:About.) The exponential growth of Wikipedia has been cred-
ited to its ‘democratic, all-encompassing nature’. Wikipedia has been
‘designed to cater to all groups and is dedicated to providing balanced
opinions and articles with the sole purpose of informing.’ The explicit
philosophy of wikis, as described on the Wikipedia pages, is to make it
‘easy to correct mistakes rather than making it dificult to make them’.
Wikipedia has set up a number of features to correct mistakes and allow
editing of text. This is mainly done through the capacity to track edi-
torial changes, for example through ‘Recent Changes’ pages, giving a
revision history and a ‘diff’ feature. The diff feature works by high-
lighting the changes between two revisions, thus making it possible to
quickly restore previous revisions. Wikipedia acknowledge that the open
philosophy of allowing any content to be edited by any user makes any
wiki vulnerable to what they term ‘vandalism’ (or bias). This approach –
of making damage easy to undo rather than preventing damage in the
first instance – is a form of ‘soft security’ and is consonant with the
general Wikipedia philosophy of ‘assume good faith’. The result, when
compiling an online encyclopedia accessed by many millions of people
as an authoritative source of knowledge, is to produce entries which are
an amalgam of more or less convergent views on a topic.
For many encyclopedia entries, the agreed ‘truth’ on a topic may be
regarded as relatively straightforward and non-controversial. For other
subjects, the composition of an entry by multiple authors and edi-
tors clearly becomes a much more political and contested process, and
Wikipedia have a list of over a hundred issues which are particularly
controversial, ranging from abortion to zoophilia. For any article within
Wikipedia, the capacity to track editorial changes means that to a large
34 Paedophiles in Society

extent the negotiations and deliberations as each article is constructed

and re-constructed become a transparent process. Unlike encyclope-
dias published in hard-copy, the process is visible to anyone who cares
to go through and review chronologically the often extensive edito-
rial changes (both minor and major) which have been made since the
entry was first posted. Although at times it can be convoluted to fol-
low the narrative of who made which changes, and wading through the
many tiny editorial revisions of punctuation and grammar can also be
tedious, the overall result is a fascinating document on the process of
constructing a definition of a contested concept.
As part of the editing process, as well as a record of which edits
were made, contributors frequently also leave comments on a discus-
sion page, known as a ‘talk page’. Thus the comments left as part of the
background discussion to the ‘child grooming’ article can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Child_grooming. The discussion cov-
ered in this section took place between 13 April 2005 and 8 March 2006
and during this year seven topics on child grooming were covered, from
a brief query on the UK Sexual Offences Act, and a short comment on
the clarity and structure of the article, to longer debates on NPOV (the
Wikipedia principle of always maintaining a ‘neutral point of view’),
paedophilia, moral character, pornography, and ‘AfD’ (an acronym for
‘Article for Deletion’, where someone complained ‘This article is a bunch
of fluff that either is or should just be covered elsewhere. I am contem-
plating nominating it for deletion.’ Rather than being deleted, however,
the article continued to be negotiated over and develop.
The original article on ‘child grooming’ was first posted on Wikipedia
by a user named Patrick at 11.57 on 26 March 2005. The definition given
(with hyperlinks underlined) is:

Grooming a child is befriending a child, often in the negative con-

text of preparing for the child to accept inappropriate behavior from
the other person; in addition to acts which by themselves are legal,
this may include showing pornography to the child, perhaps even
child pornography, to give the child the impression that the depicted
acts are normal. One form of grooming is ‘internet grooming’, e.g.
through online chat. In 2003 MSN Chat was restricted to better
protect children from inappropriate communication online.

The definition then goes to add, in a separate paragraph: ‘The proposed

Protection of Children and Prevention of Sexual Offences (Scotland) Bill
would make it an offence for an adult to meet a child with the intention
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 35

of later sexual abuse of that child’, and Patrick later added a link to
an academic paper by the University of Central Lancaster Cyberspace
Research Unit.
The terms highlighted in the article were linked to web-pages on
‘showing pornography to a child’ (which links to a ‘stub’ on ‘dissem-
inating pornography to a minor’ and is listed under ‘pornography’ and
‘law’); ‘child pornography’ (which is an extensive entry, listing legisla-
tion in a number of countries); ‘online chat’ (which is quite a technical
entry, with references to obscure early internet use of technology such
as MUD. It also included a link to ‘sexual abuse’ (which includes a short
entry on spousal abuse and a somewhat longer entry on child abuse).
This entry therefore already gives a sense of the particular interests of
the people who decide which definitions should be added to Wikipedia,
what each definition should contain, and what each definition should
link to.
In the 14-month period from 26 March 2005 to 20 May 2006,
there were 117 revisions of the definition of ‘child grooming’
with over forty users contributing to the revisions (these details
can be accessed via http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Child_
grooming&action= history). Many of the revisions are marked as ‘m’
for minor, and are often the same user re-visiting the entry to tidy up
the entry or add more detail. For example, Patrick makes fifteen revi-
sions to his original entry, which remains uncontested until 20 May
2005, almost two months later. However, a substantial revision is then
posted by a user named LuxOfTKGL, which is alleged online to be the
username of a British man, Darren Cresswell (see http://wikisposure.
com/Lux). LuxOfTKGL defined himself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
User:LuxOfTKGL ) as a girl-orientated paedophile. Prior to a prison sen-
tence, he was active on ‘girl lover’ websites including the (now defunct)
TKGL website. After Lux’s revision, the definition of ‘child grooming’
now reads (underlining to show hyperlinks has been removed from all
following definitions):

Grooming a child is befriending a child, building a strong trust-

ing bond.
The term is often used in the negative context of lowering the
inhibitions of the child to sexual behavior with the other person;
It must be stated however that the relationship between Grooming
and the adult act of seduction for a legitimate relationship is very
similar – such Grooming in and of itself is not necessarily harmful,
it all depends on the intentions and purposes behind the grooming.
36 Paedophiles in Society

It could be said parents groom their children to love them, and there
are many models in which building a strong trusting bond with a
child is beneficial, and indeed necessary. Therefore, Grooming a child
used as a term on its own should at least make the reader ask for
what purpose before a judgment on whether it is acceptable or not.
In addition to acts which by themselves are legal, sexual grooming
may include showing pornography to the child, perhaps even child
pornography. The type of pornography may be such as to arouse the
child, and/or an example of what the other person desires, to give the
child the impression that the depicted acts are normal.
One form of grooming is ‘internet grooming’ or ‘online grooming’,
i.e. nurturing an internet friendship, e.g. through online chat, possi-
bly resulting later in real life contact. Again, the term is often used
in the negative context mentioned above, but there are also many
situations online where positive relationships have been forged and
built out of such situations. In 2003 MSN Chat was restricted to better
protect children from inappropriate communication online.

Legal information was also provided on the UK Sexual Offences Act.

This definition remained uncontested on Wikipedia until the neutral-
ity of the article was disputed a month later on 24 June 2005. This
was flagged up by a sign showing a hand held up palm forward on a
red background, in an international ‘stop’ sign, and the comment ‘The
neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the
talk page.’ The definition was also placed under a category shown as
NPOV, relating to the contested neutrality of the point of view (POV)
of the editor of the definition. Various links were added and removed,
for example on ‘cybersex’, but the main text of the definition remained,
and on 1 September 2005 the NPOV category was removed (meaning
that the neutrality of the article was no longer disputed) even though
the text remained the same.
On 8 September a user named Jdcooper then went further and added
an additional paragraph to the definition, which was still regarded by
Wikipedia as neutral:

Some critics have commented on the dangers of seeing the child’s age
as the sole criteria [sic] for their vulnerability and role in the relation-
ship. There have been numerous cases of a minor effectively seducing
a reluctant older person, a situation for which the law makes no
allowance, assuming instead that everyone under the age of consent
is vulnerable, immature, and always devoid of responsibility. Critics
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 37

have described this view as naive and erroneous, though this same
argument rages throughout the discussion of any activity for which
there is a age [sic] of individual sovereignty.

On 14 September the NPOV category was reinstated, and the paragraph

on minors seducing reluctant older persons was removed. The NPOV
category remained, as various minor revisions were made and the def-
inition of ‘child grooming’ was intermittently linked, and un-linked,
to categories such as ‘friendship’, ‘pedophilia’ and ‘child sexual abuse’.
Not until 12 October was the NPOV category again removed, but the
definition still remained substantially the same as before:

Grooming a child is befriending a child by building a strong, trusting

bond, though the term is most often used negatively to refer to an
act of lowering a perceivedly inhibitory attitude of a child regarding
sexual behavior with an adult.
Grooming in and of itself is not necessarily harmful, it all depends
on the intentions and purposes behind the grooming. In addition
to acts which by themselves are legal, sexual grooming may include
acts such as showing pornography to the child, perhaps even child
pornography. The pornography may be used to arouse the child, or
as an example of what the other person desires, to give the child the
impression that the depicted acts are normal or common.
One form of grooming is ‘Internet grooming’ or ‘online grooming’,
that is, nurturing an Internet friendship, usually by means of online
chat, which may later result in ‘real life’ contact. Again, the term
is often used in the negative context mentioned above, but there
are also many situations online where positive relationships have
been forged and built out of such communications. In 2003 MSN
Chat was restricted to better protect children from what they called
‘inappropriate communication’.

The information on the UK Sexual Offences Act also remained in place,

as did the links to both the categories ‘child sexual abuse’ and ‘friend-
ship’. On 1 November the befriending element of the ‘child grooming’
definition was strengthened, and the whole entry was substantially
enlarged to incorporate material on sexual grooming and online sex-
ual grooming as well as information on the UK Sexual Offences Act.
This expanded definition was provided by a user named Rookiee
Revolyob (which is alleged online to be the username of an American,
38 Paedophiles in Society

Damien Cole, see http://wikisposure.com/Rookiee), who describes him-

self (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rookiee) as a ‘pedosexual and
boylover’ (his username ‘Revolyob’ is ‘boylover’ backwards) and an
activist in the boylover and girllover communities. At this point the
basic definition of ‘child grooming’ in Wikipedia, which still had no
NPOV category at this point, was:

Child grooming is the practice of instilling foundation of moral

character within a child. It is often accomplished by forming an inter-
personal relationship between an adult and a child, building a strong,
trusting bond, thereby setting the stage for mentorship.
The term has been held in both negative and positive light,
depending on the user’s context. It has recently grown a primarily
negative connotation, most often when referring to adults who abuse
their position of authority and trust to mold the child’s views as their
own. In this context, it is often compared to brainwashing. In this
usage of the term, instilling values which society considers positive is
not commonly viewed as ‘grooming’; only values negatively held by
society and/or for personal gain.

However, this definition lasted less than one day before being replaced
by the earlier style of definition which had lasted broadly unchanged
since first being posted by Patrick in March. Again, categories under
which to classify ‘child grooming’ continued to shift, and ‘interpersonal
relationships’ was added as a category on 3 November.
The NPOV category was added for the third time on 3 November and
a further category, Accuracy Disputes, was also added for the first time,
but these were both removed again by 9 November, and the definition
had been adjusted again to remove some of the more positive connota-
tions of grooming. At this point a term, ‘chickenhawk’, was introduced
into the definition, posted on 9 November, removed on 13 November,
and reinstated again the same day. Various entries were made by dif-
ferent people, including a user named ‘Psychedelicfrog’ who stated on
his user-page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Psychedelicfrog) that
‘Psychedelicfrog is a male boylover and advocate for NPOV in boylove-
related articles. His goal is not to spread pro-pedophile propoganda [sic],
but to ensure that the topic is represented in a fair and accurate way.’
On 30 November, eight months after the original definition had first
been posted, a substantial revision was made by a user named Rainbird,
re-presenting the original definition as a ‘neologism’ and providing a
new definition of ‘child grooming’ as ‘common usage’ which read:
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 39

The phrase ‘Child grooming’ has seen many varied kinds of usages
over the course of the past several decades. In the 1970s and 1980s,
grooming a child on the one hand, meant quite literally – keep-
ing an eye out for a child’s hygeine [sic] issues. On the other hand
it meant preparing him for his future. Children were groomed to
become artists, or doctors, or manual laborers. Parents had a vision
for their child’s future – and they made sure to find that child men-
tors, and give him or her experiences which would lead him on that
pathway in life . . . [ellipsis in original]

The rest of the entry remained broadly the same. This definition was
not disputed, and a new web-link, to Perverted-Justice.com (a volunteer
anti-paedophile computer watch-dog agency), was added in December.
Given the positive connotations of ‘grooming’ given in this definition,
it could be suggested that the Perverted-Justice web-link may have been
added to alert chat-room users to the fact that some are watched by anti-
paedophile volunteers. No other, more mainstream, child protection
sites were linked.
On 22 December, the definition reverted to the earlier style:

Child grooming is a somewhat euphamistic [sic] term for the devel-

opment of a relationship with a child by an adult for the purpose
of engaging in sexual activities with the child. The ‘groomer’ is
sometimes refered [sic] to as a ‘chickenhawk’.
In addition to acts which by themselves are legal, sexual grooming
may include acts such as showing pornography to the child, perhaps
even child pornography. The pornography may be used to arouse the
child, as an example of what the adult desires or to give the child the
impression that the depicted acts are normal or common.
One form of grooming is ‘Internet grooming’ or ‘online grooming’,
that is, nurturing an Internet friendship, usually by means of online
chat, which may later result in ‘real life’ contact. In 2003 MSN Chat
was restricted to better protect children from what they called “inap-
propriate communication”. Yahoo! and the New York State attorney
general’s office agreed in October 2005 that Yahoo! will remove and
bar user-created chat rooms with names that promoted sex between
minors and adults.

Between December 2005 and May 2006, the definition became

increasingly longer and with more legal content, but there appears
to have been less online discussion of the issues and the NPOV and
40 Paedophiles in Society

Accuracy Disputes categories do not appear to have been used. Con-

tributors to the definition at this point included Clayboy (http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Clayboy) who had this to say on his user-page:

A proud member of the underground cabal of pedophiles who edit

wikipedia (UCPWEW) (yes, I am being sarcastic, to be painfully clear)
I am not here to manipulate content to skew it until it fits my per-
verted, wrong and harmful view of the world, nor am I here to meet
boys. I am here because I believe strongly in the neutral point of view
policy and I want to watchdog the articles pertaining to the boylove
community or pedophilia at large. In my view, this is badly needed
because most people who edit these articles are motivated by strong
feelings and often blind hate, and not calm, proven facts and neutral
wording such as they should be. [The term ‘underground cabal’ was
given a web-link to an article by Perverted-Justice.com.]

By the end of May 2006, the definition of ‘child grooming’ was given as:

This article is about the act of grooming a child for sex. For grooming
to improve appearance or hygiene, see Personal grooming.
Child grooming, in the context of this article, refers to actions
deliberately undertaken with the aim of befriending a child, in order
to lower a child’s sexual inhibitions or establish an intimate friend-
ship in preparation to the eventual introduction of sexual activities
with the child. The phrase ’child grooming’ can also mean preparing
a child for a future activity or role outside of a sexual context. This
can include educating the child, ensuring the child knows how to
behave in a social setting as well as other benign activities essential
for normal child development. This definition is outside of the con-
text of this article. The act of grooming a child sexually may include
activities that are legal in and of themselves, as well as acts which
are illegal in some jurisdictions, such as showing pornography to the
child by which the groomer may seek to arouse the child sexually,
arouse his/her sexual curiosity, or to persuade the child that sexual
activity is normal between adults and children. Sexual grooming of
children also occurs on the Internet. The adult’s goals may include
online sexual activity – in chat rooms, for example – or meeting the
child in person.
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 41

This definition was followed by expanded legal information, now

covering Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.
In December 2009, when I last visited the ‘Child Grooming’ article,
it remained active and had expanded considerably, but now resembled
much more what one might expect from such a topic. Grooming to
improve appearance or hygiene has been removed to a different article
and there is no mention of mentoring or of children seducing adults
Instead, there is a clear overview of sexual grooming behaviours, a
paragraph on internet grooming, notes on criminal codes in various
English-language countries, and references and external links to sites
including child protection sites. The focus of the article has thus moved
clearly and unambiguously to a child protection perspective (although
there is also a link to a lengthy article on ‘pederasty’).
As noted earlier, alongside the edits being made to the article, there
was also a fairly lively discussion going on behind the scenes on the ‘talk
page’. For example, regarding ‘NPOV’ (the policy of always holding a
’neutral point of view’) the question of what the article should cover was
mainly debated by two editors, LuxOfTKGL and Lepeu1999. LuxOfTKGL
started the discussion by commenting:

The article seemed severely biased to one side of the situation. The
term ‘child grooming’ is not descriptive of the act that has taken place
later, nor the intentions of the ‘groomer’. Therefore, I felt it proper
to add in the counter balance to this to state reasonably that other
forms of ‘grooming’ are socially acceptable, and indeed beneficial.

To which Lepeu1999 responded:

I disagree with the above. Your rational [sic] appears to be nothing

more than an attempt to be disingenuous with respect to the entire
concept. Given your public profile, I question whether or not you
have an agenda here.

As the argument continued, another contributor suggested:

Yes, I’m afraid that I, too, must take issue with this article. I feel that
its tone, perspective, and very definitions are biased, or at very least
misleading. Grooming is not synonymous with befriending, other-
wise it would simply be called befriending. . . . It is my suggestion that
this article be rewritten with a more accurate and neutral perspective.
42 Paedophiles in Society

The discussion continued, with increasingly personal comments being

levelled as edits were made and removed. When someone remarked that
child grooming is a felony, Rookiee snapped back, ‘Which felony is
‘child grooming’ specifically? . . . there is no statute in the US that I’m
aware of that says ‘grooming’ is illegal. That’s a UK term, to be sure of.
And thank God, the UK doesn’t reign over the US anymore.’
Rookiee also took exception to the phrase ‘the predatory tactic used
by pedophiles’, retorting, ‘I contest that. I’m a pedophile, and I’ve never
done that to anyone. That statement is biased and ignorant. It should
read “For the predatory tactic used by child abusers” at the very least.’
When another editor argued, ‘Not everyone who sexually abuses a child
is a pedophile. But child grooming is a much more involved, premedi-
tated effort than simply molesting a kid. It means actively cultivating a
relationship for the ultimate purpose of sex. Who but a pedophile would
do so?, Rookiee’s response was ‘Aaaannnd you would know this, how?;)
The way you’re making it sound, either you’ve done it, or you’ve had it
done to you.’
Throughout the year under study, what is perhaps most interesting is
the information which is absent from the article and also which never
gets mentioned in the discussion. For example, only one reference is
made on the discussion page to another online dictionary, the Free
Dictionary, where the two main definitions of ‘grooming’ are ‘activity
leading to skilled behavior’ and ‘the activity of getting dressed, putting
on clothes’. No other primary sources external to Wikipedia appear to be
examined, although other online encyclopaedia and dictionary entries,
had they been searched, would have yielded similar results to the Free
Dictionary. Wikipedia was the only online encyclopaedia at this point
which contained an article on ‘child grooming’.
Again, it is interesting that nowhere in the extended definitions and
discussions related to this encyclopaedia entry is there any informa-
tion given on the development of this term as a specific practice, or
references to its first use in the media. For example, the Wikipedia
entry could usefully have made reference to the Tackling Sexual Grooming
Conference, held in London on 29 September 2003, where the keynote
speech given by Will Gardner of Childnet International made the point
that ‘The new offence of ‘Grooming’ . . . was born from a Home Office
Task Force on Internet Safety’ (Childnet: Gardner, 2003). Another use-
ful reference on the difficulties surrounding the derivation and meaning
of the term was provided a few months later when the British Psycho-
logical Society made the following statement on its website to promote
research findings presented on 23 March 2004:
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 43

Over the last few years the concept of sexual grooming is one which
has come into common parlance and from May 2004 it was included
as an offence under the Sexual Offences Act.
Yet two psychologists have presented research suggesting that sex-
ual grooming is still something which both scientists and policy
makers have yet to accurately define. . . . As the researchers tried to
plot the development and acceptance of the term they found a sur-
prising lack of empirical or theoretical research into the area. This, the
researchers maintain, has meant that the range of behaviours referred
to as sexual grooming is still not well defined. . . . High profile cases in
2004, such as the US Marine who contacted a young girl over the
internet before abducting her, have made ‘sexual grooming’ a widely
used term, particularly in relation to the activities of strangers over
the internet. The researchers believe this has implications for parents,
carers and teachers who may misunderstand the range of behaviours
attached to ‘sexual grooming’ and for the effectiveness of future leg-
islation, which may be reduced if the public are unable to identify
the threat properly. (British Psychological Society, 2004: online)

References such as this would have contextualized the Wikipedia entry

on ‘child grooming’ more clearly. Such unacknowledged omissions in
the article and discussions demonstrate the implicit bias, and ‘point of
view’, of the contributors at this time, who appear throughout most
of the fourteen months under study to have been more interested in
checking out what the legal status of certain activities might be, than in
discussing effective mechanisms to protect children.
This ‘point of view’ among some Wikipedia editors did not go entirely
unnoticed at the time.

4. ‘Pro-paedophiles’ and ‘anti-paedophiles’ online

In response to ‘pro-paedophile’ advocacy and activity such as the

Wikipedia editing, there has been a rise in explicitly ‘anti-paedophile’
activity online. The first challenge to Wikipedia’s neutrality, or the
‘Wikipedophilia’ debate, began on 12 December 2005 with a post-
ing claiming that Wikipedia was a ‘Gathering for Internet Predators’.
This was originally posted by a group called Parents for the Online
Safety of Children (POSC) and appeared on the Perverted Justice
site, among others. It was this posting which originally claimed, as
Clayboy ironically noted, that there was an ’underground cabal’ of
paedophiles on Wikipedia trying to make it a distribution centre
44 Paedophiles in Society

for pro-paedophile propaganda. The posting by POSC attempted to

‘out’ a number of editors, including four self-defined paedophiles.
Claiming that Wikipedia allowed paedophiles to edit pages and view
the IP addresses of children freely, POSC recommended that parents
and schools should block children’s access to Wikipedia. Wikipedia
responded rapidly to these claims with comments from an administra-
tor named Linuxbeak (Alex Schenck), who pointed out various errors
in the posting. Linuxbeak concurred that Wikipedia did indeed allow
paedophile editors to edit paedophilia-related articles, but stressed the
encyclopaedia’s stance as neutral and unbiased and stated that neither
would Wikipedia tolerate an anti-paedophile position to be adopted.
The rebuttal concluded that it was not the job of Wikipedia to tell its
users what is right or wrong, but only to avoid illegality. In a lengthy
letter posted on the Wikipedia website, Linuxbeak robustly defended
Wikipedia’s integrity:

To whoever I am talking to, please understand why I am so angry. I’m

not against your cause; in fact, I’m totally for it. Pedophiles need to
be kept in check and away from children. However, you have falsely
insinuated that one of our administrators is pro-pedophile and in fact
supported by this supposed pedophile underground. You couldn’t be
any further from the truth! (Wikipedia, 2005: online)

The argument continued and in June 2007 the founder of Perverted

Justice, Xavier von Erck (also known as Phillip John Eide: posted
on Evilvigilante, 2007) set up the Wikisposure website to investigate
paedophile activists posting on Wikipedia and other sites. Since then,
various changes have taken place at Wikipedia. For example, Rookiee’s
user-page was taken down and he was blocked on 21 September 2006
for using his page for advocacy; the user-page of LuxofTKGL seems
to have been un-used since 26 September 2006; Clayboy’s user-page
was taken down on 7 March 2007 for ‘activity detrimental to the
activity of Wikipedia’; and an arbitration case was filed against the
fourth named editor, Zanthalon, on 15 March 2007. These actions have
removed four of the most outspoken pro-paedophile activists who were
editing Wikipedia. In addition, anti-paedophile activists have edited
new articles for Wikipedia, on ‘anti-paedophile activism’ and other
topics, to counter the pro-paedophile articles still extant. However,
Xavier von Erck (as username XavierVE), the founder of Perverted Jus-
tice, in a curious twist, was himself then blocked, apparently for too
many contentious edits: his user-page was blocked as from 4 March
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 45

2008. (Parenthetically, Xavier also apparently behaved contentiously

in another area: with regard to my own research, he claimed in 2010
to have submitted ‘over a dozen’ fake questionnaire responses in an
attempt to ‘poison the well’ of my Minor-Attracted Adults Daily Lives
research data in 2006–08. Another individual, Stitches77 – who may
possibly be Xavier in another guise – made a similar allegation in 2009.
However, when asked formally to provide evidence for this assertion or
to point to examples of false data used by me, Xavier declined and has at
no point offered any proof. Knowing Xavier’s propensity to publicize his
achievements if he does manage to fool someone, this suggests strongly
that no such data were submitted and none were used.)
While the presence of self-defined paedophiles on Wikipedia fluctu-
ates, elsewhere online there are more stable sites which allow individuals
to debate topics openly and share their feelings. As noted earlier,
paedophile activists such as BlueRibbon are very aware that Wikipedia
provides ‘the top result’ for the term ‘paedophilia’ on Google, ‘making
it an important platform’. Any English-speaker wishing to learn about
paedophilia (or related terms such as pederasty) is able to click through
from a search engine to Wikipedia and then, through the external links
(depending on the currents edits on Wikipedia), on to ‘boy-lover’ or
‘girl-lover’ sites which are legal and easily accessible. Thus, in two or
three clicks, interested individuals are usually able to find themselves
on websites where ‘pro-paedophile’ arguments are put forward.
As the phenomenon of ‘pro-paedophile’ websites has grown, so have
the number of ‘anti-paedophile’ or ‘vigilante’ sites which track and chal-
lenge anyone advocating ‘paedophile rights’ or seeking sex with minors
contacted online. The most successful of these sites is Perverted Justice,
the strapline of which runs, ‘Welcome to the most aggressive and inno-
vative anti-pedophile organisation online’. Their stated aim is ‘exposing,
profiling, fighting and aiding to arrest and convict pedophiles and
predators across the entire world’. Since 2003, they have been carefully
monitoring and investigating the most outspoken paedophile online
activists. At the same time, they also have volunteers who pose as chil-
dren (aged between 12 and 15 years old) in chat-rooms. The volunteers
do not initiate any sexual chat but wait for adults soliciting for sex. If an
adult suggests a meeting, they provide an address to meet at and also
collect telephone and other details from the adult (invariably a man).
In this way, at least 544 men have been successfully prosecuted for sex
offences against minors. Some of these men have arrived (for what they
believed to be a meeting with a young child alone at a house) carrying
items including guns, knives, rope, handcuffs and a gag.
46 Paedophiles in Society

It is clear, therefore, that there are a number of both ‘pro-paedophile’

and ‘anti-paedophile’ sites now existing on the internet. While the
aim of the ‘anti-paedophile’ activity is to shut down sites advocating
tolerance of paedophilia, identify and harass paedophile activists and
prevent the online grooming and subsequent sexual abuse of children,
it is less obvious, at times, what the aim of the ‘pro-paedophile’ commu-
nity may be. The Canadian sociologist, Pierre Tremblay, has researched
and theorized the role of online communities in the lives of paedophiles
and he comments:

Because law enforcement agencies pursue practical goals (arresting

individuals) web sites have mainly been understood as providing new
instrumental opportunities for paedophiles or hebephiles to reach
juveniles and commit (or attempt to commit) offences. However, the
most significant and long-term implication of this new mass medium
of communication is that it allows individual paedophiles to partici-
pate in the development of an authentic subculture and ‘community’
and to perceive themselves belonging to ‘a social movement’. The
obvious implication is that a stable forum for in-group intimate,
albeit virtual, contacts between individuals normally trapped by an
unshareable secret will have lasting effects on their commitment and
ultimately on the incidence of age of consent offences. (Tremblay,
2002: 32)

(The term ‘hebephiles’, which Tremblay uses, refers to those who are
sexually attracted to minors who have reached adolescence but who are
still below the age of consent. Some people regard this as a subset of the
more general category of paedophiles.) Tremblay is here suggesting that
online communities are likely to work as deviance amplifiers, by encour-
aging participants to become ‘embedded in a deviant quasi-community
or social movement’ in which the influence of the peer-group will
support the development of ‘deviant careers’ (Tremblay, 2002: ii). The
online paedophile community, in this view, will act to encourage
paedophiles to ‘violate basic social norms’. This may not be entirely
straightforward, however. Tremblay concludes:

. . . a sociological investigation of the current web-driven paedophilia

subculture should increase our understanding of paedophiles and
could provide a useful strategy for overcoming the inherent self-
selection sampling biases shaping conventional clinical and correc-
tional research. It could assess the extent to which this socialization
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 47

process (individual deviants becoming embedded in a collective set

of exchanges) affects not only their motivation to act out but also
their ways of acting out and even their motivation to cease or reduce
the frequency and the seriousness of their violations. To the extent
that age of consent offenders interact among themselves, they may
learn from each other new ‘tricks’ or discover new ‘opportunities’
(an ‘enhancing effect’). But, at the same time, they may also define
for themselves a new set of norms about the ‘appropriate’ rules of
courtship and about the appropriate settings for engaging in erotic
interaction with juveniles (‘a structuring effect’). Moreover, individu-
als engaging in age of consent offences may also realize that they are
pursuing an altogether ‘impossible dream’. As they persevere, they
are likely to be disappointed by the juveniles that they have inter-
acted with (the theme of ‘betrayal’ and the associated theme of the
‘unreliability’ of juveniles were recurrent topics in our interviews).
They may also be disappointed by the callousness or insensitivity of
other paedophiles they happen to exchange with (another recurrent
theme). As they attempt to actualize their attraction, the personal
costs they impose on themselves and on their personal entourage
(including the juveniles themselves), may trigger a self-reflection
process that will commit them into abstinence. (Tremblay, 2002: 33)

Here, therefore, Tremblay is raising the possibility that the online

paedophile community, while it may enhance the potential for behav-
ing sexually with children, may also, on the other hand, have the capac-
ity to reduce that potential by encouraging alternative social norms and
self-reflection. My research supports that assertion and suggests that
there are indeed cases where the ‘pro-paedophile’ sites can help indi-
viduals to maintain a law-abiding lifestyle (Goode, 2009), even if only
through letting off steam, by having a forum to share otherwise-hidden
knowledge about oneself. As one research respondent explained:

An interactive message forum like [named site] provides the means

for a community to develop, for GLers [girl-lovers] to interact with
each other, question each other, discuss ideas, form bonds, provide
mutual support. Also, of course, there are the related sites in other
languages: [another site] for French-speaking GLers, and a number
of BL [boy-lover] forums in other languages too. (’William’, 2007,
research data)

Another respondent commented, ‘We have our own language, our own
customs, our own websites. That’s a community.’ (‘Gus’, 2007, research
48 Paedophiles in Society

data). While we may be fairly sanguine about adults coming across and
joining such communities, and being able to take what they find with a
pinch of salt, it seems that ‘pro-paedophile’ sites also attract people with
less life experience who are therefore more open to taking on board an
uncritical acceptance of such advocacy:

These websites have helped me to understand my attractions to a

greater extent, and to understand my place as a MAA [minor-attracted
adult] in modern society. (‘Ed’ (aged 17), 2007, research data)

I am 15 years old. After coming across this site through a random

google search, I found myself entranced and quickly read through
your entire story on the main page. I moved on to Essays after, then
Testimonies, and finally the mailbag. I have to say that this is one of
the most enlightening sites I have ever found on the internet. It trans-
forms the dark, taboo world of Pedophilia into something wonderful
and sweet – not to be ashamed of. I actually think I am proud to
be the way I am, thanks to this site and the views expressed on it.
I don’t feel so alone anymore. . . . I know, now, there are more like me
out there. I know that there are people, girls like me, willing to lis-
ten to this and not call me a pervert or whatever else close-minded
insults others may throw at me. I know who I am – a boylover. I am
not ashamed. (‘Ginni’, undated: online)

Belonging to a marginalized community may certainly encourage

behaviour which is ‘deviant’ from the mainstream. Research on inter-
net newsgroups for marginalized and stigmatized sexual groups suggests
that concealing a stigmatized identity paradoxically brings it continu-
ally to mind (McKenna & Bargh, 1998), thus making that aspect of the
self even more central to one’s self-identity. Consequently, the central-
ity of this self-identity makes self-disclosure to trusted and empathic
others even more pressing, in order to feel a sense of worth and accep-
tance. Newsgroups and other sites where people can ‘post’ and ‘chat’
validate such identities and, by doing so, they can make it more likely
that they will ‘encourage real-life behavior consistent with these iden-
tities’ (McKenna & Bargh, 1998: 693). This may mean engaging in
criminal behaviour: more benignly, it may simply mean that individ-
uals, supported by the online community, are able to ‘come out’ to
family and friends in real life and disclose what had previously been
too embarrassing and taboo to speak about.
At the same time, the online community may also set up norms
which channel and set a context for desires. These norms may be
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 49

implicit and enforced through informal group approbation or disappro-

bation – whether posts on certain topics are picked up and discussed
or ignored. The norms may also be more explicit. For example, on the
(now-defunct) Human Face of Pedophilia website (one of the most influ-
ential ‘pro-paedophile’ websites until its demise in 2007), there were
posted a Manifesto (dated 2005) and Living with Pedophliia: A Practical
Guide, copyrighted to Lindsay Ashford, 2004. These set out expectations
for behaviour, such as ‘channel your sexuality, avoid child pornography,
stay within the law’ as well as arguments for a ‘civil liberties’ approach
to paedophiles.
There are a number of sites online which hold an explicitly ‘non-
contact’ position and where it seems to be the case that no illegal
material is displayed or exchanged (or the site would rapidly be closed
down). On these sites posters will, for example, chat about children
they know or have seen and post wistful descriptions of ‘girl moments’
or ‘boy moments’, often describing a transient glimpse of an attractive
child during everyday life in a way which links to longing and fantasy
but not, it would seem, to actual sexual contact. On the ‘girl-lover’ sites
particularly there is a strong sense of idolizing little girls: one of the
most popular ‘girl-lover’ sites on the internet was headed ‘A celebration
of the splendor of little girls’ as discussed in (Goode, 2008b). In psy-
choanalytic terms, this is another example of splitting and projection.
One could describe this as the ‘Madonna/whore’ dichotomy taken to
the extreme, where everything that is felt to be precious, pure, spiri-
tual, beautiful, chaste and good is invested in the idealized image of the
‘little girl’, fetishizing a certain form of femininity – playful, nurturing,
undemanding and protective of the adult male. In talking about ‘girl
moments’, it is noticeable how each tiny gesture becomes imbued with
intense meaning: she touched my fingers for a moment, she sat next to
me, she brushed against me, I caught a glimpse of her, she smiled at me.
One man wrote to me about his feelings for a little girl he knew:

[When I was very unhappy] this little girl would perceive exactly
when I felt most ’low’ and would come and give me a little hug,
or hold my hand – and make me feel so much better. . . . On one occa-
sion, she was going to be away . . . so she decided to lend me [a cuddly
toy], so that I could still sort of ’keep in touch with her’ through him!
I kept [the toy] in my pocket the whole time, and whenever I needed
to, I could hold him and feel close to her!
[Several years later, she occasionally emailed.] She ended the first
mail she sent me with a very sweet ’PS’, which made me almost die
50 Paedophiles in Society

on the spot. I have it printed out here in a drawer by my bed, and

it’s a rare day when I don’t read that particular mail before I go to
sleep. The thing which frustrated me the most was definitely not a
physical frustration, though yes, there was that. But that is fairly easy
to ’deal with’. The ache inside me that drove me mad was the sim-
ple fact that I could never tell her those three words: ‘I love you.’
(‘William’, 2007, research data)

Another man described to me how, maybe forty years ago:

A girl of about four or five years old skated up to me and took

my hand and claimed me as her partner for the dance, and we
skated hand-in-hand for about ten minutes. At the end of the dance,
I wanted to swing her up in my arms and kiss her and hug her and
hold her, and go away from the crowd and do whatever else we
wanted to do together. I didn’t have a clear idea what I wanted to
do. Of course I also wanted to skate with her some more. But I didn’t
get to do anything. (‘Eustace’, 2007, research data)

One ten-minute event, forty years ago, endlessly ruminated on: this
gives a flavour of many of the ‘girl moments’. Similarly, an individual
sexually attracted to pubescent boys explained to me about his sexual
fantasies:

[Sexual fantasies about boys were] the backdrop to a phenomenal and

completely overwhelming feeling of failure and the deepest misery,
hurt, isolation and fear that undermined the very value of my life
itself . . . [When the boy] becomes the next Roy Keane then everyone
else will say that my life and existence added to all that is positive
and people would love me for it and I would be truly happy and
have a purpose in this life. . . . The qualities I admired in boys, I now
feel I’ve rediscovered within myself. I’ve come to the realisation that
the transition to adulthood was not to leave them behind. They were
merely buried under so much fear, confusion and pain. I feel I’ve
now won back my sense of wonder, curiosity, questioning, optimism
about the future, kindness, compassion, playfulness and wanting to
do plain old good! (‘John’, 2008, personal communication)

What John appears to demonstrate here, as with the ‘girl-lovers’

celebrating ‘the spendor of little girls’, is the splitting of human expe-
rience into everything which is positive being located in the child and
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 51

everything which is negative (failure, misery, hurt, isolation, fear, con-

fusion, pain) in the adult. Only when John, through years of reflection,
was able to re-integrate positive aspects back into himself was he able to
let go of obsessional ‘boy-love’.
Before he reached that point, John described the relationship between
his own interior fantasies and what he found in the online ‘boy-love’
community:

[The fantasies became] the basis of the creation of the garden of Eden
I call ’Boy World.’ A normal heterosexual’s fantasy would last all of 5
minutes and end in an orgasm. My fantasy about boys was starting
to last 2 full hours if not more. . . .
Boy World was a sandy beach with blue skies and sunshine. It was
filled with fun, laughter and games. . . . I’d give boys personalities,
he’d be into Liverpool and so would I and we’d talk away about
football. Sometimes another boy would be into Manchester United
and we’d have a little banter going back and forth. Sometimes he
was into computer games and we’d debate which is better – the super
Nintendo or the Sega Megadrive – and which games were better. We’d
become friends and he’d slowly, through our conversations and fun
activities, feel comfortable enough with me to start to ask me about
sex and if I had ever ’done it’ with a girl. I’d always find a way to turn
the conversation to the point where I’d end up giving him a back
massage or foot massage. There was no rush to do anything in Boy
World. It would skip forward in time and the boy would be asking
for another massage and I’d cheekily suggest with a smile that there
was another place on the human body that’s very nice to massage as
well and I’d wait until a grin crossed his face as he realized what I was
getting at.
There were so many scenarios played out, in so many places with so
many conversations. Had I in later life ever gone down the ’groomer’
path then this is where I would have been trained for it.
. . . If you want to see what Boy World looks like then just go to the
‘boy love’ community. It’s the online representation of Boy World.
At its core is an archive of boy pictures. On the beach, in water parks,
everywhere. All smiling and having fun with blue skies and sunshine.
Around these pictures are the ideologies, beliefs and thoughts that
structure this world. (‘John’, 2008, personal communication)

While activists such as Perverted Justice and commentators such

as Eichenwald (2006) have seen ‘pro-paedophile’ websites only as
52 Paedophiles in Society

promoting sexual contact with children and therefore as unremittingly

negative, my research has suggested that they are also able to function as
supporting a view which ‘makes sense’ of paedophiles as not predatory
or evil, but as ordinary human beings with an involuntary sexual attrac-
tion which can be controlled, just as any other desire can be controlled.
For example, one respondent wrote about where he found support as a
‘non-contact’ paedophile:

Internet support boards are currently the only place I feel comfortable
talking about it. . . . Wikipedia helped me discover that there were peo-
ple who believed that attraction to children was not evil, and that the
predatory paedophiles in popular culture were not necessarily accu-
rate depictions. [Now-defunct website] taught me a lot about who
these people are . . . [the online paedophile community] is the sole
outlet for any thoughts I have relating to this part of myself. (‘Kristof’,
2007, research data)

One respondent (‘Louis’) summed it up, when he discovered the online

‘pro-paedophile’ community: ‘It was such a relief just to discover that
I was not alone in loving boys but having no desire to do anything
socially / sexually harmful to them.’ Thus, the online community may
help to relieve loneliness and frustration, build a sense of trust and sup-
port and, at best, provide a positive self-identity which can buttress
against law-breaking. Perhaps the most intriguing suggestion comes
from John:

The only good thing about the boy love community I can think of is
that it can act as a sand trap to slow some people down. If a [preda-
tory paedophile] finds his way on to the boy love community, he
will suddenly find a lot of different opinions and points of view that
I think will have the effect of slowing that person down quite con-
siderably. . . . In the end it could be that the boy love community’s
existence has saved as many children as it is responsible for abusing.
Not all good but then not all bad either, just a generally ineffective
psychology that has a lot of confusion and therefore unable to deal
with reality. In saying this I am not defending the boy love commu-
nity, it’s just if I were society I would not be so quick to judge! (‘John’,
2008, personal communication)

These quotations help to undermine the view of the online ‘pro-

paedophile’ community as a homogenous group sharing identical views,
 Encountering Paedophiles on the Internet 53

and can begin to highlight, and contribute to, dissenting voices within
the paedophile community which argue for a genuinely ethical and
law-abiding stance to children and sexuality. (More details on the
international English-language online ‘pro-paedophile’ community are
provided in Goode, 2009.)

5. Conclusion

This chapter has sought to demonstrate not only that paedophiles have
been involved from the start in shaping the internet, but also that
the internet is radically re-shaping the paedophile experience. Over the
last few years, paedophiles have become more vocal in society, as the
internet provides hitherto-unobtainable opportunities for paedophiles
to contact one another and for the anonymous dissemination of
information to potentially millions of users.
The analysis of the construction of the ‘child grooming’ Wikipedia
article over a 14-month time-span highlighted how ‘sexual activity
between an adult and child’ either is or is not ‘normal and/or accept-
able’, as one editor expressed it. This debate hinged not on illegality
but on normativity or (potential) social acceptability, as a series of
self-defined paedophile editors worked to build an implicit case that
adult–child sexual activity falls within a continuum of normal human
behaviour. This article provides us with an encapsulated moment of
cultural knowledge-construction – a set of freeze-framed images – as
one concept, ‘child grooming’, enters popular knowledge and negoti-
ates its place within the cultural discourse. What is ‘grooming’? Is it
like ‘friendship’? Like ‘abuse’? Like ‘mentoring’? Like ‘parenting’? Like
‘seduction’? Like being a ‘chickenhawk’? Like ‘brainwashing’? Linking
the new concept to pre-existing concepts, whether positive or negative,
allows ‘grooming’ to fit within existing models and become part of a
cultural resource of ‘common knowledge’.
Similarly, how we understand the discourses presented in online ‘pro-
paedophile’ communities helps us to shape and make sense of social
and cultural understandings of ‘the paedophile’ and adult sexual attrac-
tion to children. The following chapter continues this exploration of
the cultural construction of knowledge, and the topic will be revisited
in other chapters also, as the book seeks to demonstrate, not only
that paedophiles exist as an integral part of society, but also that
‘pro-paedophile’ attitudes and beliefs lie deep at the heart of culture.
3
Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’
of Paedophilia

Introduction

Chapter 1 introduced the idea that, although paedophiles irrefutably

exist within society, there is a great sense of confusion and bewilder-
ment over how to respond to them – and what to do about child
sexual abuse. There is a startling mismatch between the rhetoric –
which is generally loudly hostile – and the reality, which tends to
be far more muted. The examples of Michael Jackson and Roman
Polanski in particular have demonstrated how, even where the circum-
stantial evidence seems highly convincing or indeed (in the case of
Polanski) the perpetrator admits guilt, those around the alleged or actual
abuser continue to support and excuse his behaviour. The Hollywood
actress Whoopi Goldberg, for example, famously exonerated Polanski’s
crime by characterizing it as not ‘rape-rape’. In an interview she
stated:

I know it wasn’t rape-rape . . . All I’m trying to get you to under-

stand, is when we’re talking about what someone did, and what they
were charged with, we have to say what it actually was not what
we think it was . . . Initially he was charged with rape, and then he
pled guilty to having sex with a minor, okay. . . . What we were talk-
ing about was what he did, and that’s what I wanted to clear up, and
that’s all I wanted to clear up. ’Cause I don’t like it when we’re pas-
sionate about something and we don’t have all the facts . . . We’re a
different kind of society. We see things differently. The world sees
13 year olds and 14 year olds in the rest of Europe . . . not every-
body agrees with the way we see things . . . (quoted in Markay, 2009:
online)

54
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 55

Her remarks were contrasted with the evidence given at the trial by the
13-year-old, who explained how, after the 43-year-old had repeatedly
refilled her champagne glass and given her part of a powerful sleeping
pill, he told her to take off her clothes and invited her into the
jacuzzi:

He goes, ‘Come down here’ [next to him] and I said, ‘No. No, I got
to get out.’ And he goes, ‘No, come down here.’ And then I said that
I had asthma and that I couldn’t – I had to get out because of the
warm air and the cold air or something like that. And he went ‘Just
come down for a second.’ So I finally went down . . . And he was like
holding me up because it [the water] is almost over my head. . . . Then
he started to move [his hands] around and I just got out . . . .I said that
I wanted to go home because I needed to take my medicine. He said,
‘Yeah, I’ll take you home soon.’ . . . I said, ‘No, I have to go home now.’
He told me to go in the other room and lie down. . . . I was afraid. . . .
He reached over and he kissed me. And I was telling him, ‘No,’ you
know, ‘Keep away’ But I was kind of afraid of him because there was
no-one else there. . . . Then he went down and he started performing
cuddliness . . . he placed his mouth on my vagina. . . . I was ready to
cry. I was kind of – I was going, ‘No. Come on. Stop it.’ But I was
afraid. . . . He was – sometimes he was saying stuff. But I was just block-
ing him out, you know. . . . I was kind of dizzy, you know, like things
were kind of blurry sometimes. I was having trouble with my coor-
dination like walking and stuff. . . . I wasn’t fighting really because I,
you know, there was no one else there and I had no place to go. . . . He
placed his penis in my vagina. . . . He didn’t answer me when I said,
‘No.’ . . . Then he lifted my legs up farther and he went in through my
anus. . . . [I didn’t resist] because I was afraid of him. [Someone came
to the door.] And I got up and put on my underwear and started
walking towards the door. . . . He sat me back down again. Then he
started to have intercourse with me again. . . . I thought that I could
just leave then and go home and say something, you know, because
he was the only way I had to get home. . . . I was sitting in the car
[waiting for Polanski to drive her home] and I was crying. . . . (Extracts
from transcript of 1977 court interview posted online, The Smoking
Gun, 2003)

As he left her at her house, Polanski’s parting words to the girl were,
‘Don’t tell your mother about this and don’t tell your boyfriend either.
This is our secret.’ (Cohen, 2009).
56 Paedophiles in Society

This phenomenon of misinterpreting and trivializing child sexual

abuse – and insisting that it ‘wasn’t rape-rape’ – is not confined only
to high-status celebrities. It is also seen in ‘everyday’ cases where the
families of the victim and the perpetrator and those around them (such
as the employer, school, church congregation or other institutions)
are keen to hush up scandal and smooth over disturbing informa-
tion. As Chapter 1 has also shown, using the example of the Casa
Pia orphanage case in Portugal, there is often great social and cultural
reluctance to face the reality of the abuse of children.
The discussion on the confusion and reluctance to get to grips with
the reality of child abuse and the presence of paedophiles in society
continued in Chapter 2 where it would appear, in some quarters at least,
that there is a naive acceptance of the ‘darknet’ as protecting democ-
racy rather than criminality. The internet has been linked to a massive
rise in the distribution of child pornography, but crucially it also pro-
vides a platform for paedophiles to contact one another and to present
‘pro-paedophile’ arguments, either anonymously or under the cover of
pseudonyms. Thus, as Chapter 2 discussed, paedophiles are active both
in shaping the internet and in being shaped by it as, for the first time,
they are able to talk online with others and share previously undisclosed
experiences. However, paedophiles are in no sense hermetically sealed
off from the rest of society. They, like any other individuals, live within
society and the processes which influence them online also influence
wider society. Because of the capacity of the internet to act as a secure,
anonymous and powerful source of global information, one could argue
that the ‘paedophile voice’ has, for the first time, found an amplifier
through which to influence popular culture. However, this is not to
suggest that the ‘paedophile voice’ is homogeneous, nor that it is uncon-
tested, nor indeed that it was silent before. While the internet permits
and amplifies, through access to many millions of users, the messages
which individual paedophiles such as BLueRibbon or LuxOfTKGL can
send out, it is the contention of this book that such a perspective is
and has always been an integral part of human culture, alongside other
forms of adult sexuality.
Before we proceed any further, it might be helpful to pause and get
a clearer sense of what ‘paedophilia’ is and how many paedophiles
there may be. A commonsense working definition of a paedophile
(which is used throughout this book) was provided at the start of
Chapter 1. A standard definition, widely accepted in clinical circles,
describes paedophilia as involving recurrent, intense sexually arousing
fantasies and sexual urges lasting for six months or more and involving
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 57

a prepubescent child or children, and which are acted on or which

cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty (American Psychiatric
Association, 2000). However, this leaves out any discussion of those
adults who may find themselves aroused to children but only occa-
sionally and not exclusively; this may include ‘situational offenders’
who become sexually aroused and orgasm while having sexual contact
with a child or while using child pornography but who adamantly deny
they are ‘paedophiles’ (for example, see Bell, 2003). It also leaves out
those adults who sexually fantasize about children more or less recur-
rently but who have no intention of acting on such attractions and who
manage any distress without ‘interpersonal difficulty’. Thus, while this
clinical definition attempts to differentiate between the two concepts of
‘paedophiles’ and ‘non-paedophiles’, there remain experiences of adult
sexual contact with children, and sexual attraction to children, which
are not adequately covered.
Very few studies have been conducted to date which explore how
common sexual arousal to children may be in the general adult popula-
tion, despite the significance of this topic in combating sexual abuse of
children. An overview by Green (2002) cited a number of studies (Briere
& Runtz, 1989; Fedora et al., 1992; Freund & Costell, 1970; Freund &
Watson, 1991; Hall et al., 1995; Quinsey et al.,1975) and there are also a
small number of others. These studies have examined the responses of
‘normal’ men in the general adult male population (and one of the stud-
ies also included women). These are all relatively small-scale. They rely
on three basic methods: direct self-report (what the research subjects
themselves said about their sexual arousal to children); more general
questionnaire responses (which included measurements such as ‘sex-
ual impulsivity’ and self-esteem); and physical responses (measuring
arousal when images were shown or tapes narrating a sexual story were
played).
Such studies seem to suggest that somewhere between 12 per cent and
32 per cent of community or college samples of adult men report sex-
ual attraction to children (Becker-Blease, Friend & Freyd, 2006; Briere
& Runtz, 1989; Haywood, Grossman & Cavanaugh, 1990; Smiljanich &
Briere, 1996) or show penile responses to paedophilic stimuli (Barbaree
& Marshall, 1989; Fedora et al., 1992; Frenzel & Lang, 1989; Freund &
Watson, 1991; Hall et al., 1995). For example, in a voluntary paid sample
of 60 men (with an average age of around 30) recruited from hospital
staff and the community, 17 per cent showed a penile response that
was paedophilic (Fedora et al., 1992). However, these figures can only be
taken as indicative rather than any exact estimate: Freund and Watson
58 Paedophiles in Society

(1991), studying sexual arousal in a community sample of male volun-

teers, found that 19 per cent of the ‘normal’ sample were misclassified
as having an erotic preference for minors – but also that a compara-
ble number of the known paedophile sample were misdiagnosed as not
having an erotic preference for minors.
An interesting example is the study by Hall et al. (1995), in which
a sample of 80 volunteers was recruited from the general population.
To explore their responses, the researchers showed the volunteers images
and also used audio-tapes with sexual narratives. The images and tapes
referred to adult women and to girls under the age of 12 years. Sexual
arousal was measured using self-report and physical measurements of
penile arousal. In this presumably ‘normal’ community sample of male
volunteers, aged around late thirties, 26 of the 80 volunteers (32.5 per
cent) showed sexual arousal to slides of prepubescent children that
equalled or exceeded their arousal to the adult slides, and 21 volun-
teers (26.25 per cent) exhibited sexual arousal to taped stories of sexual
behaviour with children which equalled or exceeded their arousal to
the adult tapes. For eight of the subjects (10 per cent) the most arousing
slide was one of the child slides. As well as the physical response mea-
surements, 16 (20 per cent) of the volunteers self-reported paedophilic
interest and three in this community sample of 80 men ‘admitted to
engaging in pedophilic behavior’ (Hall et al., 1995: 686).
The authors conclude:

The slides and audiotape data combined suggest that most normal
men are not sexually aroused by nude female children per se, but
that some men who report no pedophilic activity are sexually aroused
when a female child is depicted as enjoying sexual activity with an
adult male. Consenting heterosexual activity, independent of the
maturity of the partner, is sexually arousing to some men. . . . a major
implication of this study is that sexual arousal to pedophilic stimuli
does not necessarily correspond with pedophilic behavior. . . . Thus,
arousal to pedophilic stimuli may motivate some, but not all, sexu-
ally aggressive acts against children, and a sizeable minority of men
who do not report engaging in pedophilic behavior exhibit sexual
arousal to pedophilic stimuli. (Hall et al., 1995: 692)

These clinical studies therefore show a more complicated picture

than the clinical definition of paedophilia might suggest. In addition
to these laboratory studies there have also, to date, been three surveys
which used questionnaires to explore adult sexual arousal to children
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 59

(Becker-Blease, Friend & Freyd, 2006; Briere & Runtz, 1989; Smiljanich
& Briere, 1996). Smiljanich & Briere (1996) seems to be the only study
to date which has investigated women’s experiences as well as men’s.
They undertook a questionnaire study of 279 undergraduates which
included 99 men and 180 women. This found 22 per cent of the male
sample (and 3 per cent of the female sample) admitted ‘some attraction
to little children’, with 14 per cent of the men using child pornogra-
phy, 4 per cent masturbating to sexual fantasies involving children and
3 per cent admitting to the ‘possibility of sex with a child if undetected’
(figures for the female sample were respectively 4 per cent, 0 per cent and
0 per cent). The most recent study, Becker-Blease et al. (2006), used a self-
completion questionnaire study of 531 undergraduate men. This study
found only 7 per cent admitted sexual attraction to ‘little children’, but
18 per cent had sexual fantasies of children, with 8 per cent masturbat-
ing to those fantasies, and 4 per cent admitting that they would have
sex with a child ‘if no-one found out’.
Taken together, these studies therefore indicate that a sizeable minor-
ity of men, who do not describe themselves as paedophile, seem to be
capable of being sexually aroused by young children, whether or not
they act on that attraction. Until more research is done, using much
larger samples, this is as much information as we have at present. Sum-
marizing these findings suggests that, as a rough rule of thumb, in every
group of a hundred men, at least one and possibly more are likely to be
exclusively or primarily sexually attracted to children (in other words,
paedophiles), and perhaps a quarter or more of adult males can be sex-
ually aroused by images of children aged 13 or younger. Even though
the figures are only indicative at this stage, this still seems a surprisingly
high level of adult male sexual attraction to children. It is in this con-
text that this chapter explores popular cultural responses to paedophiles
and looks at how we ‘make sense’ of this phenomenon in contemporary
society. This and the following chapters on scientific and academic texts
lay the groundwork for theorizing a new understanding of paedophiles
in society.
This chapter is divided into three sections. Section 1 looks at aspects of
popular culture including the circulation of jokes and satirical humour
about the topic of paedophiles and society’s response, and films deal-
ing with the topic of adult sexual attraction to children. Section 2 then
looks at the specific concept of ‘pederasty’ and outlines some of the
ways in which this term has been used to ‘make sense’ of or justify
paedophilia or ‘boy-love’. Section 3 then draws on wider themes in
which notions of the sexuality of ‘the Other’ have been used to argue
60 Paedophiles in Society

for the acceptability of adult sexual contact with children in Western

society. This section includes contributions not only from anthropology
but also from biology, as the sexual practices of a particular African ape,
the bonobo, have recently entered popular culture as part of an argu-
ment for sexual tolerance and acceptance of adult sexual contact with
children.
Together, these aspects of popular culture (including the incorpo-
ration of technical terms such as ‘pederasty’) help us begin to piece
together some of the jigsaw puzzle of how contemporary Western soci-
ety makes sense of events such as the court cases of Michael Jackson
or Roman Polanski, or the political activism of Kevin Brown, the
self-defined ‘minor-attracted adult’ introduced in Chapter 1.

1. Popular culture and ‘the paedophile’

This chapter now turns to look in more detail at this relationship

between ‘the paedophile’ and culture, especially popular culture in
‘Anglosphere’ countries (English-speaking nations which draw on a
shared historical and literary culture). How is it possible to ‘make sense’
of paedophiles and the question of adult sexual attraction to chil-
dren? As discussed in Chapter 1, and picked up again in Chapter 2,
commonsense understandings of originally technical concepts such as
‘paedophilia’ or ‘child grooming’ are constructed through popular dis-
course by, for example, using celebrities as role-models and by linking
the new, unfamiliar concept to other, pre-existing and more well-known
concepts. In the case of ‘child grooming’, for example, the Wikipedia
editors attempted variously to link this new concept either to ‘child
abuse’ or to ‘friendship’, ‘parental love’ or ‘mentoring’.
Popular discourse, and popular culture, emerge from a wide area of
activity including news media, sports, music, films, animations, tele-
vision drama such as soap-operas, literature (including fiction, poetry,
popular science, biography and autobiography) and lifestyle features
such as clothing and diet. Previously distinguished from the ‘high cul-
ture’ world of the subsidized arts (opera, ballet and classical music,
for example), popular culture (or folk culture) was seen as of low(er)
value. More recently, popular culture tends to be seen simply as the
culture of everyday life; as the way in which social groups – through
language, ritual and symbolism – construct and share a common con-
sensus. Abstruse technical information (on climate change, for example,
or disease) becomes mediated through popular discourse, with some
aspects simplified and highlighted and others downplayed, distorted
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 61

or misrepresented. Thus the complex science of climate change (itself

a distillation of many fields of meteorology, oceanography, physics,
computer modelling, environmental studies and so forth) becomes con-
densed into sound-bite slogans such as ‘eco-friendly’, ‘global warming’,
‘carbon footprint’ and indeed ‘climate change’ itself.
Discourse mediates emotion as well as information: for example, the
public outpouring of grief in Britain at the death of Princess Diana
not only allowed a ritual expression of sorrow and regret at the loss
of one particular person but more broadly gave people an opportunity
to feel a sense of social connection. Both her marriage and her death
allowed rare – and brief – moments of powerful social cohesion, united
initially in the emotions of joy and optimism and then of mourning.
Humour also plays a key role in cultural discourse. The social function
of humour is to divert or defuse psychological tension (emotions such
as embarrassment, anxiety, fear and hate) and this can be done through
slapstick, incongruity, teasing, ridicule and cynicism or through parody
and satire – forms of humour which typically carry more overt political
meanings.
In relation to paedophilia and the sexual abuse of children, all these
elements come into play. Simplified stereotypes of the ‘paedophile’
are shared across society, changing over time. While Chapter 1 drew
attention to the ‘evil paedophile’ and the ‘nasty pervs’ featured in con-
temporary tabloid newspapers over the period of the twentieth century,
stereotypes of paedophiles have ranged from the clinically abnormal
to the violent working-class sex offender, the pathetic, rather grubby
old man, the louche and decadent member of the Establishment, the
middle-aged European sex tourist, the faceless internet child pornog-
rapher, the fallen rock-star, and the cunning and evil member of a
‘paedophile ring’. Similarly, culturally mediated emotional responses to
paedophiles and to child sexual abuse have also varied widely from out-
rage to tolerance and indifference (Jenkins, 1992, 1998). This can be
shown using the example of another public figure, this time the British
musician Gary Glitter (the stage name of Paul Francis Gadd), who was
convicted and imprisoned for possession of child pornography involv-
ing very small children and more recently convicted of the rape of
two young girls. Despite considerable public anger and revulsion at his
crimes, it is interesting that the official website of AOL Music contains
a biography of Glitter which begins, ‘Although the late ’90s apparently
saw the end of Gary Glitter’s career, following his conviction for sexual
offenses, there is no doubting that for a full 25 years before that tragic
denouement, Glitter ranked among Britain’s best-loved performers of
62 Paedophiles in Society

all time’, thus apparently suggesting that the sexual abuse of toddlers
and small children which produced Glitter’s ‘denouement’ was a tragedy
only for him. The biography continues with a fulsome appreciation of
Glitter’s musical contribution and ends:

Then came the news that Glitter was under investigation on child
pornography charges and his world fell apart. Stores throughout the
U.K. withdrew his records from the shelves, concerts were canceled;
overnight, one of Britain’s most adored icons became public enemy
number one and even his staunchest allies now doubt whether Glitter
will ever be able to pull one more comeback out of the bag. What can-
not be erased, however, is the contribution he has made to the history
of rock & roll – the creation of ‘Rock and Roll’ itself. (Thompson,
undated: online)

This biography, by Dave Thompson of the All Music Guide, had not, as
of January 2011, been updated to reflect Glitter’s 2006 prison sentence
for sexually abusing young girls in Vietnam. It is noticeable that, as well
as the euphemistic use of the term ‘tragic denouement’ to describe Glit-
ter’s use of child pornography, Thompson also uses the emotive phrase
‘his world fell apart’ – again, the pain experienced by the children in pro-
ducing the pornography (and, later, in being sexually abused by Glitter
himself) is invisible in this biography. It is only Glitter who suffers in
this account.
The case of Gary Glitter is also worthy of note in another regard.
The issues of paedophiles and child sexual abuse clearly provoke psy-
chological tension and emotional reactions such as anxiety, so it is not
surprising that humour plays a part in sociocultural responses, and an
interesting phenomenon spawned by the Glitter trial is the presence of
‘Gary Glitter jokes’ on the web. These, along with ‘Maddie jokes’, ‘sick
jokes’, ‘dead baby jokes’ and so forth, rely for their effects on incongruity
and shock, and are typically extremely bleak. At one point, Gary Glitter
appeared to be facing the death penalty in Vietnam for his crimes. The
sentence was due in December and there were a number of jokes about
the tradition of ‘hanging up Glitter at Christmas’. Such jokes, and vari-
ations on them, are likely to be applied to whoever becomes the latest
well-known paedophile:

• What’s worse than Gary Glitter babysitting your kids? Ian Huntley
giving them a bath. [Huntley is well-known in the UK as a sexual
abuser who murdered two children]
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 63

• What’s the difference between Neil Armstrong and Gary Glitter?

Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon: Gary Glitter fucks
children.
• The Police have raided Gary Glitter’s house. They found class A drugs
in the lounge, class B drugs in the kitchen and Class 5c in his
bedroom.
• What’s the difference between Gary Glitter and greyhounds? Grey-
hounds wait for the hares.
• What’s the difference between Gary Glitter and acne? Acne waits till
you’re a teenager to come on your face.

Jokes relating to Michael Jackson, as well as including the more generic

types, also relied for their comic impact on specific biographical facts
about Jackson himself, which changed over time:

• Michael Jackson first wanted to look like Diana Ross, then a white
person, now he wants to be a Roman Catholic priest.
• Michael decided to have a boy of his own because it’s too expensive
to rent them at $2 million a pop.
• Michael Jackson has been spotted dangling children from a balcony
again. It makes a change because he usually tosses them off.

When we can laugh at horror, we are able, at least to some extent, to put
it in perspective and thus contain it. As well as the circulation of online
jokes, humour in popular culture (ranging from the heartbreaking to
the tasteless and tacky to the genuinely witty) has also been expressed
through television shows produced as a comic backlash to poke fun
at and deflate what can sometimes be regarded as a self-righteous and
overblown sense of horror. Although paedophilia is a highly sensitive
subject, there are examples of risqué humour including an episode in
the well-known cartoon series South Park, in 2000, called ‘Cartman Joins
NAMBLA’. Eric Cartman is the 8-year-old protagonist who decides his
young friends are much too childish for him and advertises online for
mature friends who like little boys. To his surprise, he is inundated with
responses. Soon he is invited to attend a dinner as the ‘poster-child’
for NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association (an actual
organization in real life, mentioned in Chapter 1). Confusion arises
when the (presumably fictitious) North American Marlon Brando Look
Alikes also meet in the same place. The episode ends with a paedophile
making a heartfelt plea for tolerance, understanding and recognition
as a sexual minority (similar to the kinds of arguments put forward by
64 Paedophiles in Society

paedophile activists such as Kevin Brown and Lindsay Ashford, men-

tioned earlier). While the adults are deeply touched by his appeals, the
blunt reply of the unimpressed 8-year-olds is simply, ‘Dude, you have
sex with children.’
An example from Britain comes from the award-winning spoof docu-
mentary series, Brass Eye, which poked satirical fun at the public and
celebrities by setting up absurd situations which people nevertheless
believed to be factual. The Brass Eye special on paedophilia, aired twice
in July 2001 and coming less than a year after the murder of a little
girl, Sarah Payne, and subsequent mass anti-paedophile riots, caused
huge offence and the channel was forced to issue an apology. Despite
this, the actual show itself is so patently silly that it is now surprising
that anyone could find it realistic enough to be offensive. The spoof
suggested, among other things, that internet paedophiles can project
poison gas through a child’s keyboard, using a new system known as
HOECS (pronounced ‘hoax’). It also included an item on a paedophile
disguised as a school (yes, really), and a pair of ‘Trust Me’ trousers
which inflate like a balloon. The producer, Chris Morris, even managed
to include Syd Rapson, the Labour MP from the Paulsgrove estate in
Portsmouth (which had witnessed the worst of the anti-paedophile riot-
ing), commenting on these trousers: ‘I think it’s an absolute disgrace that
somebody should use the internet to market these “trust me trousers” .
It makes it very difficult to pin them with the offence because it covers
the fact that they’re stimulated in the groin area.’
Another British example is the figure of the ‘Paedofinder General’
in the cartoon series Monkey Dust, which ran from 2003 to 2005 and
was an award-winning series shown first on the digital channel BBC3
and later, presumably due to high viewing-figures, shown on the more
mainstream channel BBC2. The Paedofinder General is a terrifying
hooded character based on Matthew Hopkins, the seventeenth-century
‘Witchfinder General’ immortalized in the eponymous 1968 film by
Michael Reeves, starring Vincent Price. The Paedofinder General accosts
any adults seen with children and accuses them of paedophilia. In one
episode, for example, the accusation is on the grounds that the man
is wearing swimming-trunks with the logo ‘peedo’ on them. The man
protests that the logo is in fact ‘Speedo’ (a well-known brand) but this
does not save him: he is summarily executed. A father playing on the
beach with his children is accosted and accused of giving his child a
‘69’ (a euphemism for simultaneous fellatio and cunnilingus). When he
protests that it was in fact a ‘99’ ( a type of ice-cream), the Paedofinder-
General is horrified at how much worse a ‘99’ must be than a ‘69’ and
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 65

again, the man is immediately executed, by hanging, along with the

children, who are also hanged on the basis that abused children grow
up to be abusers. A family watching the public execution are delighted at
the outcome and the little boy of the family comments happily that this
is the best holiday he has had. These and similar episodes clearly draw
for reference on events such as the anti-paedophile riots in Bristol and
Portsmouth in 2000, and the infamous incident in which a paediatrician
had her house daubed with the slogan ‘paedo’ (Allison, 2000).
These examples from satire and parody show that not only is the
paedophile the target of humour but also those around him – perhaps
especially those who allow their anxiety over child abuse to degenerate
into unthinking ‘moral panic’ (Cohen, 2002). These are thus examples
of the way in which humour can be used to subvert, deflate and thereby
manage some of our deep-seated, realistic – and very painful – anxieties
about harm to children.
Other forms of popular culture which have addressed the topic of
paedophilia include Hollywood and independent films. Many films
touch on the subject of adult sexual attraction to children or adult sex-
ual abuse of children, a topic treated in for example Kincaid (1998),
Green & Goode (2008) and Goode (2009). Obvious examples of this
genre are of course Lolita (1962, directed by Stanley Kubrick, and 1997,
directed by Adrian Lyne) and Pretty Baby (1978, directed by Louis Malle).
A more recent example from mainstream Hollywood cinema is The
Woodsman (2005), directed by Nicole Kassell and starring Kevin Bacon
as the main character, a 45-year-old paedophile named Walter. In the
film, Walter is opposed to and attacks another paedophile, a mysteri-
ous and evil character whom Walter calls Candy (from the Candyman
who gives treats to children), who is clearly shown seducing young
boys. Walter himself is presented as gentle and loving, perhaps almost
a rescuer of children – like the Woodsman of the title who rescues
Little Red Riding Hood from the Big Bad Wolf. Alongside the tormented
Woodsman and the malignant Candyman, other Hollywood images of
paedophiles could be said to include Jean Reno as Leon, the profes-
sional assassin with a heart of gold, flirting with 12-year-old Natalie
Portman playing the role of orphaned Mathilda (Leon / The Professional,
1994, directed by Luc Besson). Leon contains a scene which appears
almost entirely tangential and extraneous to the plot-line, in which little
Mathilda dresses up in a series of costumes to represent famous people
(Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin and Gene Kelly) ostensi-
bly to demonstrate to Leon how little he knows about ordinary life, but
also gratuitously giving the viewer the opportunity to see a little girl in
66 Paedophiles in Society

make-up and acting ‘sexy’. This scene is reminiscent of a comment by

a journalist who infiltrated a NAMBLA meeting to discover their ‘secret
eroticism’ and found it was simply network television, the Disney chan-
nel and mainstream films: ‘I had found NAMBLA’s “porn”, and it was
Hollywood.’ (quoted in Kincaid, 1998: 115). As Sinclair (1988) and oth-
ers have pointed out, Hollywood has always done a line in ‘nymphets’,
from Shirley Temple to the present day.
Like the later films Lawn Dogs (1997, directed by John Duigan) and
Man on Fire (2004, directed by Tony Scott), the emotional energy in
Leon comes from the sympathetic and low-key portrayal of the rela-
tionship between the man and the young girl. In these films, there is
no sexual violence. This is in contrast to, for example, the controversial
Hounddog (2007, directed by Deborah Kampmeier) which was banned
from general release. Hounddog, like Man on Fire, stars the actress Dakota
Fanning as a young child but in this movie she is raped. The direc-
tor defended her portrayal of child rape, arguing ‘I have a daughter;
I am a daughter. I cherish and honor the souls of girls and women.
If I did anything to harm Dakota or anything exploitative, that would
be betraying the whole reason I made this film.’ (Kampmeier, 2008).
The 12-year-old Fanning also defended the scene, pointing out, ‘I know
my mom would take me to see it. You have to prepare your children
for things that happen in the world. Everything isn’t rosy.’ (Fanning,
2007).
What is interesting in this selection of films is less the predictable
sexualization and voyeurism (available in spades in films such as Pretty
Baby) but rather the moments of affection and friendship between the
grown man and the young child as they goof around together. Para-
doxically perhaps, what films such as Lawn Dogs express is not that
men find prepubescent girls sexually attractive (after all, as Fanning
comments, everything isn’t rosy) but that they can have comfortable
non-sexual friendships with them. Warm friendships between men
and (unrelated) children are seldom presented in modern popular cul-
ture, so the nuanced depictions in these films provide an unexpectedly
sophisticated contribution (Green & Goode, 2008).
Models of adult–child friendship provide one way of ‘making sense’ of
paedophilia, and these films have been cited by paedophiles as impor-
tant in developing their own sense of self (Goode, 2009). However, for
‘boy-lovers’ rather than ‘girl-lovers’, there are fewer films in modern
popular culture which portray such a relationship, although Long Island
Expressway (2001, directed by Michael Cuesta) and Mysterious Skin (2004,
directed by Greg Araki) are two fairly mainstream films dealing with
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 67

adult male sexual desire for boys. This dearth in films is not matched
in literature or online. For many, the most significant model of adult–
child relationships is that of ‘Greek Love’ or ‘pederasty’ from the world
of Ancient Greece, and this is discussed in the following section.

2. The concept of ‘pederasty’

Pederasty, like paedophilia itself, has for most of its career been a
technical term dealt with mainly in historical works. Largely ignored in
mainstream culture for many centuries, this notion has more recently –
and often enthusiastically – been taken up by theorists and campaign-
ers within the gay rights movement and now references to ‘Greek Love’
frequently emerge in discussions on paedophilia, making pederasty part
of contemporary popular discourse when discussing adult sexual attrac-
tion to children. A search of internet sites will show that the concept
of pederasty features on a number of gay and pro-paedophile sites and,
for example, is on the NAMBLA site and was also discussed in an online
encyclopaedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer culture
available at GLBTQ.com (now defunct). Thus it is clear that, although
its origin may lie in the rarefied domain of science (the realms of the
clinician and the historian), the term ‘pederasty’ has, in the twenty-first
century, entered popular culture through internet-mediated sexual pol-
itics and political activism. These two spheres of science and popular
culture are not and never have been separate; recent academic books
concerned with pederasty have found themselves vulnerable to fierce
controversy – championed and castigated in equal measure. While The
Greeks And Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality In Ancient
Greece, by James Davidson (2008), Images of Ancient Greek Pederasty
(Lear & Cantarella, 2008) and Historical Pederastic Relationships (Miller,
Vandome & McBrewster, 2009), seem to have escaped difficulty, the
book Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classi-
cal Tradition of the West (Verstraete & Provencal) encountered a storm of
criticism and was originally withdrawn from publication by Haworth,
who then published it a year later, in 2006, after removing one essay.
The offending essay, titled ‘Pederasty: An integration of cross-cultural,
cross-species, and empirical data’, was later published separately in the
Journal of Homosexuality.
These publications indicate an increasing level of interest in this con-
cept. Pederasty was also implied in the discussion on ‘child grooming’ in
Chapter 2, where the concept of ‘grooming’ was linked by some activists
to the concept of ‘mentoring’ – a concept closely allied to pederasty and
68 Paedophiles in Society

with a long pedigree in pedagogical models of older males educating

young boys.
The term ‘pederasty’ comes from two Greek words, paides (boy) and
erasteio (to love or long for) and therefore is used to relate only to situ-
ations in which adult men are sexually attracted to young boys, with
the synonym ‘boy-lover’ also being used in place of ‘pederast’. The
equivalent situation in which adult men are sexually attracted to young
girls appears not to have been recognized with any formal or informal
term until the 1970s, when the expression ‘girl-lover’ was published in
Paedophilia: The Radical Case (O’Carroll, 1980).
According to studies such as that by William Armstrong Percy III,
author of Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece (1996) and an enthusi-
astic commentator on this subject (personal conversation, March 2008),
pederasty as a recognized social convention within the ancient world
arose in Crete in the eighth century BC as a response to delayed marriage
to stem population growth. Men were not expected to marry until their
thirties and began developing relationships with young boys in order
to deal with sexual frustration. This became an elaborate institutional-
ized practice which then, over a few generations, spread first to Sparta
in the seventh century BC and thence to the other Greek city-states,
including Athens. For these fiercely militaristic cultures, based on rigid
elitism and segregation, a benefit of pederasty was that it could build
strong emotional ties between soldiers who might previously have been
lovers, and thus could promote loyalty and bonding within military
cohorts. It was also seen as a way of transmitting virtues such as honour
and civic-mindedness from older to younger men. Thus pederasty was
regarded as a solution for military cohesion and for population control
(alongside war and institutionalized infanticide) and as a specific form
of pedagogy emphasizing athletic skill as well as intellectual and moral
development. Later, as continual wars took their toll and as emigration
shifted populations out of Greece into the wider empire of Alexander
the Great from the fourth century BC onwards, the practice of pederasty
gradually declined. It had arguably almost disappeared by the second
century BC, although the persistence of myths with pederastic themes
(such as that of the god Zeus and the young boy Ganymede) suggests
that positive attitudes to the practice remained. It was not until the rise
of Christianity from the second century AD onwards that sex outside
marriage, and non-procreative sex generally, was discouraged.
Thus pederasty seems to have existed as a significant institution
within ancient Greek culture for some five hundred years or so.
It appeared as a theme in both literature and in art, particularly
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 69

vase-paintings. A striking example is that of the Warren Cup, an

embossed and engraved silver cup presently in the British Museum.
The Warren Cup is a Roman artefact, made in the first century AD.
It depicts two fairly explicit idealized scenes of an older bearded male
having sexual contact with a younger, adolescent, beardless male. When
it was bought for £1.8 million by the British Museum in 1999, it caused
controversy due to the nature of these explicitly pederastic or homo-
erotic images (Williams, 2006). The Warren Cup, although a later Roman
example, has similarities with earlier Greek vase-paintings depicting
pederastic relationships. A number of vase-paintings have been found,
showing scenes of courtship, gift-offering, foreplay and sexual inter-
course between men and youths. The vases also show scenes from
mythology, such as Zeus with Ganymede, and they include painted
inscriptions in praise of the beauty of boys (Lear & Cantarella, 2008).
These vases portray idealized images of pederasty, conjuring a world
of beautiful elite males sharing and displaying highly admired physi-
cal and intellectual qualities. Perhaps they are the classical equivalent of
the airbrushed pin-ups of today, where every body is perfect and every
relationship is ideal.
Certainly pederasty seems to have been a pursuit only of the wealthy
and land-owning classes: privileged men with the money to afford the
armour and weapons to fight as a ‘hoplite’ (a citizen-soldier); the influ-
ence to vote and control the fate of their city; and sufficient resources
(obtained through warfare and slavery) to be able to send their sons to be
educated. Only the leisured gentry would also have the time to pursue a
pederastic relationship, viewing the naked boys practising their athlet-
ics, courting a boy at his school and bestowing expensive gifts on him;
and only a well-connected man would be likely to be acceptable to the
boy’s father. Thus ‘Greek love’ or pederasty, as a form of stylized and ritu-
alized relationship with similarities to mediaeval European courtly love,
seems to have been a relationship specifically tied to hierarchy, privilege
and wealth, as well as to a militaristic and hyper-masculine culture in
which women and girls were excluded from citizenship and confined
to an extremely circumscribed domestic role. As with the traditions
of courtly love, the relationship may well at times have been ‘chaste’
with no overt physical sexual contact but with a strong emphasis on
faithfulness, loyalty and commitment.
Another parallel which we can associate with classical pederasty is
of course the traditional British public school system. Based on wealth,
privilege and hierarchy, the great English public schools (private schools
founded over almost a five hundred-year period between 1179 and
70 Paedophiles in Society

1611 and including Westminster, Winchester, Eton, Shrewsbury, Rugby,

Harrow and Charterhouse) were all based on an ideal of classical educa-
tion and athletic prowess that would have been familiar to the young
men of ancient Greece. As with the schools first founded in Crete and
Sparta, British public schools prepared their pupils for adult roles in
public and military service and provided an entry into the elite class.
Discipline was traditionally harsh, with corporal punishment inflicted
by senior pupils on younger pupils. Sexual initiation, too, was also likely
to be performed by an older boy on a younger boy. And, just as appears
to have been the case with classical pederasty, the institutionalized sex-
ual abuse of young boys appears to have repeated itself over generations,
with boys growing up, becoming fathers and electing to send their sons
to the same schools, to undergo the same ritual humiliations, pun-
ishments and sexual experiences that they themselves had endured as
youngsters.
However, it would be a mistake to draw any parallels too closely:
each cultural context is unique. For example, although we may think
of classical Greece as a ‘democracy’ and thus similar to forms of society
we know today, in fact we would find many aspects unrecognizable
and indeed morally repellent. The Greek democracy only recognized
land-owning adult men as ‘citizens’ – the vast majority of the popu-
lation, including adult women, slaves and ‘barbarians’ (anyone not a
member of that city-state), were all excluded from any form of public
life. Women were regarded primarily as a means to breed citizens and
soldiers: only when a man reached his thirties would he marry, usu-
ally taking a teenage bride. Greek culture emphasized male beauty over
female and male love over female. Alongside the decorous and idealized
love between the eromenos (young male lover) and the erastes (older
male lover), so beautifully painted on vases and praised in epic litera-
ture, lay the reality of the widespread rape of slaves, non-citizens and
those captured during war.
The notion of pederasty has been taken up and used, not only implic-
itly in British public schools, but quite explicitly in some models of
pedagogy, using terms such as ‘pedagogic Eros’, where the emphasis
has been on men mentoring young male protégés, developing inti-
mate sexual relationships with them as a way of benefitting their
general education and development. This is discussed in, for example,
Boys on Their Contacts with Men (Sandfort, 1987), Male Intergenerational
Intimacy: Historical, Socio-Psychological and Legal Perspectives (Sandfort,
Brongersma & Naerssen,1991) and Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic
Greece (Percy, 1996). Sandfort’s work is discussed in more detail in
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 71

Chapter 5, but we now turn to a further example of how concepts orig-

inally derived from the work of scientists (in this case, anthropologists
and biologists) are incorporated into popular discourse on sexuality.

3. Contributions from anthropology and biology

Turning from examples taken from classical Greece, two thousand years
ago and more, what other sources of popular culture may individuals
draw on when attempting to explain and ‘make sense of’ the phe-
nomenon of contemporary adult sexual attraction to children or adult
sexual contact with children? Judging by the material in scientific and
popular books dealing with paedophilia (for examples of these, see
Chapter 5) and by the ‘chat’ posted on internet forums, it seems that
another significant body of evidence from which contemporary culture
tends to draw when thinking about paedophiles is the example of ‘other
countries’ and ‘other cultures’. Clearly, this is a vast area, potentially
encompassing literally every country and every culture other than the
one within which any particular researcher or writer happens to cur-
rently reside! Such an ethnocentric position traditionally tends to divide
the world into two segments: the ‘normal’ one in which the writer lives;
and the ‘exotic’ beyond, housing inscrutable others, primitives and sav-
ages, with their quaint rituals and strange superstitions – much indeed
as classical Greeks viewed all their neighbours as the ‘barbarians’, those
aliens who did not speak Greek and thus only made meaningless ‘bar
bar’ sounds whenever they opened their mouths.
For any culture, a part of the attraction of ‘the Other’ is its strangeness
and often, mixed with that, its erotic allure – or repulsion – marked by its
differences in sexual practice. We are often intrigued by how strangers
look, how they speak, what they eat – and what they do in bed. As the
anthropologist Mary Douglas has pointed out, if we want to criticize a
group of people, it is typically their sexual behaviour that we will focus
on to mark them out as ‘other’ than us (1966, 1992). From travellers’
tales to contemporary anthropology and cultural studies, the sexual
practices of ‘the Other’ continue to fascinate and titillate us, whether it is
the lure of the sensual Orient, as for example popularized in Sir Richard
Francis Burton’s 1885 translation of the Arabic classic A Thousand and
One Nights (also known as The Arabian Nights), or the guiltless frolicking
of the ‘noble savages’ of Tahiti painted in a deliberately ‘primitivist’ style
by Eugenè Henri-Paul Gauguin in the 1890s.
Key scientific works in this field include the writings of Margaret Mead
and Bronislaw Malinowski, both of whom focused, as had Gauguin,
72 Paedophiles in Society

on the remote (from a European and North American perspective) cul-

tures of the South Pacific. Mead’s most important text was a study of
sexual practices among adolescent girls on one South Pacific island,
Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western
Civilisation, (2001; first published in 1928) and followed by a study of
gender-differences in New Guinea, Sex and Temperament in Three Prim-
itive Societies (2002 [1935]). Mead’s fascination with the sexual life of
‘primitive savages’ in the South Pacific was echoed in the work of her
contemporary, Bronislaw Malinowski, who, like Mead, is regarded as a
founder of modern social anthropology. Malinowski’s classic, Sex and
Repression in Savage Society (2001), was first published in 1927.
It would be difficult to over-estimate the impact of these texts on
the development of sexual attitudes within twentieth-century Western
society. As scientific explorations into the universal phenomenon of
human sexuality, these books laid the groundwork for theorizing sex-
ual behaviour, feeding directly into the work of later sexologists such
as Alfred Kinsey. Both Mead and Malinowski wanted to test European,
specifically Freudian, theories of sexual development, for example the
concept of the Oedipus complex, in order to confirm whether or
not they had universal applicability. Both of them ended up painting
utopian portraits of ‘savage’ life which powerfully indicted their own
cultures’ sexual hypocrisy and repression. Malinowski, in Sex and Repres-
sion, provides a vivid contrast between a miserable, guilt-ridden, shame-
faced upbringing typical of middle-class Europeans, and a charming,
sunny, relaxed, uninhibited and playful childhood in the Trobriand
Islands (now known as the Kiriwina Islands). For example, he described
children engaging freely in sexual contact from the age of 5 or 6 years
onwards into puberty:

At an early age children are initiated by each other, or sometimes

by a slightly older companion, into the practices of sex. Naturally,
at this stage they are unable to carry out the act properly, but they
content themselves with all sorts of games in which they are left
quite at liberty by their elders, and thus they can satisfy their curiosity
and their sensuality directly and without disguise. (Malinowski, 2001
[1927]:44–5)

Any individual piece of evidence drawn from such a heterogeneous and

polyphonous evidence-base as ‘other cultures’ is usually likely to say far
more about the agenda of the writer than about any one culture’s values.
This will be particularly true in such a vexed area as adult–child sexual
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 73

contact and children’s sexuality, and when we look at contemporary

discussions what is perhaps most remarkable is the breadth of evidence
drawn upon, from a vast range of cultures over a vast span of time. This
section can only point to those examples which tend to be most used
in discussions on the English-language internet and which thus have
most salience in contemporary ‘pro-paedophile’ debates. Again, we find
a particular example from the South Pacific, this time from Papua New
Guinea, which is repeatedly referred to. This time the anthropologist
in question is Gilbert Herdt, who has written in a number of publica-
tions about his periods of fieldwork among the Sambia tribe from 1974
up to 1993. Professor Herdt is now the Director of the National Sexuality
Resource Center, based at San Francisco State University. When conduct-
ing his fieldwork back in the 1970s, as a gay man with a commitment
to integrity and transparency, Herdt found himself the first Westerner to
be permitted to know about ‘boy-inseminating rites’ or the tribal culture
of ritual fellatio of adolescent men by younger boys:

My empathy for and closeness to these men facilitated their ‘confes-

sion’ to me. I was in turn deeply grateful to them, and felt the desire
to ‘confess’ my own secrets too. These friends knew that I could be
trusted to keep my word, and over the years I have been true to this
promise. When Moondi asked me whether I knew of this practice [by
‘this practice’ Herdt appears to mean fellatio by a male] and had ever
done it before, I could say yes; and my own revelation sealed a pact
that has endured many years. (Herdt, 1999: 11)

Herdt further comments, ‘My ability to apprehend and interpret Sambia

sexuality depended upon acceptance of my own sexuality and the intu-
itive use of myself to understand how homoerotic relations were built
into the Sambia design for life.’ (p. 13). However much we might regret
Herdt’s inability to apprehend and interpret Sambia female sexuality
(and thus half the population and culture he is studying), one still
gains an impression of Herdt as generally self-aware and sensitive. Sadly,
others who have made use of his research have been somewhat less
sensitive. Herdt describes a specific cultural practice, which has now
apparently died out since it was studied in the 1970s. In this initiation
rite, young boys aged from around 7 onwards are taken from their fam-
ilies and initiated into a number of secret practices by the elders in the
‘cult-house’. One of the ritual practices is to repeatedly fellate older ado-
lescents from 15 onwards, swallowing the semen, until they themselves
are considered old enough to be fellated in turn and subsequently to
74 Paedophiles in Society

marry and start families. Herdt reports that the young boys involved in
this practice were often reluctant but that it was considered essential to
becoming a man. For the Sambia, boys needed to ‘eat penises’ and suck
the semen or ‘milk’ of ‘junior warriors’ in order to grow strong and to,
literally, ingest masculinity. Only in this way, it was believed, would they
become masculine enough to grow up as full men capable of fathering
children.
Similar rituals have been reported among the New Guinea tribes of
Etoro and Kaluli (Bauserman, 1997). As Herdt has described it, ‘boy-
inseminating rites’ are a specific cultural practice which take place in
a society in which men engage in other similarly unusual ritual prac-
tices such as the use of nose-bleeds as a form of blood-letting in order to
purge themselves of pollution after having sexual contact with women
and in which, for example, kissing is ‘completely unknown and absent’
(Herdt,1999: 5). What makes this ‘boy-insemination’ practice relevant
to modern Western society is the rhetorical use made of it by those who
point to it as an example of cross-cultural ‘inter-generational intimacy’
and who use it as evidence to argue that, since such evidence of ‘inter-
generational intimacy’ seems to be widespread in many cultures then
it cannot be a bad thing. Other examples of adult–child sexual con-
tact within cross-cultural contexts are given in works by Ford and Beach
(1951) and in Bauserman (1997), with specific examples on Tahiti by
Oliver (1974) and on Hawaii by Milton Diamond (1990).
As well as looking at examples from history and examples from other
countries and other cultures, a third way of ‘making sense’ of human
sexuality and particular forms such as adult sexual attraction to children
is through the contribution of biology and its sub-disciplines such as
ethology and primatology. Cross-species parallels with aspects of human
behaviour have been studied ‘in the field’ (using observation of nat-
ural behaviour), using captured populations (such as animals in zoos,
where behaviour can be manipulated) and clinically (using laboratory
experimentation and dissection).
A leading author in this field was the American scientist, Professor
Alfred Kinsey (discussed in the following chapter). Kinsey was a
zoologist before he became perhaps the most famous and influential
sexologist of the twentieth century. He himself did not experiment on
animals (his field of research prior to human sexuality was the study of
gall-wasps, which he collected and classified). Nor did Kinsey first initi-
ate interest in this field, which was already very well-established when
he began researching sexuality in the 1930s but Kinsey and his col-
leagues are nevertheless hugely important in popularizing this mode of
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 75

study, drawing heavily and uncritically on published studies of labora-

tory work with rats, monkeys and other mammals to make points about
human sexuality, including inter-generational sexual behaviour (Kinsey,
Pomeroy & Martin,1948). In many ways, Kinsey’s work – including this
use of animal data to draw conclusions about human sexuality – has
become firmly incorporated into modern ways of understanding sex
and sexuality: it would be extremely difficult to find a single book on
sex published in the last fifty years which does not make reference to
Kinsey’s work.
While many people today may be a little less sanguine about just
how much we can really learn from dissections of monkeys’ brains, or
stimulus-response experiments on laboratory rats, the study of one ani-
mal in particular has sparked the popular imagination and re-ignited
interest in what animals may be able to teach us about human sexu-
ality. This is the bonobo ape (also known as the pygmy or ‘Left Bank’
chimpanzee), an ape which lives on the left bank of the Congo River in
equatorial Africa. The bonobo was identified as a separate species only
in 1926, from bones held in a museum, and has been studied in the wild
only since the 1970s. Due to violent conflict in the area and inroads into
the forests by mining companies, the bonobo is now feared to be on the
verge of extinction, despite being recognized by the international scien-
tific community as uniquely significant in its ability to teach us more
about human evolution. The bonobo is now considered to be as close a
relative to humans as chimpanzees.
Excitement about the bonobo began in 1995 with an article, ‘Bonobo
sex and society: the behaviour of a close relative challenges assump-
tions about male supremacy in human evolution’, by Frans de Waal,
published in the popular and prestigious science magazine, Scientific
American. In his article, de Waal made the following points:

At a juncture in history during which women are seeking equality

with men, science arrives with a belated gift to the feminist move-
ment . . . females play a central, perhaps even dominant, role in the
social life of one of our nearest relatives. In the past few years
many strands of knowledge have come together concerning a rela-
tively unknown ape with an unorthodox repertoire of behavior: the
bonobo . . .. The species is best characterized as female-centered and
egalitarian and as one that substitutes sex for aggression. Whereas
in most other species sexual behavior is a fairly distinct category, in
the bonobo it is part and parcel of social relations – and not just
between males and females. Bonobos engage in sex in virtually every
76 Paedophiles in Society

partner combination (although such contact among close family

members may be suppressed). . . .. Bonobos become sexually aroused
remarkably easily, and they express this excitement in a variety of
mounting positions and genital contacts . . . the frontal orientation of
the bonobo vulva and clitoris strongly suggest that the female gen-
italia are adapted for this [face to face sexual] position. . . . Instead
of a few days out of her cycle, the female bonobo is almost con-
tinuously sexually attractive and active . . . . The diversity of erotic
contacts in bonobos includes sporadic oral sex, massage of another
individual’s genitals and intense tongue-kissing. Lest this leave the
impression of a pathologically oversexed species, I must add, based
on hundreds of hours of watching bonobos, that their sexual activity
is rather casual and relaxed. It appears to be a completely natural
part of their group life. Like people, bonobos engage in sex only
occasionally, not continuously. Furthermore, with the average copu-
lation lasting 13 seconds, sexual contact in bonobos is rather quick by
human standards. . . . sexual behavior is indistinguishable from social
behavior. Given its peacemaking and appeasement functions, it is not
surprising that sex among bonobos occurs in so many different part-
ner combinations, including between juveniles and adults. (de Waal,
1995: online)

The initial article was followed up by a book, Bonobo: The Forgotten

Ape (1997). The message that bonobos are ‘sexy apes’ who can beat
any humans in the ‘sexual revolution’ stakes is one that has found a
receptive audience (the other key message of de Waal’s paper, on the
female-centric culture of the bonobos, fell on stonier ground). As a
commentator on the Primates’ World website remarked, in an article
entitled ‘Sex-crazed bonobos may be more like humans than thought’,
bonobos ‘make the human sexual revolution of the sixties and seven-
ties look tame.’ (Primates World, 1998). They have gained the tags of the
‘make love not war’ primates and the ‘Kama Sutra ape’. In the United
States, they are used – to the disgust of the conservative movement –
to bolster perceived left-wing or liberal views on evolution theory, on
homosexuality within animals, and also to counter arguments on the
naturalness of male supremacy and the biological inevitability of vio-
lence and war; for example, see the article ‘Do you bonobo? Meet
our make-love-not-war primates’ (Wiker, 2001, online). Commentators,
bloggers and other posters on the web have used the ‘argument from
bonobo’ to make varied political points about male dominance and to
discuss the ‘naturalness’ of homosexuality and the positive qualities of
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 77

‘free sex’. For example, the following exchange took place on 11 July
2006 on a discussion board hosted by USA Today on gay marriage
(spelling corrected and presentation adjusted, this web-page is now
defunct):

Person A: And you certainly don’t see primates having same sex sexual
relations with each other. Seems to me the animals act better than
some humans do.
Person B: Actually, the Bonobo monkey (a primate) is a well known
example of exactly that: http://www.colszoo.org/animalareas/aforest/
bonobo.html. The most telling part of the Bonobo article I cited is
this:
‘Sex is an important way to ensure group stability and ease ten-
sions. Bonobos substitute sex for aggression, and sexual interactions
occur more often among bonobos than among other primates.
Reduced male aggression, strong bonds between males and females,
and frequent sex (including male-to-male and female-to-female)
characterize bonobo society.’
Hmmm . . . I seem to see the same pattern in human society. Where
sexuality is feared, repressed, and combated, violence reigns. Where
sexuality is free, violence is greatly reduced. Compare the violent cul-
tures of the Middle East (and the high murder rates of the Bible Belt)
with the low violent crime rates of progressive Northern European
countries – kinda supports the theory.

But sexuality is arguably not all we have inherited from our ape
cousins. Humans are as closely related to chimpanzees as they are to
bonobos and, along with sexuality, it seems our violence may also stem
from our primate ancestry. In Demonic Males: Apes and the Origin of
Human Violence (1996), a study of the ‘deep origins’ of human violence,
Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson argue that the strong connection
between sex and male violence among many species is related to its
reproductive advantage:

Sexual selection, the evolutionary process that produces sex differ-

ences, has a lot to answer for. Without it, males wouldn’t possess
dangerous bodily weapons and a mindset that sanctions violence.
But males who are better fighters can stop other males from mating,
and they mate more successfully themselves. Better fighters tend to
have more babies. That’s the simple, stupid, selfish logic of sexual
78 Paedophiles in Society

selection. So, what about us? Is sexual selection ultimately the rea-
son why men brawl in barrooms, form urban gangs, plot guerrilla
attacks, and go to war? Has it indeed designed men to be especially
aggressive? (Wrangham & Peterson, 1996: 173)

Aggressive sexual behaviours exist widely among animal species includ-

ing mammals – but not across all primate species. Indeed, only
among two species on Earth are these instinctive aggressive behaviours
expanded into certain more complex forms including male-bonded
intergroup hostility, lethal territorial raiding parties, deliberate killing
of adults and infants, battering of adult females and forced copulation
of females by males. These behaviours are not even typical among great
apes. They are found only among chimpanzees and humans.
Chimpanzees and bonobos are the two closest living relatives of mod-
ern human beings. While chimpanzee (and human) males have social
groups based on hierarchical political alliances, bonobo society is dif-
ferent. It is organized into stable, cohesive parties in which mother–son
bonds and female–female bonds are particularly important. Any threat
from an aggressive male is likely to be met by a concerted rebuff from
a group of determined females and it is this female solidarity which
appears to have fundamentally altered male behaviour among bonobos,
diluting violence and making rape unknown. Among chimpanzees and
humans, however, males have not changed: their aggression and sexual
dominance remain untamed. These traits of violent physical and sex-
ual attack – in which individual males, or groups of males, attack all
those less dominant than they are – have been termed by Wrangham
and Peterson as ‘demonic’; instinctual, unthinking, hard-wired into us
from our evolutionary past:

Our ape ancestors have passed to us a legacy, defined by the power

of natural selection and written in the molecular chemistry of DNA.
For the most part it is a wonderful inheritance, but one small edge
contains destructive elements; and now that we have the weapons
of mass destruction, that edge promotes the potential of our own
demise. . . . The problem is that males are demonic at unconscious
and irrational levels. The motivation of a male chimpanzee who
challenges another’s rank is not that he foresees more matings or
better food or a longer life. Those rewards explain why sexual selec-
tion have favored the desire for power, but the immediate reason he
vies for status is simpler, deeper, and less subject to the vagaries of
context. It is simply to dominate his peers. (Wrangham & Peterson,
1996: 199)
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 79

They conclude their study on ‘demonic males’ by highlighting the para-

dox at the heart of humanity, as we increasingly move towards the
possibility of total annihilation:

Ingenuity now serves the demon with new weapons, new tactics, new
kinds of deception in the ever-escalating game of conflict.
For us, the biggest danger is not that demonic males are the rule
in our species. After all, other demonic male species are not endan-
gered at their own hands. The real danger is that our species combines
demonic males with a burning intelligence – and therefore a capacity
for creation and destruction without precedent. That great human
brain is nature’s most frightening product.
But it is simultaneously nature’s best, more hopeful gift. If we
are cursed with a demonic male temperament and a Machiavellian
capacity to express it, we are also blessed with an intelligence that
can, through the acquisition of wisdom, draw us away from the
5-million-year stain of our ape past. (Wrangham & Peterson, 1996:
257–8)

Primatology therefore seems to suggest that we can learn about sex-

uality, violence (and female solidarity) from our ape cousins. Sexual
dominance and aggression will be explored later in the book, but we
finish this discussion on bonobos with an example of the way this ani-
mal has been used to argue for the ‘naturalness’ of adults having sex
with juveniles. This is from a blog and video podcast called Child Love
TV by Norbert de Jonge, a Dutch paedophile activist. It includes the fol-
lowing comment, posted 13 May 2007 (the site on which it was posted,
CLogo, was taken down in May 2008):

[E]veryone should accept their pedophilic feelings, because, generally

speaking: 1. pedosexual contacts are healthy for children, and when
these contacts can’t take place it is because, 2. a third party, like politi-
cians or parents, abuses its power over the child in order to deny the
child its sexual freedom.
. . . You realize how absurd it is to even have to explain the benefits
of greater sexual freedom for children, when you see a child – when
you see child pornography of consensual sexual contacts. . . . Sex
can be an expression of love and is a pleasant liberation of ten-
sion. Touch and affection are the cure for the social diseases of
violence and fundamentalism. . . . children have to indulge their sex-
uality to become peaceful. Did you know that animals who are
known to do this, like dolphins and Bonobo monkeys, will patch
80 Paedophiles in Society

up quarrels by having sex? Our world leaders can learn a valuable les-
son from them. (de Jonge, 2007: online, emphases in original, ellipses
added)

De Jonge, therefore, provides a clear example of a quotation link-

ing ‘pedosexual contacts’ and ‘sexual freedom’ with the behaviour of
bonobo apes. Primatologists would of course be surprised (and those
I have spoken with are horrified) by such a misunderstanding of pri-
mate behaviour, and its misapplication to human behaviour, but what
is relevant here is not the accuracy or otherwise of the science but its
use by some groups as a legitimizing discourse. De Jonge, in his attempt
to normalize adult sexual contact with children, makes use of ‘dolphins
and Bonobo monkeys’ to argue that children should be free to express
themselves sexually (with adults).
This chapter has therefore looked at three main discourses which
are used – in academic and popular culture – to make sense of
paedophiles and adult sexual contact with children. All these discourses
(on pederasty or ‘Greek love’, on cross-cultural examples and cross-
species examples) have been used throughout the twentieth century
and now, in the twenty-first century, form part of contemporary ‘inter-
generational studies’. They are presented, for example, in Paidika,
an international journal on paedophilia; in the international Jour-
nal of Homosexuality, which frequently features articles on aspects of
paedophilia; in an edited collection, published in the United States,
on Pedophilia: Biosocial Dimensions (Feierman, 1990); and in an edited
collection, published in Britain, called Dares to Speak: Historical and
Contemporary Perspectives on Boy-Love (Geraci, 1997).
There is a sense among the ‘pro-paedophile’ community that its time
has come and that long-stifled voices will now be heard more clearly.
The edited collection Dares to Speak ends with the following assertion:

Surprisingly, there has been a plethora of publications that are pos-

itive, or at least scientifically neutral, on the subjects of childhood
sexuality and intergenerational sexual relationships. . . . That a virtual
reference library of more open material on intergenerational rela-
tionships should exist is of course not at all evident in the general
discussion today. . . . There has been a more varied response to child-
hood sexuality issues than that presented to us by the religious right,
the recovered memory movement, some feminists, or the child-abuse
industry. It can be safely said, without appearing to exaggerate, that
Intergenerational Studies has just begun, and that there are shades of
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 81

grey and white in the discussion that do not appear in the literature
of abuse. (Crawford et al., 1997: 255–6)

The reader will note that the authors of this quotation, in distinction
to ‘Intergenerational Studies’, make reference in passing to the ‘child-
abuse industry’. These two terms (‘intergenerational’ and ‘child abuse’)
could be said to summarize the nature of the confusion experienced by
society, and perhaps begin to account for the ‘jigsaw puzzle’ or ‘rag-
bag’ sense that is experienced when one attempts to piece together how
contemporary society makes sense of paedophilia.
The three ways of understanding paedophilia which have been
focused on in this chapter are all part of a discourse which sees
paedophilia as being about ‘intergenerational sexual relationships’. The
notion of ‘intergenerational sexual relationships’ – to make sense –
must itself be based on an understanding of ‘childhood sexuality’.
Whether it is practices from ancient Greece, from New Guinea or
allegedly from bonobo behaviour, the common thread is that it is
about ‘juveniles’ being (in some sense) sexually attracted to adults
and choosing (more or less) to engage in sexual practices with them.
This discourse is strongly at odds with what Crawford and colleagues,
quoted above, call the ‘the child-abuse industry’. It is worth concluding
this chapter with a brief overview of these two main, but conflict-
ing, discourses. Both discourses are primarily about adult sexuality
while also commenting on children. Both have their academic roots
in nineteenth-century Western thought (from anthropology, sexology
and social policy in particular) but achieved their most significant
popular impact in the 1970s with the rise of sexual and identity
politics.
The first discourse relates to the liberatory potential of ‘less
orthodox’ ‘new sexual minorities’ (Weeks, 1989) including bisexuals,
sado-masochists, transvestites, transsexuals and paedophiles (Plummer,
1995). These sexual orientations have been seen as part of a broad
continuum of alternative sexualities. Both paedophiles and children
find themselves positioned within this discourse of ‘alternative sexu-
alities’, alongside lesbians and gay men, the logic being that anything
other than ‘straight’ is by definition dissident and radical. Thus Gayle
Rubin (1992), in a celebrated essay on ‘Thinking sex’ written for a
conference in 1982, lumped together as ‘sexual radicals’ just about any-
one with any kind of possible ‘alternative’ sexual experience: prostitutes,
fetishists, adults with incestuous desires . . . and children. This confla-
tion of hugely varying sexual experiences – encompassing economics,
82 Paedophiles in Society

paraphilias, crime and child development – have in common only their

difference from normative heterosexuality
Rubin reminded her readers of the importance of this diversity, urging
that ‘[w]e have learned to cherish different cultures as unique expres-
sions of human inventiveness rather than as the inferior or disgusting
habits of savages. We need a similarly anthropological understand-
ing of different sexual cultures’ (1992: 284). Writing sympathetically
of NAMBLA, Rubin suggested that ‘the community of men who love
underaged youth’ (she does not mention other forms of paedophilia)
‘have been the victims of a savage and undeserved witch-hunt. A lot
of people will be embarrassed by their collaboration with this persecu-
tion’ (1992: 273). Thus, proponents of ‘intergenerational intimacy’ saw
themselves as being at the forefront of a wholesale revision of normative
and ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (Rich, 1996), arguing for a relaxed and
joyously liberated sexuality which could embrace everyone, including
children. A generation later, this view remains profoundly influential
even though at least one key thinker has now reconsidered its impact
on children. In the early 1980s, Pat Califia wrote enthusiastically of the
erotic possibilities of adult sexual contact with children. In 2000, he
published a more sober analysis:

I’m alarmed by the way people who want to justify imposing their
sexual needs on young people have made use of my name and
work. . . . these articles [published in 1980] were interpreted as giv-
ing permission, here and now, for things like father/daughter incest
or adult American men traveling to southeast Asia to buy sex from
prepubescent boys. Although that was never my intention, I hope
this reexamination of the issues can serve as a way to make amends
for harm that might have been caused inadvertently by my mis-
guided idealism. . . . Sex radicals have often avoided or glazed over
the damage done by child sexual abuse. . . . I was naive about the
developmental issues that make sex between adults and prepubescent
children unacceptable. (Califia, 2000: 57, 61, 62)

While Califia has reconsidered, other ‘sexual radicals’ continue to cri-

tique the ‘child abuse industry’ or ‘CSA [child sexual abuse] industry’
(Jones, 1991), arguing that it is no more than a late-modern ‘victimolog-
ical’ discourse which acts to silence potentially positive accounts from
boys (this ‘victimological’ critique is not extended to the experience of
girls). More recently, but drawing on the same intellectual tradition, the
author Judith Levine (2002) has put forward a case for a more relaxed
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 83

approach to children’s sexual contact with adults, without discussing

questions of children’s age.
During the time that ‘sexual radicals’ were developing their theories
on ‘intergenerational intimacy’, the experience of consciousness-raising
among another radical group made it possible, for the first time in his-
tory, to provide a very different critique of normative sexuality. Authors
such as Rush (1980), Driver and Droisen (1989), Danica (1989) and
Itzin (2000) have all repeatedly drawn attention to the abusive nature
of adult sexual contact with children, drawing on reports of the direct
lived experiences of adults as well as on statistical data to provide evi-
dence of its long-term impacts. Among the very first of such texts,
Louise Armstrong’s Kiss Daddy Goodnight: A Speakout on Incest, pub-
lished in 1978, broke a profound taboo by bringing into public view
the hidden trauma of children’s actual sexual experiences. These reports,
breaking the silence of many generations, first came almost exclusively
from women but, more recently, men have also begun speaking publicly
about sexual contact with adults in their childhood: an example of this
is the British documentary Chosen (dir. Woods, 2008) which received a
BAFTA award for its sensitive portrayal.
As with the first perspective discussed, this second theoretical tradi-
tion also makes connections between adult sexual attraction to children
and other forms of sexuality, but in this case it is likely to link the
phenomenon of adult sexual attraction to children not to ‘alternative
sexualities’ but, on the contrary, to mainstream male sexual behaviour,
seeing a continuum of sexual violence (Kelly, 1987) which is expressed
through sexual harassment, rape and the sexual abuse of children. Thus,
this second discourse, which takes a child protection perspective, does
not present paedophilia as a radical or dissident alternative but con-
versely as an integral part of normative adult male sexuality as expressed
(and problematized) within patriarchal systems.

4. Conclusion

This chapter has attempted to provide an overview of some of the main

ways in which contemporary society understands adults who are sexu-
ally attracted to children. Rather than any coherence, the ways in which
society ‘make sense’ of this phenomenon may strike one almost as a
disparate ragbag of disjointed ideas, with tabloid newspapers shriek-
ing about ‘evil paedos’ and ‘nasty pervs’ (and finding themselves the
butt of satire), while celebrities and their fans shrug off concerns over
child abuse and mainstream Hollywood ’nymphets’ act out fantasies
84 Paedophiles in Society

which then, it appears, become the content of NAMBLA’s porn. The

nineteenth-century technical psychiatric term of ‘paedophilia erotica’
(and the considerably older ‘pederasty’) have emerged alive and kick-
ing in the twenty-first century, drawing fresh energy from the capacity
of the internet to disseminate ideas, shape global discourse and, as a
by-product, provide an amplifier for the ‘paedophile voice’. The field of
‘intergenerational studies’ draws on pederasty, cross-cultural and cross-
species examples to put forward a view of both paedophiles and children
as ‘sexual radicals’, while perspectives on child sexual abuse and child
protection, one could argue, get rather lost and almost drowned in the
cross-currents. Where paedophiles do feature in the academic literature,
it is often simply to acknowledge that typically they are misrepresented
and demonized (Kitzinger, 2004; Meyer, 2007). Individualized and apo-
litical notions of ‘stranger danger’ only serve to add to the confusion,
merely adding to the confusion and throwing a smokescreen over the
reality of child sexual abuse (Kelly,1996; Cowburn & Dominelli, 2001).
Given these conflicting academic analyses of paedophilia, which each
critique normative masculine sexuality but from substantially different
perspectives, it is perhaps less surprising to find such a level of confusion
within contemporary mainstream society – and a response in every-
day popular culture which ineffectually falls back on sardonic humour,
satire, cynicism, indifference, furtive titillation or baffled hatred. Instead
of being able to critique adult sexual attraction to children as a social
phenomenon, explicable within its cultural and political context, when
confronted by the reality of sexual offences against children popu-
lar culture tends to draw on asocial narratives of individualized moral
deviance; the ‘bad apple’ approach. In this way, paedophiles find them-
selves explained in the popular press and in criminal justice cases
neither as outside the mainstream (as ‘sexual radicals’, free-wheeling
counter-cultural libertarians in the style of Allen Ginsberg or André
Gide, for example), nor as within the mainstream (as normative hege-
monic patriarchs) but typically as monsters, not inside or outside but
simply other than society; individualized and pathologized perverts,
people who have left behind their common humanity.
How did we get here? The next two chapters seek to answer that
question by exploring some of the most influential work published on
‘intergenerational sexuality’ over the last half-century or so. As will be
obvious by now, there is, as quoted above, a ‘plethora of publications
that are positive’ on adult–child sexual contact, too many to cover in
this one book, so only a small selection will be discussed. Readers wish-
ing to find out more about the second perspective (that on the abusive
 Popular Culture ‘Making Sense’ of Paedophilia 85

nature of adult sexual contact with children) are encouraged to read

the statistical, clinical and experiential data provided in a number of
mainstream texts. The following chapters in this book focus on the per-
haps less obvious but nevertheless hugely influential work which follows
the logic of the first perspective, that there is ‘a more varied response
to childhood sexuality issues’ and that adult sexual contact with chil-
dren has ‘shades of grey and white’. We begin with the most influential
author of all, Professor Alfred Kinsey.
4
‘Early Sexual Growth and
Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey

Introduction

Following on from the discussion on ‘making sense’ of paedophilia

through historical, cross-cultural and cross-species examples, this
chapter now turns to one specific body of data and analysis developed
by the biologist Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues at Indiana University
and set out in a key text published in 1948, Sexual Behavior in the Human
Male. Since its first publication, Kinsey’s work has been the focus of
controversy and misinterpretation and it is therefore essential to return
to this famous but little-read original source-material for analysis. The
impact that this work has had on modern Western society has been pro-
found, and the extraordinary fame of Kinsey’s study on sexual behaviour
has recently been revived in the popular imagination by the Hollywood
biopic Kinsey (2004), written and directed by Bill Condon and starring
Liam Neeson and Laura Linney. The unique data from Kinsey’s survey of
sexual behaviour – and the manner in which they were published and
discussed both in Kinsey’s original book and in Condon’s film almost
sixty years later – not only provide us with a lens through which to
examine changes in attitude to the idea of adult–child sexual contact
but also show us how such changes in attitude were effected.
Dr Alfred Charles Kinsey (1894–1956), Professor of Zoology at Indiana
University, has been a household name since the publication of Sexual
Behavior in the Human Male, which he published in conjunction with
his two research associates, Wardell Pomeroy, a prison psychologist,
and Clyde Martin, an undergraduate student taken on as the ‘num-
bers man’. Without doubt this book remains a fascinating text. Within
its tables and descriptions of findings a particular moment of under-
standing human sexuality is preserved like an insect caught in amber.

86
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 87

Radical and taboo-busting as Kinsey’s work undoubtedly was, and sci-

entifically neutral and objective as it claimed to be, it is suffused with
the prejudices – both amusing and disturbing – of its three WASP (White
Anglo-Saxon Protestant) male authors.
First published on 5 January 1948 by W. B. Saunders, a well-
established medical publishing house, the book excited intense popular
interest and was likened to the H-Bomb in impact. Despite the relatively
expensive price of $6.50, to keep up with demand the publishers needed
to reprint the book three times in the first month alone and a further
four times during that year, with numerous reprintings being issued
throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In total, the book has had at least
thirteen re-issues, the most recent being on 1 June 1998 by Indiana Uni-
versity Press, to mark the book’s fiftieth anniversary. During its heyday,
the book sold 275,000 copies in the United States alone, with numer-
ous translations abroad (Wallechinsky & Wallace, 1981). Kinsey received
many accolades, even appearing on the cover of Time magazine when
the second book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, was published
in 1953. The media coverage was unprecedented for a book (Gathorne-
Hardy, 1998) and has probably only been rivalled in modern times by
J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Over the decades, Kinsey’s books, his
sex survey, his research team, his Institute for Sex Research, and more
recently the film about his life, have all been the subject of considerable
controversy, adulation and anger.
Section 1 sets out some of the key points of the original text and
identifies Kinsey’s focus on ‘sex offenders’ as a central theme running
through his work. Section 2 provides a brief biographical context within
which to make sense of Kinsey’s work and Section 3 homes in on what
is without doubt the most significant part of Kinsey’s work in relation
to adult–child sexual contact, Chapter 5 of Sexual Behavior in the Human
Male. Section 4 brings the work up to date by looking at the ways in
which the data in that chapter have been critiqued and the portrayal of
Kinsey’s work in the film Kinsey, and by exploring how Kinsey’s work has
been incorporated into the body of contemporary academic literature
dealing with adult–child sexual contact, with the enduring influence it
has had on our thinking.
In order to demonstrate Kinsey’s thesis clearly, I have drawn exten-
sively on quotations from Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and,
to a lesser extent, on Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. However,
for copyright reasons, I have not been able to use as many direct
quotations as I would have wished and so I have needed to para-
phrase in places. The reader is encouraged to check all quotations and
88 Paedophiles in Society

assertions of fact with the original work to confirm the veracity of my

portrayal of Kinsey’s views.

1. The Kinsey study and ‘sex offending’

In order to analyse Kinsey’s work, it is necessary to understand what

he and his research team believed they were doing, and the language
that they used to present their findings to the public. When Sexual
Behavior in the Human Male was published, it was meant as the first
tranche of findings from a huge project on human sexuality which,
it was intended, would continue for another twenty years or so and
encompass interview-data to be obtained from up to 100,000 individ-
uals throughout the United States. At the time of publication, Kinsey
and his team claimed already to have interviewed approximately 12,000
individuals and they viewed their work as providing an analysis of data
from the most thorough, comprehensive and scientific study of human
sexuality ever undertaken. Kinsey saw his work as primarily biological
and taxonomic, building from his expertise in zoology and the metic-
ulous entomological studies of gall-wasps which had been the focus of
his academic work until middle-age.
The book opens by stating that it is ‘a progress report from a case-
study history on human sex behavior’, a ‘fact-finding survey in which
an attempt is being made to discover what people do sexually’ and what
factors account for differences in sexual behaviour among individuals
and among different groups within the population (Sexual Behavior in
the Human Male, 1965: 3; please note that all quotations and page-
numbering in this chapter are from the 1965 re-issue of the original
1948 text, but page-numbering is likely to be the same in all re-issues).
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, and the subsequent Female vol-
ume, were credited as being authored by Alfred Kinsey and two of his
research staff, Wardell Pomeroy and Clyde Martin (and, for the Female
volume, Paul Gebhard as the fourth author). Both of these texts were
in fact written solely by Kinsey himself (Gathorne-Hardy, 1998: 61)
who habitually wrote using the first person plural, ‘we’. Throughout the
text, and particularly in the opening chapter, Kinsey was at some pains
to represent his work as fully within the traditional and conventional
positivist model of ‘hard science’, authored by a serious, disinterested
group of dedicated scientists. Thus the first few pages are larded with
scientific terminology and an emphasis on ‘the desirability of obtaining
data about sex which would represent an accumulation of scientific fact
completely divorced from questions of moral value and social custom’.
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 89

Within just the first page alone, Kinsey manages to squeeze in reference
to all of the following terms: ‘progress report’, ‘case-studies’, ‘Research
Council’, ‘fact-finding survey’, ‘data’, ‘accumulation of scientific fact’,
‘physicians’, ‘patients’, ‘objective data’, ‘psychiatrists’, ‘analysts’, ‘edu-
cated intelligence’, ‘education’, ‘social control of behavior’, ‘science’,
‘laboratory animals’, ‘physiologic activities’, ‘scientists’, and ‘scientific
investigations in this field’. This is a careful scene-setting, leaving the
reader in no doubt that, with that kind of opening, the rest of the book
will be thoroughly scientific!
It is not until p.16 that Kinsey feels confident enough in having estab-
lished the research team’s scientific credentials that he begins to let his
hair down and show some emotion, referring to his interviewees’ ‘satis-
factions and heartaches’ and his own ‘sympathetic acceptance of people
as they are’. As Paul Gebhard, one of the co-authors, was later to say,
‘I felt that it was anthropology; we were just studying our own culture
instead of some primitive culture. And I felt this was really important,
pioneering work. We all felt that way.’ (quoted in Brown, 2004, online).
A key part of this ‘pioneering work’ was the development of a new
model of human sexuality and a new model of how such sexuality
articulated with ‘our own culture’. Thus Kinsey’s model of sexuality
drew on previous conceptual models taken mainly from biology, whilst
developing new sociological implications. Kinsey saw himself as in con-
tradistinction to the psychological or psychodynamic model of sexuality
developed by Freud. He had no patience with psychology. The termi-
nology of ‘New Biology’ and ‘Scientific Sexological’ concepts – humans
as instinct-driven animals – saturates his work. There is no mention of
‘men’ or ‘women’, but only the ‘human male’ and the ‘human female’,
with repeated reference to research on ‘anthropoids’ and on ‘other mam-
malian species’ – apes, monkeys and especially rats. Kinsey was, after
all, a zoologist by training, and a determined Darwinist to boot, who
delighted in seeing humans as simply another species of mammal, so it
is not surprising that, for him, animal research was an important source
of confirmation for his theories on ‘sexual behaviour in the human ani-
mal’, as he liked to term it. At the same time, Kinsey seems to have been
influenced by the Freudian idea of the sex drive or libido constantly
existing as a powerful force within bodies, demanding a ‘sexual outlet’
for its expression and release in orgasm.
Throughout Kinsey’s book, we are not really exploring sex – we are cer-
tainly not being given information on developing sexual relationships
or love-making. A central concept of the book is this notion of a ‘sex-
ual outlet’ – almost as impersonal and mechanistic as plumbing: place
90 Paedophiles in Society

the penis into an ‘outlet’ and orgasm results. Kinsey’s model of sexuality
is thus a straightforward one: the human male is a biological organism
with an innate drive to achieve coitus and to orgasm. The amount and
type of ‘sexual outlet’ is affected by biological factors; the main factor,
according to Kinsey, being the age at which adolescence occurs. Mea-
suring the onset of adolescence by signs such as physical growth, pubic
hair, voice-change, and ability to ejaculate, Kinsey demonstrates from
his data that if adolescence occurs early (around 10 or 11 years old),
then the individual is more likely to have sex early and have more sex
throughout life than a boy who reaches adolescence later (age 14 or 15).
As he expresses it, the boys who reach adolescence earliest are the ones
who most often have ‘the highest rates of outlet’ in later life (p. 213).
(It may be relevant that in the film Kinsey, there is a scene where Kinsey
is asked when he developed pubic hair and his voice broke: he reports
that this occurred when he was about 11, although he is reported to
have remained a virgin until his marriage at age 27.)
Throughout the book, there is built up a picture of male sexuality as
focused on ‘sexual outlet’ and in which the earlier sexual activity starts,
the better. Because of the centrality of the concept of ‘sexual outlet’, any
notion of slowly developing sexual maturity is almost irrelevant. The
idea of a human being passing incrementally through developmental
stages, from baby to child to adolescent to adult, to arrive at full emo-
tional, psychological and social maturity ready to participate in adult,
sexually expressed relationships seems entirely foreign to Kinsey’s model
of sexuality. The plumbing metaphor works whatever the chronological
age of the penis concerned, or the ‘outlet’ concerned.
Kinsey is keen to emphasize throughout the book that young males
do (or should) start sexual activity as soon as they are capable of ejacula-
tion or indeed ‘would be capable of ejaculation if the proper opportunity
were at hand’ (p.189). (This oblique statement about ‘the proper oppor-
tunity’ is discussed further in Section 3.) On pubertal boys, Kinsey
states that, after the initial experience of ejaculation, practically all boys
become regular in their sexual activity, thus ‘more than 99 per cent of
the boys begin regular sexual lives immediately after the first ejacula-
tion’, whether this involves monthly, weekly or ‘even daily ejaculation’.
(pp. 191–2). As well as emphasizing that young males should start sex-
ual activity as soon as they are capable of ejaculation, Kinsey finds that
those who do start early have many advantages. Not only do they have
much more frequent sex ‘for a matter of at least 35 or 40 years’, but they
are ‘more alert, energetic, vivacious, spontaneous, physically active’ and
generally outgoing (p. 325). This highly positive description appears to
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 91

be derived from ‘personality ratings’ but it is not clear who – if anyone –

administered these ratings or whether they were not simply anecdo-
tal impressions of the interviewer. Late-adolescent boys were described
using the terms ‘slow’, ‘quiet’, ‘mild in manner’ and so on. These list-
less, unforceful males do not appear to deserve much sex, and never get
much sex, according to Kinsey.
As well as admiring the ‘vivacious’ young males who begin sexual
activity early, the book also admires what it terms ‘lower level males’, in
other words, working-class or blue-collar youths. Again, this comes out
throughout the book. Kinsey distinguishes between ‘upper level’, that is,
college-educated, and ‘lower level’ males. As with the ‘early-adolescent’
and ‘late-adolescent’ distinction, there is a similarly clear and value-
laden distinction made between ‘upper level’ males, who don’t get the
sex, and ‘lower level’ males, who most certainly do. (Again, it may be
relevant that Kinsey, and also his researcher Clyde Martin, had come
originally from distinctly ‘lower level’ working-class roots, although
they were of course also ‘college-educated’). There is a tension in the
book between the inability of ‘upper level males’ to ‘achieve coitus’
and the contrast this makes with ‘lower level males’ who are presented,
enviably it seems, as ‘natural’, uninhibited, sexually free and sexually
successful. Throughout the book the argument is that ‘upper level males’
fail to get what they want in socio-sexual relations’ (p. 363) while ‘the
lower level male comes nearer having as much coitus as he wants’ (ibid.)
and indeed ‘the lower level male is likely to have had intercourse with
hundreds of girls’ (p. 369).
As well as age and social level, the book analyses other factors which
are seen as affecting ‘sexual outlet’. These include marital status, reli-
gious background, and rural or urban background. Marital and religious
factors are treated fairly uncontroversially, but Kinsey proposes that
rural or urban background is particularly important because the major-
ity of boys living on farms will have sex with animals – as will city boys
who visit farms. It is rather startling to discover that Sexual Behavior in
the Human Male contains an entire chapter, Chapter 22, on bestiality.
This seems never to have attracted any particular interest or comment.
Re-reading Kinsey’s work now, however, one of the most striking char-
acteristics of the book is the contrast between the way in which sex
with animals and sex with women is presented. Thus, whenever ‘pet-
ting’ (that is, heterosexual love-making which does not involve penile
penetration) is discussed, the language becomes noticeably stilted and
medical: rather than any reference to a man caressing a woman’s breast
with his hands or mouth, one finds only ‘manual manipulation of the
92 Paedophiles in Society

female breast’ and ‘oral eroticism’, and an almost complete absence of

reference to affection or emotion. Unexpectedly, it is in the chapter on
bestiality where we find the most explicit references in the entire book
to affection, where Kinsey talks about ‘many a farm boy’ who fantasises
about sexual contact with animals and ‘may develop an affectional rela-
tion with the particular animal with which he has his contacts’ and who
may be ‘quite upset emotionally’ when ‘situations force them to sever
connections’. Kinsey also writes about ‘male dogs’ who ‘may become
considerably attached’ to the boy who masturbates them and may ‘com-
pletely forsake the females of their own species in preference for the
sexual contacts that may be had with a human partner.’ (pp. 676–7).
Consonant with the tenor of the whole book, the overall impression
is formed that, since the function of sex is orgasm, an activity such as
‘petting’ (hugging, kissing or caressing) is largely a waste of time. ‘Pet-
ting’ is presented as something that is only done by ‘high school and
college levels’ (p. 345) and provides few orgasms. The implicit advice is
not to bother too much with ‘petting’ women: better for the ‘human
partner’ to head straight for the affectionate (male) animals on the
farm. Indeed, the anthropologist Margaret Mead commented acutely in
a review, ‘The book suggests no way of choosing between a woman and
a sheep’ (quoted in Gathorne-Hardy, 1998: 272).
The ‘sources of sexual outlet’ which are covered in separate chapters
in the book encompass: masturbation, nocturnal emissions, heterosex-
ual petting leading to orgasm, heterosexual coitus (whether pre-marital,
marital, extra-marital or sex with prostitutes), homosexual outlet, and
animal contacts. Alongside the emphasis on bestiality, there are other
strange anomalies such as the recurring questions on ‘urethral inser-
tions’, a very rare activity statistically but one enjoyed by Kinsey himself,
apparently from early adolescence onwards (Jones, 1997). Similarly,
specific survey questions in the Questionnaire on ‘breast knots’ in ado-
lescent males and ‘thickness of lips’ (1965: 64) seem also to indicate
interests peculiar to Kinsey, as it is not clear what their general scientific
value might be to sexology.
Despite its much-vaunted scientific neutrality, therefore, the biases
within the book are glaringly evident for those who take the time to
read it. For example, throughout the book there is an obvious impa-
tience with and intolerance of women, particularly those who withhold,
demand payment for, or otherwise constrain male ‘sexual outlets’.
Women, as they appear in this book, have little sexual interest and no
imagination or empathy. In fact, they are really rather irritating and get
in the way of men having sex. Kinsey expresses annoyance that women,
whether as mothers, as school teachers or as ‘voting citizens’ (he was
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 93

26 when women finally attained suffrage in the United States), are the
main carers for boys and are the ones who ‘control moral codes, sched-
ules for sex education, campaigns for law enforcement, and programs
for combating what is called juvenile delinquency’. He dismissively con-
jectures that it is ‘obviously impossible for a majority of these women
to understand the problem that the boy faces’ in dealing with sexual
arousal (p. 223).
It is extraordinary to find that, in an 800-page book on male sexuality,
there is only one reference to rape (pp. 237–8) and this sole reference is
not actually about the reality of rape but only about false allegations
(in this case, false allegations of sexual abuse against children), which is
a ‘problem which deserves noting’ (p. 237). As one author has astutely
commented, remarking breezily that Kinsey thus put in ‘a good word
for child molesters’:

This represented the only instance in the Reports [on Male and
Female Sexual Behavior] where adults appeared in the role of victims
and children in that of oppressors . . . Throughout this discussion, it
should be noted, Kinsey assigned the villainous role not to children
as such but specifically to female children, just as in his examina-
tion of the sexual hardships endured by teenagers he assigned the
role of repressor to mothers and female teachers. Inevitably one feels
that his sympathies went out not so much to the young in gen-
eral as to those among them who happened to be males. (Robinson,
1976: 92)

Thus, in what is purported to be a comprehensive and scientific com-

pendium on sexual behaviour in the human male, the sexual behaviour
of actual rape or sexual abuse – committed against adults or children –
does not appear. It is only false allegations which ‘deserve noting’. This
silence on sexual assault, along with the tone of contempt for women’s
desires and experiences, is consonant with Kinsey’s thesis on the impor-
tance of coitus and ‘sexual outlet’. For him, ‘sexual outlet’ is central and
he expresses only exasperation for any moral codes which reduce the
amount of coitus available to males. Throughout his writings, his many
public lectures and his campaigning activities over twenty-odd years,
Kinsey’s vision, shared by the members of his research team, is a pow-
erful image of ‘human males’ craving and needing ‘sources of sexual
outlet’ by which to relieve the biologically ordained pressure of their
libidinal drives.
Kinsey, partly for reasons which will be explored in the next section,
was driven by a great sense of sympathy for sexually active men and an
94 Paedophiles in Society

equally strong sense of outrage and injustice at social systems which

prevented, circumscribed or punished men whose sexual behaviour
contravened norms or laws. His book, ostensibly an objective and dis-
passionate scientific study on all sexual behaviour in the human male,
is in fact a sustained argument for the legal and social freedom for all
males to achieve coitus without hindrance, via whatever ‘outlet’ is avail-
able. This argument leads logically to Kinsey’s campaign, introduced in
the Male volume and continued actively and unceasingly for the remain-
der of his life, for the reduction and even removal of ‘sex offender’ as a
criminal category.
Even prior to beginning the study on which this book is based,
Kinsey was already declaring in his lectures to students, ‘there are only
three kinds of sexual abnormalities: abstinence, celibacy, and delayed
marriage. Think about this.’ (quoted in Gathorne-Hardy, 1998: 124).
Reading his words, we do indeed need to ‘think about this’. Kinsey is
stating baldly that, in his opinion, the only ‘abnormal’ sex is no sex.
Kinsey does not qualify this contention in relation to consensual or
non-consensual sexual acts. In Kinsey’s world-view, the very concept of
‘non-consensual sex’ appears to be an oxymoron, since apparently there
would never be a reason not to consent to sex: certainly in his written
work there appears to be no mention of such a situation. For Kinsey,
therefore, there are no forms of sexuality which are wrong. The only
form of wrongdoings or crimes which can be committed in relation to
sex are to abstain from or to prevent sex.
At the time when Kinsey was researching, in America just prior to and
during the Second World War, society was shifting awkwardly between
a general relaxation of sexual mores and an increasing hostility towards
male homosexuality. The categories of sex offending for which a man
might be imprisoned ranged from rape of an adult or sexual abuse of
a child to ‘victimless crimes’ such as masturbation in public, consen-
sual heterosexual oral or anal sex, or consensual sex between two adult
men. Kinsey’s sympathies were strongly with the ‘sex offender’, seem-
ingly regardless of the offence committed. Since he regarded sex as an
essential biological drive, all ‘sources of sexual outlet’ as equally morally
neutral, and orgasm, however obtained, as an unproblematic and unal-
loyed good, his research provided a compelling argument against the
concept of ‘sex offending’ and for all sexual behaviour to be socially tol-
erated and legally de-criminalized. This was no mere rhetoric. Kinsey’s
work inspired and underpinned substantial reforms of sex offender laws
in both the United States and Britain from the 1950s to the present day.
(More details on this are provided in Section 4.)
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 95

2. The man behind the book

Professor Kinsey, as the instigator and leader of the largest survey into
human sexuality ever conducted and as the founder of the prestigious
Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, was a powerful personal-
ity, domineering and charismatic. He was also, as noted, the sole author
of the two major texts resulting from the survey (as both Sexual Behavior
in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, although
credited to several authors and written in the formal third person, were
in fact written solely by Kinsey himself, Gathorne-Hardy, 1998). It is to
Kinsey’s biography therefore that we must turn in order to understand
something of the provenance of his key ideas on human sexuality and
on ‘sex offenders’.
We all take our early childhood experiences into the rest of our lives
and our work. The dramas, the fears and the comforts of childhood
inform our emotional and intellectual lives and provide the ground
for our particular ways of knowing, embedded in and inseparable from
our socio-economic and cultural contexts and the accidents of our
biographies. It is the task of biographers and theorists to tease out possi-
ble relationships between early experiences and later intellectual work.
This embedded, situated knowledge, of course, affects both the subject
(in this case, Kinsey) and those who choose to study the subject (as well
as those who choose to study those who choose to study the subject,
and so on ad infinitum!)
Kinsey has been studied by two biographers in particular. The first,
James Jones, is an American who conducted his doctoral research
at Indiana University and went on to publish his research as Alfred
C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life in 1997. The second major biographer
is an English author, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, from an aristocratic
family fallen on hard times (Gathorne-Hardy, 2004) who had been one
of Benjamin Britten’s young boy friends in the 1940s (Bridcut, 2006)
and who has written on topics as diverse as English nannies and the
public school system as well as on Kinsey. Gathorne-Hardy, like Jones,
was given privileged access to files at Kinsey’s Institute at Indiana Uni-
versity. His 1998 biography, Alfred C. Kinsey: Sex the Measure of All
Things provided the basis for Condon’s film Kinsey in 2004. Facts cited
in this section are taken, unless otherwise referenced, from Gathorne-
Hardy’s work, and page numbers given in this section therefore refer to
Gathorne-Hardy (1998).
Alfred Kinsey was born in Hoboken, New York, in 1894. His early
life was dominated by chronic ill-health, the humiliations of chronic
96 Paedophiles in Society

poverty, and by bullying both at home and at school. His health prob-
lems, including rickets, rheumatic fever and typhoid, were linked to
poor diet and housing and, when not ill at home, he was isolated at
school and socially. A school-acquaintance recalled many years later, ‘He
kept himself alone, stayed by himself . . . We thought he was a sissy guy,
feminine-like, like a girl.’ (p. 16). He had a stern Methodist upbring-
ing from his intensely religious dictatorial father and he himself went
on to bring up his own children unusually strictly, chastising them on
occasion (p. 7). His hated childhood left him with an ‘almost insane’
emphasis on personal cleanliness and neatness (pp. 8 and 9). At age 10
the family moved fifteen miles out of town to a village, South Orange,
and here, ‘Even thirty years later Kinsey could remember the excite-
ment, the great surge of relief he got from at last escaping out into the
surrounding countryside – away from his bed, from illness, from home,
from the bullying streets and cramped houses’ (p. 12).
Socially awkward, self-absorbed, an obsessive collector, Kinsey is
presented even by sympathetic biographers such as Jones and Gathorne-
Hardy as someone who found it hard to empathize with others, some-
one perhaps with almost autistic difficulty in understanding how others
might perceive the world. The impression that comes through most
clearly, however, from anecdotes of his childhood is his overwhelming
sense of ‘furious hatred’. Kinsey had an abiding sense of rage against
his upbringing, his father and especially religion. He seems to have
been furious, throughout his life, about the effects of his upbringing.
It is this powerful sense of frustrated fury, an engine of rage, which
comes through clearly in his later work. When he shows empathy, it
is with men denied opportunities to express themselves sexually. When
he argues most eloquently, it is for the rights of such men to do what
they please. Generations of men, reading Kinsey, have found echoes of
their own frustration and their own desires.
As Kinsey grew older, more confident and more assured in his social
standing, leaving behind his working-class background and settling
into the comfortable lifestyle of a successful professor with an interna-
tional reputation, aspects of his character began to be expressed more
assertively. Kinsey was not shy about sex within his circle of colleagues
and associates. He had a fascination with masturbating and watching
masturbation, insisting to a photographer, ‘I need 2,000 orgasms . . . All
I want is the genitalia – close up. . . . I have to see the semen coming out.’
(p. 296). It is well-documented by Jones and Gathorne-Hardy that he
had sex with a large number of men, among them most of the mem-
bers of his research team which became ‘a group of interacting open
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 97

marriages’ (p. 168), including Clyde Martin, Wardell Pomeroy and oth-
ers, in which ‘we all sucked one another’ (p. 290). Kinsey had ‘about
nine other partners during his life’ in addition to ‘anonymous and
casual “tea-room” [homosexual] sex’ (p. 248). During Kinsey’s lifetime,
homosexual acts were criminal and the damage to his reputation, to
his work and to his university and funding bodies had his activity been
known would have been immense. Kinsey relied on people around him
to remain silent.
Homosexual sex was not the only sexual interest which Kinsey had
and which, had it been more widely known about, might have affected
the public’s uncritical acceptance of his work. Both his major biog-
raphers, Jones and Gathorne-Hardy, document masturbation practices
which included inserting pencils and even toothbrushes into his penis
through the urethral opening (p. 337). He also tied rope around his tes-
ticles and on one occasion suspended himself from the ceiling, possibly
for a couple of hours, by this rope (pp. 206 and 414). He was also known
to have circumcised himself as an adult (p. 414), and it seems clear that
quite extreme pain comprised an integral part of his sexual life. Given
such unusual and extreme practices, it would be surprising if Kinsey’s
own idiosyncratic sexual experiences did not colour his relationship to
sexual behaviour in general. Kinsey himself hints that these practices
are relevant in his professional work. For example, in Sexual Behavior
in the Human Male (1965: 60), in a discussion on interviewing skills,
he includes a paragraph on interviewing men who have ‘greatly elabo-
rated’ their ‘masturbatory techniques’ and he comments favourably on
the importance of the interviewer’s ‘background of knowledge’ in this
regard.
Other idiosyncratic details about Kinsey may also be relevant to
the final shape of the study and the published results. He was appar-
ently very proud of his penis, which was said to be ‘unusually large’
(Gathorne-Hardy, 1998: 60) and he had a habit of wearing few or no
clothes, which some people found disconcerting (pp. 90, 105–6). With
young male students he was especially relaxed. He had been a very
enthusiastic member of the Boy Scouts since his adolescence and con-
tinued to enjoy camping trips all his life. Before his career switch into
sexology, Kinsey was a zoologist studying the gall-wasp, a tiny flightless
insect, and this research involved camping trips with students to col-
lect samples. These camping trips continued later, when Kinsey took his
young male research staff around the United States to interview respon-
dents for the survey on sexual behaviour. Some young men on these
trips were taken aback when Professor Kinsey appeared naked, engaged
98 Paedophiles in Society

them in intimate conversations and offered to teach them masturbation

techniques. One researcher, Vincent Nowlis, who had recently joined
the team, left promptly when he realized he was expected not only to
work for but to have sex with the Professor (p. 228). After that, Kinsey
determined that he would only accept research members who were more
open about sexual issues.
From the information provided by his biographers, we can see that
Kinsey was not the conventional scientist of impeccable sexual probity
whom the American public believed him to be. When he argued for
tolerance of sexual difference, and a freeing-up of sex offender legisla-
tion, including that which criminalized male homosexual acts, he can
be seen to be ahead of his time, a courageous advocate for sexual libera-
tion and the unashamed enjoyment of sexual pleasure, and this is how
many people today understand his work. Offering to masturbate the
young men working under him could be interpreted as the gesture of a
relaxed sexual libertarian eager to release his students from stuffy and
repressive inhibitions. After all, such young men, although constrained
by job and career considerations, could still choose to leave the project
if they did not wish to participate sexually. There was a sense of sex-
ual permissiveness and experimentation about the research team which
many relished, although there was also a rigid and compulsive quality:
the research team all had to fill in sex calendars, detailing each orgasm
and its ‘source’ (p. 218). Kinsey was a controlling and dominating char-
acter and those around him regarded him as a powerful father-figure not
to be thwarted. Nowlis described him as ‘a guru surrounded by disciples’
(p. 217) and there are many similar comments.
For Kinsey, as we have seen, sex was genuinely ‘the measure of all
things’, the central organizing principle. For men, the need to orgasm
was a biological demand that must be met. The idea of an orgasm which
is unwanted is outside Kinsey’s conceptual framework. Kinsey could,
and in his writings and speeches frequently did, sympathize with those
who did not have sex when they wanted it; we never hear from him any
sympathy for those who might be exposed to sexual acts they did not
want or which they were unable even to comprehend.

3. The data in Kinsey’s Chapter 5: ‘Early Sexual

Growth and Activity’

Turning from Kinsey the man and back to an examination of his

hugely influential publications, it is worth taking a moment to exam-
ine how the data on sexuality were collected. (All page-references in this
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 99

section are to Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, 1965, unless otherwise
noted.)
The question of data-collection is more complex than would at first
appear. The authors (again, actually only Kinsey but drawing on support
with statistics from Martin) outline their methodology in the context
of a thorough overview of previous ‘sex studies’ (pp. 21–34), again in
order to demonstrate how this study is a development of earlier scien-
tific work. The book is a presentation of data ‘secured through first-hand
interviews’ which are ‘limited to persons resident in the United States’
and include persons from ages ‘three to ninety’ (p. 5). It is stated on p. 6
that the present study is based on ‘about 5300’ white males, which is
not the whole sample of 12,000 histories taken at that point, which pre-
sumably included women and Black men whose histories were intended
to constitute later volumes. However, a casual reader might be misled on
this point by the Dedication at the front of this volume to the ‘twelve
thousand persons who have contributed to these data’.
Information is given on pp. 13–16 on the different groups involved
in contributing interviewees, from hospitals, universities, schools, psy-
chiatric clinics, prisons and ‘Travelers on Trains’, but there is no way
of telling from the information contained within this volume exactly
how many sex histories were derived from which groups. Further, since
the discussion on sources of data seems to cover all 12,000 case-studies
and not simply the 5300 selected for this volume, it is not at all clear
where the sample in this volume was drawn from or even whether this
is the whole of the white males who had contributed to the study by
that point or only a subset. Particular reference is made to penal and
‘correctional institutions’ where the inmate populations ‘have voluntar-
ily cooperated in splendid fashion’ (p. 15). Although not mentioned in
the book, Kinsey’s colleague Pomeroy, through his contacts, was able to
recruit a large number of prison inmates (particularly sex offenders) as
interviewees. In one rare admission of who contributed, there is men-
tion of ‘several hundred male prostitutes who have contributed their
histories’ (p. 216) to the overall sample of ‘about 5300’ men. Since male
prostitutes probably do not constitute anywhere near 5 per cent or more
of the general male population, this is evidence of skewing the sample.
On p. 7 the question of normal sexual behaviour is raised, with the
strong statement that no preconception of what is normal or abnormal
has affected the choice of the histories or the selection of data recorded.
Kinsey also states that the study does not distinguish between ‘sexu-
ally well-adjusted persons’ and those whom psychiatrists would regard
as neurotic, psychotic or psychopathic. However, since sexual or mental
100 Paedophiles in Society

health is not used as a variable in the research, it is impossible, from

the data presented, to know whether the sample was representative of
the wider population within the United States or, by apparently rely-
ing heavily on samples of prisoners including sex offenders, whether it
skewed the findings towards the ‘psychopathic’ end of the spectrum.
Kinsey’s research team also took histories from individuals based at a
State Training School for the Feeble-Minded, a Children’s Home, and
a Salvation Army Home for Children (p. 15). It is not clear what ages
the interviewees were from these institutions and no further details are
given in the book. However, Gathorne-Hardy tells of Kinsey collecting
data from Washawaka Orphanage (1998: 169) and of collaborating with
a graduate student, Glenn Ramsey, who, for reasons which are unclear,
had independently decided to collect a large number of masturbation
histories from boys at Woodruff Senior High School in Peoria, Illinois
where Ramsey was teaching; he subsequently agreed to join Kinsey’s
team after being dismissed as a teacher (Gathorne-Hardy, 1998: 129,
136, 192–3).
Years later, in 1979, Paul Gebhard, a man at the heart of Kinsey’s
research team and the one who took over as Director of the Kinsey
Institute after Kinsey’s death, published a version of the original data
which had been re-analysed (Gebhard, Johnson & Kinsey, 1979). In the
first chapter of this volume, he attempted to explain some of the dif-
ficulties with the data. Even his explanations are fairly convoluted and
opaque. He advises: ‘we must warn readers that attempting comparisons
between this volume and the first two ‘Kinsey Reports’ is complex and
often frustrating’ and goes on to say that Sexual Behavior in the Human
Male is:

one of the most difficult books to work with ever written. Some
of the problem stems from the fact that in those days we lacked
computers and our card sorters were slow. A relatively simple table
could easily take a full day or two of sorting – assuming the machine
was available. Consequently, some tabulations were made a year or
more before others and since our interviewing continued, our Ns
[sample-sizes] varied. (Gebhard et al., 1979: 8–9)

In fact, Gebhard admits that the sample of ‘older males’ (which

appears here to mean anyone aged over 45!) was ‘often so small
that no calculations should have been published’ – he gives the
examples of a table based on 14 cases and one table based on a mere
three cases (1979: 9). As well as varying sample-sizes and difficulties
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 101

working with the data, a more fundamental problem was that the data
themselves were skewed, containing unrepresentatively high propor-
tions of ‘delinquents’, prison-inmates, prostitutes and homosexuals. The
Kinsey research team had deliberately ‘sought out groups and organiza-
tions known to have a high proportion of homosexual members and
interviewed large numbers of these’ (1979: 5). Gebhard explains that
this was done because the team intended later to publish these find-
ings as part of a separate study on homosexuality, but this was never
indicated in the ‘Kinsey Reports’, where the samples were presented as
being representative of the general population.
In the 1979 volume, the original interview-data have been ‘cleaned’
by dividing them up into four groups: the ‘Basic Sample’, ‘Delinquents’
(including sex offenders), ‘Homosexuals’ and ‘Special Groups’ (includ-
ing ‘sources with known deviant sexual bias’, 1979: 5). A sample of
‘prepubescent children’ is included under Special Groups. Thus, in the
1979 volume, only the Basic Sample appears to be meant to be rep-
resentative of the general population while, in the original Male and
Female volumes, data from all these four groups were presented as rep-
resentative not only of the average American citizen but indeed as
representative of the entire human population, ‘the human animal’, in
general. Gebhard, however, stands by the findings from Kinsey’s work
and asserts:

Despite the flaws of our earlier pioneering publications and the diffi-
culties of comparing them with this volume, it is clear that the major
findings of the earlier works [Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female] regarding age, gender, marital
status, and socioeconomic class remain intact. Adding to and clean-
ing our samples has markedly increased their value, but has not as
yet caused us to recant any important assertion. In using our new Ns
[sample-sizes] in analyses, we anticipate we will discover relationships
previously unknown to us and we will undoubtedly have to modify
some prior statements, but we feel the important contributions of
Dr. Kinsey will stand. (Gebhard et al., 1979: 9)

This approach of continuing to stand by Kinsey’s findings has continued

to this day (see Section 4), despite what would seem to be the increas-
ingly untenable nature of such a stance, particularly ‘the major findings
of the earlier works regarding age’, as concern centres on the way in
which children’s experiences were included in the study and the ways
in which information about such experiences was obtained. Gebhard
102 Paedophiles in Society

states that, in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, those interviewed

included 536 prepubescent children, of whom he says ‘Most of these
were too young to have received our standard interview and were given
a variant of it.’ (1979: 6). Later he clarifies this sample as comprising
380 ‘prepubertal males’ and 156 ‘prepubertal females’ (1979: 45). Their
experiences were discussed in both the Male and the Female volumes.
The following discussion mainly addresses the data in the Male volume,
where the subject was treated more fully.
Returning to the original work by Kinsey, the most important section
of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in terms of children’s sexual devel-
opment and adult–child sexual contact is presented immediately after
the background and methodology of the research have been laid out
in Part 1. The first chapter of Part 2 (‘Factors Affecting Sexual Outlet’)
is Chapter 5, ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’. This is therefore the
first chapter which gives actual findings from Kinsey’s survey. Given the
nature of the material presented in this chapter, an important question
to ask at the outset is how this chapter fits into the rest of the book.
Is it an anomaly, an aberration which can safely be ignored or excised,
leaving the value of the rest of the book unscathed? Or is it central to
the argument of the entire book?
The evidence suggests that, for Kinsey and his team, this is not by
any means an insignificant or anomalous part of the book, but is indeed
central to the overall argument. This is shown in the way that data from
this chapter are integrated into the themes of the book, with the find-
ings repeatedly referred to throughout the other sections of the book
(for example the comment ‘The existence of multiple orgasm in the pre-
adolescent male has been discussed in Chapter 5’ is given on p. 215,
in the chapter on ‘Total Sexual Outlet’). As well as references in other
chapters to statements in Chapter 5, attention is drawn to the chapter
itself all the way through from the beginning to the end of the book.
At the start of the book, in the introductory section, on p. 6, Kinsey
explains ‘We have only begun to accumulate data for the highly impor-
tant chapter that involves infants and very young children’. On pp. 58–9
he provides a section on ‘Interviewing young children’, which refers to
interviews with children from ages 12 down to 3. Although it is stated
‘One of the parents has been present in all of our interviews with these
younger children’ (p. 58), and this assertion is repeated by a subsequent
Director of the Kinsey Institute, John Bancroft, it is known that in fact
this is quite untrue. Kinsey conducted all the interviews with children
personally and at least a proportion of them were conducted with no
other adult present (Gathorne-Hardy, 1998: 214–15). It is possible that
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 103

children were also interviewed through schools and Children’s Homes

(as listed in the groups interviewed, pp. 14–15).
Kinsey and his team found the whole area of children’s sexuality suf-
ficiently important to state ‘A later volume will cover this aspect of the
study’ (p. 59). Although this intended volume was never published,
members of Kinsey’s research team, notably Wardell Pomeroy, contin-
ued research in this area. Pomeroy later went on to write Boys and Sex
(1968) and Girls and Sex (1971) (both books re-issued most recently in
1991), and Your Child and Sex: A Guide for Parents (1974). In a published
interview, he stated his view that:

Girls should learn to have an orgasm as part of their growing

up. It isn’t nearly as important whether she has intercourse when
she is young, or pets when she is young. The real important ingre-
dient is whether she has orgasm. The girls who have orgasm when
they are young – as early as three or four – but anywhere along in
pre-adolescence, are the ones who have the easiest time having an
orgasm in marriage, or as an adult. It’s a real learning experience.
And it doesn’t make much difference how she gets it. Those who
masturbate have just as easy a time as those who have intercourse
or pet.
. . . We compiled all the sex histories we got of women who as
children had traumatic sexual experiences with adults: rape, cruel
and unusual punishment, etc. We found that as adults, they were
more responsive sexually than the rest of the population. (Quoted in
Arnow, 1977: 5, 53)

This view has developed from the work Pomeroy undertook with the
Kinsey research team and fits with the thesis presented in the previous
section, that the earlier a boy enters adolescence and starts sexual activ-
ity, the better he will function. This thesis is made clear in numerous
remarks throughout the book, for example in the statement that, when
assessing age of onset of adolescence, one should pay attention to the
time of first ejaculation ‘or to evidence that the boy would be capable of
ejaculation if the proper opportunity were at hand’ (p. 189, emphasis added).
Kinsey also comments that most people could be much more sexually
active if they were as ‘unrestrained’ as those who ‘openly and regularly’
defy the law and social convention (p. 213).
He then develops his view that the ‘primitive human animal’ must
prehistorically have engaged in ‘unrestrained pre-adolescent sex play’ –
an activity which he believes also occurs in ‘the other anthropoids’,
104 Paedophiles in Society

in ‘some of the so-called primitive human societies’ and ‘among such

of the children in our society as escape the restrictions of social con-
ventions’ (p. 222). In relation to escaping ‘the restrictions of social
conventions’, Kinsey then adds a reference to Chapter 5.
Throughout the book, Kinsey is making a case that not only is early
sexual experience good but that more children should be enabled to
have this experience of ‘unrestrained pre-adolescent sex play’, without
restrictive ‘sex taboos’, and that ‘proper opportunity’ should be ‘at hand’
to assist this to happen. As Pomeroy continued to insist, in 1977, the
‘girls who have orgasm when they are young – as early as three or four’
will be the ones who are ‘more responsive sexually’ later on. For Kinsey,
Gebhard, Pomeroy and the rest of the research team, sex is ‘the mea-
sure of all things’ and overrides any other consideration. Given this
view on pre-adolescent and prepubertal sexuality as benefitting from an
‘escape’ from ‘the restrictions of social conventions’, it is unsurprising
that Chapter 5 is not presented as anomalous in any way. It is pre-
sented with no apology and no explanation and no special treatment
is regarded as necessary in discussing data on erotic arousal and orgasm
among ‘younger boys’, including babies.
Like all the chapters presenting data, this chapter contains charts and
tables. The four tables which are most relevant are Tables 30 to 34.
Table 30 (p.175) is titled Pre-adolescent Eroticism and Orgasm and gives
samples of children from age 1 to age 15. The part of the table on ‘Erotic
Arousal’ covers 471 children and gives data from age 4, ‘based on mem-
ory of older subjects’. The part on ‘Orgasm’ covers 273 children from age
3 and again is ‘based on memory of older subjects’. In other words, the
data have been collected, as one would expect, by asking respondents
to recall the first time they felt sexually aroused or first had an orgasm.
However, a separate section gives data from age 1 and covers 214 chil-
dren, using ‘original data gathered by certain of our subjects’ on 214
cases of which ‘all but 14 were subsequently observed in orgasm’ (p. 175,
emphasis added).
Table 31 (p. 176) is titled Ages of Pre-Adolescent Orgasm: Based on actual
observation of 317 males. This table includes one 2-month-old baby, two
babies aged 3 months and so on. In total, this table includes data on 28
babies up to 1 year old, of whom it is claimed orgasm was observed for
nine babies. There are, in addition, a further 49 children aged between 1
and 4 years old; 112 children aged between 5 and 9 years old; 115 chil-
dren aged between 10 and 12 years old; and 13 children aged between
13 and 14. All the children in the table are aged under 15 years. Cumu-
lative tabulations and percentages are carefully given to one decimal
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 105

place. The corresponding text accompanying this table states that bet-
ter data on ‘pre-adolescent climax’ has come from ‘the histories of adult
males who have had sexual contacts with younger boys’ and who have
interpreted the boys’ experiences. Kinsey states:

Unfortunately, not all of the subjects with such contacts in their his-
tories were questioned on this point of pre-adolescent reactions; but 9
of our adult male subjects have observed such orgasm. Some of these
adults are technically trained persons who have kept diaries or other
records which have been put at our disposal. (Sexual Behavior in the
Human Male, 1965: 177)

From these ‘technically trained persons’, Kinsey and his team obtained
information on ‘317 pre-adolescents who were either observed in self
masturbation, or who were observed in contacts with other boys or
older adults’ (ibid.). He characterizes these children as ‘a somewhat
select group of younger males . . . based on more or less uninhibited
boys . . . many of whom had had sexual contacts with one or more adults’
(ibid.) These boys were less ‘inhibited’ or ‘restricted by parental controls’
than typical children, and in this sample he claims, ‘Orgasm has been
observed in boys of every age from 5 months . . . Orgasm is in our records
for a female babe of 4 months.’ (ibid.)
To be clear, then, what Kinsey is here describing is not a situation
where children or adults were asked to remember back to their first sex-
ual experiences. Nor is it a situation where mothers or other carers are
asked about when they noticed their child’s first genital exploration or
masturbation. The data in Table 31 are based on the observations of nine
‘adult males who have had sexual contacts with younger boys’. Kinsey
calls some of them ‘technically trained persons’ – this phrase has never
been adequately explained by the Kinsey Institute but apparently means
that they were taught to use a stopwatch. In order for this to happen, the
Kinsey researchers did not have one-off interviews with these men; they
corresponded with them and, when told that these men were having
sexual contact with small children and babies, they supplied them with
stopwatches. There is a name for such behaviour in civilized countries,
but that name is not ‘science’.
It is also important to note that, of these 317 children, there is lit-
tle emphasis on boys who are beginning to reach an age at which they
might choose voluntarily to masturbate in front of an adult man. Of this
sample, only 13 children are aged over 13 years. Seventy-seven of these
children are not even 5 years old. There is no data given on how many of
106 Paedophiles in Society

these babies and young children were ‘observed in self masturbation’

and how many were ‘observed in contacts with other boys or older
adults’ but it is stated that ‘many’ of this group of under-15-year-olds
‘had had sexual contacts with one or more adults’ (emphasis added). The
only fact which is seen as ‘unfortunate’ here is that not all ‘adult males
who have had sexual contacts with younger boys’ were asked enough
questions about it.
The Kinsey research team was generally composed of married couples
with young families: for example, the Kinseys themselves had daughters
born in 1924 and 1925 and a son born in 1928. The first formal data-
collection for the project started in 1938, although Kinsey had been
interested in this area for years before this date, in fact from 1926, he
told Gebhard (Gathorne-Hardy, 1998: 127), that is, when he himself had
babies at home. It is known that Kinsey and his research team were heav-
ily engaged in discreet multiple sexual relationships with one another
and were used to keeping sexual secrets from the outside world (as docu-
mented extensively in biographies and other material). It is known that
Kinsey, Pomeroy, Gebhard and Tripp – and possibly other members of
the research team also – shared strong views on early sexual experience
as being not only neutral but actively beneficial. It is known that they
wished to gather research-data from every source available. Knowing all
this, one reads the highly detailed description of the ‘female babe of
4 months’ and the other descriptions of orgasm in babies and young
children, one looks again at the term ‘technically trained persons’, and
questions are raised in one’s mind to which there are as yet no answers
available in the public realm. In this context, one also looks again at a
comment on children masturbating, where Kinsey makes the point that
children can be taught that, if known outside the family, such activity
may cause ‘social difficulties’ but that it is possible to work out ‘care-
ful adjustments’ in the home. Kinsey then makes the oblique comment
that there are ‘cases’ of parents who have succeeded in accomplishing
this ‘delicate adjustment’ between things which are acceptable in the
home and ‘things that other people outside the home “just don’t under-
stand”’ (p. 506). If Kinsey is here referring to simply allowing young
children the privacy to explore their own bodies from time to time, that
would be both an understandable and a commendable position for a
scientist and a parent to hold. However, given the data presented in
Chapter 5 and elsewhere on situations in which Kinsey tells us of babies
under a year old who have ‘learned the advantage of specific manipula-
tion, sometimes as a result of being so manipulated by older persons’;
and where, for children, ‘an older person provides the more specific sort
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 107

of manipulation which is usual among adults’ (1965: 501), it would be

irresponsibly naive to assume, without further consideration, that this
is what Kinsey is saying, and in this context the comment by Kinsey on
children learning to keep quiet takes on a more sinister tone.
We should remember also that Kinsey found masturbation personally
fascinating. He had himself filmed masturbating, wanted the photog-
raphers Clarence Tripp and William Dellenback to film two thousand
sequences of men masturbating to orgasm, and was known to raise
the topic of masturbation with his students in lectures and on camp-
ing trips, whether such a topic was welcomed or not. His biographers
report also that masturbation had occupied his thinking very much as a
boy. Kinsey writes feelingly of boys living in ‘continual mental conflict’
over masturbation and the damage such conflict causes psychologically
(p. 514). One can understand a man, filled with ‘furious rage’ at his
own repressed and inhibited sexual upbringing, reacting against it by
an excessive lifelong obsession with masturbation, sex, penises, orgasms,
‘sexual outlets’ and everything which is ‘taboo’ and forbidden. One can
also imagine such a man, in his zeal to undo what he considered harm-
ful repression, impelled by an obsession with collecting statistical data
and a compulsive need to watch sexual activity (Gathorne-Hardy, 1998:
206), deciding that it would be a good idea to give matters a helping
hand, or to watch others doing so.
Considering the attitudes expressed so consistently by this group,
one has to ask, in fact, why this group of men would not have sexu-
ally abused children, if they really believed the statements which they
averred so frequently. To their minds, an adult sexually touching a
young child would not have been regarded as sexually abusive and
would, on the internal evidence from their publications, have been
seen as a non-exploitative, mutually pleasurable and kind thing to
do – teaching a child, even a baby, how to take greater pleasure in
their own body. If they seriously believed, as they claimed, that early
sexual experience led to sexual benefit in later life, what would have
stopped them? If, rather, they believed that small children should be
protected from adult sexual contact, that information is never conveyed
in any form.
Gathorne-Hardy touches on this issue several times in his detailed and
thorough biography. On p. 175 he claims that, ‘to begin with [Kinsey]
would tell men who had or wanted to have sex with children . . . to stick
to adults’. This claim is referenced (Chapter 9, reference note 31, p. 476)
to a ‘Frank Banta’ (possibly a pseudonym for ‘honest chat’?) from inter-
views conducted by the BBC in 1995: in other words, only to an obscure
108 Paedophiles in Society

and possibly pseudonymous individual, not to any published source.

It seems a very weak source for such an important assertion.
Again, Gathorne-Hardy asserts, ‘It should go without saying, but
should nevertheless perhaps be said, that Kinsey was fiercely against
any use of force or compulsion in sex.’ (1998: 223). Gathorne-Hardy
is a careful biographer who meticulously references his assertions. It is
noticeable that this assertion, however, is un-referenced and at no point
anywhere in this whole biography does he quote any actual statement
from Kinsey himself on force or compulsion. He repeats this view on
pp. 376–7, stating: ‘However obvious, I should perhaps stress again
that Kinsey was implacably opposed to any sort of violence, coercion,
or pressure of any sort in sexual matters.’ This time, he adds a foot-
note in support: a reference to the Female volume, pp. 17 –18 and ‘still
more specifically to lectures and conversation’ attributed to Gebhard
(Chapter 19, reference note 26, p. 489). Pages 17 and 18 of the Female
volume contain no condemnation of force at all, rather a diatribe on
‘Social Control of Sexual Behavior’ which begins by stating:

Most societies have recognized the necessity of protecting their mem-

bers from those who impose sexual relationships on others by the
use of force, and our own culture extends the same sort of restriction
to those who use such intimidation as an adult may exercise over
a child, or such undue influence as a social superior may exercise
over an underling. In its encouragement of marriage society tries to
provide a socially acceptable source of sexual outlet, and it considers
that sexual activities which interfere with marriages and homes, and
sexual activities which lead to the begetting of children outside of
marriage, are socially undesirable. The social organization also tries
to control persons who make nuisances of themselves, as the exhibi-
tionist and voyeur may do, by departing from the generally approved
custom. In addition our culture considers that social interests are
involved when an individual departs from the Judeo-Christian sex
codes by engaging in such sexual activities as masturbation, mouth-
genital contacts, homosexual contacts, animal contacts, and other
types of behavior which do not satisfy the procreative function of
sex. (Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, 1953: 17)

Kinsey’s argument in this section then continues by claiming that

‘sex offenses’ are common and ‘sex offenders’ are ordinary people. This
hardly warrants the description of being ‘fiercely against’ or ‘implacably
opposed to any sort of violence’! This therefore seems to be the strongest
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 109

statement Gathorne-Hardy was able to find in Kinsey’s oeuvre on the

harmfulness of coercion. The implication is that Gathorne-Hardy looked
hard at all the published material, all the thousands of papers and let-
ters Kinsey wrote, the lectures he gave, and the interviews and all he can
find is an unpublished reference to a ‘Frank Banta’, this quotation from
the Female volume, and unquoted, footnoted support from Gebhard.
It seems clear therefore that Gathorne-Hardy was actually unable to find
any published quotation from Kinsey or his research team to back up
this view that Kinsey disapproved of force in sex.
And of course it is unlikely that, even if Kinsey did disapprove of ‘force
or compulsion’, he would have regarded adult sexual contact with chil-
dren or babies as in any way comprising ‘force or compulsion’ (see the
comments by Tripp in the following section). In addition, to wish for
protection against sexual contact for one’s own children, while publicly
recommending the opposite for children in general, would have been a
strangely inconsistent position to adopt. Kinsey was a noted public lec-
turer as well as a writer; he had many opportunities throughout his long
and influential career to make a public statement about the harmfulness
of adult sexual contact with children. He did not. On the other hand, he
made repeated explicit comments about the harmlessness and positive
value of such behaviour.
One fact which we do know about the home-life of the Kinseys is that
Mrs Kinsey, who was not a member of the research team but was closely
involved throughout, spent a number of years (possibly as many as 12
years, from 1944 right up to 1956) meticulously typing out the volu-
minous diaries of one apparently ‘technically trained person’, known
variously as Kenneth Braun or ‘Mr Green’. Gathorne-Hardy says that
in February 1956 she had ‘finally finished typing Braun’s Masterwork
and her typescript was bound in board and cloth’ (1998: 433). These
diaries contained horrifically disturbing material on the sexual abuse of
literally thousands of individuals, including the rape of small children.
Typing away, day after day for more than a decade, perhaps this material
eventually came to seem quite normal to Mrs Kinsey.
After detailed descriptions of orgasm ‘in an infant or other young
male’, the text from Chapter 5 of The Human Male continues with a
report on five cases of ‘young pre-adolescents’ on whom observations
are said to have continued ‘over periods of months or years, until the
individuals were old enough to make it certain that true orgasm was
involved’. Kinsey asserts that, for a minority of these children, they ‘fail
to reach climax even under prolonged and varied and repeated stimula-
tion’ – a failure which he attributes to ‘psychologic blockage’ rather than
110 Paedophiles in Society

‘physiologic incapacity’ (pp. 177–8). Again, this tells us very clearly that
these are not casual observations of everyday life in which little Johnny
plays with his ‘willy’ or his ‘pee-pee’ while Daddy benignly watches.
Some children had a ‘psychologic blockage’, they didn’t want someone
using ‘prolonged and varied and repeated stimulation’ to try and make
them orgasm just to prove a point.
In case of any lingering doubt about what exactly is being discussed,
the chapter in The Human Male continues with Table 32, on p.178, titled
Speed of Pre-adolescent Orgasm, which details ‘Duration of stimulation
before climax; observations timed with second hand or stop watch. Ages
range from five months of age to adolescence.’ In this table, there are
188 ‘cases’ but we are not told how many children are of which ages,
although we are told in the text that there ‘are two-year olds who come
to climax in less than 10 seconds, and there are two-year olds who may
take 10 or 20 minutes, or more.’ (pp. 178–9). The orgasms are carefully
timed to two decimal places, with the mean time to climax, for example,
put at 3.02 minutes. A person or persons unknown has timed 188 chil-
dren from as young as 5 months with a stopwatch over periods ranging
from up to ten seconds to over ten minutes.
A key text in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male is the comment given
on Table 32, which remarks that this is an unusual group of children
because, in the population as a whole, a much smaller percentage would
‘experience orgasm at any early age’ because few babies or children
‘have the opportunity’ or ‘ find themselves in circumstances that test
their capacities’ but, in Kinsey’s view, ‘half or more’ of all babies and
‘younger boys’ in an ‘uninhibited society’ would be capable of orgasm
‘by the time they were three or four years of age’ (p. 178). This is pre-
sumably where Pomeroy, his research associate, also gained his view
(Arnow, 1977: 5, 53) that girls should have orgasms ‘when they are
young – as early as three or four’. As Pomeroy complacently remarked,
it ‘doesn’t make much difference’ how she had this experience, whether
as ‘traumatic sexual experiences with adults: rape, cruel and unusual
punishment, etc.’.
If any further evidence was required that we are not discussing
children’s own freely chosen genital exploration and masturbation here,
this is it. These children are quite clearly and deliberately having their
‘capacities’ tested. The ‘inhibition’ referred to in this quotation is that
inhibition which restrains us from sexually touching babies and tod-
dlers. So what exactly is this ‘capacity’ which is being tested? It is sexual
stimulation to ‘orgasm’, described graphically by Kinsey as includ-
ing ‘convulsive action, often with violent arm and leg movements,
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 111

sometimes with weeping . . . There are observations of 16 males of up to

11 months of age, with such typical orgasm reached in 7 cases.’ (p. 177,
emphasis added).
Table 33 (p. 179) is titled Multiple Orgasm in Pre-adolescent Males: Based
on a small and select group of boys. Not typical of the experience, but sugges-
tive of the capacities of pre-adolescent boys in general. This table reports on
182 ‘cases’ and again ages are not given. The focus of the table, and
this part of the chapter, is a fascination with orgasm, trying to find
out how quickly small children can be made to orgasm and how many
orgasms they can be stimulated to have in any period of time. There is
an obsessional detail shown here. The ‘Mean No. of Orgasms’ are given
as 3.72, the median as 2.62, with a ‘Mean Time Lapse’ of 6.28 minutes
and median time-lapse 2.25 minutes. Any sense of reality has been lost
here. Babies, at least one as young as 5 months old (p. 179), toddlers and
children are being recorded as having orgasms on a minute-by-minute
basis, for thirty minutes or more, while some ‘observer’ timed the whole
procedure with a stopwatch.
The final table in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male which is focused
solely on pre-adolescent sexual experience is Table 34, titled Examples of
Multiple Orgasm in Pre-adolescent Males: Some instances of higher frequen-
cies. This table shows children aged from 5 months up to 14 years old.
Although there are data given on 24 children, it is not clear if, for exam-
ple, the two 11-month-old babies are the same baby. If the repeated age
indicates the same child, then the sample-size would be a minimum
of 13 children involved. This table therefore gives data on somewhere
between 13 and 24 babies and children. The time-periods given for ‘mul-
tiple orgasm’ range from 70 seconds to 24 hours. The text comments,
‘The maximum observed was 26 climaces in 24 hours, and the report
indicates that still more might have been possible in the same period of
time.’ (p. 180).
Kinsey and his colleagues are pleased with their data. Kinsey quotes
previous researchers as wishing for information on ‘specific sexual expe-
rience in infancy and early childhood’ and boasts that his work has
now addressed this and complied with the ‘scientifically fair demand
for records from trained observers’ (p. 181). By the time of the pub-
lication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, in 1953, Kinsey and
his colleagues had continued collecting data, and continued to espouse
the same views. On p. 15 of the Female volume, Kinsey states that, in
addition to studying adults, ‘we have engaged in a more detailed study
of younger children and particularly of children between two and five
years of age’. He goes on:
112 Paedophiles in Society

Because early training may be so significant, most parents would like

to have information on the most effective methods of introducing
the child to the realities of sex. Most parents would like to know
more about the significance of pre-adolescent sex play, about the
sexual activities in which children actually engage, about the pos-
sibilities of their children becoming sexually involved with adults,
and what effect such involvements may have upon a child’s subse-
quent sexual adjustments. Most parents would like to know whether
the sexual responses of a child are similar, physiologically, to those
of an adult. . . . In this study, we have had the excellent cooperation
of a great many parents because they are concerned with the training
of their children, and because they realize how few data there are on
which to establish a sound program of sex education. (Sexual Behavior
in the Human Female, 1953: 15–16)

One wonders if it is really the case that ‘most parents’ would like
to know about ‘the possibilities of their children becoming sexually
involved with adults, and what effect such involvements may have
upon a child’s subsequent sexual adjustments’ – this is rather a bizarre
assertion. Why would a parent want to know that? In the Female vol-
ume, Chapter 4 deals with ‘Pre-adolescent Sexual Development’. Again,
this material deals with adult sexual contact with children. It starts
with newborns and states, ‘some human infants, both female and male,
are capable of being stimulated by and responding to tactile stimula-
tion in a way which is sexual in the strictest sense of term [previously
defined as comprising orgasm]. . . . direct observations made by a num-
ber of qualified observers, indicate that some children are quite capable
of responding in a way which may show all of the essential physi-
ologic changes which characterize the sexual responses of an adult’
(p. 102). If this is not sufficiently clear, he then states, ‘What seem
to be sexual responses have been observed on infants immediately at
birth’ (p. 103). He is not writing about baby boys with spontaneous
erections here. He appears to mean newborn girls being masturbated
to orgasm, as he has previously defined, on p. 101, ‘a sexual response in
any mammal involves . . . a build-up of neuromuscular tensions which
may culminate at a peak . . . the phenomenon which we know as sexual
climax or orgasm’. I would like to be incorrect here, but my reading of
this text is that Kinsey is telling us that he knows of people, ‘qualified
observers’, who have masturbated newborn babies. Kinsey also writes
about little girls masturbating themselves or engaging in ‘sex play’ such
as ‘mama and papa’ or ‘doctor’ with children their own age, which I find
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 113

morally unproblematic and an entirely separate issue. However, when

he writes that ‘we can report 4 cases of females under one year of age
coming to orgasm, and a total of 28 cases of small girls three years of age
or younger reaching orgasm’ (p. 105), it seems clear that these can only
have been induced by adults.
Later in the same chapter, Kinsey turns to the subject of ‘Pre-
adolescent Contacts with Adult Males’ (p. 116). Here Kinsey is keen to
illustrate that such contacts do no harm. He finds that of a sample of
4,441 females, there was ‘only one clear-cut case of serious injury done
to the child, and a very few instances of vaginal bleeding’ (p. 122). He
recognizes no other form of harm which might result. In the Female vol-
ume, which is intended to cover all sexual behaviour and experiences of
women, there is no reference to ‘incest’ in the list of References. There
are three references to ‘rape’, but the first is to dreams of rape (p. 213),
the second to a footnote on ‘statutory rape’ (p. 287) and the third to a
footnote on religious attitudes to rape as ‘sinful’. As with the Male vol-
ume, there is no information presented at all on actual rape or other
sexual abuse.
The quotations given from Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sex-
ual Behavior in the Human Female are available for anyone to read. There
are no revised editions of either the Male or the Female volume: although
these volumes were reprinted a number of times, they were never revised
so there remains only one edition of each text. There is no controversy
over whether or not this material is as stated. The two published texts
were not the only places where Kinsey raised the issue of adult–child
sexual contact. Kinsey continued this theme when he embarked on a
tour of Europe in 1955, shortly before his death. During this tour he
lectured at the prestigious universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in
Denmark and noted, according to his biographer Gathorne-Hardy, how
Scandinavians ‘have just as insane a horror’ of sex between adults and
children as Americans. The real danger was other adults making an issue
of it, Kinsey insisted. Gathorne-Hardy (1998: 421) reports how Kinsey
told his Aarhus audience he ‘was amazed to find they were still hav-
ing inhibitions regarding contact of homosexuality and older persons
with children in spite of their great acceptance of most things sexual’.
As Gathorne-Hardy notes, ‘Kinsey clearly felt able to be much less cir-
cumspect abroad.’ In Italy, too, we are told that Kinsey applauded the
amount of sex he found and commented on ‘the harmlessness, indeed
mutual benefits, of adult/child sex’ (Gathorne-Hardy, 1998: 424).
Thus, in their published works, far from acknowledging that they
have been complicit in criminal and abusive experimentation on babies,
114 Paedophiles in Society

toddlers and children, Kinsey and his team are proud of their unique
data. These are the data which Pomeroy endorsed, in 1977, with his
published quotation that ‘Girls should learn to have an orgasm as part
of their growing up . . . when they are young – as early as three or four.’
These are the data which Gebhard, in 1979, publicly affirms as part of
Kinsey’s ‘major findings’. Pomeroy, Gebhard, and the Kinsey Institute
over the decades have had repeated opportunities to retract or apologize
for these data. They have chosen not to do so.

4. Challenges, bowdlerizing, and the Kinsey Reports

sixty years on

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, first published in 1948, is now more
than sixty years old. Professor Kinsey, an extraordinarily influential man
in his time, has been dead for many years. The records on which his
work was based remain locked up inside the Kinsey Institute. Do the
views propounded in his major works, especially his two Reports on
human sexuality, have any continuing validity or relevance today? Cer-
tainly some writers think so. Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy,
‘regarded the Female report as the foundation of his “philosophy”’ and
supported the Kinsey Institute financially (Gathorne-Hardy, 1998: 439),
thereby establishing an ongoing link between Kinsey’s work and the
pornography industry.
More significantly perhaps, both Kinsey’s admirers and his critics
agree that he was successful in influencing major legislation both in
the United States and in Britain (see, for example, Reisman et al., 1990;
Weeks, 2007). Kinsey was adamant that the great majority of ordinary
American men behaved sexually in ways which would make them liable
as ‘sex offenders’ and thus the law needed to be changed to reflect this
and to de-criminalize common behaviour. As he insisted repeatedly,
men involved in illicit sexual activities comprised, in his view, ‘more
than 95 per cent of the total male population’. Kinsey then stretched
this even further by suggesting that wanting to incarcerate sex offenders
is ‘a proposal that 5 per cent of the population should support the other
95 per cent in penal institutions’ (Human Male, p. 392). Here, of course,
he is conflating the total population of people (including women and
children) with the total population of men, to strengthen his polemic
that it is absurd to suggest that ’95 per cent’ of the population should be
locked up. His biographer, Gathorne-Hardy, comments that it is ‘possi-
ble to argue that Kinsey was decisive’ in his influence in both the United
States and Britain and he states that the ‘American Law Institute’s Model
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 115

Penal Code of 1955 is virtually a Kinsey document.’ (Gathorne-Hardy,

1998: 449). The Model Penal Code itself stated:

We deem it inappropriate for the government to attempt to con-

trol behavior that has no substantial significance except as to the
morality of the actor . . . It must be recognized, as a practical matter,
that in a heterogeneous community such as ours, different individ-
uals and groups have widely divergent views of the seriousness of
various moral derelictions. (Quotation taken from Gathorne-Hardy,
1998: 449)

The Code was subsequently adopted in a number of states. While its

positive impact was to liberalize laws on consenting adult behaviour,
such as homosexuality, it also put in place a legal framework which saw
adult sexual contact with children as largely a matter of indifference,
simply an expression of ‘divergent views’. The Code based its recommen-
dations in part on the fact that existing legislation undermined respect
for the law by penalizing behaviour many people engaged in. As Kinsey
remarks in the film Kinsey (Condon, 2004), ‘Everybody’s sin is nobody’s
sin and everybody’s crime is no crime at all.’ However, behaviour may be
common but still profoundly harmful: domestic violence is an example
of such behaviour, and so is child sexual abuse.
In October 1955, Kinsey visited Britain and acted as an advisor and
expert witness for the Wolfenden Committee.

The establishment by the government of the Wolfenden Commit-

tee in 1954 was a compromise, between the desire amongst more
conservative elements to do something to control homosexuality
and rid the streets of overt displays of prostitution, and a wish on
the part of liberals to find more modern forms of regulation than
prison or the law. Its task therefore was to navigate between the two
extremes whilst trying to come up with an acceptable framework.
In doing this it took expert advice, including from the already near
infamous Alfred Kinsey, the American sexologist. Kinsey’s matter-of-
fact approach to homosexuality and his implicit moral neutrality
pointed to a less punitive legislative framework. Also, for the first
time openly homosexual citizens gave evidence to the committee, as
did other perceived experts and a host of other interested parties. The
result was not so much a compromise between conservative moralists
and progressives as a bold new framework, offering the outlines of a
new moral economy for the post-war world. (Weeks, 2007: online)
116 Paedophiles in Society

The Report from the Wolfenden Committee was published in 1957

and resulted in the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which – as with the
Model Penal Code – de-criminalized, and ultimately legalized, adult
male homosexuality. Again, it is not the impact on consenting adult
behaviour which is of concern, but the general attitude, following
Kinsey, that in the ‘new moral economy’ there is no such thing as
rape (only false allegations; see both the Male and the Female volumes),
there is no such thing as child sexual abuse, sex is unproblematically
good and no-one is or can be harmed. As Gathorne-Hardy himself (with
uncharacteristic disquiet) comments on Kinsey’s view on adult sexual
contact with children, Kinsey is ‘very ready to believe they have not
been harmed and will not be forced’ (1998: 224, emphases in original).
Kinsey’s influence extends also to contemporary scholarly and pop-
ular works on child sexuality. As the book Dares to Speak: Historical
and Contemporary Perspectives on Boy-Love (Geraci, 1997) makes plain,
Kinsey’s book is ‘surely one of the most revolutionary texts on boy-
hood sexuality ever written.’ (p. 272), and the following chapter will
provide information on other authors who have also taken seriously
Kinsey’s views on ‘boyhood sexuality’; but what is extraordinary is that,
for many people and for many years, this part of Kinsey’s work seems
to have been quite invisible. Until the late 1970s the data in ‘Chapter 5’
were accepted uncritically and without comment and it was still possible
for a leading academic on sexuality to write, ‘Somewhat surprisingly, his
[Kinsey’s] revelations about the genital capacities of children have gone
virtually unnoticed.’ (Robinson,1976: 117). The biographer Gathorne-
Hardy concurs, noting ‘It is an interesting reflection on the changing
fashion of concern that this chapter is almost the only one that was
totally ignored on publication.’ (1998: 222).
What changed the ‘fashion of concern’ was one woman. No public
critique of these data appeared until 1981, when a young American aca-
demic, Judith Bat-Ada (now Reisman), gave a paper on the topic at the
Fifth World Congress on Sexology, in Jerusalem. Her talk was entitled
The Scientist as a Contributing Agent to Child Sexual Abuse: a Preliminary
Consideration of Possible Ethics Violations. Reisman was the first person
to analyse Kinsey’s work from the perspective of the children rather
than the adults, and the first person to recognize publicly that what
is being described is rape. None of the many dozens of other reviewers
or commentators had noticed (or been concerned by) the description
of small children being systematically ‘manipulated’ and timed with
stopwatches, with the apparent permission, or indifference, of those
around them. Reisman’s talk went down like a lead balloon among the
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 117

assembled sexologists. Nothing daunted, she has continued to research

and publish (Reisman et al., 1990; Reisman, 1998, 2010).
In 1994, an independent documentary film, The Children of Table 34,
was released by the Family Research Council in the United States and a
year later there was a congressional call for a public investigation into
Kinsey’s research. This came to nothing. In 1998 – fifty years after the
first publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male – a British televi-
sion channel broadcast Secret Histories: Kinsey’s Paedophiles, a three-part
documentary directed and produced by Tim Tate. This documentary
unearthed new details of how the data for Chapter 5 had been obtained
and again called for the Kinsey Institute to open its files for public
scrutiny. The documentary included key figures in the debate: Paul
Gebhard, Clarence Tripp and Vincent Nowlis, all close colleagues of
Kinsey’s; the then Director of the Kinsey Institute, John Bancroft; his
nemesis, Judith Reisman; both Kinsey’s major biographers, James Jones
and Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy; and a woman, Esther White, who claims
that her sexual abuse as a child may have provided some of the data
reproduced in Kinsey’s work.
The documentary centres on a man known as ‘Mr Green’, ‘Rex King’
or Kenneth S. Braun. This is the man whose handwritten diaries Mrs
Kinsey had spent many years typing up into a leather-bound manuscript
(now closely guarded within the Kinsey Institute). Braun worked as a
US Government Land Examiner (a form of surveyor) in Arizona and
New Mexico. Braun kept detailed records of all his sexual acts, including
sexual contacts with 605 pre-adolescent males and 231 pre-adolescent
females. A fictional account of the meeting between Braun and Kinsey
in 1944 is shown in Condon’s 2004 movie Kinsey, in which Kinsey tells
Pomeroy excitedly ‘I’ve waited years to meet this man!’ before proceed-
ing sternly to tell Braun off for having had sexual contact with children.
The account given in Tate’s documentary is more factual and more
horrific. Braun was in fact part of Kinsey’s circle for many years, from
1943 probably to Kinsey’s death in 1956. He was a friend of Kinsey’s
friends Gershon Legman and Robert Dickinson, who both later collab-
orated with Braun in compiling a definitive monograph on ‘the penis’,
apparently never published (Gathorne-Hardy, 1998: 211).
In Tate’s documentary, Paul Gebhard recalls how Dickinson taught
Braun ‘how to measure things and time things’. Gebhard continues:

He encouraged him – he knew he was going to do his ordinary

behaviour anyway. Dickinson couldn’t have stopped him being a
paedophile but he said ‘At least you ought to do something scientific
118 Paedophiles in Society

about it, so it won’t be just your jollies, it’ll be something worth-

while to science.’ So he gave him some training by letter and
correspondence. (My transcription of recorded interview from Tate,
1998)

Braun’s ‘jollies’ included documented sexual experiments with babies,

now – with Dickinson’s training – carefully measured, timed and
recorded in copious diaries. Braun did not work alone: Gathorne-Hardy
mentions in passing that there was ‘a Dr Werner, Braun’s companion in
many sexual jaunts’ (1998: 345). Again, like Gebhard, Gathorne-Hardy –
having read Braun’s diaries in the Kinsey Institute – is fully aware as
he writes this that Braun’s sexual ‘jaunts’ included the rape of small
children.
By the time Kinsey met Braun face-to-face in 1944, the abuse had
been continuing for over twenty years and, according to notes at the
Kinsey Institute, the abuse continued for another ten years, all the time
when Kinsey was collecting data. Gathorne-Hardy notes, but does not
make the connection, that Kinsey was in touch with Braun from late
1943 and that ‘the most interesting development in 1944 was Kinsey’s
increasing concentration on children. . . . By 1944 he had realized how
extraordinarily early – three, four or five years old – sexual attitudes
and responses . . . start to develop. He decided they must investigate
little children directly’ (1998: 214, emphasis in original). Kinsey and
Braun corresponded for at least three years, and Kinsey sent Braun the
proofs of Chapter 5 to check prior to publication. The result, according
to Gebhard, was that Braun ‘contributed a fair amount to medicine’s
knowledge of sexuality in children’. As Gebhard summed up, ‘It was
illegal and we knew it was illegal but it was very important for people
to study childhood sexuality.’ (My transcription of recorded interview
from Tate, 1998.)
Kinsey’s close colleague Clarence Tripp also saw nothing wrong in
using a predatory paedophile to collect information on ‘childhood
sexuality’ and appeared baffled at any notion of harm:

Here was this man with hundreds of contacts – there was never
a charge against him, never arrested for anything. The children
thought he was wonderful. The mothers thought he was wonderful.
There are two instances in which – a young girl – didn’t complain –
they agreed to the sexual contact – but they found it very painful
and yelled out. This was because they were very young and had small
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 119

genitalia and ‘Green’ was a grown man with enormous genitalia, and
there was a fit problem.
...

Pedophilia is an almost non-existent kind of crime. And the thing

that he [Kinsey] hated most about it is that people used words like
‘child molestation’. ‘Child molestation’! What is that? No-one knows.
Abuse of children? Are they talking about boxing them against the
ear or hitting them with a stove-pipe? Or are they talking about tick-
ling them? Are you talking about fondling? Are you going to put
fondling and death attacks in the same group? As Kinsey said, by
this kind of paranoia, you do the child more damage for life than all
the pedophiles in the world would do. (My transcription of recorded
interview from Tate, 1998)

One point Tripp does not mention in his eulogy is that Braun, as a
qualified professional Government official, presumably had quite a level
of authority over the rural families he visited. I have never been to
the United States and am ignorant of much of American history but
I do recall a Great Depression happening in the 1930s and 1940s when
Braun was working in the impoverished rural farming states of Arizona
and New Mexico. To whom might these vulnerable children and their
families have complained, after an influential State official had abused
them? More details on these issues are doubtless available in Braun’s
diaries but these are safely tucked away in the Kinsey Institute and
‘confidentiality’ prevents their ever being released. Given the Institute’s
use of ‘confidentiality’ as their reason not to provide documents, it is
morbidly humorous to find the following footnote in Gathorne-Hardy’s
biography:

These forty-odd pages [written by Kinsey] are written on the back of

old sex histories. . . . [I found] something endearing in the way that,
despite their paranoia about confidentiality, the [pages] were partly
written on a long list of histories identified by name against their
history numbers. On another sheet backing something else I found
Kinsey’s own history number. It is safe with me. (Gathorne-Hardy,
1998: 431n)

Other commentators might find such behaviour unethical at the very

least, rather than ‘endearing’ but nothing fazes Gathorne-Hardy.
120 Paedophiles in Society

So far, therefore, there is written and spoken evidence that, of the key
members of Kinsey’s research team, Kinsey, Gebhard, Pomeroy and Tripp
not only expressed no strong statements on harm to children from adult
sexual contact but, to the contrary, expressed impatience at any notion
of harm. Of Kinsey’s research team, only Vincent Nowlis is on record as
expressing qualified disapproval of the data in Chapter 5.
Braun was not the only paedophile involved in supplying data.
Gathorne-Hardy reports, ‘The earlier the orgasm the better leads log-
ically to infant orgasm. Kinsey had similar accounts for little girls as
for little boys (but not from Braun as far as I can gather)’ (1998: 244).
Gebhard mentions obtaining data from ‘a pedophile organisation in this
country’, which may have been the Rene Guyon Society, and Gebhard
also mentions ‘a man in Germany’ with whom Kinsey ‘carried on quite
a correspondence and we were learning some interesting things about
pedophilia in Germany’. This man was Dr Fritz von Balluseck, a Nazi
who was involved in the occupation of Poland during the war and with
whom Kinsey apparently carried on a correspondence from 1936 to
1956, according to German newspaper accounts (Reisman et al.,1990).
The correspondence came to light when von Balluseck was convicted
of thirty counts of child sex abuse in 1957, shortly after Kinsey’s
death.
To date, Reisman’s remains the only sustained critique of Kinsey’s
work. Her work, situated firmly within the intellectual compass of the
American political right, is distinctly unappealing to more liberal aca-
demics. This is a pity, because Reisman raises serious allegations about
the work of Kinsey’s team and the Kinsey Institute which in turn
require serious refutation. Instead, Reisman has been the target of con-
temptuous derision while the charges she raises have been ignored
and trivialized (for example, in postings about her on the Wikipedia
website). The voices on the political left, the voices of lesbian, gay and
bisexual academics and activists, are all surprisingly quiet (or mumbled)
on this question. The only reference given to her work in Gathorne-
Hardy’s detailed biography is an ill-tempered footnote on p. 223, where
he dismisses her investigations as ‘scurrilous’, ‘shoddy’, ‘ludicrous’ and
‘idiotic’.
Even though her allegations concern the wellbeing of children,
no-one at the Kinsey Institute has troubled to discuss them in any detail,
or categorically refute them, although, for example, John Bancroft, as
Director of the Kinsey Institute, felt compelled to address ‘particular
controversies and political attacks’ in a foreword to the re-issue of Sexual
Behavior in the Human Male in 1998. Indeed, over the years, as a response
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 121

to Reisman’s persistent investigations, the Kinsey Institute has, reluc-

tantly, had to issue several explanations on where they got their ‘child
sexuality’ data from. It is noticeable that their explanations vary, and
they have never issued any evidence in support.
Kinsey’s original explanation, as noted earlier, was that the informa-
tion was taken from ‘9 of our adult male subjects’, some of whom were
‘technically trained persons’ who kept diaries or other records (Human
Male, p. 177). Gebhard, then Director of the Kinsey Institute, wrote a
refreshingly honest letter to Reisman in 1981, failing to mention any
‘technical training’ of persons but revealing for the first time that sex-
ually explicit photographs and film of children were apparently taken.
His letter states, in part:

Since sexual experimentation with human infants and children is

illegal, we have had to depend upon other sources of data. Some
of these were parents, mostly college educated, who observed their
children and kept notes for us. A few were nursery school owners
or teachers. Others were homosexual males interested in older, but
still prepubertal, children. One was a man who had numerous sex-
ual contacts with male and female infants and children and, being
of a scientific bent, kept detailed records of each encounter. Some
of these sources have added to their written or verbal reports pho-
tographs and, in a few instances, cinema. We have never attempted
any follow-up studies because it was either impossible or too expen-
sive. The techniques involved were self-masturbation by the child,
child-child sex play, and adult-child contacts – chiefly manual or oral.
(in Reisman et al., 1990: 223)

In 1998, the then-Director, John Bancroft, had forgotten about the

photographs and cinema and even the manual and oral techniques. He
recalled only that there was one paedophile, Kenneth Braun, who was
responsible, conveniently, for absolutely everything. He ‘found that,
without any doubt, all of the information . . . came from . . . one man.’
(Bancroft, 1998: page k). More recently, Gebhard who, after all, was there
all the time the data was being collected and who should therefore know
authoritatively, has decided that actually the data came from interviews,
mainly with paedophiles in prison:

In these more recent attacks, in the last ten years or so, they’ve
been outright accusations that first of all, we did experiments with
children . . . accused us of terrible acts, which of course did not occur.
122 Paedophiles in Society

We did not experiment with children. Kinsey interviewed some

children, but it was always in the presence of the parents. He was
the only one that interviewed them, the rest of us didn’t have the
patience required. And so that accusation is without any foundation.
Now they’re saying, you hired people to do it. We never hired any-
one to do it. We got our data from pedophiles, most of whom were
in jail, especially in California, where they have a sexual psychopath
statute, there were a fair number of pedophiles, and we interviewed
them about their activity and the response of the children, according
to what they said, you know. We took it with a grain of salt. (Paul
Gebhard in interview, Wattenburg, 2000: online)

It therefore seems clear that the Kinsey Institute has colluded with those
responsible for the data in falsifying information about how the data
were collected. It cannot have been by ‘one man’ nor can it have been
from prison-interviews. When Gebhard carefully chooses the words
‘experiments’ and ‘hiring’, I am reminded of President Clinton’s state-
ment that he did not have ‘sex with that woman’, and also of Kinsey’s
ruse, all those years ago, when he hoodwinked faculty at Indiana Uni-
versity by claiming that he was only filming ‘animal’ sexual behaviour
when what he meant was the human animal. Gathorne-Hardy also gives
the example of Kinsey using the word ‘conference’, which ‘remained a
euphemism for sex history, and sometimes more, for many years’ (1998:
127n). Kinsey set a precedent for secrecy and deception. As he himself
said, there is a ‘delicate adjustment between things that are acceptable
in the home and things that other people outside the home “just don’t
understand’ ” (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, 1965: 506).
The Kinsey Institute has loudly claimed that, if it were ever asked to
disclose its records, it would prefer to destroy them first. The Institute
seems to have retained into the twenty-first century the same attitude
to adult sexual contact with children which Kinsey promulgated in
the 1940s. The discourse on child protection seems to have entirely
passed it by.

5. Conclusion

The aim of this chapter has been to demonstrate beyond doubt what
Reisman had the intellectual courage to first point out, back in 1981,
that the most important and influential work on human sexuality in
the twentieth century was based on the rape of children. This is a
startling and profoundly shocking assertion to make, which is why an
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 123

entire chapter has been devoted to carefully documenting the evidence

for this statement. Kinsey’s work, likened to the H-Bomb when it was
published and the source of innumerable citations, references, com-
ments and even popular songs, jokes and cartoon strips, has formed
the bedrock of all subsequent academic studies on human sexual-
ity: it would be almost impossible to find an English-language book
on human sexuality published since the 1950s which did not men-
tion Kinsey. No other academic in the field of sexology (and precious
few academics in any field) have been featured on the front cover
of Time magazine or have sold so many copies of an academic text-
book. As will be seen in the following chapter, Kinsey’s work has been
continued and developed by other researchers and writers, and his
views on children’s sexual nature from birth have been taken up with
gusto in certain quarters. As well as sexological studies, Kinsey’s work
influenced legislation, the gay rights movement and the field of sex edu-
cation. It is possible therefore to state without equivocation that Kinsey’s
work has been the most important and influential work on human
sexuality in the twentieth century. Kinsey’s two reports on human sex-
uality have deeply influenced science, the media, the law and public
opinion.
It is also possible to show, from the evidence provided in this chapter,
that his work was based on the rape of children. Kinsey denied, in both
the Male and Female volumes, the reality of even the concept of rape
(the only references are to false allegations, dreams and religious pro-
scriptions) and, as Clarence Tripp makes plain, he believed paedophilia
was ‘an almost non-existent kind of crime’ in which he claimed he
had found one example in his sample of 4,441 females. The central
thesis of his work, as I understand it, is that the only ‘abnormal’ sex
is no sex; that the ‘human animal’ needs orgasms; and that the ear-
lier boys and girls have orgasms, the better for them throughout their
life. He based his two Reports on human sexuality on these assertions
and he backed up his claims with the documentation of copious data.
He regarded Chapter 5 in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, on ‘Early
Sexual Growth and Activity’, as central to his argument and referred fre-
quently to the data in it throughout the rest of his work. The data for
his assertions were obtained to some small extent by adult recall during
the taking of sex histories. However, substantial parts of the data were
obtained from the records and observations (apparently, according to
Gebhard, photographed and filmed) of adults ‘manipulating’ children,
aged from birth to adolescence. Under both national and international
legislation, this is (and was at the time) child sexual abuse. Where it
124 Paedophiles in Society

involves penetration, as it clearly did in some cases, it is (and was at the

time) rape.
The work for which Kinsey is rightly valued, on the recognition and
tolerance of masturbation and consensual adult sexuality, emerges from
this central thesis and his work cannot be addressed without recognition
of this central thesis. Far from an ‘implicit moral neutrality’, as Weeks
(2007) describes it, Kinsey’s moral position is abundantly clear, and his
biographers, particularly Gathorne-Hardy, are equally clear: there is no
such thing as rape, and there is no such thing as child sexual abuse; the
worst one can say about adult sexual contact with children is that there
is ‘a fit problem’, as Tripp phrased it.
One might say that a difficulty with Kinsey’s work, particularly in
the American context, is that so much is wrapped up together and this
accounts for the hostility to which Reisman has been subjected. Kinsey’s
point on sexual variation and the fact that one person may experience
a very much stronger and more continuous sex drive than another per-
son is a plea for understanding and tolerance which we can all share.
Similarly, a view that young people should not be taught to hate and
fear their sex-drive but to be accepting of the urge to masturbate and to
develop their sex-life as they grow into adulthood is a positive interpre-
tation of Kinsey’s data. The difficulty arises from the apparent inability
to draw together the discourses of sexual liberation and of child pro-
tection, producing cognitive dissonance. One result is the inability to
see that someone respected as a scientist is endorsing adult sexual con-
tact with children, leading to the absurd bowdlerization indulged in by
Kinsey’s biographers and by the film director Bill Condon. In such a
view, Kinsey can only be either an admirable scientist who perhaps had
a few forgivable peccadilloes, or he has to be a sinister, conspiratorial
monster orchestrating evil experiments. The individual, reading Kinsey
(or, more typically, reading about Kinsey at second- or third-hand) feels
that they either have to reject all that he did as evil or, if they support
some of what he did (for example, his role in championing alterna-
tive sexualities), that they need to rush to his defence and protect him
loyally against ‘scurrilous’ or ‘idiotic’ claims.
In these actions we are reproducing on a grand scale the dramas
played out in microcosm every time an allegation of child abuse is made.
Even when provided with abundantly clear evidence of the attitudes of
Kinsey’s research team to child sexual abuse, many people will still claim
to see nothing wrong. The sanitized and bowdlerized version of Kinsey’s
life and work portrayed in Bill Condon’s biopic Kinsey (2004), with Liam
Neeson playing Kinsey as a sympathetic hero, makes us feel comfortable,
 ‘Early Sexual Growth and Activity’: The Influence of Kinsey 125

even though the more reassuring scenes (in which Kinsey, Pomeroy and
Mrs Kinsey are all shown as appalled by Braun’s contacts with children)
were deleted from the main movie presumably because they are too fan-
ciful even for Condon. The reactions to Reisman’s critique, and to Tate’s
and Condon’s highly divergent film versions of Kinsey, provide evidence
of how, even when we know child sexual abuse has occurred, we reject
that knowledge because we cannot psychologically bear to associate it
with anyone we admire.
The following chapter continues to explore Kinsey’s impact on views
of children’s sexuality and its links to how we make sense of paedophiles
in society today.
5
Studies on Adult Sexual Contact
with Children

Introduction

The previous chapter concentrated on the work of one author, Alfred

Kinsey, and his view of ‘children’s sexuality’, a view based not on chil-
dren’s experiences of their sexuality but on adults’ experiences of their
sexual interactions with children, using the one criterion which Kinsey
found important and to which everything else became subservient: the
orgasm. Kinsey wished to argue that children have a sexuality which is
not harmed by being used for adult gratification, and thus he saw adults
‘manipulating’ children to orgasm as synonymous with children’s own
authentic and autonomous sexuality. His views on childhood sexuality
have continued to shape understandings of paedophilia and child sexual
abuse up to the present day. In particular, Kinsey articulated a view of sex
in which the only ‘abnormal’ sex is no sex and therefore, by extension,
paedophilia does not exist as a pathology or even as a separate con-
cept. Children – like animals, adults or wet dreams – are simply another
‘sexual outlet’ which may be used for orgasm. Kinsey also argued persua-
sively that ‘sex offenders’ do not exist and so should not be criminalized.
Neither of his two encyclopaedic books on human sexuality deals with
the reality of rape and nowhere is the concept of non-consensual sex
addressed. According to Kinsey, therefore, it would be absurd to prose-
cute anyone for such an offence as ‘paedophilia’ or ‘child sexual abuse’,
and indeed, his work has been used to argue for leniency and, more fun-
damentally, to revise legislation to make it less vigorous in prosecuting
sexual offences. The only reference Kinsey makes to ‘child sexual abuse’
is to the situation of elderly men wrongly accused by hysterical females
(Male, pp. 237–8). Relying on Kinsey as a scientific resource on which to
base legal and public opinion bolsters the ‘sexual liberation’ discourse

126
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 127

discussed in this volume (Chapter 3) while cutting away any support

for a ‘child protection’ discourse, since from Kinsey’s perspective there
is nothing harmful from which children, however young or vulnerable,
would need to be protected.
When I first began researching the issue of child protection and child
sexual abuse, I naively assumed that ‘everyone’ agreed that adult sexual
contact with children harms those children. I was astonished to dis-
cover how wrong I was. As with the rhetoric of heated condemnation of
paedophilia compared to the reality of how those who sexually offend
against children may be treated (see earlier chapters), there seems to be a
similar dissonance in the rhetoric of ‘child protection’ compared to the
reality of how people actually behave when a child is at risk of poten-
tial or actual sexual abuse. Indeed, the question of harm to children in
relation to adult sexual contact remains a topic of lively debate and one
of the most vexed areas of this entire subject and it is therefore to this
topic that this chapter turns.
This chapter contains four sections. Section 1 presents a brief overview
of the question of ‘age of consent’ as a basis for understanding harm to
children from adult sexual activity and follows this with an introduction
to a study (well-known and often-referenced in the literature) by a Dutch
psychologist, Theo Sandfort, who reported on interviews with a sample
of boys on their sexual contacts with men. Section 2 goes into some
detail to examine the Sandfort study and Section 3 then widens the
discussion to include a selection of other prominent academic texts on
paedophilia and adult sexual contact with children.

1. The Sandfort study and ‘age of consent’

Although, as suggested above, lip-service is paid to the idea that child

sexual abuse is wrong, it is surprising how quickly consensus collapses
when the question of age of consent comes up, and this issue will
therefore be addressed in this section. For many people, the question
of the harm of adult sexual contact with children is related directly to
the age of the child, or the disparity between ages, and there is little
consensus, for example, on the harm caused by mutual sexual experi-
mentation between 14-year-olds, or the risks from a 15-year-old having
sex with an adult a few years older, or the pathology of an adult being
sexually attracted to young people under the age of 16 (or 18 in the
United States). Indeed, some adult men seem to see it as unproblemati-
cally normal and acceptable to be sexually attracted to ‘nubile’ teenage
‘schoolgirls’ of ‘sweet sixteen’ or under. Well-known examples include
128 Paedophiles in Society

Edgar Allen Poe who, in 1836, married his cousin Virginia Clemm when
he was 27 and she was 13 (although a sworn affidavit given at the wed-
ding stated that she was 21); John Ruskin, who fell in love with the
10-year-old Rose la Touche when he was in his 40s; Charlie Chaplin
who, at 29, married 17-year-old Mildred Harris, at 35 married 16-year-
old Lita Grey, and at 54 married 17-year-old Oona O’Neill; Jerry Lee
Lewis who, at 22, married his 13-year-old cousin Myra Gale Brown, in
1957; and Elvis Presley who, in 1959, aged 24, started a romance with
his future wife, Priscilla Beaulieu, when she was 14.
The legal age of consent varies across the world but an overview of the
global age of consent laws shows that most countries cluster around 16
years old as the average age at which people may legally consent to begin
heterosexual sex (homosexual sex tends to have separate legislation and
remains illegal in some countries). In order to understand a little more
about the confused and shifting definitions of ‘age of consent’, it is help-
ful to look at the legal history of this concept in one particular country,
for example in England. In England, the legal age of consent was first
introduced in 1275 and set at 12 years. By 1576 it was assumed that a
girl could consent to sex from the age of 11. In 1875, in the Offences
Against the Person Act, the age of consent was raised to13 years. In 1885,
the age of consent was raised again, to 16, but sex with a girl aged 13 to
16 was legal provided the man was aged under 24. The Sexual Offences
Act 1956 made sex with a girl aged under 16 punishable by up to two
years’ imprisonment and sex with a girl aged under 13 punishable by
a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, with the age of the adult
perpetrator largely irrelevant. Following the Wolfenden Report, the Sex-
ual Offences Act 1967 set an age of consent of 21 for male homosexual
acts, with legislation in Scotland following suit in 1980, and in Northern
Ireland in 1982. In 1994 new legislation in England reduced the age of
consent for homosexual acts to 18 and in 2000 this was lowered again,
to 17 in Northern Ireland and to 16 in England, Scotland and Wales,
bringing it largely into line with the age of consent for heterosexual acts.
The changes in legislation, from 1275 to the present day, have come
about on each occasion because of changes in how sex is conceptual-
ized (as property-right, as fornication, as sodomy and so forth) and how
children are conceptualized (as property, as corruptible, as vulnerable
and so forth).
Today, in contemporary England, there is no concept of legal consen-
sual sex below the age of 16 years and, since the Sexual Offences Act 2003,
all sexual acts – not just penetrative sex – are now a criminal offence if
at least one of the people involved, male or female, is under the age
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 129

of 16. The Sexual Offences Act 1956 still applies, although the Home
Office has stated that ‘the law is not intended to prosecute mutually
agreed teenage sexual activity between two young people of a similar
age, unless it involves abuse or exploitation’. A more recent amendment
to the Act involves the ‘abuse of trust provision’, designed to protect
those aged 16 and 17 who, even though they are over the age of con-
sent, are potentially vulnerable to abuse from people in authority or
positions of trust, such as teachers, carers, prison officers, youth coun-
sellors or sports coaches. Non-consensual sex remains technically illegal
(but frequently unreported and unprosecuted) at any age.
The legal age of consent, while dependent on social attitudes to young
people’s sexual activity, also relates to the biological factor of the phys-
ical onset of puberty and to the sociological factor of the age at which
a significant proportion of young people first engage in sexual acts with
others. Over the last 150 years, the age of onset of puberty in the UK
has dropped by approximately four years, from an average 16.5 years
for girls and 17.5 for boys in 1840, to 11.9 and 13.1 years respectively in
the 1990s. At the same time, the average age of first sexual experience
in the UK is now 14 years for girls and 13 for boys, with almost 35 per
cent of girls and more than 55 per cent of boys having had some form of
‘sexual experience’ short of intercourse before they reach the age of 16
(Wellings et al., 1994). At the same time, a 1999 NOP [National Opinion
Poll] opinion survey on the age of consent suggested that the majority of
young people do not want the age of consent to be lowered or removed
(Brook, undated, online). This legal marker still provides some form of
protection from unwanted sexual attention. It indicates the distinction
recognized by society between those who are physically and psycho-
logically ready to experience sexual intimacy with another person, and
those who do not yet have the required maturity.
However, as can be seen from this brief overview, the age at which
one person can legally give their consent to sexual acts with another
person is both historically and geographically varied. While the legal
age of consent bears a relationship to the onset of physical sexual matu-
rity (puberty) and thus, arguably, to emotional and mental maturity, the
relationship is by no means straightforward or necessarily logical. The
variance over time, country, regions or states within countries, and con-
text (whether the sexual act is with a peer or someone older, younger
or in a position of authority; heterosexual or homosexual; within mar-
riage or not) all adds to the confusion. This confusion certainly works to
the advantage of those who view adult–child sexual contact generally as
non-harmful, since it is easy to point to, and disparage, the seemingly
130 Paedophiles in Society

arbitrary and illogical bases of legal ages of consent, thus throwing doubt
on the whole question of legal ‘consent’ itself and hence, in turn, any
division between people who are ‘old enough’ and ‘not old enough’ to
have sex. This has led to calls, for example by the well-known British gay
rights activist Peter Tatchell, for a reduction in the age of consent to 14
(Tatchell, 2002). A more thoughtful response, and one which acknowl-
edges the agency of young people while also recognizing the existence of
exploitation and coercion, particularly by adults against both girls and
boys, is that of Matthew Waites (2005) who discusses the current UK leg-
islation and alternative proposals on the age of consent and comments
that they:

. . . [focus] excessively on what is legally defined as consensual, rather

than recognising that the law has a limited but legitimate role in
constituting social norms of behaviour, and a legitimate role in pro-
tecting children collectively as a vulnerable group by facilitating state
intervention in their lives where necessary. [The proposal to abol-
ish ‘child sexual offences committed by children or young persons’]
tends not to recognise the existence of consensual but abusive or
excessively risky behaviour among young people . . . [we should] draw
a distinction between what is recognised as consent in law and what
we believe is a desirable standard of consent. (Waites, 2005: 238)

Waites’ suggestion is for an amendment to the UK law which would

introduce a two-year age-span provision applying until the age of 16, as
is already current in some other jurisdictions.

This would mean that 14-year olds could legally have sex with those
aged 14–16; 15-year olds with those aged 14–17; and 16-year olds
with anyone aged 14 or above, including all adults. The age of con-
sent would thus remain 16 in relation to adults over 18 . . . [This
provision] should be accompanied by redoubled efforts to extend
and improve the provision of sex and relationship education, sexual
health promotion, and skills, resources, and support of many kinds
to young people, to enable them to make decisions about whether
and how to have sex more confidently and effectively.
My solution implies a conception of young people’s citizenship
which repudiates the prevailing stark dichotomy whereby children’s
sexual citizenship is equated entirely with ‘protection’, understood
as legal prohibition, and defined in stark contrast to adult sexual
citizenship, defined by sexual ‘autonomy’ (understood as the absence
of legal prohibitions). (Waites, 2005: 238–9)
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 131

Waites and other authors (for example, see Levine, 2002) are concerned
that age of consent legislation may patronize children and deny them
agency and decision-making skills. However, they remain aware, as
Waites emphasizes, that many young people do look back and regret
early sexual experiments. This confusion over our need, as a society, to
protect young people from harm (whilst simultaneously not criminaliz-
ing or morally condemning them for sexual experience or denying them
agency in exercising their right to bodily autonomy and integrity) leads
to uncertainty over how best to revise or reform current age of con-
sent legislation. This confusion has been used by some individuals and
organizations to argue for liberalization of age of consent laws which
would at the same time relax legislation against adult sexual contact
with children.
One example of the use of this confusion to argue for greater liberal-
ization and indeed the complete removal of the legal concept of an age
of consent, to be replaced by a system of individual negotiated agree-
ment, is provided by the book, Boys on their Contacts with Men (Sandfort,
1987), published within the context, and as part of, a Dutch campaign
for greater sexual freedom. Boys on their Contacts with Men is written as
an accessible text for the general reader and an explicit and major part
of its raison d’être was to inform the debate in the Netherlands in the
late 1970s and early 1980s on lowering or abolishing the age of con-
sent, much as Kinsey’s work in the 1940s was written to inform and
influence the debate on relaxing sex offender laws. The book is based
on an investigation carried out by Sandfort as a research assistant in
1980–81 at the Sociological Institute of the State University, Utrecht, in
the Netherlands. Sandfort wrote two books, in Dutch, from his investi-
gation, published in 1981 and 1982. In 1986, when the Dutch legislature
was actively considering revising the age of consent laws, Sandfort sum-
marized his work in a paperback book aimed at the general reader, first
in Dutch and then, in 1987, in English. Section 2 now looks in some
detail at this book and the arguments it puts forward for the benefits of
adult–child sexual contact.

2. ‘Boys on their Contacts with Men’

Theo Sandfort is something of a hero to many paedophiles. He is, for

example, on the NAMBLA list of recommended reading – always a good
indication! (see http://www.NAMBLA.org/readings.htm, accessed 1 April
2008). His writings are widely referred to (although, like most academic
texts, perhaps not actually so widely read). Dr Sandfort, now a research
scientist at Columbia University, is regarded as a notable academic in the
132 Paedophiles in Society

area of sexuality: he has been President of the Dutch Society of Sexology,

President of the International Academy of Sex Research, and serves on
the board of various academic journals on sexuality. In 2000, Haworth
Press published his Childhood Sexuality, billed as ‘one of the first books
to present facts about the normal sexual behavior of children under
thirteen’. Coyly, Sandfort does not mention his work on paedophile
relationships in the list of publications on his web-page (http://www.
hivcenternyc.org/people/theosandfort.html, accessed1 April 2008).
The investigation on which Boys on their Contacts with Men was
based was part-funded by the NVSH, the Netherlands Society for Sex-
ual Reform, a campaigning organization which still thrives, calling
itself ‘the most comprehensive site about sexuality’. Its web-page on
paedophilia portrays views negative to paedophilia as being hysterical,
illogical and ‘primitive’; it shows pro-paedophile images including the
cover of a pro-paedophile magazine; and it also contains a brief inter-
view with Martin de Jong, chair of the Dutch Paedophile Association.
It does not contain any views which are not supportive of paedophilia
(http://www.nvsh.nl/variants/paedophilia.htm, accessed 2 April 2008).
Why is Boys on their Contacts with Men a significant book? It is one
of the few books (indeed, perhaps the only book) to which paedophiles
can point and say, ‘Look, a scientific study has been done which proves
that adult–child sexual relationships can be positive for the child.’
The English-language edition contains a glowing Foreword penned by
Dr John Money, the doyen of sexology, who acclaims the book as ‘One
of the most valuable works of research scholarship on the topic of
pedophilia that has ever appeared in print.’
Sandfort has two points to prove in this study. Firstly, he wants to
provide evidence that children do enjoy sex and are sexually active and
therefore that age of consent laws which limit the extent of their sex-
ual expression below a certain age do not reflect reality and should be
altered or removed, thus de-criminalizing consensual sexual contact at
any age. His second point is that people generally regard all adult–child
sexual contact as harmful. Therefore, if he can prove any counterexam-
ples, the harm argument will be shown to be logically flawed. He has
therefore gone out to find a sample of boys who will tell the researcher,
convincingly, that they enjoy their sexual relationships – or ‘sexually
expressed friendships’ – with men and that they find it ‘pleasant’ and
therefore not harmful.
He was able to recruit this sample because, as well as part-funding
Sandfort’s research, the NVSH also provided the entire sample on which
the study was based. Sandfort explains on p. 37, that the men were
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 133

found through the NVSH and especially through the ‘pedophile and
youth emancipation groups’. He then says, ‘It was the men, the older
partners, who asked the boys to participate.’ He does not, in this book,
say what his own role in the NVSH may have been, or whether any of
the ‘older partners’ were in fact Sandfort himself, or his friends. In any
case, he does not discuss the fact that, to the boys, he himself, as a
well-educated professional adult man and possibly one already known
to them as a member of the NVSH (we are not told), he must have
seemed not dissimilar in status to the ‘older partners’. In the inter-
views, Sandfort presents, entirely appropriately, as non-judgmental, but
again – from the perspective of the young boys (23 of whom were
aged 14 or younger) – this positive and supportive attitude towards
adult–child sex might in fact have made it more difficult for them to
deviate in their answers from any NVSH ‘party line’. For example, it is
interesting to read how, when asked explicitly about negative factors
around their sexual relationship, the boys provide examples of men
over-riding their wishes and ‘pestering’ them for sex but then repeat-
edly deny that this is significant or insist that it only happens very
infrequently. It would be interesting to read the full transcripts and
certainly this is a point which could be sensitively explored in any
follow-up study.
Sandfort also remains silent on how exactly the boys were chosen to
participate in the sample, and how many boys may have been selected
out as ‘unsuitable’, although he does tell us that:

[the] possibility cannot be excluded that only the ‘better’ relation-

ships were here investigated. Although we made absolutely no effort
to ‘select’ a favorable sample, it is undoubtedly true that men and
boys will be more willing to participate in a project like this if what
is being studied does not cause problems in their relationship and so
create a bad impression of it. (Sandfort, 1987: 35)

This rather convoluted sentence seems to mean that, although ‘we’ (that
is, Sandfort) may not have deliberately selected only a ‘favorable’ sam-
ple, it is more than likely that the men (who actually recruited the
sample) did.
In the book, Sandfort tells us that he interviewed 25 boys aged
between 10 and 16 years old, all of whom were having a sexual rela-
tionship with men aged between 26 and 66. In all, then, he tells us 25
boys were involved, and 20 men (because five of the men were each
having relationships with two of the boys in the sample). However, it
134 Paedophiles in Society

is rather odd that, when the names used in the book are counted up,
he actually refers to 27 boys and to 25 men (whose ages also seem to
vary). This seems extremely careless for such a ground-breaking study.
There are also two Simons aged 12 given in the book, one having a rela-
tionship with Ed (aged 32), and one with Maarten (aged 32). Thus, as
well as being sloppy with detailing numbers of respondents and ages,
Sandfort seems to have been quite surprisingly careless in allocating
pseudonyms to distinguish between the respondents in this very small
sample. In addition to the 27 names, he also seems to confuse one child
as being either Bert or Bart and another child as John or Johan, so there
are in fact 29 names in total for the children. If Sandfort is so offhand
with basic details of names and ages one wonders what other informa-
tion from the research is being treated equally casually. (All quotations
in this section are from Sandfort, 1987 unless specified otherwise. The
ages given are the ages of the children at the time of interview, which is
usually older than the age at which sexual activity had commenced.)
The overall impression from this book is rather sad. The boys, partic-
ularly the younger ones, come across as affectionate, caring and eager
to please, working hard to conform to the ideal of the ‘nice’, ‘pleasant’,
‘considerate’ young boyfriend. They remind me oddly and unexpect-
edly of the stereotype of the ‘mail-order bride’, aware that her tenuous
position can only be maintained as long as she adheres to the idealized
model of meek and obliging, submissive femininity (Robinson, 1996).
In this regard, it was intriguing to catch hints of how the boys seemed
on some level to identify with their mothers. It would be helpful to
see the full interview-transcripts to explore this in more depth (three
transcripts are provided in an appendix to Sandfort’s book). It is not
surprising that if the main model of sexual companionship which the
boys had was that of their parents, and they identified their ‘older part-
ners’ as similar in some ways to their fathers, then they might in some
sense identify themselves with their mothers’ experiences. Thijs (aged
10) describes his sexual experience as, ‘I think it’s exactly like a woman
going to bed with a man – it’s nice. And I feel the same things they feel.’
(p. 111). Rob (aged 12) explained:

Through sex with Chris, I learned how my parents relate to one

another. . . . Chris explained what was really going on at home,
because sometimes I just don’t understand what they are talking
about. [TS: But what does that have to do with your sexual relations
with Chris?] Well, my father sometimes sort of teases my mother,
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 135

flatters her and stuff. I didn’t used to have the faintest idea why he
did that, and now I know. (pp. 79–80)

For much of the time, however, the experiences seem to be, as one
would expect, less about identifying with their mothers and more about
sharing some complicated masculine social network where various indi-
viduals have sex with various others, both adults and children, in a
kaleidoscope of complex interactions. For the boys caught up in this
network, this is regarded – by some of them at least – as ‘normal’.
As one child, Lex, aged 13, states about his parents’ knowledge of his
own sexual relations, ‘Oh, they think it’s okay, as far as I know. . . . [TS:
They’re not opposed to it?] No, they do that kind of thing themselves,
so . . . [ellipses in original]’ (p. 102).
All 20 of the men involved in this investigation, Sandfort tells us, had
had previous paedophile relationships, and 12 of the 20 were known to
the authorities, with three of the men actually still on probation for sex-
ual offences at the time of the study. Sandfort notes (p. 37) that ‘In the
25 friendships which are the subject of this book, 20 men were involved:
five of them had two younger friends, each of whom participated in this
investigation.’ As we have seen, this claim is problematic, because in
fact 27 boys’ names are used and 25 men’s names, with only one name
(Maarten) used twice. We therefore cannot know which of the men had
‘two younger friends’. Neither is this aspect given much attention in
the book. Teasing it out, however, it seems that, far from this being a
study of ‘normal children’ living in an everyday community, a num-
ber of the boys were living in a context in which the adults around
them either actively endorsed adult–child sexual contact or held a neu-
tral opinion on it, and in which a tangled web of current and past sexual
relationships intertwined.
To give a flavour of this strange environment and its links with the
NVSH, there is the example of Erik (aged 10) who has a mother in the
NVSH, where he had first met his ‘older partner’. Erik explains, ‘I was
there. And so, of course, were a whole lot of pedophiles, and so was
Edward [aged 57]. He was very nice, and he had brought a car race game
with him’ (p. 47). Sandfort describes how, ‘Lex [aged 13] was brought by
some of his age-mates to Richard who immediately started telling him
about pedophilia . . . Within an hour they had sex’ (p. 66). In Lex’s words,
‘he showed me some films. Sex films. . . . There were four of us looking at
the film and then they started pulling my pants down . . . and so Richard
said, “Now, will you let me . . . ?” . . . I got used to it.’ (p. 66). The ‘older
136 Paedophiles in Society

partner’ Richard may also have had a previous sexual relationship with
Theo (aged 13) who is shown as now having a relationship with Bert
(aged 35). Rob (aged 12) had a similar experience:

a week or so after I met him . . . We’d been making [‘half-naked’]

photos . . . And then he started to explain things to me . . . how you
really got to jerk off and other things like that. . . . I didn’t have the
faintest idea about any of that. . . . Okay, every so often I saw I had a
hard-on, but I didn’t know anything more than that. (p. 65)

Gerrit (aged16) had an older brother who had a sexual relationship with
Gerrit’s ‘older partner’ for two years, overlapping with Gerrit’s relation-
ship (Gerrit’s brother appears not to have been included in the sample).
Gerrit described how his ‘older partner’ Barend (aged 39) started the
sexual activity:

the three of us [Barend, older brother, and Gerrit] were lying here
on the bed and Barend had a sex book on the table. So my brother
and I began to read it and I began to sort of jerk off and so on. From
then on we had sex with one another. . . . Barend started to jerk off a
little, and my brother too. . . . Barend did it a little bit to my brother,
but not to me. Because I was a bit embarrassed – my brother not. He
went around with Barend for two years. (p. 162)

Gerrit himself was then active in involving his friend Harrie (aged16) in
a paedophile relationship. Similarly, Rob (aged 12) was now having sex
with the ‘older partner’ who had previously had sex with his brother
(who appears not to be included in the sample). Both John (aged 13)
and his brother Jantje had a sexual relationship with the same man
(again, Jantje appears not to be included in the sample). The brother
of Jos (aged 13), and possibly his sister as well, may also have been
involved with a paedophile – it is not clear from the text. Both Maurits
(aged 10) and Simon (aged 12) were having a sexual relationship with
Maarten. Willem (aged 13) is described as ‘already experienced’ when
he starts a relationship with his ‘older partner’. Rene (aged 12) met his
‘older partner’ when ‘I went to his home to meet a man I’d known for
six years, also a pedophile, who’d just got out of prison.’ Hans (aged 13)
met his current ‘older partner’ through another paedophile, and Simon
(aged 12) had previously had a relationship with another paedophile,
Ton. This is more complicated than a soap-opera!
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 137

Within this sample, therefore, a picture emerges, not of an aver-

age neighbourhood as Sandfort seems to want to imply, but of a
group of men – all connected to ‘pedophile and youth emancipation
groups’ of the NVSH – having sex with clusters of siblings and their
friends; of paedophiles introducing children to other paedophiles and
of children subsequently introducing their brothers and schoolfriends to
paedophiles. It has reached the point where Bert / Bart (aged 14) claims:

that’s the way it always is; one quarter of all boys do it, thus in my
class of 16 there are four, including me, who have relations with a
pedophile. [TS: That seems to me a bit too many.] Well, it just goes
on an awful lot, but you’ll have to ask Albert about that – he knows
the figures a lot better. (p. 107)

In addition, Paul (aged 14) had previously ‘had a sexual relationship

with’ (or been sexually abused by) his step-father – we are not told at
what age this occurred. Is this then an example of a free-and-easy sexual
paradise in which children are at last ‘emancipated’ to express their full
sexual natures without unnecessary social inhibitions? Or is it an envi-
ronment in which the sexual decisions made by the children are shaped
by the dynamics of the secretive clique in which they are being brought
up? (The study is of course silent on the experiences of those children
who may have been offered sexual ‘emancipation’ by eager adults but
yet declined their kind offers.)
This may well be an environment in which the children can feel ‘spe-
cial’ – admired, pampered, cuddled, indulged and attended to (at least
until they reach adolescence). But this is also a clique which is protec-
tive of the men far more than of the boys: the major concern seems to
be with keeping the men out of prison, not with ensuring the children
have genuine autonomy. Rob (aged 12) has clearly been taught to feel
very protective of (and responsible for) his ‘older partner’. ‘What really
frightens me is what Chris has already gone through, and that, thanks
to me, he might have to go through it all over again. That he would
have problems with the police and such. And also my mother.’ (p. 88)
Walter (aged 15) also innocently repeats the justifications he has heard
from his ‘older partner’, ‘We’re not hurting each other, are we? If you
murder somebody you only sit in jail a few months; but if you go to bed
with somebody you get punished more severely – that’s what Steven
says.’ (p. 88). More unpleasantly, John / Johan (aged 13) discloses that
his ‘older partner’ has threatened John’s parents into silence, ‘One good
thing, though, is they’d never turn Marcel in. My mother is on disability
138 Paedophiles in Society

but she works black [illegally]. Marcel said, “If she turns me in, the next
day I’ll turn her in.” ’ (p. 99).
The boys also seem to feel responsible for their ‘older partners’ sexual
pleasure. ‘Pedophiles ought to be able to enjoy themselves’, says Marco
(aged 12, p. 79). Little Ben (aged 10) has been told that sex is ‘doing
nice things for children’, apparently: ‘Sex with Herman is, uh, love for
children and, uh, doing nice things for children, that sex is not bad.’
(p.78). Ben also commented that Herman says, ‘“I want to do some-
thing nice but you don’t want to do it.” So then I think he’s mad at
me.’ (p. 78). Poignantly, he also tells us, ‘I think it’s wonderful to sleep
together. Then I don’t have to lie in bed alone. Sometimes I’m a little
bit scared to go to sleep if I’ve seen a movie.’ (p. 54). Jos (aged 13) felt
pressurized, ‘When I don’t want to do it and Bas [aged 35] keeps pes-
tering me.’ (p. 84). Martin (aged 12) also expressed that pressure – but
then quickly backtracks: ‘I ask him not to do something, I say I don’t
like it, and then he doesn’t stop. But that doesn’t happen so much.’
(p. 82). Johan / John (aged 13) had hidden his pain: Sandfort reports
that ‘Marcel (45) said that he had anal contact one time with Johan
(13), who found it painful. Johan, however, had not admitted it had
hurt and said that he wanted to do something nice for Marcel.’ (p. 71).
On p. 80, Johan bravely denies there is anything wrong, ‘There’s noth-
ing unpleasant about it [sex] . . . I haven’t any trouble with it. I like it and
he likes it, so I think why should we make problems about it?’ Lex (aged
13) also felt he owed his ‘older partner’: ‘Well, you ought to have sex,
because he does so much for me. He takes me out a lot. So I should pay
him back somehow; that’s what he thinks, but I think so, too, so I’m not
against it.’ (p. 94). Hans (aged 13) also felt responsible and anxious not
to ‘let the other guy down’:

if I’m doing something and, uh, something he likes but I, well,

don’t like it so much. Sometimes every so often you can say no,
but other times you really shouldn’t. . . . you tell him no and he gets
mad. . . . If you say no you’re letting the other guy down. . . . you got
to find a solution, and that’s not easy. (pp. 83–4)

Sandfort’s apparent incapacity to understand the power-dynamics of

what he is studying is at times ludicrous. Theo (aged 13) attempts to
negotiate with his ‘older partner’ while feeling guilty that he is ‘telling
a fib’: ‘he wants to suck me off and I tell him it hurts, and so I’m telling
a fib [because it doesn’t really]. . . . I’ll say “If the TV stays off I’m going
to sleep alone”, and then I get to watch the TV a little longer.’ (p. 95).
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 139

Sandfort ponderously asserts, ‘From this answer it can be seen that the
boy realized he could withhold sex from his partner and so use it as
a power tool.’ (p. 95) A ‘power tool’?? No doubt this is affected by
the translation from the Dutch, but what is truly amusing is that over
the page Sandfort then feels compelled to conclude his discussion on
‘power’ with a lengthy quotation (p. 96) – on a man’s ability to ejaculate
‘to the ceiling’! Yes, Professor Sandfort, very exciting no doubt, but that
is not actually the kind of power we were expecting you to analyse! (It is
also notable that this anecdote about a man in his fifties ejaculating ‘to
the ceiling’ emphasizes an image of paedophiles as highly potent, vir-
ile and masculine, counter perhaps to more popular but less flattering
notions of them.)
This quotation is also revealing for another reason. Sandfort intro-
duces this quotation as ‘an example from the interview with Ben (10) of
how he often cheered on his partner Herman (55) when they had sex’.
Sandfort wants the child to be talking about ‘cheering on’ his ‘partner’
when he ejaculates, but what the little boy is actually talking about is
how absurd it all is and therefore how it makes him laugh. Sandfort is
quite unable to hear this, and keeps steering the little boy until he says
something positive about ejaculation:

Ben (aged 10): Oh, when he wants to come I say, “Come! Come!”
(Bursting out laughing)
TS: Does it make you laugh, or is it also serious?
Ben: Yes, I always start laughing (Again laughs)
TS: But you mean it seriously, you’re encouraging him?
Ben: Yeah, I laugh my head off.
TS: You laugh your head off? Why do you find it so funny?
Ben: (Still laughing) All of a sudden, psssst! Up to the ceiling!
TS: Do you also think that’s sort of strange?
Ben: Uh, no.
TS: You don’t think it’s strange?
Ben: Later I’ll be able to do it, too.
TS: Do you think it’s too bad that you can’t yet?
Ben: Yes, but when I’m eleven or twelve I will.

The younger boys of 10 and 11 years old especially seem somewhat baf-
fled by what is going on. Ben, for example, does not seem to derive any
enjoyment from the sexual contact which he describes as an ‘unpleasant
tickling’ (p. 78). Why a 10-year-old child would want, on a daily basis,
140 Paedophiles in Society

to ‘cheer on’ a 55-year-old man ejaculating is something that doesn’t

seem to occur to Sandfort.
At no point does Sandfort distinguish between the experiences of the
younger or older boys in his sample. This omission is almost certainly
driven by Sandfort’s belief that age is irrelevant to consent – in fact,
consent as a concept is not addressed. It is enough for Sandfort that
some of the boys describe themselves as ‘initiating’ sexual contact and
that they find pleasure in their experiences. For example, regarding Jan
(aged 11), Sandfort reports that ‘Sander said [to Sandfort] that it was
really he who had taken the initiative, and that he had been very care-
ful how he began: “You get a response to something you do, and that
determines whether you go any further or not. The whole process lasted
three months.”’ (p. 67) We are not told how old Jan was at that time,
but we are told that it was ‘a long time ago’, presumably therefore Jan
was aged no more than 9 or even younger. In Britain today, there would
be no hesitation in naming this behaviour as ‘grooming’.
So, does this book tell us about ‘sexually expressed friendship’
between boys and men? Is it reassuring in its message that such
friendships can be positive and not harmful? To what extent are they
‘friendships’? To what extent are they ‘sexually expressed’? And to what
extent is the sexual expression integral to the friendship, in the views
of the boys? It seems clear from what the boys say that some of these
relationships are indeed regarded as friendships. Here it is difficult to
be precise, because Sandfort has not been precise and has given us 27
names of boys while telling us that he studied 25 boys so there is a cer-
tain amount of confusion to be taken into account. At least one boy
(Andre, aged 14) is clear that it is not a friendship, he does not love his
‘older partner’, he was in it for the sex and now he has a girlfriend he
is finishing his contact with the man. With some of the other boys, for
example Marco (aged 12), from whom we hear only once (p. 79), there
is no clear evidence either way and, for others, what seems to matter
are the incidental benefits of time with an adult. Lex (aged 13) talks
about the activities he is able to do, to which Sandfort responds, ‘You’re
pretty lucky, eh?’ and Lex replies poignantly, ‘Yeah, that only happens
if you go around with a pedophile, or you’re the only child at home, of
course,’ (p. 52). Harrie (aged 16) explains that he gets treats like French
fries whereas otherwise, ‘There are seven of us in the family, so you just
can’t do that sort of thing’ (p’53), and for Willem (aged 13), it is the lack
of parental discipline, ‘At home you can’t do as much as you can here
at Roel’s. Like smoking – they don’t let me smoke at home. Here I can
do just about everything.’ (p. 53); while, for Wouter (aged 12), he could
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 141

escape from an unpleasant home situation, ‘I feel at home . . . I can hide

from my dad.’ (p. 54).
For some of the other boys, for example Gerrit (aged 16), it is fairly
clear that his friendship with his ‘older partner’ may be providing him
with space to think, away from his family, and encouragement of his
dreams of living in the countryside, and his hobbies such as sketching.
Gerrit did not initiate the sexual aspect of this friendship and it is likely
that, had it not been initiated, he would still have enjoyed the company
of his friend.
For a number of the other boys, too, what they seem to value most in
their friendships with the adult men is the attention, the treats, and the
physical warmth of hugging, cuddling and back-rubbing. Peter (aged 14)
is clear that what he likes is being cuddled (p. 56). Sandfort makes the
comment, which everyone in this culture should take to heart, that boys
in this age-bracket, once they are no longer little children, are unlikely
to receive much physical affection. If the only person who is going to
provide cuddles is a paedophile, then for some lonely and affection-
starved children that alone may be sufficient reason to spend time with
him. The answer is not that ‘sexually expressed friendships’ are positive:
the answer is that those of us who care about children and adolescents
must feel comfortable to offer them that bodily touch and warm, com-
forting physical affection that we all crave throughout our lives – the
hugs, back-rubs and cuddles – while never crossing the boundary into
inappropriate sexual contact. The boys also felt more relaxed and freer
in their behaviour in the homes of their ‘older partners’. They felt they
could talk to these adults and perhaps escape from a stressful situation
at home. Again, this is not something on which paedophiles have a
monopoly: any adult could potentially befriend a young person and
play a valuable role, offering support without any sexual element. It is a
sad comment on our culture that so few children and adolescents have
adult friends outside the family to whom they can turn when their own
family situation is difficult.
It seems therefore that some of these relationships were indeed per-
ceived as friendships by the boys but – far more often than Sandfort
would like to admit – even in this carefully selected, and arguably brain-
washed, little group the sex is likely to be something the boys feel
obliged to take part in rather than experiencing it as an integral and
necessary aspect of their friendship.
Sandfort’s work has been reviewed and criticized (as described in
Bauserman, 1990) on the grounds of method (for example, biased sam-
pling), speculation (for example, assuming that the boys were lying
142 Paedophiles in Society

throughout their interviews), and moral or ethical concerns (for exam-

ple, the fact that the relationships studied were illegal). Bauserman
refutes these critiques, essentially by decrying them as ‘ideological’ and
‘dogmatic’, in other words, as based on a moral position which dif-
fers from Bauserman’s own. In turn, his analysis of the critiques has
been addressed by two of the original reviewers, David Finkelhor and
David Mrazek (both published in Sandfort, Brongersma & Naerssen,
1991). Finkelhor’s response is particularly interesting. He is a key author
and researcher in the field of child sexual abuse and his model on
paedophilia is widely used. Finkelhor comments, ‘Sandfort’s findings are
probably valid and could be (and need to be) replicated by other inves-
tigators’ but he also states, ‘it is probably an extremely unrepresentative
sample. It is impossible to make policy on the basis of such a sample’
(1991: 313); and he goes on to say that:

[W]e are talking about an experience that has a very high risk. . . . The
public policy priority to protect children from unwanted and coercive
sexual approaches by adults seems justified given the evidence of its
wide prevalence and the high risk for serious effects. The (now grown)
children who have had such experiences are very active in lobbying
for such protection. I have encountered very few individuals with
self-defined positive experiences who are lobbying for legal protec-
tions for their kinds of experiences. Mostly it is pedophilicly oriented
adults who argue for such rights. . . . Some types of social relationships
violate deeply held values and principles in our culture about equal-
ity and self-determination. Sex between adults and children is one of
them. Evidence that certain children have positive experiences does
not challenge these values, which have deep roots in our worldview.
(Finkelhor, 1991: 314)

In order to understand Sandfort’s book, it is important to bear in mind

its wider context (the drive by the NVSH to reduce or abolish age of con-
sent laws and to de-criminalize adult–child sexual contact) and also to
read carefully the quotations from the boys which, even in the limited
form in which they are presented, still cannot manage to paint the pic-
ture of positive sexual enjoyment that Sandfort and the NVSH wanted
to portray. According to Bauserman (1990), Sandfort had intended to
follow up this study, and had obtained permission from all the boys to
conduct such a follow-up. This never happened. The boys in the sample
must now be aged in their 30s and 40s – it would be of great value if they
can be traced or would be willing to get in touch, so that a researcher
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 143

could re-contact them and allow them to speak, in their own words as
adults looking back, about how they found the sexual relationships, the
research, and their views now.

3. Other studies on adult sexual contact with children

The value of Sandfort’s work is that it offers us a uniquely candid insight

into how paedophiles may behave in society. In distinction to the many
clinical or prison-based studies of paedophiles, Sandfort’s is almost the
only one which actually positions paedophiles in society, within a
social context where they are permitted extreme leniency in their sex-
ual behaviour (as will be remembered, at least three of the paedophiles
were on probation at the time of the research and the book makes clear
that, even when arrested, most of the paedophiles were effectively only
‘cautioned’ and allowed to continue). Although his expressed purpose
was to interview the boys, at the same time he cannot help but show us
the paedophiles themselves, in his descriptions, in their own comments
and through the words of the boys.
This is a highly atypical setting. For example, Sandfort tells us that,
when Robert (aged 42) invited Rene (aged 12) to start a relationship
with him, Rene replied ‘I’ll see. If they think it’s okay at home, then
it would be fine.’ (p. 44). In many ways, this is the great paedophile
fantasy come true: the paedophile able to have a sexual relationship
which is ignored or even approved of by the child’s family. And, unlike
Hollywood movies such as Long Island Expressway, Leon or Man on Fire
(see Chapter 3), no-one gets to die either: the worst that seems to hap-
pen is that the paedophile goes to prison but comes out again and carries
on as before. This, then, is the paedophile fantasy which is counterposed
to the popular cultural fantasy of the ‘evil pervert’. In Sandfort’s book,
the paedophile is well-integrated into society and able to offer boys
valuable resources such as knowledge, affection, outings and treats –
a ‘value-added paedophile’, one might say. In Sandfort’s book, as with
Kinsey, no-one is harmed, there is only good sex, and sexually active
paedophiles have a place and a positive role to play in society.
As noted in Chapter 3, Sandfort’s is by no means the only text which
treats the subject of adult sexual contact with children in this positive
light. Crawford et al. inform us that there are a ‘plethora of publica-
tions that are positive’ on this topic and that ‘Intergenerational Studies
has just begun, and . . . there are shades of grey and white in the discus-
sion that do not appear in the literature of abuse’ (1997: 255–6). This
section now turns to look at a small sample of those texts which treat
144 Paedophiles in Society

adult sexual contact with children in ‘shades of grey and white’. These
texts tend to derive from the fields of sexology, pathopsychology, evolu-
tionary psychology, criminology, sociology, sociobiology, anthropology,
ethnology and human ethology. It is important that there is an aware-
ness of these books and the arguments within them. The reader may
be surprised at the influence of these books, the authorities involved
in creating them, and the bodies of data on which they draw. Unless
such literature, and the arguments within them, are clearly understood
and addressed, and thus challenged, their subtle but powerful influence
remains.
A noticeable fact about these texts is that they emphasize male-with-
male paedophilia and scarcely touch on male-with-female paedophilia
or paedophilia by women. Regrettably, as a mono-lingual, I am not able
to comment on work available only in languages other than English,
although it is clear that there is, for example, a body of Dutch- and
German-language work which is relevant to this discussion but not
available in translation (for example, the work by Sandfort available
only in Dutch; the studies in the 1980s by the social worker Monica
Pieterse on paedophiles, again published only in Dutch). It would be
all but impossible to provide a thoroughly comprehensive bibliogra-
phy of all the relevant works, as work on paedophilia and paedophiles
per se will shade off into the wider areas of sexual ‘variation’, ‘deviation’
or fetish; children’s rights, children’s sexuality, children’s development
and sex education; social work and healthcare; moral and legal dis-
cussions and other cognate discipline-areas. I do not pretend that the
titles given below provide a scientifically rigorous sample of available
English-language material; the intention is that they should simply pro-
vide the reader with a flavour of some of the relevant texts. Book-length
works include Gagnon & Simon (1970), Rossman (1976), O’Carroll
(1981), Cook & Howells (1981), Taylor (1981), Sandfort (1982), Wilson
& Cox (1983), Brongersma’s two volumes (1986), Feierman (1990), Li
Chin-Keoung, West & Woodhouse (1990), Sandfort, Brongersma & van
Naerssen (1991), and Geraci (1997).
In addition to work which seems mainly concerned with the adult
experience, there are also a number of books on children’s sexuality
written by authors who have published statements which endorse adult
sexual contact with children (Pomeroy, Yates, Constantine, Martinson,
Sandfort) or who are closely related to and have defended the work of
Kinsey in this area (Pomeroy, Bancroft). Examples of these include Yates
(1978), Constantine & Martinson (1981), Martinson (1994), Sandfort &
Rademakers (2001) and Bancroft (2003).
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 145

The following four reviews are again not intended to be compre-

hensive but to illustrate to the reader that such texts exist and are
easily obtainable through libraries and booksellers. The views contained
in them (drawn from academic and popular discourse and using the
kinds of historical, anthropological and biological arguments discussed
in Chapter 3) are able to influence the ‘sexual radicalism’ discourse by
providing a resource arguing for the legitimacy and normality of adult
sexual contact with children. When we attempt to understand the place
of paedophiles within contemporary society, and how society responds
to paedophiles, books such as these help us to understand the arguments
for tolerance which exist and how they are developed and transmitted.

Adult Sexual Interest in Children (1981), edited by Mark Cook and

Kevin Howells. This book is part of a series entitled Personality and
Psychopathology. It is compiled by two British lecturers (one at Univer-
sity College Swansea and one at the University of Leicester) and arose as
a result of a major conference on sexual behaviour organized by Mark
Cook, the International Conference on Love and Attraction, held at Swansea
in 1977 and subsequently written up as a series of conference papers
published by Pergamon Press in 1979 as Love and Attraction: An Inter-
national Conference, edited by Mark Cook and Glenn Wilson. At the
conference, Kevin Howells had convened a symposium on paedophilia,
at which Tom O’Carroll, a well-known paedophile activiist, had been
invited to speak but which was disrupted when Judith Reisman (see
the previous chapter) brought this to the attention of ancillary staff
at the University who then threatened strike action if O’Carroll was
given a platform. At the same conference, Floyd Martinson convened
a symposium on Child and Infant Sexuality.
This book therefore arose from the authors’ experiences of contro-
versy surrounding the conference, and they write: ‘We began planning
this book with the intention of assembling a body of information about
the various aspects of adult sexual interest in children, which might
provide a factual basis for a cooler and more reasoned approach to the
issue’ (p. viii). The collection includes chapters by the sociologist Ken
Plummer and the forensic criminologist and Director of the Institute
of Criminology at Cambridge, Donald West (see below). The tenor of
the book is liberal in the sense that sex with children is generally seen
as something not to get too excited about, although there are various
provisos about the possibility of harm.
A sample chapter is that by Thore Langfeldt on ‘Sexual develop-
ment in children’. Langfeldt, a psychologist from Norway who has a
146 Paedophiles in Society

clinical practice with children with ‘deviant sexual behaviour’ (Cook

& Howells, 1981:112), appears to share an interest similar to Kinsey’s in
masturbation and early childhood sexual experience. Like Kinsey, he dis-
cusses how, ‘at the neonatal level’ ‘an orgasm is easily produced’ (p. 102),
and he makes use of reports ‘from pedophiles’ on ‘erections in small
boys’ (ibid.). He also states that ‘observations are confirmed by reports
from sexual interactions between young boys and adults’ (p. 104) and
by ‘[i]nterviews with men and boys having sexual relations’ (pp. 104–5).
Looking at childhood sexuality, he discusses how ‘sexual activation may
occur as a result of active manipulation by the child itself or by its care-
taker’ (p. 105) and expands this by stating how an ‘uncle or some adult
friend of the family might in some cases tell the child how to mastur-
bate’ (p. 106). These interventions are implicitly approved. There is a
confusing but rather disturbing discussion of ‘muscular oriented ther-
apy’ on ‘young children’ (pp. 116–17) which seems to be aimed at
causing ‘an increase in the pelvic bloodflow which gives rise to erec-
tion and lubrication’ (p. 117). The overall tenor of the chapter is to
suggest that touching children sexually is positive and helpful and con-
notes with ‘liberation’, ‘pleasure’ and being ‘liberal’, whilst not touching
children sexually connotes with being old-fashioned and ashamed and
having an ‘anti-hedonistic attitude’.

Pedophilia: Biosocial Dimensions, edited by Jay Feierman and published in

1990 by Springer-Verlag. My attention was drawn to this book because
it is frequently cited and recommended by those within the paedophile
community. As with the Cook & Howells book, this collection arises
from conference papers, this time a symposium in 1987, organized
by the International Society for Human Ethology, on understanding
paedophilia from cross-cultural, cross-historical and cross-species per-
spectives. An emphasis of the collection is on the contribution of
evolutionary biology to contemporary human behaviour and, since the
collection was published in 1990, some aspects of the more specialized
work on neuro-endocrinology, for example, are likely to be somewhat
out-of-date. This is an odd collection in some ways, with contribu-
tors going into great detail on the sexual behaviour of Japanese quail,
laboratory mice and so forth without always clearly linking it to any
implications for understanding why some men find children or ado-
lescents sexually attractive. Nevertheless, it remains a fascinating work,
even for the non-specialist. There are contributions by social scientists
Vern Bullough and Paul Okami, but the majority of contributions are
from the physical sciences. In some ways the most interesting part per-
haps is the final concluding chapter by Feierman himself, which is
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 147

essentially a heartfelt plea for tolerance, although it is noticeable that

while there is clear empathy for the men caught up in the dilemma of
paedophile sexual attraction (and who may find themselves sentenced
and publicly disgraced for offending behaviour), there is no such clear
empathy expressed for the children involved if the men do act on their
attraction. Feierman refers sensitively to the cost of being a paedophile
as ‘an indeterminable sentence of never to be discussed inner turmoil
and pain’ (1990: 553).

Children’s Sexual Encounters with Adults, written by Li Chin-Keung,

Donald West and T. P. Woodhouse, was published by Duckworth in
1990 and then reprinted in 1993 by Prometheus as Children’s Sexual
Encounters with Adults: A Scientific Study. (The edition reviewed here
is the earlier, Duckworth, edition.) This book contains two reports
of research conducted by the authors. The first study, by West and
Woodhouse, is a survey of male students which asked about their sex-
ual experiences with people older than themselves before the age of 11
and when aged 11 up to 16 years. They received 182 completed ques-
tionnaires and undertook 23 interviews with respondents who had a
history of relevant sexual experience and 13 interviews with respon-
dents who hadn’t. Forty-five students reported experiences between the
ages of 11 and 16 years and 22 reported experiences aged under 11
years. The majority of the experiences were with male non-family mem-
bers, often a one-off encounter with strangers, and the respondents
reported these as embarrassing but otherwise ‘indifferent’. For example,
one respondent told how a friend’s father had touched him in bed at
night:

I was almost wholly indifferent, it was bloody embarrassing, but I was

almost completely indifferent to the whole thing. I don’t seem to
recall having – I mean it was a nuisance that I was being kept awake.
Other than that it was slightly embarrassing I seem to remember.
(1990: 53)

The authors then attempted to expand the data-collection using elec-

toral registers in London and Cambridge, contacting respondents
through telephone and postal questionnaires and visits to randomly
selected addresses to ask men about their childhood sexual experiences.
Not surprisingly, they encountered some difficulties! Nevertheless, they
collected 298 questionnaires using this method, of which 60 (20 per
cent) reported some sexual experience with adults or with someone
older than themselves at the time, before the age of 16. Allowing for bias
148 Paedophiles in Society

in non-response, the authors suggest a prevalence rate of around 10 per

cent. They found that whilst some respondents had found their expe-
riences very distressing or disturbing, some had not. Some experiences,
mainly those when the respondents were aged around 15 years, and
particularly those involving women rather than men, were regarded pos-
itively. There were no instances of parental sexual abuse reported in this
study. The authors conclude that ‘whereas the early sexual experiences
of girls tend to be regarded as violation, those of boys are considered
initiation’ (1990: 127). This relatively relaxed attitude is echoed in the
second part of the book, which comprises Li’s doctoral thesis, super-
vised by West. During the early to mid 1980s, Li found and interviewed
20 self-defined paedophiles, contacting them through psychiatric clin-
ics, an un-named paedophile organization (presumably the Paedophile
Information Exchange, PIE), and Forum, a ‘soft porn’ magazine. The
backdrop to Li’s analysis of his research findings was the Cleveland
investigation in 1987, in which, within a five-month period, 121 chil-
dren were diagnosed as having been sexually abused and were taken
into care by social services, thus provoking a sustained national debate
about the nature and prevalence of child sexual abuse. Against this back-
drop, Li sets out a careful analysis of the issues and cautiously posits a
‘middle ground’ on the ‘continuum of adult–child sexuality, bearing in
mind that there is considerable grey area in this continuum.’ (1990: 314,
emphasis omitted).

Male Intergenerational Intimacy: Historical, Socio-Psychological and Legal

Perspectives, edited by Theo Sandfort, Edward Brongersma and Alex van
Naerssen, was published in 1991 by Harrington Park Press (a subsidiary
of The Haworth Press). This book was published simultaneously under
the same title as a special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality, vol-
ume 20, numbers 1/2, in 1990. Sandfort is of course well-known for his
Boys on their Contacts with Men (see previous section), and Brongersma
has been referred to affectionately in an online discussion as one of
the ‘grandfathers’ of the paedophile movement and by Plummer, in
this volume, as a ‘committed paedophile’ (p. 320). This compilation
brings together contributions from Ken Plummer, the British sociologist
and a leading theorist on sexualities, David Thorstadt, the outspoken
boy-love campaigner and the public face of the North American Man-
Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), and Li Chin-Keung, writing on his
study on adult male sexual experiences with boys (as discussed in Chil-
dren’s Sexual Encounters with Adults). Also contributing are a number
of others, including Edward Brongersma himself, on ‘Boy-lovers and
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 149

their influence on boys’. The book is written mainly from a Dutch

perspective and therefore displays a social attitude strikingly at odds
with the North American or British model. This is shown, for exam-
ple, in the two chapters dealing with the treatment of paedophiles,
in which the aim of treatment is to increase self-esteem and ‘social
autonomy’ and explicitly not to reduce sexual contact with children,
contact which is assumed, on the word of the paedophile, to be
consensual.
I hesitated for months to open this book, once I had taken it out of
the library, because I expected I would find it too disturbing to read.
In fact there is much of interest here and the historical chapters on
‘pedogogical Eros’, the ‘Uranian movement’ and the history of toler-
ance in the Netherlands are informative. The polemics in favour of
‘loving boys’ are silly rather than disturbing (or perhaps by now I’m
getting inured to them). The near-total absence of any reference to
family or parents is remarkable and Brongersma’s quotation on how
a relationship with a paedophile will help a boy to ‘burst the gates
of the family cage’ (p.169) sums up pretty succinctly what seems to
be the view on the contribution of the family and the relative impor-
tance of ‘the boy-lover’ to everyone else in the boy’s life. Similarly,
Jones’ remark on ‘the man-over-boy power imbalance typical of so many
father/son’ relationships (p. 287), as distinct from good old boy-lover
relationships, of course, seems to betray a real hostility to the family,
perhaps a jealousy? Overall, one is left with a sense that the vision
of male intergenerational intimacy being portrayed in this book is a
self-serving fantasy of educated middle-class men finding themselves
pursued by sexually rampant working-class young adolescents eager
for their attentions, whom they can then altruistically liberate from
their repressive and stultifying parents in order to educate and prepare
them for manhood. Strange that they don’t find their services more in
demand.
As well as these books, which together build a vision of paedophiles in
society acting sexually but harmlessly with children, there are also those
texts which relate even more precisely to Kinsey’s work on ‘children’s
sexuality’. As we saw, Wardell Pomeroy, Kinsey’s close colleague, went
on to write popular lay books on children’s sexuality, and to insist in
print that incest can be pleasurable for children and that girls (Pomeroy
was less interested in boys) should have orgasms from an early age
(Arnow, 1977). John Bancroft, one-time Director of the Kinsey Insti-
tute (who can be seen in interview in Tate’s film, Kinsey’s Paedophiles,
defending Kinsey’s position on using paedophiles to research ‘children’s
150 Paedophiles in Society

sexuality’) also went on to edit a collection of papers, Sexual Devel-

opment in Childhood (2003). Bancroft’s book, with contributions from
Philip Jenkins, David Finkelhor and others, does contain some useful
discussions, but there appears to be little or no discussion of the ethical
implications of researching children’s sexual development and overall it
does not reduce my concern at the manner in which Kinsey’s legacy is
still treated.
Some of Kinsey’s previously unpublished data, obtained from adults
having sexual contact with children and babies, may also have been
used directly in other publications. Floyd Mansfield Martinson’s book,
Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective (1973), is still available
online and in this Martinson states that, alongside his own observations
and interviews:

I have also read and incorporated data from Alfred Kinsey’s interview
notes on a sample of children two to five years of age, data which
have not been previously published. Permission to utilize these data
was granted by the Institute for Sex Research (the Kinsey Institute),
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. (Martinson, 1973, Preface:
online)

It is possible that these may be the interviews Kinsey conducted with

children in a nursery-school in California in 1949 (Gathorne-Hardy,
1998: 327) but it is unlikely that this will ever be verified.
Martinson also explains:

Recall of sexual encounters is possible from about age three. For ear-
lier ages one cannot rely at all on subjective data as such. One must
utilize the observations of mothers, researchers, and others who have
been particularly close to the infant and young child. Among oth-
ers, Larry and Joan Constantine have graciously offered me the use of
data on a small number of child sexual experiences that they gathered
incidental to their study of multilateral marriages.(ibid.)

Apparently a ‘multilateral marriage’ involves three or more people, but

what relevance that has to ‘child sexual experiences’ in the under-3s
is opaque. Constantine and Martinson later edited a book together
(1981) called Children and Sex. Like Sandfort and others, Martinson is
something of a hero in this field. He was the fourth recipient of the
Kinsey Award (which has also been awarded to Gebhard, Pomeroy and
Bancroft, among others) and received an obituary in the Journal of Sex
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 151

Research when he died in 2000. The obituary enthused that, ‘More than
anyone else in sociology has done, Floyd made us knowledgeable about
sexuality in children. . . . He was recognized as one of the world’s author-
ities on child sexuality and he received many awards.’ (Reiss, 2000: 391).
Martinson’s 1994 book on The Sexual Life of Children is described by its
publishers as tracing:

the development of sexuality in the child from the prenatal, through

birth and up to puberty and adolescence. . . . Western society has been
slow to recognize sexual experiences and conceptualizations as an
important part of a child’s development. This is the only work that
has been written in a frank and open manner about the many sex-
ual encounters that children have on a daily basis as part of their
normal psychological development. (Greenwood Publishing Group,
undated: online)

In fact, as we have seen, it is not the only work written on children’s

‘many sexual encounters’. Another significant text in this field is titled
Sex Without Shame, by Dr Alayne Yates, a psychiatrist. Her book, first
published in 1978, is, like Martinson’s book, now available online. Like
Martinson also, Yates refers repeatedly to the Kinsey data on childhood
sexuality. She also quotes with apparent agreement, in Chapter 6, the
slogan, ‘Sex before eight or else it’s too late’, attributed to the René
Guyon Society. Her book includes a great deal of rhetoric on both incest
and on developing an ‘erotic’ relationship with your child from birth,
which appears to be related to her own professional practice as a child
and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Hawaii. Yates had a rel-
atively prestigious career, for example being a guest editor of Sexual
and Gender Identity Disorders, for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Clinics
of North America, published by W. B. Saunders in 1993.
Yates goes on at great length and with a high level of detail. A flavour
of the text can be conveyed by the following excerpts on incest:

There is one event that occurs in all strata of society and that provides
youngsters with intense erotic stimulation – incest. While incest can
lead to serious problems, it is not always harmful. . . .. Mutual sex play
among siblings does not prove harmful, and could foster a robust,
healthy, nonincestuous stance later in life. . . . Incest does not neces-
sarily produce damage. . . . The girls I have evaluated who were young,
uncoerced, and initially pleased with the relationship remain emo-
tionally unscathed, even after protracted incest. However, they may
152 Paedophiles in Society

be devastated by the social consequences after discovery. They are

fully orgasmic . . . When these girls move out into school and the com-
munity, they swiftly form gratifying liaisons with more appropriate
males. They retain a taste for older partners, such as foster fathers,
male teachers, doctors, and policemen. . . . There is an important les-
son to be learned from noncoercive father-and-daughter incest. Early
erotic pleasure by itself does not damage the child. It can produce
sexually competent and notably erotic young women. Childhood is
the best time to learn, although parents may not always be the best
teachers. (Yates, 1978: online)

Notice Yates’ emphasis that girls who experience incest are ‘fully orgas-
mic’ – this is the point repeatedly made by Kinsey and later by Pomeroy.
In other words, following Kinsey, orgasm is reified as the highest good:
it trumps any other good, such as the security and psychological well-
being a child receives in a non-incestuous environment. Incest or other
early sexual experience is presented as benefitting the girl by ready-
ing her to be ‘sexually competent and notably erotic’ in her ‘gratifying
liaisons with more appropriate males’. The list of these ‘more appropri-
ate males’ which Yates produces – ‘foster fathers, male teachers, doctors,
and policemen’ – sounds more like a recipe for serial abuse from pre-
cisely those adults who are given the greatest responsibility by society
to protect vulnerable children.
Yates goes into quite extraordinary detail when she is looking at the
‘erotic’ involvement between parents and very young children, particu-
larly babies. She notes her experience of ‘the hundreds of births in which
I either officiated or observed’, although it is not in any way clear why
a psychiatrist would ‘officiate’ during labour or delivery. Again, the fol-
lowing excerpts can only give a flavour of her approach, which includes
‘exercises’ which she, as a psychiatrist, recommends from birth and for
babies up to one year of age:

Mothers who are erotically involved with their infants raise sexy chil-
dren. . . . The application of delicately scented and delightfully creamy
lotions to the genitals isn’t just for hygiene or, as the label indicates,
to protect against harmful bacteria. Lotions and oils are highly sen-
suous and the genital contact distinctly erotic. What difference does
it make anyway to call a spade a spade? After all, good mothers have
always patted and powdered the penis and swabbed the clitoris.
. . . There are certain exercises that enrich the experience of body
intimacy – for both mother and child. These are designed for use in
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 153

the first six months of life. The first exercise may be begun on the
delivery table . . . Mothers on the delivery table who have the chance
but avoid looking at the penis or clitoris are dealing with significant
sexual inhibitions. . . . Mothers who retreat from the sight of infant
genitals need to pay close attention to the next exercise. There’s time
to concentrate at the first feeding. . . . Look at the arms, the legs, the
belly, and the genitals. All deserve careful attention. The clitoris may
be hidden or covered with a mucous jelly. Two fingers spread the
labia to reveal the contours. The newborn girl is still affected by your
hormones so that the labia are flushed and the clitoris enlarged and
glistening. Can you touch it? . . . If the penis is uncircumcised slide
back the foreskin to reveal the glans. . . . Are you reluctant to touch it?
Some mothers are so frightened that they never retract the foreskin.
Eventually it adheres to the glans and often becomes infected.
. . . More advanced exercises involve your reactions to your infant’s
secretions. . . . The glistening modicum of saliva or the dab of mucus
which slips from the baby girl’s vagina are bits of a cherished being,
until recently a part of you. Full acceptance of these secretions is the
same as the ability to savor your mate’s sexual perspiration, semen,
and saliva. . . . If infancy passes without an abundance of these inti-
mate sensations, then the sexual response will be limited. Thus all
forms of licking, washing, tickling, and sniffing contribute to the
growth of the eroticism. . . .
Breast-feeding is a potent gratification, for both mother and child.
Rhythmic sucking, scent, warmth, and closeness combine to produce
the optimal erotic congress. Genital pleasure is enmeshed in the total
experience. Direct genital stimulation occurs as the mother presses
the child’s hips against her body. . . .
. . . The genitals are ordinarily stimulated, if only under the guise
of hygiene. . . . Diapering is prime time for the enhancement of gen-
ital eroticism. . . . Genital manipulation is often an accepted method
to calm an irritable infant. Although statistics aren’t available, sex-
ual dysfunction seems far more likely in countries where diapers
are employed. Certainly the parent who conceals the baby’s genitals
beneath a tightly pinned diaper assumes a huge responsibility. This
parent becomes the infant’s main source of genital pleasuring.
. . . During the second six months the infant develops a separate self
and recognizes the parents as distinct individuals. . . . The infant with
a background of pleasure knows what he likes and now begins to
seek that which feels good. . . . Some little girls rub against a pillow or
squeeze thighs together to create erotic feelings. The father becomes
154 Paedophiles in Society

a playmate with a bouncy knee. . . . More advanced exercises include

the provision of large soft or fuzzy dolls and pillows of various shapes.
The session can be extended to include play with mud or finger paint
in the backyard or tub. . . .
The infant in the second half year needs to develop reci-
procity. . . . Teaching the infant to swim has been in vogue for a
number of years. Initially these programs were sold to the public as
the stylish acquisition of an essential skill. . . . The real payoff from
infant swimming has nothing to do with skill. A wet, wriggly, naked
body, ecstatic in the sensuous delights of water and the defiance of
gravity, is hard to resist. Make the most of it. . . . The child can scarcely
contain her joy; she’s done something great. As she clasps her thighs
about her mother’s waist, clitoral impressions add to her gusto.
Can the infant receive too much stimulation through these activ-
ities? Will eroticism take over the child? Data from many cul-
tures yields an emphatic ‘no.’ . . . By nature children have catholic
tastes. . . . If they’ve observed or participated in oral sex they may
devise a game with this as the central focus. . . . Sex play is certainly
healthy.
. . . In cultures where children are sexually active, sex play continues
uninterrupted. Unfortunately, in our culture, there’s a sharp decline
in all sexual activity by the end of the oedipal phase. . . . Parents who
have followed the suggestions in these chapters, or who have in
other ways communicated acceptance and enjoyment of sex, have
promoted a solid erotic foundation. (Yates, 1978: online)

Any parent who has raised small children understands the importance
of accepting and loving every aspect of their dear baby – smelly faeces,
urine escaping everywhere, vomit, dribble, snotty noses and all. Many
parents also recognize the importance of close and sustained skin-to-
skin contact, breastfeeding, snuggling and sleeping together to build
the child’s sense of security and subsequent self-assured independence
(Liedloff, 1986; Kitzinger, 2008). None of those considerations, however,
need ever involve the kind of genital fixation and violation advocated
here. One wonders what the publisher, and Yates’ employers at the
University of Hawaii, thought of these recommendations and ‘exercises’.

4. Conclusion

Overall, as can be seen, this review of a small selection of books, cho-

sen more or less at random from those available, present a vision of
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 155

paedophiles in society as acting sexually but harmlessly with children;

a vision which is entirely consonant with the work of Kinsey in the
1940s. Kinsey was not the originator of this view by any means. He him-
self drew on earlier and contemporary theorists and researchers such
as the anthropologist Clellan Ford (1909–1972) and the psychologist
Frank Beach (1911–1988), whose main work on cross-cultural sexual
customs, Patterns of Sexual Behavior, published in 1951, is still referred
to in current studies (for example, see Green, 2002). The key contri-
bution of Kinsey was not to instigate but to popularize the idea of
adult sexual contact with children and, within that, the notion that
children, from birth, are sexual agents who have the capacity to be
willing participants in sexual encounters with adults. This approach
can be easily identified in the work of Langfeldt, Sandfort, Brongersma,
Martinson, Yates and others. Together, these authors have produced a
powerful strand within the ‘sexual liberation’ discourse which has been
taken up by other ‘sexual radicals’ or ‘sexual dissidents’ who would
arguably not otherwise have sympathy with paedophilia but who are
convinced by its association with, for example, gay rights or queer
politics.
It is noticeable that a number of these books are from reputable aca-
demic and Establishment sources (for example, Donald West was the
Director of the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University, and
Edward Brongersma a senator in the Dutch parliament). These are not
self-published rantings by neurotic loners on the margins of society
(although there are of course also examples of those within this genre).
Often, the books and articles are peer-reviewed and produced within
contexts which have national or international standing: they cannot be
dismissed as irrelevant or merely subcultural. The impact of such texts
has been, and continues to be, profound on the development of the
discourse of ‘sexual liberation’.
Those of us who naively had no idea that academic and popular
texts genuinely do exist which promote adult sexual contact with chil-
dren, including newborn babies, need to realize the significance of
these works. Kinsey’s Reports were published in the late 1940s and early
1950s. A generation later, Pomeroy, Yates, Constantine, Martinson and
Sandfort were publishing their texts from the early 1970s to the early
1980s. A generation on and we now appear to be experiencing what
even sceptics such as Philip Jenkins (2003) have identified as an epi-
demic of child pornography. Child sexual abuse remains at epidemic
levels in every country in the world in which statistics are gathered. For
example, a United Nations report in 2006 found that 150 million girls
156 Paedophiles in Society

and 73 million boys aged under 18 experienced forced sexual intercourse

and other forms of sexual violence involving physical contact in 2002
and that in 21 countries, most of them industrialized, as many as 36 per
cent of women and 29 per cent of men said they had been the victims of
sexual abuse during childhood, with most of the abuse occurring within
the family (Usborne, 2006).
Books are also now being made available online, or coming back into
publication, which have been unavailable since the 1970s. For example,
Tony Duvert (1976) was an author who, like Kinsey again, was fascinated
by masturbation and by the notion of a child’s right to sexual explo-
ration with adults. As with Sandfort’s work, Duvert also used his book to
argue for a lowering of the age of consent. He combined his interest in
the sexual life of young boys with a passionate loathing for parents and
families, describing the paedophile (especially the well-off, middle-class,
homosexual paedophile) as ‘the father’s rival’. The publisher’s synopsis
of the book includes the following:

This title offers a scathing view of sex manuals for children and soci-
ety’s hypocrisy of over [sic] sex that argues for the rights of children
to their own bodies and their own sexuality. Written in the wake
of May 1968 and Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, Tony Duvert’s
Good Sex Illustrated (Le Bon Sexe Illustré) was part of the miraculous
moment when sexuality could turn the world upside down and reveal
social hypocrisy for what it was. Bitterly funny and unabashedly anar-
chistic, Good Sex Illustrated openly declares war on mothers, family,
psychoanalysis, morality, and the entire social construct, through
a close reading of sex manuals for children. Published in 1973,
one year after Duvert won the prestigious Prix Médicis, it proved
that accolades had not tempered his scathing wit or his approach
to such taboo topics as pedophilia. (Posted as product description
on Amazon, 2007, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Sex-Illustrated-
Foreign-Agents/dp/1584350431, last accessed 10 December 2009)

As a society, we seemed to have learned little between that ‘miraculous

moment’ in the 1960s and the present day in our capacity to distin-
guish between the self-indulgent pleasure of privileged adults to publish
scathingly witty, taboo-busting diatribes against ‘hypocrisy’ and the
rather more sober requirement to protect actual flesh-and-blood chil-
dren from sexual abuse. Rather than averting one’s gaze and hoping that
these sorts of books will go away or will have no effect (or that publishers
will take more responsibility in what they choose to publish), it is better
 Studies on Adult Sexual Contact with Children 157

to understand what the arguments are, how they are used, who is citing
and quoting these authors, and overall, something of what the contem-
porary impact may be. Sandfort’s research, for example, continues to
be used by a number of writers as evidence that man-boy sexual con-
tact can be positive rather than harmful. Work published over the last
few generations continues to reverberate in that cultural space within
which individual and legislative decisions are made. When we seek to
understand the issue of paedophiles and their place in society, we need
to take cognisance of, but not be blinded by, texts – from however lofty
a source – which are based on a model of ‘childhood sexuality’ derived
from the rape of small children by paedophiles with stopwatches.
6
Paedophiles and Adult Male
Sexuality

Introduction

This book has argued that society has rather an odd attitude to
paedophiles – simultaneously both intensely hostile and remarkably
tolerant. Mainstream Hollywood ‘nymphets’ (Shirley Temple, Brooke
Shields, Dakota Fanning or even Macaulay Culkin) act out fantasies
which can seem very close to NAMBLA’s porn, and senior Establishment
figures in Europe join with celebrities in the United States to protect
a convicted child-rapist from justice. British MPs, international foot-
ballers, J. K. Rowling and the Pope all publicly share the horror and
distress of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance – while in Portugal the
law is carefully watered down ahead of the Casa Pia orphanage trial
(in a scandal said to have ‘shaken the very foundations of Portuguese
democracy’; Tarvainen, 2004) and the trial itself then peters out into
obscurity. On the web, the owner of a site termed ‘the largest online
child pornography-oriented videotheque’ (quoted in Leurs, 2005: 32)
contemptuously brags that he knows ‘many of the best [internet] secu-
rity people in the world, and none of them work for the British police’
(Clarke, 2009, online).
Chapter 3 introduced some tentative figures on the prevalence in
the general population of adult sexual attraction to children. These
figures may help to explain to some degree why child sexual abuse
is so prevalent and also help us become aware that paedophilia is
not a rare or even necessarily a remarkably aberrant form of sexual-
ity. Sexual attraction to children can be conceptualized as part of a
continuum of normative human (male) sexuality. Fantasies of being
able to identify and remove all paedophiles from contact with chil-
dren through bureaucratic schemes of ‘vetting and barring’ or Criminal

158
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 159

Record Bureau checks (as the British Government has wished to do) or
even, in darker moments, of rounding up and executing them all, are
patently absurd, however tempting they may be when faced with the
horror of child sexual abuse – and it may be this (subliminal) aware-
ness which fuels the powerful anti-paedophile rhetoric in contemporary
culture.
Chapter 3 concluded that we can make sense of the paradoxical
responses to paedophiles through the recognition that there are two
parallel and conflicting views on paedophiles, based on a differenti-
ated conceptualization of sexuality (and child sexuality) and therefore
of the harm or harmlessness of adult sexual contact with children. It is
these two discourses, swirling like oil and water, which produce such an
unpredictable and paradoxical cultural environment.
One discourse offers the view that ‘children’s sexuality’ can be seen
as ‘dissident’, ‘radical’ and ‘alternative’ to normative heterosexuality,
much like homosexuality or sado-masochism, for example. In this view,
the antonym of ‘sex’ is ‘sex-negative’ ‘anti-sex’ or prudishness. There
is no conceptual space for ‘innocence’ as a positive quality or experi-
ence and there is no point at which a child is regarded as too young for
sex. This view draws on historical and cross-cultural examples of adults
having sex with children, and also, more recently, on (misrepresented)
primatological research on bonobos, to assert the universality and thus
normality of adult sexual contact with children. Any negative conse-
quences are seen as primarily to do with ‘anti-sex’ attitudes in society.
As Gathorne-Hardy (in a discussion on the Female Report) summarizes
Kinsey’s view on the impact of men’s sexual contact with girls:

Since in Kinsey’s view there was nothing inherently unpleasant about

male genitals, and the only thing inherent in genitals being touched
was pleasure, adverse reactions had to be learnt. It was these (inap-
propriate) learned reactions that caused distress. Similarly, he was
irritated by the way the hysteria surrounding the tiny minority of
violent cases . . . spread out to the vast majority of cases where it was
not just inappropriate but was what did the damage. There is a con-
siderable body of fairly recent research to suggest he may be right.
(Gathorne-Hardy, 1998: 377, emphasis in original)

This quotation neatly, accurately and succinctly sums up the ‘sexual

radical’ position. For the ‘considerable body of fairly recent research’,
Gathorne-Hardy appends a footnote to four pieces of research, which
are by Professor David Finkelhor (whose research does not support
160 Paedophiles in Society

this view), Professor Diana Russell (whose research does not support
this view), Paul Gebhard and colleagues (whose research is in fact
Kinsey’s so, by circular logic, does support this view) and Professor
Theo Sandfort (whose research on ‘boys on their sexual friendships with
men’ was explicitly supported by a pro-paedophile organization, the
NVSH).
The second discourse on sexuality (and on child sexuality) is in fact
the one supported by the empirical research of Finkelhor and Russell and
is the one propounded by them as well as by other researchers and theo-
rists. This discourse often contains a political analysis which suggests, as
with the first discourse, that there is indeed something problematic, dif-
ficult and oppressive about normative or ‘compulsory’ heterosexuality.
Overlapping with the ‘sexual radical’ discourse, it also often suggests
that human sexuality in all its forms is distorted and impoverished
by a lack of imagination, a reluctance to tell new and more honest
sexual stories (Kincaid,1998). Again, it shares with the ‘sexual radical’
discourse a critique of the subordination of children and an increasing
sensitivity to the concept of children’s rights. Where it differs funda-
mentally is in its understanding of the qualitative distinction between
adult and child sexuality, its awareness of the developmental stages of
childhood and its emphasis on ‘least harm’ and respect for autonomy
as ethical goods which balance or outweigh the good of ‘genitals being
touched’.
Identifying and disaggregating these two discourses begins to per-
mit an exploration of the culturally mediated relationship between
paedophiles and society, but in order to go further it is necessary to
examine in more detail what lies at the heart of both discourses – this
‘sexuality’ which both the ‘radical’ and the ‘child protection’ discourse
so repeatedly problematize. This chapter therefore sets out some of the
ways in which human sexuality can be seen as shaped and constructed.
This is by no means a comprehensive overview of every aspect of human
sexuality but is intended to draw out some salient points.
Section 1 focuses on some of the difficulties in our relationship
with children in contemporary society and the ways in which children
become ciphers freighted with our postmodern anxieties. Section 2 goes
more deeply into those aspects of adult male sexuality which are most
problematic, the links to dominance, violence and denial of empathy,
and Sections 3 and 4 provide some examples of the impact normative
adult male sexuality has had over the centuries on the lives and the
bodies of women and children. This leads into the final discussion and
conclusion provided in the Epilogue.
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 161

1. Finding children sexy

In the introduction to this chapter I suggested that paedophilia may

not be a rare or even necessarily a remarkably aberrant form of sexual-
ity. Some readers may be offended and angered at this suggestion that
paedophilia is not categorically different from ordinary sexuality: oth-
ers may find this a comforting thought, helping to explain moments of
involuntary arousal when around children. It is this secret – hiding in
plain sight – that a ‘sizeable minority of men’ may find children sex-
ually attractive (Hall et al., 1995: 692) which provides the motor for
the confusion and conflicting messages within contemporary society.
Roman Polanski, attempting to downplay his conviction for child-rape,
shrugged it off with the comment, ‘But . . . [sexual intercourse], you see,
and the young girls. Judges want to [have sex with] young girls. Juries
want to [have sex with] young girls – everyone wants to [have sex with]
young girls!’ (cited in Cohen, 2009, online). By ‘everyone’, of course,
Polanski is not referring to the human population in general but to
adult men like himself. However, it is nevertheless the uncomfortable
truth within his statement which arguably provides the energy to drive
both child sexual abuse and irrational (and ineffectual) reactions to
paedophilia.
What is relevant in this debate, therefore, is in no sense children’s
own authentic and autonomous sexuality but only the desiring gaze
of the adult – and, in fact, the adult male. As one commentator has
phrased it:

Society needs the pedophile: his existence allows everyone else to

view sexy children innocently . . . Why does the American national
psyche need the pedophilia of everyday life? . . .. Were society to
allow itself to articulate that it does have sexual interests in chil-
dren . . . society would have met the enemy and seen that he is us.
. . . Childhood – the social concept – cannot do the moral work soci-
ety has created it to do. In a century whose distinguishing marks are
depression and Depression, genocide and the prospect of omnicide,
life can look pretty damn nasty, brutish, and short. And so to serve
both as ethical prop and security blanket, we have created a moral
museum of innocence and purity – our Eden – and we have labeled it
childhood. But then the paradox of everyday pedophilia is this: once
we have made over childhood into purity and innocence, we natu-
rally enough want to have it, but to have it would make it what we
no longer want. (Mohr, 1999: online)
162 Paedophiles in Society

Of course Mohr, like Polanski, also assumes that ‘society’, ‘everyone

else’, ‘the American national psyche’ and ‘we’ are all ungendered,
implicitly male. He suggests that ‘everyday pedophilia’ has been created
through a social need to see childhood as pure and innocent and then
subsequently to ‘want’ it. However, this would not in itself lead to sexual
arousal to children since there is no straightforward or inevitable rela-
tionship between ‘innocence’ and being ‘sexy’: this may be one social
construction of ‘sexy’ but there are others. Mohr exaggerates but he does
have a point: the ‘pedophilia of everyday life’ contains the truth that, if
it is indeed correct that paedophilia is simply one point on a continuum
of sexuality, then there are not ‘them and us’, ‘paedophiles’ and ‘every-
one else’. In many ways, there is only ‘us’. If this is indeed the case,
what is to be done? The author James Kincaid has a suggestion, that we
should simply accept the fact:

[That] children are devised by our culture as erotic and that we are
bound to find them so. . . . the erotic is, after all, a large territory in
which we move all the time; that our being there seldom surprises
us or makes us likely to assault the nearest thing in sight . . . For me
(and you too) it is no hardship to live with a scale of erotic responses
and to find pleasurable even the sort of low-grade, background erotic
hum we experience at a cafeteria or on a bus. Feeling erotically buzzed
or even highly charged does not mean entering automatically into a
different order of being. Human beings do not have a rutting season,
do not spray or howl at the moon or start humping the legs of guests
at parties. (Kincaid, 1998: 287)

Kincaid does not disagree that children have been sexualized or made
an erotic focus in contemporary society but his level-headed view is that
this need not lead to any injurious behaviour. His prescription for sanity
around children is:

If you find yourself getting too excited, going too far, wanting to
incite or not to stop – then stop. If you are hard-pressed, then indulge
in voyeurism . . . Take the model of Joe Gargery in Dickens’s Great
Expectations. Joe’s love for Pip is so powerful that he knows when
he must leave. . . . he tears himself away . . .
Not wishful to intrude I have departured fur you are well again dear
Pip and will do better without
Jo
P.S. Ever the best of friends
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 163

Not wishful to intrude, we should all departure while the kids are
well, maintaining our friendship as distance, even if an erotic dis-
tance. I think this stoic story is also available to us, once we wash
away the hysteria. (Kincaid, 1998: 289)

What commentators such as Mohr and Kincaid are essentially propos-

ing is that human (male) sexuality is plastic: it can be moulded to fit
social and cultural norms, and that contemporary society over the past
150 years or so has ‘devised’ childhood as innocent and children as
erotic, thus shaping how adults perceive them. While there is much
evidence, from Freud onwards, that sexuality is indeed plastic, it seems
highly unlikely to me that the ‘sexy child’ is really only a modern inven-
tion. What has changed, rather, is not the eroticizing of the child but
the (attempted) protection of the child from adult male sexuality. In my
view, the shift has been towards a greater valuing of the child and thus
a greater awareness of her or his potential exploitation and harm.
Children have long been both beloved and denigrated, idealized
and feared. Increasingly from the Enlightenment and into the Roman-
tic period, children were cherished as almost sacred, angelic, noble,
Apollonian, closer to God than disenchanted adults ever can be; in
Wordsworth’s phrase, even ‘trailing clouds of glory’ as infants descended
from heaven to impure Earth. At the same time, an older but still con-
tinuing tradition sees children as intrinsically evil, Dionysian, wild,
untamed, asocial and anti-social, needing wickedness beaten out of
them and goodness beaten in. Thus the child is deviant, threatening,
anarchic but also beloved and dependent, calling forth self-sacrifice and
altruism on the part of adults, especially the parent (Jenks, 1996). Hav-
ing to embody these conflicting images, the child moves from being an
authentic individual to a symbol, a cipher containing and re-presenting
adult anxieties back to us. Perhaps this explains in part the huge pub-
lic distress at the inexplicable disappearance of one little 3-year-old,
Madeleine McCann. Madeleine came to represent, for many of us, all
the children, known and unknown, whose lives are lost, whose security
and happiness is destroyed and perhaps also that part in our own adult
selves which feels threatened, insecure and overwhelmed by human
evil. If Madeleine came home, then perhaps the world would really be
okay after all.
It seems to me that this shift in valuing and concern is likely to be
linked to the current social climate in Western societies of high divorce
rates, the prevalence of step- or ‘recombinant’ families (Giddens, 1993),
and cultural anxiety over the role of men and, in particular, fathers.
164 Paedophiles in Society

As families disintegrate and adult relationships collapse – often into

acrimony and despair – conceptualizations of children have correspond-
ingly shifted. As part of a slow process over the last two hundred years,
which witnessed first the rise and now the agonizing, slow-motion,
explosion of the nuclear family, children have moved from the mar-
gins of adult social concern to centre-stage, to a position where they
have arguably overtaken other adults as the primary love-object. We see
in children both our hope for the future and our link to a nostalgic,
warmer and more loving past (Jenks, 1996). To children are handed the
emotional burdens which we as adults can no longer carry. Where adult
relationships no longer offer reliable love and trust, the adult–child
bond becomes a primary source of love and stability. As the sociologist
Ulrich Beck expresses it:

The child is the source of the last remaining, irrevocable, unex-

changeable primary relationship. Partners come and go. The child
stays. Everything that is desired, but not realizable in the relationship,
is directed to the child. With the increasing fragility of the relation-
ship between the sexes the child acquires a monopoly on practical
companionship, on an expression of feelings in a biological give and
take that otherwise is becoming increasingly uncommon and doubt-
ful. . . . The child becomes the final alternative to loneliness that can
be built up against the vanishing possibilities of love. It is the private
type of re-enchantment, which arises with, and derives its meaning
from, disenchantment. (Beck, 1992: 118)

The child, then, contains and expresses our anxieties in an increas-

ingly fragile and risky world. But what of gender? As adult relationships
decompose, do women turn increasingly to boys (or girls) for erotic com-
fort? There is no evidence of this. Polanski, Mohr, Kincaid and others,
when they speak of the adult desiring the child, mean the man desiring
the girl – or, at times, the boy.
The adult male fetishization of young girls was shown in Chapter 2
where men celebrated the ‘splendor of little girls’ and reminisced for
decades over a few innocent moments spent together. This fetishization
is also perhaps shown in the portrayal of the ‘Hollywood nymphets’ as
both sexualized and innocent, both vulnerable and powerful – Lolita
seducing Humbert Humbert, Mathilda singing ‘Like a Virgin’ to Leon.
These children are carefully portrayed as powerful but not too power-
ful, sexy but controllable. What is being fetishized is not the girl per se
but the quality of the relationship. The male role here is part boyfriend,
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 165

part big brother, father, uncle . . . all the best, fun bits of men relating
to females without any of the difficult bits. It is fun for the girls too, at
least at times. There is something here about a structurally powerless but
privileged status, a kind of ’court fool’ which girls and young women can
inhabit and which is not accessible to adult women. It need not be sex-
ual or even erotic; it may simply be about the security of gentle flirting
and friendship, a close and cosy dyad where the girl can be powerful, the
man can be childlike – and boring old Mummy is excluded. There may
not be much written in the professional literature about this dynamic,
but it is the stuff of much fiction as well as film. In the Just So stories,
Rudyard Kipling’s famous children’s stories first published in 1902, we
see this enacted in the two tales of Taffy and her Daddy:

Once upon a most early time was a Neolithic man. . . . we, O

Best Beloved, will call him Tegumai, for short. . . . And his little
girl-daughter’s name was Taffimai Metallumai, and that means,
‘Small-person-without-any-manners-who-ought-to-be-spanked’; but
I’m going to call her Taffy. . . . Now attend and listen ! (Kipling, 1902:
123–4)

Kipling weaves a tale of a little girl of about 5, perhaps, and her clev-
erness (she invents first writing and then the alphabet) under the close
and caring eye of her Daddy and the somewhat more distant warmth
of her Mummy (who is a bit silly, and misunderstands things, and stays
behind in the cave while Taffy and her Daddy go out together). This tri-
angle is about patriarchy, the allure of the powerful adult male (and to a
lesser extent the rejection of the contemned adult female), but it is espe-
cially about the times when male power can be big and cuddly and safe
and playful. The film Leon is brutal in comparison to Kipling’s gentle
bedtime story, but the dynamic is the same. As with Lolita, any possible
mummy has been cleared off the scene (and wasn’t that nice anyway)
and now, with Mathilda, Leon the professional hitman can play with his
oven-glove pig and she can make eyes at him and help him with read-
ing and writing. He can be the wounded king and she the little princess
(with the wicked stepmother out of the way). The story is repeated with
variations in Lawn Dogs and Man on Fire. There is a price to pay but,
after all, what little girl would not opt to be the little princess, the spe-
cial friend of her wounded king, the big yet vulnerable grown-up man?
The heady allure of patriarchy when the powerful man is just a little boy
inside, needing her as much as she needs him, is a dynamic that works
well for both parties, up to a point.
166 Paedophiles in Society

This may be an example of the Apollonian child (Jenks, 1996) where

the girl is idealized into a particular image of femininity. As noted in
Chapter 2, she is playful, nurturing, undemanding and paradoxically
protective of the adult male. As a research respondent, ‘William’, rem-
inisced (again, quoted in Chapter 2), when he was unhappy ‘this little
girl would perceive exactly when I felt most “low” and would come and
give me a little hug, or hold my hand – and make me feel so much bet-
ter’. She lent him her cuddly toy, she sent him an email which ‘made
me almost die on the spot. I have it printed out here in a drawer by my
bed, and it’s a rare day when I don’t read that particular mail before I go
to sleep.’ William described to me his feelings about little girls:

To me, there is simply nothing on this earth as beautiful . . . subtlety

and understated spiritual power. . . . the incredible power she has to
affect and move me, to bring me to my knees in awe and adora-
tion! . . . The superlatives are not superlative enough. . . . Lewis Carroll
in one of his letters, wrote of experiencing a ‘feeling of reverence,
as at the presence of something sacred’ when he was photographing
certain of child friends ‘undraped’. . . . And, probably, most people – or
most decent people anyway – would agree up to a certain point: little
girls are beautiful, cute and charming. So how is this ‘paedophilic’?
How is it sexual? Well, the point is that the beauty and loveliness
of little girls, which I have tried my best – inevitably rather inad-
equately – to describe above, is to me utterly sexy. It is erotically
appealing. . . . I am moved romantically. . . . Girl Love is, to me, a ‘sex-
uality – plus’. If that makes sense! It is everything to me, the core of
my identity as a person, and everything that is most significant and
important. (‘William’, 2007, research data)

Another research respondent also tried to sum up his feelings about little
girls:

Secret, sensual, intensely imaginative, passionate, curious . . . Their

love of glitter and pink and magic wands and fairy wings is a celebra-
tion of paganism and extravagance. . . . Kneeling in the garden mixing
up a magic potion of flower petals and water, my feelings are that I am
beside a fountain of creativity, and that whatever threadbare image
or faded narrative I drop into it will emerge coloured like a Disney
feature and glistening with life. (‘Tim’, 2008, research data)

Both ‘William’ and ‘Tim’ devoted pages to attempting to convey the sub-
tlety and nuance they experience. What I have termed the fetishization
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 167

of the quality of a relationship does not permit straightforward descrip-

tion – or indeed straightforward distinction into ‘paedophilic’ and
‘non-paedophilic’ attraction. Perhaps it is not so surprising, given these
subtle dynamics, that society finds it difficult to address adult male sex-
ual attraction to girls (the attraction to boys seems to have a different
quality, as explored to some extent in Chapter 5). It is not merely the
subtlety which obscures. It is also the discomfort of confronting the real-
ity when the ‘wounded king’, the special friend, becomes instead the
abuser. This talk of ‘awe and adoration’, glitter and fairy wings is all very
far from Kinsey’s cold-blooded model of ‘sexual outlets’ and ‘genitals
being manipulated’ but it can end up in the same place.
History shows us again and again the inability of society to hold
in the collective mind the notion that adults harm children sexually,
and how frequently that painful reality slips out of awareness. Jeffrey
Masson (1985) documents how often commentators (typically, medical
doctors and psychologists) have identified assaults against children and
then denied or misidentified the reality of their findings. When in 1896,
Sigmund Freud first gave his paper, The Aetiology of Hysteria, at Vienna,
he reported what he had uncovered from early analysis of patients, that
a significant proportion of his patients had been the victims of sexual
abuse within their own families, typically girls from around the age of 8
years old being abused by their fathers. He felt he had made a discovery
of the most extraordinary scientific importance. To his astonishment,
the response was hostile. Freud wrote afterwards to his friend Wilhelm
Fleiss that the lecture:

met with an icy reception from the asses, and from Krafft-Ebing [who
attended the lecture] the strange comment: It sounds like a scientific
fairy tale. And this after one has demonstrated to them a solution to a
more than thousand-year-old problem, a ‘source of the Nile’! . . . They
can all go to hell. (Quoted in Masson, 1985: 9)

Within two weeks of the lecture, Freud was writing, ‘I am as isolated as

you could wish me to be: the word has been given out to abandon me,
and a void is forming around me.’ (Masson, 1985: 10). Over the course of
the next ten years, Freud systematically retracted the ‘seduction theory’
which had almost destroyed his career, and proposed instead his theory
of the Oedipus complex, that little girls wished to have sex with their
fathers and fantasized accordingly.
In an ironic twist, when the psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson uncovered
letters and documents showing that Freud’s later disavowal of the exis-
tence of childhood rape was motivated not by a search for truth but by
168 Paedophiles in Society

discomfort at its implications and a failure of courage, Masson himself

also experienced the icy blast of disapproval. Instead of analysing his
material, reviewers labelled Masson’s book ‘comical and self-serving’,
slanderous and mean-spirited, and described its author as ‘monumen-
tally stupid’, ‘a charlatan’ ‘filled with motiveless malignity’. As Masson
writes, ‘My character was attacked, my motivation was attacked, but
my arguments . . . were not adequately addressed.’ (Masson, 1985: xv).
By reminding people uncomfortably of children’s abuse – and the com-
plicity of adults in refusing to hear – Masson became a scapegoat. He
was sacked from his post as projects director of the Freud Archives
and ejected from membership of the International Psychoanalytical
Association.
I have so far argued that, within society, there is a continuum of men,
who may or may not be labelled paedophiles and who may or may not
act on their attractions, who find children sexually arousing or who are
attracted to a relationship with a child which has erotic overtones. All
of these possibilities may, for the sake of simplicity, be subsumed into
the phrase, ‘finding children sexy’. These relationships may be happy
and rewarding for both parties. They may also slide into sexual abuse,
in which case society finds it a struggle both to acknowledge and to deal
with the child’s pain. The following sections now turn to look at a more
sombre issue: the relationship between adult male sexuality in general
and the capacity to cause harm.

2. Culture, sex and the ‘Axial Age’

This book has studiously avoided simplistic references to men who have
sexual contact with children as being psychiatrically ill or ‘deviant’,
because such explanations can provide only narrowly focused individu-
alized biographical accounts, missing out the wider social and cultural
context. Similarly, the book has also avoided terming such people as
‘evil’ or accounting for them as ‘bad apples’, since these terms suggest
that we need look no further than essentialist categories or the random
nature of life. Instead, in order to analyse why men sexually abuse chil-
dren, we need to understand ‘the values underpinning society’, as Pope
Benedict XVI expressed it in his homily on paedophile priests (Arch
Diocese of New York, 2008).
In order to understand sexual abuse, this book contends that we need
to place such behaviour within its cultural context and ask what it is
about human culture, apparently universally, which permits or enables
men to sexually abuse children. Culture in its widest sense can be
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 169

defined as the way in which a society controls women’s reproduction,

for example by ‘classifying women according to the types of sexual rela-
tionships they are to have with men’ (Brock & Thistlethwaite, 1996:82).
All aspects of a culture can be understood as part of this overall process
of controlling women and, through women’s reproductive bodies, the
process of controlling a formalized set of rules for inheritance of prop-
erty and titles. Thus there is an immediate and intimate relationship
between sexuality and culture.
Within any cultural system, religion – as an over-arching belief-
system – plays a central role. Religion speaks about the key moments
in life – birth, marriage, and death – and thus about reproduction as a
central element in human existence. Its focus on reproduction provides
the justifications which make the control of women (through con-
cepts of virginity, chastity, modesty and honour) ideologically inevitable
and therefore invisible in any particular culture. It is thus to reli-
gion that we turn in order to make sense of what culture has to
say about sexuality. The major universal religions (those that make
universal claims about reality and human life, including Buddhism,
Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism) all stem
from a particular revolutionary moment in human thought which took
place during the end of the Bronze Age and the start of the Iron Age
two and a half thousand years ago. This revolution has been termed
the Axial Age (Eisenstadt, 1978, 1986) as it formed a great axis on
which human civilization shifted, moving from a world-view based
fairly unproblematically on material reality to an understanding of
transcendence and ultimately a division between two spheres of exis-
tence: the illusory world of matter and decay, and the true world of
spirit and the mind. Gradually, over the centuries from 800 to 200
BC, societies across India, China, Persia, Israel and Greece developed
religious, philosophical, moral and legal systems based on the ethical
values of compassion, justice, wisdom, righteousness and the ‘virtu-
ous man’. As the historian Karen Armstrong has described it, the most
significant qualities of the Axial Age thinkers were compassion and
empathy:

The greatest Axial teachers all taught a spirituality of empathy. Not

only was it wrong to kill another person; you must not even speak
an unkind word or make an irritable gesture. Nor could you confine
your benevolence to your own people: your concern must some-
how extend to the entire world. In fact, when people started to limit
their sympathies, this was another indication that the Axial Age was
170 Paedophiles in Society

coming to an end. Each of the Axial sages developed his own formu-
lation of what has been called the Golden Rule, which they insisted
was the essence of religion: do not do to others what you would not
have done to you. (Armstrong, 2006: online)

The role of the sage, the wise man or the saint then becomes to tran-
scend the mundane and to grasp spiritual truth. The thinkers of the
Axial Age laid the groundwork for the ascetism and renunciation found
in Hinduism and Jainism, the monastic and contemplative tradition
in Buddhism (which later significantly influenced early Christianity),
the monotheistic and dualistic principles of Zoroastrianism which con-
tributed to the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam,
the transcendent ‘mandate of heaven’ within Confucianism and the
Way of Tao, and, centuries later, the rise of philosophy and rationalism
within European thought.
This pivotal moment in human thought produced effects which still
have an impact on all our lives today, and by understanding the simi-
larities at the origin of these religions and philosophies we can untangle
some of the cultural processes which, over the last two millennia and
more, have tended towards the social construction of a sexuality which
denigrates and abuses women and children while preaching love and
compassion (Brock & Thistlethwaite, 1996).
The ideology of the Axial Age split the universe into two segments:
the temporary physical world and the true world of ideas or spirit. It is
this split which has had particular – and profoundly damaging – conse-
quences. The ideology of transcendence was born into a cultural context
in which women were already socially devalued. Those great thinkers
of the Axial Age, who came to define and dominate the formation of
cultures affecting billions of people for the next two millennia, were
all men. They developed truths which they held to be self-evident and
which others took to be universal. Taking the perspective of the world
in which they lived, they believed it to be axiomatic that women were
inferior to men and that their function was to serve men. The ‘way of
virtue’ for the sage and the virtuous gentleman was by definition a way
of manliness.
The ideology of transcendence shaped religious and intellectual
thought from China to Europe. As the dominant ideology at the point
when all the major religious and philosophical texts were first written
down, its impact is not confined to one particular historical moment but
has continued to this day. Four key ideas in particular can be identified
as significant to the ideology of transcendence: these are the ideas of
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 171

hierarchy, discipline, rejection and contempt (developed from the work

of Brock & Thistlethwaite, 1996).
The new religions, as put forward for example by the Buddha or the
Hebrew prophets, challenged the absolute power of worldly kings but
did so by setting up alternative hierarchies which emphasized obedi-
ence. Moving the realm of absolute power from the material to the
non-material realm did not dissolve hierarchy but ultimately reinforced
it and sanctified it, making it even harder to speak out against, or
even acknowledge, stratified and gendered power imbalances. Secondly,
linked to narratives of hierarchy, power and submission, was the devel-
opment of the concept of self-discipline as one strives towards the goal
of salvation or enlightenment. While female monastic traditions existed
on a small scale, it is the male monastic tradition, particularly in medi-
aeval Europe and in contemporary East and South-East Asia, which –
with the distinctive robes of the monk, bhikkhu (or ‘renouncer’) – has
provided its surrounding communities with a visible daily reminder
of religion and of religious attitudes towards discipline and the body.
However, self-denial sets up inevitable psychological processes that play
themselves out both individually and on a larger scale, affecting entire
cultures. The denial of bodily pleasure and sex within monastic tradi-
tions – particularly when the conscious awareness of that denial is itself
suppressed or denied – creates a sense of anxiety and disconnection.
In response, it is a common human reaction to disparage or hate what
one desires but cannot have.
In psychological terms, renouncing the world and striving for perfec-
tion can lead not only to denial but also to dissociation and splitting.
In Freudian terms, the rational and moral superego is at war with the
instinctual id and unbearable pressure is liable to build up unless some
form of release can be found (Freud, 2001 [1927]). In spiritual tradi-
tions, this release is intended to come in the form of ecstasy: the joy,
grace and harmony in which oneness is found. But, regrettably, a more
common outcome is dissociation. Dissociation is the fragmentation of
the self and the splitting off of feelings that connect and integrate the
self. Instead of yoga, the union of oneness, there is fragmentation. In the
unconscious psychological process of dissociation, we deal with trauma
or anxiety by dividing it up into bits and ‘projecting’ some of those bits
away from ourselves, out into the world. Parts of the world are now
‘good’ and other parts are ‘bad’, evil and hateful (Gomez, 1997). In this
way the psyche again regains control, reduces anxiety and resolves the
dilemmas of wanting and not having, but the cost of that reduction in
anxiety is heavy. It is a loss of self-awareness and a distorted perception
172 Paedophiles in Society

of the world, in which evil is now seen as existing outside, in what one
desires but cannot have. For many men in the monastic traditions, evil
existed in women.
This leads to the third main idea within the ideology of transcen-
dence, which is that of hate and violent rejection. It is perhaps a
surprising assertion that these rational philosophies and these religions
of love and peace have violence as a central idea, especially given the
explicit importance of ahimsa (non-violence) within Hinduism, Jainism
and Buddhism, for example. Nevertheless, no doubt imported into the
new ideology from the prevailing climate of warfare, violent concepts
and images are endemic. The religion of Zoroastrianism, for example,
is predicated on the idea of a battle between the opposing forces of
good and evil. Military iconography abounds in other religions too,
with images of soldiers, weapons, and struggle. Focal concepts such as
power, hierarchy, obedience, discipline, endurance and overcoming all
lend themselves to a sense of antagonism and the belief in an ‘enemy’,
whether that enemy is regarded as being located externally – in the
world, the Devil, or unbelievers – or is found within oneself – in one’s
own will, temptation, the flesh, or in one’s sensual or sexual desires.
This stress on rejection, hatred, violence and warfare leads to the
fourth main idea of the ideology of transcendence, which is to regard
the earthly world as sinful and polluting, a place of temptation and illu-
sory pleasures. The physical world is seen as a shadow or reflection of
higher truth, as illusion (Maya) or as a fallen state which is no more
than a temporary way-station on the path to our true home, which is
paradise, ‘suchness’, nirvana or heaven.
There are many ramifications to this view of the physical world. One
is that it sets up a duality between culture – the disciplined, restrained,
scholarly, spiritual or virtuous life – and nature, regarded as chaotic,
soiled, depraved or simply irrelevant. It also sets up a duality between
the mind and the body. As one Zen master, Kyong Ho (or ‘Empty
Mirror’) has expressed it, following traditional Buddhist thought: ‘To dis-
cover Mind, one should understand that one’s body is no more than
a dead corpse and that this world is, for good or bad, nothing but a
dream.’ (Kwan Um School of Zen, 1997, online). Traditional medita-
tion themes in Buddhism include meditation on the foulness of food
and on ten different kinds of corpses, from murder-victims to bloated,
putrefying or worm-infested corpses, to skeletons. In Indo-European lan-
guage there is a relationship between the words for ‘mother’ and the
words for ‘earth’ (‘matter’, ‘material’, ‘mud’ and ‘muck’ are all related
to ‘matrix’ – the base of all life, the source, origin, the mother, the
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 173

womb). While this conceptual relationship may have stemmed from a

reverential acknowledgement that no life exists without the sustaining
mother, as the ideology of transcendence took hold, both the physi-
cal earth and the mother herself became no more than dirt. Platonic
thought gradually identified the body (soma) as ‘the prison, the cage,
the tomb’ in which the soul (psyche) is ‘bound and buried’ until lib-
erated by death (Ferwerda,1986: 124). This disquiet or disgust with
the body is a recurrent theme, expressed in its most recent manifes-
tation as cyber-culture’s rejection of the physical body as mere ‘meat’
and the pleasure taken in manga (Japanese cartoon) characters or com-
puter avatars who are made of gleaming, perfect materials such as
chrome.
At the same time, the valorization of the life of the mind has suc-
cessfully created an important social space for the sage, the philosopher,
the rabbi, the scholar, the teacher and, in some contexts, the scientist.
However, in all the societies in which literacy has historically been val-
ued, its attainment has been differentially available – with boys being
encouraged to learn to read and girls often strongly discouraged. (This
is particularly ironic given the finding that, in societies where universal
education is provided, it is girls who out-perform boys in literacy and
who, as adults, are known to read more for pleasure: Norris, 2007).
It is not just women’s minds which have been disparaged. An ide-
ological view of the natural world, including human bodies, which
emphasizes and devalues their corruptible, decomposing, messy nature,
lends itself easily to an attitude of suspicion and contempt towards those
aspects of everyday life which are painful but also to those which are
pleasurable. For many men, a source of great pleasure is sexual activity
and, for a heterosexual man, that desire for sexual pleasure is intimately
linked with the desire for union with a woman. To desire but not to be
able to have is uncomfortable and, as described earlier, to reduce the
discomfort and strain, the human mind may make use of the uncon-
scious mechanism of projection, projecting the desire out of the self
and into the other. This process is not in itself a gendered process, but
because of the gendered differences in life-experiences, with militaristic
and monastic discipline a predominantly male experience, the psycho-
logical processes of projection and dissociation have historically been
more likely to occur among men. Repudiating sexual desire in the search
for transcendence, while continuing to experience that desire, has thus
entailed for many men repudiating women in the fight to control that
desire. Both ‘the body’ and ‘women’ become sources of anxiety, hostility
and cultural disparagement.
174 Paedophiles in Society

The sociological fact that men, far more than women, have over
the centuries been members of large organizations which stress disci-
pline over bodily desires, has led to a situation where the psychology of
denial, hostility and projection has entered into men’s thinking, found
a strong cultural resonance, and hence become a powerful undercur-
rent in those written records which have laid the basis for so many
religious and philosophical concepts still current today. Such cultural
assumptions are buried many centuries deep in our collective think-
ing and are embedded within all the major religions, affecting attitudes
towards women’s legal status, citizenship, decision-making, and their
physical autonomy, their ability to make free choices over their bodies,
their reproductive options and their sexuality. The beautiful and power-
ful yearnings for transcendence, love, compassion, justice and wisdom
which found their historical beginning in the writings of the Axial
Age were structured in hierarchical, militaristic societies which violently
rejected weakness, physical bodies, sexuality and women.

3. The impact on women and children: sexual abuse and

exploitation

The previous section has suggested that the ideology of transcendence,

as the dominant ideology at the point when all the major religious and
philosophical texts were first written down, has shaped religious and
intellectual thought through its focus on the key ideas of hierarchy,
discipline, and violent rejection and contempt for the material world.
This ideology splits existence into two realms, valorizing the spiritual
life of the mind while denigrating the fleshly world of nature, bodies,
death and sex. It is proposed that the outcome of this cultural and intel-
lectual heritage is a situation in which, for specific historical reasons,
male experience has become more prone to the psychological strategies
of dissociation, splitting and projection. Men, with a history of mili-
tary and monastic traditions not commonly shared by women, have
built a psychosocial and cultural tradition which projects ‘badness’ into
women, seeing both their minds and their bodies as inferior. Over the
centuries, this has produced a painful distortion in human sexual rela-
tionships, in which men typically both desire and despise the adult
female body.
Not only female bodies but female sexual desire too has been
problematized. Men, by splitting and projecting their own frustrated
desire out onto women, have produced a terrifying chimera, a cultural
stereotype of the ‘sexual woman’, out of control, anarchic, with an
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 175

overwhelming lust which threatens to destroy not only individual men

but to bring down whole civilizations if not rigidly contained, policed
and punished. This can be seen at work in innumerable texts from all
the major religions, which emphasize the sexual degeneracy of women
and the corresponding moral resolve required of men. From Islam, for
example, there are a number of sayings (ahadeeth) such as, ‘I am not
leaving behind me any fitnah [temptation] that is more harmful to men
than women’: in other words, women are the source of the most harmful
temptation, dissension or test that men can experience. Another saying
is: ‘This world is fresh and sweet, and Allah has appointed you over it, so
see how you will do. Fear this world and fear women, for the first fitnah
faced by the Children of Israel had to do with women.’
Repudiating sexual desire in the search for transcendence, while con-
tinuing to experience that desire, has thus entailed for many men repu-
diating women in the fight to control that desire. Both ‘the body’ and
‘women’ become sources of anxiety and hostility. The cultural disparage-
ment of women over many centuries has become so invisible that, for
example, a contemporary author describing Zoroastrianism in an article
entitled ‘Gender equality and status of women in Zoroastrianism’ is able
to write, completely without irony:

Zoroastrian religion does not discriminate between men and women.

Leaving aside the differences with regard to religious observances and
role responsibilities, both the sexes are treated equally in the reli-
gious texts. . . . Zoroastrian scriptures suggest that women are prone
to the temptations of evil and therefore should be kept under regular
watch. . . . Menstruation and childbirth are viewed as major sources of
pollution in Zoroastrianism. Women are advised to maintain seclu-
sion and avoid contact with everything. . . . [Menstruating women
should stay] three paces from the faithful. The women who bring
food to such women should maintain a distance of three paces. . . . If a
child touches them during this period, his body and hands should be
washed. (Jayaram, 2007: online)

Such powerful yet culturally invisible disparagement of women’s sexu-

ality and disgust of women’s bodies, over millennia, have profoundly
affected the social, sexual and psychological relationships between men
and women. This section aims to document some of the impacts of
the ideology of transcendence on the lives and bodies of women and
children, bringing into greater awareness the distortions we all face
when attempting to understand human sexuality and thus particular
176 Paedophiles in Society

and specific manifestations of sexuality such as paedophilia and child

sexual abuse.
Human sexuality has no inherent requirement to be abusive. The
example of bonobo apes, given in Chapter 3, indicated that human
development may have included the potential for sex to be always
mutually pleasurable and sociable, initiated by females as well as males
and never coercive. However, our other closest animal relatives, the
chimpanzees, routinely show a form of male sexuality which is coer-
cive, violent and is interpreted by primatologists as rape (Wrangham &
Peterson, 1996). Humans, bonobos and chimpanzees all share a com-
mon ancestor, a primordial woodland ape. What differentiated the
development of sociable bonobo sexuality from aggressive chimpanzee
sexuality was not inherent biological difference but social development,
as differences in diet and foraging patterns led to changes in social struc-
ture (ibid.). This suggests that human males may have the biological
capacity to follow either path, and that the choice of path is determined
by the social and cultural context. This therefore suggests that there is
no biological imperative for men to rape, only a cultural conditioning
to do so.
It is in this context that we can begin to explore and make sense of
the experience of human sexuality over the past millennia since the rise
of the ideology of transcendence. We can begin to see that, whether
we are considering normative sexuality (penetrative heterosexuality) or
non-normative forms such as ‘pederasty’ or child sexual abuse, all these
forms have developed within a cultural framework in which specific
myths about male sexuality and female sexuality have been propounded
and specific expectations (that women tempt, that men rape, and so
on) have structured the experience of sexuality and sex. We cannot
divide off the sexual abuse of children from other forms of sexual
abuse, principally against women. They are not separate and distinct
categories but are part of the same cultural construction of adult male
sexuality.
In Chapter 1, I suggested that we ‘have got ourselves into a pickle sex-
ually’. That is putting it rather mildly. For example, in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, what is occurring at present has been graphically
described as ‘a war against women’ in which, in the last ten years,
hundreds of thousands of women have been raped, most of them gang-
raped, in a situation horrific not only in its scale but in its systematic
nature and brutality. This is not rape because ‘soldiers have got bored
and have nothing to do’. On the contrary, it is a deliberate strategy, a
way of ensuring that communities are forced to accept the power and
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 177

authority of particular armed groups through terrorizing women and

girls. It is using rape as a weapon of war (CBS News, 2008).
As with other rape situations, there are no distinctions made for
age: rape-victims admitted to hospital have ranged from 3 years old
to 75 years old (CBS News, 2008). A report for the BBC described one
meeting:

As we walked forward to meet the tiny 16-year-old, she doubled over,

clutching her stomach and trying to cover her feet with the faded
cloth she had wrapped around her body. She averted her eyes. Urine
covered her feet. Vumi suffers from incontinence, and cannot sit
down because of the pain, the result of a horrific rape incident last
October.
‘The attack happened at night, and we were forced to flee into the
bush,’ she said, in a voice barely more than a whisper. ‘Four men took
me. They all raped me. At that time I was nine months pregnant.
They gang-raped me and pushed sticks up my vagina – that’s when
my baby died – they said it was better than killing me.’
The men then stole her few belongings and her community, unable
to live with the smell, shunned her. (Martens, 2004: online)

The rapes, often involving attacks on pregnant women, include vio-

lent sexual assaults with sticks and other implements, resulting in
permanent injury, pain and the humiliation of incontinence and social
rejection for survivors. As one reporter explained, ‘Many have been so
sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and
assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive
systems are beyond repair’ (New York Times, 2007).
And yet, in the Congo, the raped women sing. An online article on
their agony and their endurance ends by commenting on the extraor-
dinary atmosphere of hope even in the midst of such terror, recording
how rape survivors congregate each morning in the hospital in Panzi
to raise their voices, singing at a religious service. Our sufferings on
earth, they sing, will be relieved in heaven. Relief in Congo, it seems,
is just too much to ask for (CBS News, 2008). The ideology of tran-
scendence provides both the underpinning cultural rationale for their
violent and repeated rape, in its vicious hatred of the female body and
specifically the sexual parts of the female body, and also the comfort and
the expectation of heaven to relieve their intolerable pain.
In order to occur on such a scale, rape requires indifference in
the wider society. Again, the invisibility of all but the most extreme
178 Paedophiles in Society

abuses against women is shown in the indifference of governments to

the trafficking and forced sexual exploitation of women. For example,
US military bases in South Korea are surrounded by brothels. A report in
Time (MacIntyre, 2002) describes how the area outside a military camp
in Tongduchon is off-limits to Koreans, while ‘Filipinas and Russians in
micro miniskirts idle in the doorways, trying to coax G.I.s inside’. The
journalist notes how, speaking with one sergeant:

He is proud to be up here, ‘protecting democracy’ from North Korean

aggression. But that concern doesn’t extend to the Russian and
Filipina women who work the bars where he spends his free time:
they’re just part of the landscape. ‘The women are here because
they’ve been tricked,’ he says, nonchalantly. ‘They’re told they’re
going to be bartending or waitressing, but once they get here, things
are different,’ he adds, with a knowing look. (MacIntyre, 2002:
online)

Both the US military and the Korean government collude in allow-

ing the prostitution and trafficking to continue, despite the protests of
NGOs. It seems that the South Korean government, complicit in failing
to take seriously the human rights abuses and international law crimes
against Korean ‘military comfort women’ during the Asia Pacific War
with Japan, is now repeating its disregard for trafficked women forced
into sexually servicing military personnel, and that this disregard is
widely shared. As the sergeant in the Time article comments, ‘We’re here
to protect democracy. We’re not here to practice it.’
Other armies have used similar institutionalized military broth-
els. One example is the British army in Tripoli, where each of the
army’s different ranks and racial groups had its own brothel. One sol-
dier, describing the militarized prostitution system in the early 1940s,
remembered how a pavement in Tripoli ‘held a long queue of men, four
deep, standing in orderly patience to pay their money and break the
monotony of desert celibacy. The queue was four deep because there
were only four women in the brothel.’ (quoted in Yoshimi, 2000:186).
These examples of sexual violence, including institutionalized sexual
abuse, serve to emphasize the gruelling impact of normative adult
male sexuality, as shaped by centuries of the ideology of transcen-
dence, on the lives and bodies of women. What of the experiences of
children?
When we analyse a gun, we do not analyse it in terms of what it might
shoot but in terms of what the gun itself is like. The gun may be used
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 179

to shoot white men, black men, small girls, animals. It is the same gun.
Similarly, adult male sexuality may express itself by focusing on women,
men, girls or boys but it is essentially the same cultural and psychosocial
model of sexuality which underpins all forms of male sexuality, whether
those are expressed violently or lovingly, in rape or with tenderness. For
many, male sexuality has become a gun in contemporary culture. It need
not be.
Contemporary child sexual tourism draws on the same ideologies as
the sexual abuse of women, ideologies which see children and women
as of less value than men, able to be exploited without empathy, treated
as commodities rather than fellow humans.
Alongside ideologies of sexuality and gender, the ideological hierar-
chy of ethnicity also plays its part. Children and young people from
certain ethnic groups are more vulnerable to recruitment into the sex
industry. In Thailand, hill-tribes in the north and north-eastern regions
are lighter-skinned than lowland Thais and are thus seen as more desir-
able. Girls sold into prostitution by their impoverished families are able
to earn significantly more than they would as labourers or subsistence-
farming peasants. Girls may regard it as a duty owed to their families
to earn such money. For the entrepreneurs from the city, the ethnic-
minority children are seen as simply another exploitable resource.
Within Thailand generally, there is widespread denial of the economic
reality of these transactions: the families may wish to believe that the
girls are simply doing bar-work rather than prostitution; and middle-
class commentators salve their consciences by pointing the finger at the
‘greed’ of the peasants in selling their children, rather than acknowl-
edging the harsh conditions of extreme poverty under which they live
(Brock & Thistlethwaite, 1996).
In Nepal, similarly, economic conditions of great poverty, political
instability and a religious and cultural setting which values boys and
sees girls as a burden also combine to create a situation in which young
girls are vulnerable to being trafficked into sexual abuse. Girl traffick-
ing occurs through kidnapping and the direct selling of children into
prostitution by their families under the guise of false employment and
marriage brokers. Young girls are sold across the border to brothels in
India, where prostitution is legal. It is estimated that between 5,000 and
7,000 girls, between the ages of 7 and 16 years old, are trafficked each
year from Nepal to India and that more than 200,000 Nepalese girls are
involved in the Indian sex trade (Burba, 2006).
Escape is almost impossible except in cases where the young child
contracts HIV: in that case, they may be sent back to Nepal but, once
180 Paedophiles in Society

there, they are often forced to live in hospital camps or return to prosti-
tution after being shunned by their families and communities. Even as
young, terminally ill, desperate children, they are not welcomed home.
Traditionally, once females leave their family home, they cannot easily
return. A Buddhist nun working with the children explained:

I have talked to many girls in the [hospital] camps [in Nepal], and
they say the same thing — ‘I would like to go back home’, but because
of the culture, parents don’t want to keep the girls for a long time
in the home, so when they come back from India, they don’t want
them. (quoted in Burba, 2006: online)

Another nun described how:

One girl came back [to Nepal] four years after she disappeared. She
went to her home and when her mama saw her, her mama asked,
‘Why [did] you come back?’ And the girl had tears [running] down
her face. I spoke to her mama and she said to me, ‘Inside, I love my
daughter, but I cannot accept her in my house,’ and she cried. (ibid.)

Ethnicity also affects the situation in Taiwan, where the aboriginal

inhabitants now constitute 2 per cent of the population but account
for one-third of underage sex workers (Brock & Thistlethwaite, 1996:
64). It is reported (Pravda, 2006) that the non-governmental organiza-
tion ECPAT (End Child Prostitution And Trafficking) estimates there to
be 100,000 children working in the sex industry in Taiwan. As with the
situation in Thailand, these are tribal hill-people whose traditional liv-
ing has been disrupted by environmental degradation of the land by
logging companies and whose children are offered a ‘good job in the
city’ by agents working for brothels. As in many other contexts, the
intertwining of racism and destruction of once-fertile land has its great-
est impact on vulnerable children. Once the land has been raped, it’s
the children’s turn.

4. The impact on women and children: bodily mutilations

The foregoing section gave some examples of the actual everyday reality
for women and children around the world of the impact of an ideology
of transcendence which has split human thinking into the two realms of
spirit and body, valuing those aspects which are transcendent, spiritual
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 181

and non-material and despising the reality of earth, death, suffering,

bodies and sex.
This ideology has created a situation where someone is prepared to
kidnap a 7-year-old girl and traffic her to another country. There, suffi-
cient numbers of men to make it economically worthwhile are prepared
to force their penises into her so that they can orgasm. At some point,
she may contract HIV. At some point, she may die. Her physical and psy-
chological agony, her very life itself, are regarded as of less value than the
men’s wish to relieve themselves sexually. This happens to something
like 200,000 Nepalese girls. This is one example from one country.
There is no biological imperative which makes the behaviour of these
men necessary. Neither do we need to draw on a rhetoric of human
evil, comforting though it might be. Human sexuality is unitary: we are
joined by a shared human sexuality and, in order to make sense of what
these men do, we need to look to culture and ideology to explain it.
These practices are abhorrent but they are not aberrant. Both in terms
of the numbers of people affected and in terms of the ideologies used
to justify them, these practices are normal: they are a normal, everyday
part of sexuality around the world.
The ideologies which have distorted sexuality and resulted in the
normalization of such abusive practices as rape, forced prostitution, traf-
ficking and child sexual abuse have also had other impacts. These other
impacts are directly on the body. They are cultural practices which alter
the body of girls or women, in order to control (reduce) female sexual
pleasure and enhance male sexual pleasure.
An example of this is the historical practice of ‘footbinding’ in
Chinese culture. It has been estimated that over the last one thousand
years, somewhere between three billion women (Ross, 2002) and four
and a half billion women (BBC, 2003) had their feet bound. That is, a
minimum of three thousand million women – roughly the equivalent of
the entire population of girls and women alive on Earth today. In China,
the female foot, not in its ‘natural’ state but when ‘civilized’ by modifi-
cation and elaborate clothing, became highly erotically charged for men
(Jackson, 2000; Ko, 2002, 2007). Feet may carry a particular nationalist
meaning for Chinese people: many Chinese have an inherited extra toe
or toe-nail (Chi & Wang, 2004) and this recessive genetic trait is seen as
specifically linked to pure Han ancestry. It is possible that this has rele-
vance in the emphasis on women’s feet as symbolizing both culture and
nation.
According to tradition, the custom of footbinding began during the
Southern Tang dynasty (907–923) when the Emperor had one of his
182 Paedophiles in Society

favourite consorts bandage her feet to make them pointed in order

for her to dance more beautifully. The parallel here is with high-
heeled shoes in Western culture and with the exaggeratedly ‘feminine’
hip-movements which wearing high-heeled shoes encourage (think of
Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot [Wilder, 1959] – the cross-dressing
men in the film, by contrast, wear flat shoes). Similarly, ballet-shoes
permit a specific form of ‘feminine’ dance – en pointe – where the
weight of the dancer’s body is taken on the toes, supported to some
extent by stiffening the body and toe of the pointe shoe. This move,
first introduced into ballet around the 1830s, is a specifically female
dance movement: there is no routine use of en pointe among male ballet-
dancers. Footbinding, however, unlike the later pointe shoes, did not
remain restricted to elite forms of courtly dance. Over the centuries the
custom spread from the court to the upper class and then to the majority
of the population.
Small feet became synonymous with beauty, so much so that it was
difficult for a woman with large feet to find a husband. The perfect foot
was, according to a well-known expression, one that was ‘thin, small,
pointed, crooked, perfumed, soft, and symmetrical’ (Ross, 2002, online).
The practice of footbinding involved bandaging both feet with the foot
bent and the smaller toes strapped to the heel so tightly that the bones
of the foot gradually broke over a period of several years, as the weight of
standing on the feet slowly crushed them. A form of club-foot – known
by names such as the Golden Lotus or Three-Inch Hook – was produced,
only three to four inches in length. Women could walk only by totter-
ing, falling from foot to foot (Chang, 1993). Pregnancy increased the
pressure and therefore the pain. Medical consequences of footbinding
included chronic pain, inability to move freely, fractures, circulatory
problems and osteoporosis (Cummings & Stone, 1997). During the Cul-
tural Revolution, footbindings were forcibly removed, but where the feet
were already broken the release of the bandages only harmed the women
more. It is extraordinary that the same culture which embraced reflex-
ology as part of its traditional medical practice could also produce the
cultural practice of footbinding.
In Chinese culture, as with other cultures with an ideology of tran-
scendence, nature and the feminine were both subordinated to culture
and the masculine. Like the art of bonsai, footbinding took the ‘natural’
and made it aesthetic through the imposition of ‘culture’. The follow-
ing extracts are taken from an interview with a Taiwanese surgeon and
expert on footbinding, Dr Ko Chi-sheng:
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 183

It is the longest lasting and most widespread fetish custom in his-

tory. . . . Binding usually began when the girl was four and took about
five years to complete. If started too late the feet would be too
large and not supple enough to bend, but starting too soon carried
the danger that the girl would be crippled for life and unable to
walk. . . . There were sexual reasons behind binding . . . After binding
the feet the lower legs atrophied [the muscles weakened], so when
they walked . . . they used their hip muscles to move . . . with resulting
hypertrophy [enlargement] of the hip muscles . . . and also the per-
ineum muscle. . . . When the Japanese took control of Taiwan in 1895
they outlawed foot-binding, but studied it. Japanese doctors took
X-rays of women with bound feet and compared them with those
with normal feet. They found the skeletal structure was identical. The
difference was in the muscles. Binding increased the shrinkage power
of the vagina. (quoted in Ross, 2002: online)

In other words, one of the main consequences of footbinding was that

the vaginal muscles became more developed and could grip the penis
more tightly (an effect which can be produced by general health and
vigour, and specifically by pelvic floor muscle exercises, far more eas-
ily than by crippling the feet). Men also used the bound foot itself as a
sexual object: a man could put the foot in his mouth; he could put his
penis between the woman’s feet. It is possible that he also pushed his
penis into the tight space created where the arch of the foot had been
broken. The feet often remained wrapped even during sex, however,
as the wrapped foot was regarded as highly erotic, with the decorative
‘lotus shoe’ seen as perhaps the most sexually arousing item in Chinese
culture, because of its connection to the sexualized and hidden foot.
A nineteenth-century French scholar in China explained:

All the Celestials whom I have interrogated on this point have replied
unanimously: ’Oh, a little foot! You Europeans cannot understand
how exquisite, how sweet, how exciting it is!’ The contact of the gen-
ital organ with the little foot produces in the male an indescribable
degree of voluptuous feeling, and women skilled in love know that
to arouse the ardor of their lovers a better method than all Chinese
aphrodisiacs is to take the penis between their feet. It is not rare to
find Chinese Christians accusing themselves at confession of having
had ’evil thoughts on looking at a woman’s foot’ (quoted in Ross
2002: online).
184 Paedophiles in Society

At an individual level, footbinding restricted women’s movements

around the house and locality. Walking could only be done mainly on
the heel of the foot, supported by the shoe. When not wearing shoes and
supported by a walking-cane, women could scarcely walk at all. In every-
day life, this disability could be accommodated by a lifestyle where most
work (childcare, food-preparation and cooking, spinning, sewing and
making clothes and shoes) was conducted sitting down, but in emergen-
cies, just as with contemporary wheelchair-users, bound women were far
more vulnerable than those able to use their legs to run away. During
famine, they could not walk to reach food; during military invasion,
they could not flee; and in a house-fire, they were far less able to escape
(Ross, 2002).
Footbinding had an impact not only on the individual woman but
also on the woman’s family, community and ultimately on the whole of
Chinese culture and society. Dr Ko Chi-sheng claims:

The maximum distance [women with bound feet] could walk was
about three or five miles, so it shrunk their world, made them con-
servative, they needed care and support, needed large families. It also
had an important influence on architecture – Chinese houses have a
single floor, two at most, because women couldn’t climb up stairs.
Everything was small, villages, narrow lanes, and so on because
women needed support to walk, a man’s help, a rail, or a wall, or
they carried umbrellas to use as walking sticks. The women couldn’t
travel. So while the West was able to explore the world, to colonize
the world and send settlers out to America, Canada, South America,
New Zealand and Australia, the Chinese were restricted by both the
physical and mental consequences of foot-binding. They couldn’t
take their women. The Chinese stayed in China. The Chinatowns
you see in America, the overseas Chinese were all from Guangdong
in southern China, because they didn’t practise binding. (quoted in
Ross, 2002: online)

Another practice which, like footbinding, has had a powerful effect

on the individual bodies of girls and women and has affected many
millions of women over periods lasting many hundreds, perhaps thou-
sands, of years, is the cultural practice of ‘female circumcision’. Like
footbinding, this has traditionally been carried out on young girls –
often by their mothers or other female relatives – as a way of ensur-
ing their marriageability. Unlike footbinding, this practice is both
continuing and expanding.
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 185

The first historical reference to it can be found in the writings of

Herodotus, who reported its existence in ancient Egypt in the fifth cen-
tury BC (Lightfoot-Klein, 1991). Around the middle of the twentieth
century onwards, the practice began to die out in a number of countries,
but that trend has now been reversed and the practice is expanding.
It currently affects around 130 million women and girls in the world
today, with prevalence rates in Egypt, for example, running at around
96 per cent (Unicef, 2006).
Like footbinding, female genital cutting or ‘circumcision’ also results
in chronic pain and incapacity. While male circumcision (from the
Latin, circum, around, and caedere, to cut) involves cutting around the
foreskin, leaving the glans or head of the penis intact, the equivalent
(cutting off just the prepuce or hood of the clitoris) rarely happens in
female ‘circumcision’. In this case, therefore, the word ‘circumcision’
is a misnomer, and the terms ‘genital modification’, ‘genital cutting’
or ‘genital mutilation’ are more accurate descriptions of what takes
place. Commonly, part or all of the clitoris itself is cut away com-
pletely, which is equivalent in sensory and functional terms to cutting
off the head of the penis. Additionally, in some countries the proce-
dure further includes the cutting away of the small labia, the large
labia, or both. The most drastic operations are found along the Horn
of Africa, in Northern and central Sudan, Southern Egypt, Djibouti,
Somalia, parts of Kenya and Ethiopia. Here all of the above surgeries
are carried out and, in addition, the skin of the outer labia is scraped
clean of its inner tissue and is then sewn together over the wound,
so that only a tiny opening, intended to be barely adequate for pass-
ing urine and menstrual fluid, remains. This widely practised procedure
is called infibulation or Pharaonic circumcision. The majority of these
operations are still carried out in a situation where people do not
have access to anaesthesia or antibiotics, and the instruments typically
used are unsterile razors, scissors or kitchen knives. Broken glass is also
used (Seisay, 2008). The death-rate among girls subjected to this pro-
cedure is estimated to be between 10 and 30 per cent (Lightfoot-Klein,
1991).
Depending on the amount of flesh removed from the girl’s pubic area
in the genital ‘modification’, consequences are likely to include chronic
infections and pelvic inflammatory disease, difficulty in urinating and
passing menstrual fluid out of the tiny opening remaining, pain in inter-
course, and scar-tissue affecting the ability to give birth. Girls subjected
to this procedure are more likely to contract HIV infection and more
likely to die in childbirth.
186 Paedophiles in Society

It is not easy to hear from women themselves who have undergone

this procedure. Anecdotes tend to be used either to argue for or against
the practice. Descriptions are often couched in medical terminology and
leave out the lived, everyday reality. As with women’s experiences of
having bound feet, the direct experiences and views of ‘circumcised’
women are seldom available for those outside the culture to hear. It is
therefore important to take time to read the following accounts, which
are from oral histories collected in Cairo in the late 1970s from five
women, four Muslim and one Christian, ranging in age from early 20s
to mid-60s (Atiya, 1984). The women gave narrative accounts of their
daily lives including everyday concerns and successes, illnesses, deaths,
marriages and work, and in among these accounts each woman told of
her experience of being circumcised:

Om Gad: Circumcision is absolutely necessary. I don’t know why, but

it is a tradition. These parts in a woman grow bigger the older she
gets. They are ugly and deface her. . . . I was nine years old when I was
circumcised . . . We are told it’s a big event. . . . When my cousin came
to call me I was overjoyed. I got up and ran with her. It was a feast!
Although I’d heard a child scream when being circumcised I wasn’t
afraid. Some of our cousins had already been circumcised when we
arrived at the house. They were sitting there laughing. It only hurts
the moment the razor hits, then the stinging goes away . . . So they
got hold of me, and my maternal uncle’s wife sat behind me and
held my legs apart. I was sitting on the floor on a piece of rug.
The barber stood in front of me and did the operation. I cried out
once, then they made a bandage of cotton and gauze and placed it
between the ‘sisters’ [labia] and said, ‘Don’t bring your legs together
or the wound will heal over. If this happens, when a woman gives
birth she is torn.’
Alice: I was eight years old. . . . The night before the operation they
brought us [the cousins] together and stained our hands orange
with henna. All evening the family celebrated with flutes and
drums. We were terrified. We knew what to expect. Each would ask
the other, ‘Are you afraid?’ and each would answer, ‘I’m very afraid.’
This went on all night like a refrain. We couldn’t sleep. I heard
the midwife come in about five o’clock the next morning. I was
to be the first because I was the eldest. They did the operation and
then pounded an onion and salt mixture to put on the wound to
cauterize it. When it was all over, they carried me and put me to
bed. . . . On the seventh day we got up. They had new dresses made
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 187

for us. . . . Our mother told us to tie our severed clitorises to the hems
of our dresses. The family then paraded us through the streets like
brides and took us for a picnic by the river. We were told to throw
our clitorises to the Nile. This would bring us happiness. Words!
At sunset we went home. It was all over. This operation makes it
harder for a girl to enjoy sex, and as sex is all important to men,
then where is the happiness this custom brings?
Suda: [Circumcision is] a must. It’s the first taste of suffering a girl
ever has. I cried for a week before I was circumcised. I was twelve, but
I knew what to expect from the time I was eight years old. I learned
from the talk of the older girls. People say that the older a girl is
when she’s circumcised, the less chance there is of these parts grow-
ing back [sic]. I don’t know if that’s really true. But that’s why some
people keep this ordeal until a girl is twelve or thirteen. I was told
it would hurt a little, but it was hell. The midwife puts alcohol on
you afterward, and you’re on fire. I knew I had to go through this
operation. I knew there was no getting around it. It’s as sure a thing
as having to get married or give birth. . . . The midwife gave us each
the bit she cut from our bodies. She said, ‘Take this. Keep it with
you all the time for a month.’ This is to prevent us from becoming
sterile should an ill-wisher put the evil eye on us. My mother put
mine in a piece of cloth and pinned it to my dress. After a month,
I went to the river with my cousins and threw it out.
Dunya: [I was circumcised at six years old.] I remember the circumci-
sion clearly, and when the knife hit, it was as if someone had built
a fire under me. Then they twist a length of clean sheet or gauze
which is soaked in disinfectant and sulphur powder, and they bind
the child with it. My heavenly days, it’s worse than fire, and you
stay in bed, unable to move, with legs apart, for days! I wouldn’t do
it to my daughter. I wouldn’t want to hurt her.
Om Naeema: When I was about seven years old, my mother had me
circumcised. We circumcise girls in summer . . . Girls are circumcised
to keep them cool and able to control their sexual urges. Boys are
circumcised because it is believed that they cannot copulate or beget
children if they are not. Most often in the villages, a group of girls
is circumcised at the same time. Afterwards, the women wash them
in the river, each in turn. Then they bind them with a clean cloth
dipped in oil and iodine. . . . I didn’t feel anything when the knife
hit, but later when feeling came back and the medicine wore off,
about noon that day, I thought the sky would come crashing down
about my head from the pain. I cried. . . . My mother wept with me
188 Paedophiles in Society

and said, ‘Never mind, my darling, this is your day. It will pass.’
She boiled an egg for me and fed me grapes and dates to keep up
my strength, saying all the while, ‘When you eat this you will be
well.’ She also dissolved some sugar in water and gave it to me
to drink, comforting me with her words, ‘Drink this, mama’s lit-
tle heart. It will relieve the stinging you feel and cool your wound.’
She went on this way until I got better, and then she stopped wor-
rying over me.
(Quotations from Atiya, 1984)

In many countries where female genital mutilation is practised, women

who do not undergo the operation are regarded as unclean, contaminat-
ing and stinking. People may refuse to associate with them, or buy food
from them, as they claim they can smell their genitals. (An ironic fact,
given that female genital circumcision makes urination and the passing
of menstrual blood and faeces more difficult. After giving birth, circum-
cised women are more likely to become incontinent – and thus rejected
by their community because of the smell.)
This revulsion at female genitals is seen in other countries also.
Surgical removal of the clitoris (for the treatment of masturbation or
‘excessive’ sexual desire) was practised in Europe and the United States
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; in a paper published in
1866, Isaac Baker Brown, president of the Medical Society of London,
wrote that the only permanent cure for diseases such as nymphomania
was to remove the clitoris – the ‘source of evil’ (Vergnani, 2003).
Today, surgical ‘labial reduction’ and ‘vaginal tightening’ are increas-
ingly popular in the West (Elliott, 2008). Women who have had the
surgery have enthused, ‘now I love the way I look; nice and neat and
new. My vagina looks perfect’, while plastic surgeons commented, ‘The
most common reason we hear [for the surgery] is that they have had a
negative comment made by a male sexual partner. Women are made to
feel that they are not perfect the way they are’ and that there is ‘often
pressure from a man who tells them they need it. I assume that their
standards for labial beauty were set by a combination of the porn indus-
try, sex-oriented magazines and the Internet.’ (Kobrin, 2004, online).
While these operations are voluntarily chosen by adult women, in stark
distinction to traditional female genital cutting, their existence may
be used to provide some justification for the tradition. Far from dying
out, the traditional practice is spreading to new areas and the most
extreme form, referred to as ‘scraping the girls clean’, is becoming more
popular, as it is considered that ‘this is the modern and hygienic way
that educated people do it’ (Lightfoot-Klein, 1989: 48).
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 189

Footbinding and female genital mutilation are examples of cultural

practices which control women’s sexuality: footbinding by restricting
girls’ and women’s physical autonomy and by turning their bodies into
passive and eroticized objects on which a specific male sexual fetish
could be played out; and genital cutting by physically reducing the
female capacity for orgasm and by socializing the girl to see her vulva
and vagina as something which is not her own private property but
which is a family and communal possession over which others exercise
control. The concept of izzat (usually translated as ‘honour’) sums up
the communal nature of the ownership of the girl’s or woman’s sexual-
ity: it belongs primarily to her father and other male relatives and then
to her husband, but not to her.
Atrophying the leg muscles to tighten the vagina, or cutting away
the labial flesh to tighten the vagina, are not the only practices
used. In contemporary societies, a phenomenon called ‘dry sex’ has
been reported in South Africa, Senegal, Zaire, Cameroon, Malawi,
Zambia, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Haiti and Costa Rica (Kun,
1998), with prevalence rates of around 46 per cent (Beksinska et al.,
1999) to 86 per cent (Baleta, 1998) of women in South African com-
munity samples reporting this practice, especially among younger
groups.
‘Dry sex’ involves the use by the woman of a wide range of substances
which might include herbs, salt, methylated spirits, vinegar, bicarbonate
of soda or bleach to dry out her vaginal secretions prior to sex. The sub-
stances irritate and inflame the vaginal membranes, making the vagina
swollen, hot and dry. The result resembles an allergic reaction or chem-
ical burn (Kun, 1998). It increases the friction and therefore pleasure for
the man, but results in bruising and tearing for the woman, especially
if she is adolescent, causing pain and bleeding. However, as one report
quoted, ‘Men love dry sex. If you’re wet, they think it’s not normal.’
In Zambia, for example:

girls are made to believe that they are supposed to be dry. There is
even a name given to girls who are too wet – Chambeshi River, refer-
ring to a river in Zambia. Some men tell girls that being wet means
that they have been with too many men. (Human Rights Watch, 2003:
online)

Another report explains:

In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, to please men, women sit in basins

of bleach or saltwater or stuff astringent herbs, tobacco or fertilizer
190 Paedophiles in Society

inside their vagina. The tissue of the lining swells up and natural
lubricants dry out. The resulting dry sex is painful and dangerous
for women. The drying agents suppress natural bacteria, and friction
easily lacerates the tender walls of the vagina. Dry sex increases the
risk of HIV infection for women, already two times as likely as men
to contract the virus from a single encounter. The women [selling
sex] can charge more for dry sex, 50 or 60 rands ($6.46 to $7.75),
enough to pay a child’s school fees or to eat for a week. (McGeary,
2001: online)

The practice has now begun to be studied because of the link to HIV
infection. One wonders whether this practice, causing pain to millions
of women on a regular basis for most of their life, would have ever been
discussed in the literature, even to the marginal extent that it has been,
if it were not for the relationship to HIV transmission. This practice,
so important in the daily lives of millions of women, has continued
almost unspoken, as yet another example of the invisibility of women’s
and girls’ experiences.

5. Conclusion

The aim in this chapter has not been to set out the quaint, exotic or
historical customs of those who are ‘Other’ than us – customs at which
we can squirm in titillated disgust before turning away and forgetting.
These cultural practices are in absolutely no sense irrelevant or marginal
to understanding contemporary Western understandings of paedophiles
in society. On the contrary, the argument here is that examining and
theorizing such cultural practices is central because these examples show
us, in an un-moderated and unflinching form, what normative adult
male sexuality looks like and has looked like for thousands of years. Far
from the world of privileged Western ‘sexual radicals’ in their fetish-gear,
or the rarefied intellectual sphere of academics quoting scathingly witty
and taboo-busting French cultural theorists to defend sex with boys,
these examples go some way to show us the lived experiences of many
millions of ordinary people in the world today.
The contention of this book is that human sexuality is unitary, it
is holistic. It cannot be broken up into obscure nineteenth-century
pseudo-medical taxonomies – such categorizing may please those with
a stamp-collecting mentality but does not reflect a reality in which
human sexuality, as with any other aspect of being human, is nuanced,
 Paedophiles and Adult Male Sexuality 191

socioculturally produced and fundamentally about relationship not

biology.
All the examples cited here illustrate the painful nature of men’s
sexuality, a sexuality which treats with contempt what is desired. The
focus of the cultural practices is the vagina – raped, ripped apart inside,
used to relieve British soldiers’ boredom (a long queue standing four
deep ‘because there were only four women in the brothel’), tightened
by destroying leg muscles, tightened by slicing away flesh with razors
or glass, tightened by burning with bleach. In order to understand
the problematic nature of men’s sexuality, we must not bracket out
those experiences which ‘only’ affect non-Western women or children.
Humans are one species, and human sexuality is universal within our
species. If we wish to understand paedophiles in society, we need to
confront the dilemmas at the heart of human sexuality.
Writing on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt analysed
the moral context within which the Holocaust took place and identi-
fied five cultural processes. These processes involved ‘language rules’;
having a system of ‘bearers of secrets’; co-opting victims to participate
in their own destruction; focusing on meticulous attention to rules;
and the use of ‘privileged categories’ – exemptions to the general rule.
Together, these five processes produced a situation of which Eichmann
could later say, ‘Nobody came to me and reproached me for anything
in the performance of my duties’ (Arendt, 2006:131). No-one had chal-
lenged Eichmann as he went about his business of mass-murder on a
vast scale. Arendt is particularly scathing about the acceptance by non-
Nazis of the ‘privileged categories’ established early in the process by the
Nazis. She states:

the acceptance of privileged categories – German Jews as against Pol-

ish Jews, war veterans and decorated Jews as against ordinary Jews,
families whose ancestors were German-born as against recently nat-
uralized citizens etc. – had been the beginning of the moral collapse
of respectable Jewish society. (Arendt, 2006: 131)

She contrasts this acquiescence to such categories with the attitude of

the French Jewish war veterans who were offered the same privileges by
their Government and refused them, replying with great courage and
humanity, ‘We solemnly declare that we renounce any exceptional ben-
efits we may derive from our status as ex-servicemen.’ (p. 132). Arendt
makes clear that ‘What was morally so disastrous in the acceptance of
these privileged categories was that everyone who demanded to have
192 Paedophiles in Society

an “exception” made in his case implicitly recognised the rule’ (ibid.),

thereby agreeing implicitly with the notion that while some Jews might
be worth saving, the majority of Jews were not worthy and could be
murdered without protest. She concludes her discussion:

In Germany today [1963], this notion of ‘prominent’ Jews has not

yet been forgotten. While the veterans and other privileged groups
are no longer mentioned, the fate of ‘famous’ Jews is still deplored
at the expense of all others. There are more than a few people, espe-
cially among the cultural élite, who still publicly regret the fact that
Germany sent Einstein packing, without realizing that it was a much
greater crime to kill little Hans Cohn from around the corner, even
though he was no genius. (Arendt, 2006: 134)

The deep moral corrosiveness involved in setting up categories of priv-

ileged versus non-privileged, worthy and unworthy, the protected versus
the abandoned, is at root the same moral corrosion that can be seen
when the US Army ignores the abuse of trafficked women on its bases, or
when men travel abroad to sexually abuse children from impoverished
countries. It is also, painfully, the same moral corrosion that privileges
celebrities such as Roman Polanski over their child-victims, or privileges
a discourse of adult sexual radicalism and liberation over a discourse
which foregrounds and emphasizes the need of the vulnerable to be
protected.
Epilogue
Living with Paedophiles in Society and
Finding Hope

The material presented in this book has ranged from the current day
to the Bronze Age, from the glittering celebrities of Hollywood to the
remote jungles of the Congo and the brothels of northern India, from
Wikipedia to the darknet, from the familiar and expected to the hidden,
obscure, ignored and invisible. The aim has been to uncover connec-
tions which can help us make sense of human sexuality and thus,
through that, to make sense of adult sexual attraction to children and
adult sexual contact with children. The book argues that these phenom-
ena are not ‘outside’ society but are embedded deeply into how people
think about sex.
Returning to the examples discussed in Chapter 1, we now have a
clearer understanding of why society’s responses, for example to Jackson
and Polanski, have been so ambivalent. There is no consensus on how
we should respond. The messages received through popular culture are
confused and contradictory. News stories and ‘misery lit’ offer us a moral
world of clear distinctions, of good and evil, a world peopled only by
victims and monsters; a world in which the face of Madeleine McCann
looks silently out at us, a forlorn cipher for all the heart-wrenching suf-
fering of childhood. At the same time, Michael Jackson, whom some
regard as having been a predatory paedophile who abused a series of
young boys, is buried with great pomp in a golden casket with much
fulsome praise and scant reference to his ‘sad fall’, ‘troubling stuff’ or
‘attendant problems’ (Niven, 2009). Online, paedophiles put forward
manifestos and argue for the benefits of ‘child grooming’, Kevin Brown
and his peers discuss civil rights, and a whole world of alternative dis-
course is opened to any enquirer with internet access. In the movies,
each decade provides its offering of ‘NAMBLA porn’ whether Shirley
Temple, Lolita, Pretty Baby, the pubescent Natalie Portman making eyes

193
194 Paedophiles in Society

at Jean Reno in Leon, or the delights of the young Dakota Fanning – and
Bill Condon and Liam Neeson dollop on the charm in spadefuls to show
us that Kinsey may have been a little socially awkward at times but by
golly he was an all-American hero.
Serious peer-reviewed tomes from Cambridge University and other
academic institutions add to the mix. Scholarly studies of pederasty, of
historical and anthropological research, lend weight to the suggestion
that sex with children (or, at any rate, with boys) can be acceptable and
harmless. The radical critiques of patriarchy and heterosexuality emerg-
ing out of the 1970s have found themselves diverging to such an extent
that there is now a total disconnect between those discourses which
promote sexual liberation and those which focus on child protection.
Neither side speaks to the other. It seems that academics either find the
notion of paedophiles irritating and irrelevant – or else titillating and
deliciously naughty (Newman, 2009).
We have now reached the point where the confusions, contradic-
tions and disconnections need to be strongly challenged. It is no longer
enough to argue that because Kinsey was instrumental in bringing gay
rights and sex education, it doesn’t matter that his work was based on
the abuse and rape of children. Nor is it acceptable to argue that because
Kinsey’s work was based on the abuse and rape of children, we should
therefore repeal legislation on homosexuality and teach only absti-
nence in schools. Both arguments are simplistic and fallacious. What
is required is a careful and sensitive, but thorough, disaggregation of
the discourse on ‘sexual liberation’ (acceptance of sexualities alternative
to the norm of penetrative heterosexuality) from acceptance of child
sexual abuse. Children are indeed sexual, and may indeed be sexually
active, but that does not supply an excuse or a justification for adult
sexual contact with children.
This book has drawn attention to the small number of studies avail-
able on the prevalence of adult sexual attraction to children in the
general population. We need far more (and larger) studies on this cru-
cial aspect, but the studies so far undertaken suggest tentatively that
such attraction may be more common than we had thought. However,
realising that adult sexual attraction to children is not necessarily rare
or even particularly aberrant helps us make sense of some of the more
paradoxical responses to paedophilia in society, both the violent rejec-
tion and the indifference and tolerance. It also makes more sense of the
figures on child sexual abuse.
We know that most sexual abuse of children takes place within the
family or by someone known to the family. We also know that most
 Epilogue 195

of those who sexually abuse children do not self-define, and are not
clinically defined, as paedophiles. However, in order to sexually abuse a
child, the perpetrator typically would need to be sexually motivated and
find the experience sexually arousing. Using the concept of a continuum
of sexual arousal to children (rather than a dichotomous categorization
into ‘paedophile’ and ‘non-paedophile’) helps to make sense of those sit-
uations where those who are not ‘paedophiles’ sexually abuse children.
It also begins to bring into awareness the experiences of those who are
sexually aroused but do not act on their attractions. As one study found,
there may be ‘a sizeable minority of men who do not report engaging
in pedophilic behavior [but who] exhibit sexual arousal to pedophilic
stimuli.’ (Hall et al., 1995: 692).
This book therefore, paradoxically, agrees with the Kinsey studies on
human sexuality on two main points. First, Kinsey may have been right
when he put forward the view that paedophilia is not pathological, in
the sense that it is part of ordinary life. Those who have argued for
paedophilia to be removed as a category of mental illness point, as
Kinsey did, to the widespread prevalence of adult sexual contact with
children, noting that sexual arousal patterns to children ‘have been
common and accepted in varying cultures at varying times . . . Do they
constitute a mental illness? Not unless we declare a lot of people in
many cultures and in much of the past to be mentally ill.’ (Green,
2002: 470). This comment points up the absurdity of trying to make
‘paedophilia’ no more than a clinical or psychiatric label: it is far more
than that. By attempting to restrict our understanding of a complex
cultural phenomenon down to a simplistic medical diagnosis, we lose
sight of what matters – the harm caused to children. Far from locat-
ing the problem of ‘paedophiles’ within the specific psychopathology
of any particular individual, this book has argued that the problem is
instead about all of us, about aspects of human sexuality, human soci-
ety and human culture in general. Regardless of the numbers of people
who have sexually abused children, it remains wrong and harmful. The
focus should be on the act of harm to the child, not the mental state of
the adult.
This leads to the second point from the Kinsey studies, which is that
Kinsey may be right in suggesting that a large proportion of men are
‘sex offenders’. This view may be correct if we take the definition of an
offence as involving harm to the victim of the sex act, which was not
Kinsey’s approach. Kinsey did not discriminate between offences that
were mainly to do with indecency (such as consensual oral sex between
adults in private), or which caused mainly psychological distress (such
196 Paedophiles in Society

as exhibitionism or obscene phone-calls) or which could cause phys-

ical and severe psychological harm (such as sexual assault and rape):
he simply wanted the whole gamut of ‘sex offenses’ removed from the
statute book. In his view, the fact that, as he saw it, 95 per cent of men
were ‘sex offenders’ meant that sex offences should be reduced, not sex
offending. It is very odd, given that Kinsey interviewed so many male
prisoners, that not one of his sample disclosed rape to him, or, given
that he interviewed several hundred male prostitutes, not one appar-
ently had ever been sexually attacked. For Kinsey, as we have seen, rape
and sexual abuse did not exist, even theoretically. Therefore, for him
and for his followers, finding that ‘sex offending’ is common leads to
the conclusion that it should be tolerated. In contrast, my conclusion is
that if a particular form of ‘sex offending’ is indeed common (and the
statistics on child sexual abuse suggest that it certainly isn’t rare), then
tolerating such actions simply means that we collude in the abuse, we
are complicit. It is time to develop a new strategy.
If human sexuality were a fixed, immutable biological drive, then
we would just have to put up with rape and child sexual abuse. But
human sexuality is not like plumbing; it is like language. We inherit the
grammar but we develop the vocabulary and we speak our own words.
We learn it, we share it and shape it. As Kincaid reminded us, ‘Feeling
erotically buzzed or even highly charged does not mean entering auto-
matically into a different order of being. Human beings do not have a
rutting season, do not spray or howl at the moon or start humping the
legs of guests at parties.’ (Kincaid, 1998: 287). Sexuality, sex, eroticism,
romance, love, desire, attraction . . . all these are shaped by our own indi-
vidual biographies, by the communities around us, by the wider culture
and by the social, economic and political context.
Normative male sexuality is to a significant extent predicated on a
denial of empathy. I suggest that this has come about as part of the
fall-out from the ideology of transcendence. Just as our early autobio-
graphical experiences shape us, for good or ill, throughout the rest of
our lives, so the historical accidents of the Axial Age, by becoming cod-
ified into sacred and immutable texts, have shaped cultural experience
ever since. This ideology stressed the concepts of hierarchical power,
self-discipline and a rejection and hatred of the material world. Over
centuries, many millions of men found themselves caught in religions
which taught that the highest good was transcendence of the mundane
world and control or denial of temptation – temptation which was often
in the form of sexual pleasure with women. These men responded to the
stress of denying temptation by using the unconscious psychological
 Epilogue 197

process of dissociation, as we all do to some extent when we deal with

trauma or anxiety (Gomez, 1997). Dissociation splits off the anxiety-
provoking ‘bad’ bits of experience and projects them out. This reduces
anxiety and resolves the dilemmas of wanting and not having, but the
cost is a loss of self-awareness and a distorted perception of reality.
This process is also shown, as in the example in Chapter 1, in the
projection of hostility away from ‘us’ (which in this case was well-liked
figures such as Polanski or Jackson) and onto the Other, the scapegoat
figure of the ‘evil paedophile’, often faceless and scarcely known but
loathed. By splitting the world into ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ anxiety
becomes controllable, even though one’s grasp on reality is diminished
in the process. Similarly, for entire cultures, anxiety and longing could
become more manageable by splitting the world into ‘good guys’ and
‘evil women’, onto whom all the frustrations of lust and desire could
be loaded. Women in their entirety became despised, and the particular
biological parts of women (vaginas, clitorises) became in many cultures
specifically and intensely despised, to the extent of structuring whole
lifestyles around governing these body-parts through rituals of virgin-
ity, izzat (honour), marriage, sex segregation and purdah (seclusion),
footbinding or genital cutting.
As was noted in the discussion on footbinding:

The maximum distance [women with bound feet] could walk was
about three or five miles, so it shrunk their world, made them con-
servative, they needed care and support, needed large families. It also
had an important influence on architecture – Chinese houses have a
single floor, two at most, because women couldn’t climb up stairs.
Everything was small, villages, narrow lanes, and so on because
women needed support to walk, a man’s help, a rail, or a wall,
or they carried umbrellas to use as walking sticks. . . . the Chinese
were restricted by both the physical and mental consequences of
foot-binding. (quoted in Ross, 2002: online)

Not only was the vaginal opening shrunk as an effect of footbinding, the
entire social and cultural world of the Chinese population was shrunk
and made small and narrow. And yet the impact of this cultural practice
would have been entirely invisible to the Chinese during the thousand
years in which footbinding was culturally normal. What to many now
is a strange and almost inexplicable distortion was simply ‘the way it is’.
Despising something, and at the same time desiring it, provokes
powerful emotions of fear, disgust and longing. It is the unconscious
198 Paedophiles in Society

processes of denial, disassociation, splitting and projection – developed,

reinforced and normalized over tens of centuries – which have resulted
in a psychosocial context in which men find it difficult to empathise
with those around them, particularly those they desire sexually. Mas-
culinity itself, as a cultural construct, becomes predicated on specific
forms of self-control and self-denial.
John Stoltenberg, in his collection of essays Refusing to be a Man,
turns to the question of ‘how men have (a) sex’ and highlights the
relationship between the cultural construction of masculinity and the
processes of socialization to deny and repress one’s feelings, especially
as these processes are played out in the intimacy of sexual relationships
(Stoltenberg, 2000a). Masculinity, like femininity, shifts and changes
over time. What we have now is different from the masculinity of even
one generation ago, but at the same time patterns can be seen which
repeat themselves over generations and across countries and cultures.
Being a man and having sex in fourteenth-century India, for example,
is recognizably similar to a man having sex in second-century Greece
or twenty-first century Australia. The same processes of hierarchy, disci-
pline, rejection and contempt run through each encounter, more or less
subliminally or powerfully.
In contemporary Western culture, theorists are becoming increasingly
aware of how masculinity and male sexuality are linked to violence and
emotional disconnection (Garbarino, 1999; Gilligan, 1999; Stoltenberg,
2000a, 2000b). Gilligan, for example, as a practising therapist working
with some of the most violent men in the United States, writes that
shame is a peculiarly masculine experience (and thus rage and violence
become peculiarly masculine behaviours) because masculinity itself is
such a fragile social construct, endlessly vulnerable to being challenged,
disparaged and shamed. Cultural constructions, since they exist only
through social agreement, are by their very nature fragile and open
to continual challenge. Masculinity, as a construction in opposition to
femininity, is inherently fragile and vulnerable to being exposed – all
men feel emotions, feel weakness, gentleness and empathy and thus
feel failure as a ‘real man’. Paradoxically, it seems that the more a man
is sensitive to universal human emotion, the more he fails masculinity.
This vulnerability to failure can lead to ‘losing face’, creating an engine
of psychic energy which can be used either to challenge the absurdity of
culturally imposed notions of masculinity – and thus start digging a way
out of the pit of violence and degradation – or, alternatively, to simply
reinforce the construct of masculinity through stereotyped responses of
shame, hostility and dominance.
 Epilogue 199

While numerous authors have written on the fragility of the mascu-

line self, one memorable study is by a woman journalist, Norah Vincent.
Vincent, a lesbian, lived in drag as a man for over a year in order to
research what it feels like in everyday life to be received and treated as a
man. A major part of her research was the discovery of how beleaguered
men feel. She writes:

[Getting] into the so called boys’ club in the early years of the new
millennium felt much more like joining a subculture than a country
club. . . . [being with men was] not a sign of having joined the over-
class, for whom superiority is assumed and bucking up unnecessary.
It was more like joining a union. It was the counterpart to and the
refuge from my excruciating dates, which were often alienating and
grating enough to make me wonder whether getting men and women
together amicably on a permanent basis wasn’t at times like brokering
Middle East peace. (Vincent, 2006: 281)

She found the whole experience depressing, unpleasant and restrictive,

not because she was attempting to pass as a man but because she was
being received and treated as a man.
She concluded:

I don’t really know what it’s like to be a man. I never could. But
I know approximately. I know some of what it is like to be treated as
one. And that, in the end, was what this experiment was all about.
Not being but being received.
I know that a lot of my discomfort came precisely from being a
woman all along, remaining one even in my disguise. But I also know
that another respectable portion of my distress came, as it did to the
men I met in group and elsewhere, from the way the world greeted
me in that disguise, a disguise that was almost as much of a put-on
for my men friends as it was for me. That, maybe, was the last twist
of my adventure. I passed in a man’s world not because my mask was
so real, but because the world of men was a masked ball. Only in
my men’s group did I see these masks removed and scrutinized. Only
then did I know that my disguise was the one thing I had in common
with every guy in the room. (Vincent, 2006: 273)

Male violence, including sexual violence, is structured deeply into

human culture and into all contemporary known societies. When we
200 Paedophiles in Society

attempt to understand paedophilia without recognizing this fact, it

remains nothing more than an inexplicable mystery.
But the awareness that femininity, masculinity and sexuality are
socially and culturally structured provides the key to the way forward.
The sexual and gendered experiences of both men and women are
dynamically shaped and are open to revision and change. As the gender
theorist Raewyn Connell reminds us, recognizing ‘the deeply historical
character of gender has an important intellectual and political conse-
quence. If a structure can come into existence, it can also go out of
existence. The history of gender may have an end.’ (Connell, 2002: 70).
So too may the history of abusive sexuality. While this book has shown
that currently adult male sexuality is culturally constructed to be abu-
sive and non-empathic, there are signs that this is changing and can
change further. Sexuality is shaped by popular discourse (the rise of the
more sensitive ‘new man’ would be one example) and by social factors
(for example, a boost in educational and economic status among women
leads to more egalitarian relationships).
I propose that what is needed is to take far more seriously the dis-
course on ‘sexual liberation’. At the moment, this discourse remains
the elite preserve of the privileged and self-indulgent few in wealthy
Western countries. It is seen as relevant only to those who are les-
bian, gay, queer or whose sexuality is in some other way alternative to
mainstream heterosexuality. But it is mainstream heterosexuality, as the
sexuality of the majority of the world, which needs to be liberated and
become radically other than it has been.
The dull, corrosive, abusive, unempathic sex endured by so many
millions around the world, permeated by a hatred of women’s genitals
so extreme that it can encompass slicing off the clitoris with broken
glass, or expecting a woman to sit in a bath of bleach to dry up her
secretions, where ‘consensual’ sex hardly differs from the routine bru-
talization of rape or the coruscating contempt and hatred visited on
prostituted women and children – this is the sexuality which needs rad-
ical transformation. Heterosexuality shapes and has shaped the whole of
the project of civilization. A particular form of heterosexuality based on
legitimate male inheritance and thus dependent on coercive male con-
trol of female sexuality has become normal throughout global society.
It is a commonsense, taken-for-granted form of sexuality, a cultural tra-
dition so deeply engrained that other constructions of heterosexuality
have become almost inconceivable. The terrible logic of paternity, pro-
ducing male heirs to preserve past descent and inherit future property,
constructs societies based not merely on sexual reproduction but on an
 Epilogue 201

exact and unwavering form of legitimate male reproduction. These soci-

eties, spread across the world and throughout millennia, are therefore
based not on human sexuality in all its diversity but rather on one pre-
cise culturally shaped form: the heterosexuality of the patriarch, the
father, the inheritor of earlier patriarchs and the progenitor of future
patriarchs. Together, each individual sexual encounter based on this
sexuality reinforces and perpetuates the disjuncture between sex and
empathy, between sex and profound human connection.
What is required is new stories, new imaginations (Kincaid, 1998).
As the commentator Judith Levine expresses it, ‘a rich imagination is
the soul of good sex’ (Levine, 2002: 153) and this rich imagination can
make room for awareness and empathy.
And we can, if we wish, take advice and inspiration from a very sur-
prising source. The psychotherapist Judith Herman, who revolutionized
thinking on trauma, once said, ‘Radical ideas are always very sim-
ple . . . They are only radical because of [political] obstacles, not because
of their complexity.’ (interview with Kreisler, 2000). And in addition, it
seems to me that once an idea has been stated, it’s no longer radical at
all but entirely commonsense. People scratch their heads to remember
a time when the idea wasn’t obvious, even though it was unthinkable
until the moment it was thought. So here’s a radical thought: we can
look to paedophiles for inspiration. Not, of course, to child abusers, but
to that group (we have no idea how large) who are sexually attracted to
children and, because they recognize the potential harm, choose not to
act. If there are indeed ways in which paedophiles are ‘sexual radicals’,
it may be less about who they desire and instead about how some may
choose to contain their desire.
My research on 56 self-defined paedophiles living in the community
(Goode, 2009) found that a small number of the sample felt strongly
that adult sexual contact with children was to be avoided. These respon-
dents articulated a model of self-controlled chastity, continence and
celibacy – concepts completely unfamiliar within the discourses of ‘sex-
ual liberation’ and indeed even of ‘child protection’. Respondents wrote
about the importance of the online support they received in holding
onto this self-identity:

I haven’t been placed in any ‘tempting’ situations, but the knowledge

that acting on my attractions is not inevitable is great for my peace of
mind in case I am ever placed into such a situation. . . . [Online,] I’ve
learned that I’m not the only one dealing with these issues, and that
the other people like me aren’t at all like we’ve been taught to expect
202 Paedophiles in Society

of people attracted to minors. We are in just as much control of our

actions as everyone else. We aren’t monsters. We are merely human
beings, with all the strengths and weaknesses that implies. (‘Kristof’,
2007, research data)

For those living ordinary lives in the community, experiencing such

attraction and choosing not to act on it is typically an intensely hid-
den secret, never discussed in the professional or academic literature
and never mentioned in popular culture. We have no way of know-
ing how many people may be experiencing this. This is the flip-side of
paedophilia. Just as we recognize that adults may sexually abuse chil-
dren and yet not be paedophiles (not exclusively or primarily sexually
attracted to children), so we must recognize that adults may be sexually
attracted to children (and may or may not self-define as paedophile) but
can choose consciously and deliberately never to act on their attraction.
What can we say about these people (seemingly predominantly men)
who voluntarily choose restraint rather than express their sexuality?
These men are consciously choosing not to conform to any negative
stereotype. Rather than taking on a masculinity which denies empathy
or which violently seeks gratification at the expense of the other, such
men choose self-control, even when it’s a hard struggle:

I have nobody to confide in about my experiences. I do not trust

friends or family. I do not know of any online forums run by non-
paedophiles that offer support. And I see little use in confiding with
other paedophiles online because I don’t think they can see things
any more clearly than I can. . . . I would like to tell the world what it is
like to be a paedophile so people would be more understanding of the
horrible life I and others like me have to live . . . [People should know
that] it is possible to have compassion for people who are sexually
attracted to children without condoning sex between children and
adults. . . . I do my best to stay away from children. I don’t even talk
to children if I can help it. . . . Thank you for giving me this oppor-
tunity to share my thoughts and experiences of this most secret and
troublesome part of my life. (‘Justin’, 2008, research data)

Justin has chosen not to embrace a radical, counter-cultural position

as a member of an ‘alternative sexual minority’ (Weeks, 1989). He
does not feel a sense of entitlement to express his sexuality regardless
of the impact it may have. Contemporary discourses on paedophilia
have almost nothing to say to him or about him. We would have
 Epilogue 203

to look to depictions of male sexuality outside these traditions, from

medieval celebrations of courtly love to early Victorian models of man-
liness or contemporary work on interrogating normative masculinity
and ‘refusing to be a man’ (Stoltenberg, 2000a), before we can develop a
framework within which to understand the experiences of ‘non-contact’
paedophiles. Justin and those like him seem to offer us an unexpected
but hopeful model of gentleness, self-awareness and self-restraint. While
it is only a tentative indication, it reminds us that nothing is fixed, noth-
ing is pre-determined. We can change. We can separate attraction from
action. We can develop new stories based on empathy.
We are at a crossroads in contemporary culture. We are reaching the
end of the 200-year period of human culture based on fossil-fuel-derived
energy. Globally, we are running out, not just of fossil fuels but also of
fresh water, of fish, of land for agriculture, of metals, of chemicals . . . of
all the myriad resources needed to live and grow. We are fast reaching
the point of ‘peak everything’ (Heinberg, 2007). What will happen to
concern over paedophiles in post-peak civilization?
It may be that at least some of the moral panic around paedophilia
in the last decade or so has been a way to express (or transfer) some
of our guilt at our collective failure to protect children. We have been
‘spending the kids’ inheritance’, as bumper stickers merrily proclaimed
in the seemingly carefree ‘90s. Now we are only just beginning to count
the cost. While the substantive issues of credit crunch, economic cri-
sis, population pressure, climate change and the destruction of much of
the Earth’s ecosystems begin to creep into public awareness, the anxiety
engendered about the future for our children may have been expressed
through the public scapegoating of paedophiles as those who overtly
threaten and harm our children.
As the century of ‘peak everything’ plays itself out with increasing
fury and destruction, systems of child protection in even the wealthi-
est countries will begin to break down and in impoverished countries
and communities children will be, as always, the most vulnerable. The
coming century will not be a secure or happy one for the majority of
the world’s children. The project of human civilization, not only in
the form of Western democracy and enlightenment but throughout the
world, is at risk. Will our children and grandchildren be exposed to
greater levels of indifference, violence and abuse? Are the experiences
of the children of the ethnic hill-people in Taiwan, of whom around
100,000 have been pushed into child sex tourism to provide food for
their families (as discussed in Chapter 6), destined to become increas-
ingly common? Or will the currents of awareness and sensitivity which
204 Paedophiles in Society

have been developed over previous decades be maintained and strength-

ened? The current cultural distortions of human sexuality make it harder
for men to empathize but easier for them to impose their own norma-
tive constructions of adult male sexuality onto other people. Will these
distortions continue, so that the level of rape experienced in the Congo,
for example, spreads across other countries as resource-wars and ‘eth-
nic cleansings’ intensify in the face of population pressure, famine and
drought? Or will humans emerge from this crisis with their humanity
intact, able to shake off at last the abuses of the Axial Age and, even
before that, the violent inheritance from our ancestral primate ‘demonic
males’?
There is a place for paedophiles within society. Adults sexually
attracted to children seem to be part of the normal continuum of human
sexuality. This is unlikely to change. Some paedophiles understand the
harm caused by adult sexual contact with children and choose not to act
on that attraction. We need to hear from them and learn about restraint
and self-control. It is possible that such adults, predominantly men, can
point us towards a gentler model of adult male sexuality. We need to
learn more about this model and we need to learn from anyone who can
teach us. There is a place for love within our communities. Love includes
celebration, sweetness and passion. Love includes listening sensitively
to the voices of others. Love includes feeling the pain and loneliness
of others, of all of us. Love includes holding and healing the profound
pain of vulnerable children, taking it seriously, finally recognizing that
the wellbeing of children matters above any other consideration in our
society. Society will be profoundly challenged over the coming decades
as we move, globally, from the Industrial age into a hitherto unimagined
future. The twenty-first century will challenge us more than any previ-
ous time in human history. Perhaps at last we can let go of the deadening
inheritance of generations and move towards something new.
Finally, we know that there is no inscrutable or inexplicable ‘Other’:
there is only us. We previously met the paedophile in the guise of the Big
Bad Wolf in Nicole Kassell’s (2005) Hollywood movie The Woodsman but,
as Charles Dickens reminds us in his 1862 novel The Haunted House, ‘the
play is, really, not all Wolf and Red Riding Hood, but has other parts in it’
(2009:16). Indeed, as the jazz musician Louis Jordan memorably phrased
it, ‘There ain’t nobody here but us chickens.’ And all of us chickens
together had better take responsibility.
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Index

Adams, Bryan 8 Becker-Blease, K., Friend, D. &

Adam’s End (Brown) 13 Freyd, J. 59
adult–child friendship 66 Beckham, David 8
adult–child sexual contact, befriending 34–5, 37, 40–1, 141
de-criminalizing 132, 142 Benedict XVI, Pope 8, 168
Adult Sexual Interest in Children bestiality, Kinsey on 91–2
(Cook & Howells) 145–6 binaries 27
adults bisexuals 81
consensual sexuality 124 BLueRibbon (Wikipedia user) 32,
protection for 137–8 45, 56
sexual citizenship 130 body
sexual pleasure 138 and mutilation 180–90
age of consent 127–32, 140, 142, 156 rejection of, cyber-culture 173
alt.∗ 27 bonobo ape 75–80, 159, 176
alt.binaries groups 27 boy-inseminating rites 73–4
American Law Institute 114–15 boy love/lovers 50–3, 66, 68, 149
anonymous remailing 28, 30 boys
anti-paedophile riots 3 home life 141
anti-sex 159 and orgasm 123
AOL 24, 27 and physical affection 141
AOL Music 61–2 pubertal 90–1
Appollonian child 166 Brass Eye 64
Arendt, Hannah 191–2 Braun, Kenneth 109, 117, 121
Armstrong, Karen 169–70 breast knots, Kinsey on 92
Armstrong, Louise 83 British Army 178, 191
ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects British Psychological Society 42–3
Agency) 23 Britten, Benjamin 95
Arvizo, Gavin 6 Brock, R. Nakashima & Thistlethwaite,
Ashford, Lindsay 49, 64 S. Brooks 169
Atiya, N. 186–8 Brongersma, Edward 148–9, 155
avoidance 31 Brown, Isaac Baker 188
Axial Age 169–74, 196 Brown, Kevin 12–17, 64, 193
Buddha 171
Bacon, Kevin 65 Buddhism 169, 172
bad apple approach 84 bulletin board systems (BBS) 26,
Bancroft, John 102, 117, 120–1, 144, 29–30
149–50 Bullough, Vern 146
Bat-Ada, Judith: see Reisman, Judith Burton, Richard Francis 71
Bauserman, R. 74, 141–2
Beaulieu, Priscilla 128 Cadman, C. & Halstead, C. 7
Bebo 28 Cameroon: dry sex 189
Beck, Ulrich 164 Carroll, Lewis 166

219
220 Index

Casa Pia orphanage, Portugal 9, cinema 65–7

10–12, 16–17, 56, 158 circumcision, female 184–9
Cern research centre 23 civil liberties 49
Chamberlain, Azaria 8 civil rights, for paedophiles 14–16
Chandler, Jordan 5 Clarke, Ian 29–30, 158
Chandler, Raymond 7 Clayboy (Wikipedia user) 40, 44
Chaplin, Charlie 128 Clemm, Virginia 128
charities, children’s 3 Cleveland investigation (1987) 148
chat-rooms, internet 27–8, 39–40, 45 Clinton, Bill 122
chickenhawk 38 clitoris, in cultural practice 185,
‘Child and Infant Sexuality’ 187–8, 197, 200
symposium (1977) 145 Cohen, S. 161
child grooming 60, 140, 193 Compuserve 24
a felony 42–3 Condon, Bill 124, 194; see also Kinsey
on internet 34, 36–7, 39, 41 (film)
and mentoring 38–9, 41, 60, 67–8 Confucianism 169–70
Wilkpedia article on 32, 34–43, Connell, Raewyn 200
53, 60 Constantine, Joan 150
child pornography 57, 59, 62 Constantine, L. & Martinson, F. 144,
internet 26–7, 29–31, 36–7, 150
39–40, 49 Constantine, Larry 144, 150, 155
Wikipedia article on 35 Coronation Street (TV programme) 9
child protection 3, 14, 20–1, 39, 41, Costa Macedo, Teresa 9
83–4, 122, 124, 127, 160, 194, Costa Rica: dry sex 189
201, 203 courtly love 69
child sex tourism 179, 203 Crawford, J., Geraci, J., Ianthe &
child sexual abuse 18, 84, 123, 126 Ogrine, W. 81, 143
awareness of 2–3 Criminal Records Bureau 158–9
by children 36–7 Culkin, Macaulay 158
Danish attitudes to 113 cultural practice
within families 194 clitoris in 185, 187–8, 197, 200
Kinsey on 93, 126, 194 rape 194
childbirth 175, 185 sexuality in 169
Childnet International 42 the vagina in 183, 188–91, 197
children Cunningham, Ward 33
as evil 163 cyber-culture, and rejection of
sexual citizenship 130 physical body 173
sexuality 159
sexually attracted to adults 81 dance 182
as sexy 161–8 Danica, E. 83
valuing 163 Dares to Speak: Historical and
Children of Table 24 (film, 1994) 117 Contemporary Perspectives on
Children’s Sexual Encounters with Adults Boy-Love (Geraci) 80–1, 116
(Li, West & Woodhouse) 147–8 darknet 24, 29–30, 56
chimpanzees 75, 77, 176 Davidson, James 67
China 181–4, 189 de Jong, Martin 132
Chosen (documentary, dir. Woods, de Jonge, Norbert 79–80
2008) 83 de Wall, Frank 75–6
Christianity 169–70 Dellenback, William 106
 Index 221

democracy, Greek 70 feet 181–4

Democratic Republic of Congo: rape fellatio 73–4
176–7, 204 femininity, image of 166
demonic males 78–9 Finkelhor, David 150, 159–60
denial 11–12, 31, 174, 198 Finkelhor, David and Mrazek, David
of temptation 172, 175, 196–7 142
Denmark 113 fitnah (temptation) 175
Diamond, Milton 74 Fleiss, Wilhelm 167
Dickens, Charles 162, 204 foot-binding 181–4, 189
Dickinson, Robert 117 Ford, Clellan & Beach, Frank
Dimond, Diane 7 74, 155
dissociation 171–4, 197–8 Forum 148
Djibouti: female circumcision 185 Free Dictionary 42
domestic violence 115 Freenet 29–30
Douglas, Mary 71 Freud, Sigmund 89, 163, 167–8, 171
Driver, E. & Droisen, A. 83 Freund, K. & Watson, R. J. 57–8
dry sex 189–90
Dungeons and Dragons 25 Gadd, Paul Francis (aka Gary Glitter)
Dutch Society of Sexology 132 61–3
Dutroux, Marc 10, 11 Gardner, Will 42
Duvert, Tony 156 Gathorne-Hardy, J. 95–7, 100, 107–9,
113–20, 122, 124, 159–60
Eanes, Antonio Ramalho 9 Gauguin, Eugene Henri-Paul 71
EastEnders (TV programme) 9 Gebhard, Paul 88–9, 100, 104, 106,
ecstasy 171 108, 114, 117–19, 120–3, 150, 160
Egypt: female circumcision 185–8 gender, as cultural construction 200
Eichenwald, K. 51 Germany 120
Eichmann, Adolf 191 Giddens, A., 163
elite boards 26 Gide, André 84
email 30 Gilligan, J. 198
emotion 61 Ginsberg, Allen 84
empathy 10, 73, 92, 96, 198, 201–2, girl-love/lovers 66, 68, 166
204 girl moments 49–50
in ideology of transcendence girls 149
169–70, 179, 196 fetishization of 164–7
End Child Prostitution and Trafficking men’s sexual contact with 159
(ECPAT) 180 and orgasm 103–4, 110, 112–14,
Ethiopia: female circumcision 185 123, 152
ethnicity, hierarchy of 179 GLBTQ.com 67
Etoro tribe 74 Glitter, Gary: see Gadd
‘evil paedophile’ 2–3, 12, 61, 197 Gnutella 29
Goldberg, Whoopi 54
Facebook 9, 28–9 ‘Golden Lotus’/ ‘Three-inch
families Hook’ 182
child sexual abuse within 194 Golden Rule 170
disintegration of 163–4 Gomez, L. 171
Family Research Council 117 Gone Baby Gone (film dir. Affleck,
Fanning, Dakota 66, 158, 194 2007/8) 9
Fanning, Shawn 28 Goode, Sarah 3, 17–18, 65
222 Index

Google Groups 27 instant messaging 27

‘Greek Love’: see pederasty intergenerational intimacy 74–5,
Green, L. & Goode, S. D. 65 81–3
Green, R. 195 intergenerational studies 81, 84
Grey, Lita 128 International Academy of Sex
Guardian, The 30 Research 132
Guest, Lynton 7 International Conference on Love and
Gutierrez, Victor 7 Attraction (1977) 145
International Psychoanalytical
Haiti: dry sex 189 Association 168
Hall, G. Nagayama, Hirschman, R. & International Society for Human
Oliver, L. 58, 161, 195 Ethnology 146
Harris, Mildred 128 internet 20, 22–3, 56, 193
Hawaii 74 and anonymity 24–5
hebephiles 46 anti-paedophile sites 45–6
Hefner, Hugh 114 bulletin board systems (BBS) 26,
Herdt, Gilbert 73–4 29–30
Herodotus 185 chat-rooms 27–8, 39–40, 45
heterosexuality child pornography 26–27, 29–31,
compulsory 82, 160 35–7, 39–40, 49
mainstream 200–1 details of sexual offenders 12–13
normative 14, 82, 159 elite boards 26
of the patriarch 201 games 25
penetrative 12, 176, 194 newsgroups 26–7, 29–30, 48
Hinduism 169–70, 172 social networking sites (SNS) 9,
HIV 179–81, 185, 190 28–9
Hollywood nymphets 65–6, 83, 158, vigilante activism 26
164 see also paedophile community
Holocaust, the 191 online; Wikipedia
Home Office Task Force on Internet internet grooming 34, 36–7, 39, 41
Safety 42 internet relay chat (IRC) 27–8
homosexuality 76, 101, 115–16 Interpol 11
Horn of Africa: female circumcision Islam 169–70, 175
185 Itzin, C. 83
hostility 11–13, 21, 54, 78, 94, 149, izzat (honour) 189
158, 173–5, 197–8
Hounddog (film, dir. Kampmeier, Jackson, Michael 5–8, 11, 15–17, 54,
2007) 66 63, 197
Hughes, Geraldine 7 Jainism 170, 172
Human Face of Pedophilia (website) Jayaram, V. 175
49 Jefferson, Margo 7
Human Rights Watch 189 Jenkins, Philip 26, 30, 150, 155
humour 61–5 Jones, Aphrodite 7
Huntley, Ian 62 Jones, G. 82
Jones, James 95–7, 117, 149
incest 149, 151–2 Jordan, Louis 204
India: prostitution 179 Journal of Homosexuality 67, 80, 148
Infibulations: see female circumcision Journal of Sex Research 150–1
Innocence in Danger group 10 Judaism 169–70
 Index 223

Kaluli tribe 74 Levine, Judith 82–3, 201

Kampmeier, Deborah 66 Lewis, Jerry Lee 128
Kenya Li Chin-Keung 148
dry sex 189 Licklider, Joseph 22
female circumcision 185 Lightfoot-Klein, H. 188
Kincaid, James 65, 161–2, 164, 196 Linuxbeak (Wikipedia administrator)
Kinsey (film, dir. Condon, 2004) 44
86–7, 90, 95, 115, 117, 124–5 literacy 173
Kinsey, Alfred 20, 126–7, 131, 143, Lolita (film, dir. Kubrick, 1962) 65,
146, 149–52, 155–6, 160, 167, 194 165, 193
animal research 74–5, 88–9, 97 Long Island Expressway (film, dir.
data-collection 98–103, 106, 121–4 Cuesta, 2001) 66–7, 143
early years 95–6 love 204
influence 123 Love and Attraction: An International
interviews with children 100, Conference (Cook & Wilson) 145
102–3 ‘lower level’ males, Kinsey on 91
research samples 99–101, 196 LuxOfTKGL (Wikipedia user) 35–6,
sex with students 97–8 41, 44, 56
‘technically trained persons’
105–6, 109, 121 MacIntyre, D. 178
and Wolfenden Committee Madonna/whore dichotomy 49
115–16 Malawi: dry sex 189
see also Sexual Behavior in the Human Male Intergenerational Intimacy:
Male (Kinsey); Sexual Behavior in Historical, Socio-Psychological and
the Human Female (Kinsey) Legal Perspectives (Sandfort,
Kinsey Institute 100, 102, 105, 114, Brongersma & van Naerssen)
117–22, 149–50 148–9
Kinsey, Mrs 109, 125 male prostitutes 99, 196
Kipling, Rudyard 165 male supremacy 76
Kiriwina Islands 72 Malinowski, Bronislaw 71–2
Ko Chi-sheng 182–4 Malone, A. & Allen, V. 11
Kobrin, S. 188 Man on Fire (film, dir. Scott, 2004)
Krafft-Ebing, R. 167 66, 143, 165
Kreisler, H. 201 manga cartoon characters 173
Kyong Ho 172 marriage, multilateral 150
Martens, J. 177
La Touche, Rose 128 Martin, Clyde 86, 88, 91, 97, 99
labial reduction 188 Martinson, Floyd Mansfield 144–5,
Langfeldt, Thore 145–6, 155 150–1, 155
Langham, Chris 11 masculinity, as social construction
Lawn Dogs (film, dir. Duigan, 1997) 198–200
66, 165 Mason, Jeffrey 167–8
Lear, A & Cantarella, E. 67 masturbation 6, 59, 146, 156
Legman, Gershon 117 Kinsey on 96–7, 105–7, 112, 121,
Leon /The Professional (film, dir. 124
Besson, 1994) 65–6, 143, McCann, Madeleine 8–12, 15, 17,
165, 194 158, 163, 193
Lepeu1999 (Wikipedia user) 41 McGeary, J. 190
Leurs, K. 30, 158 McKenna, K. & Bargh, J. 48
224 Index

Mead, Margaret 71–2, 92 O’Carroll, Tom 145

Medical Society of London 188 Oedipus complex 167
men, sex with (Kinsey) 96–8 Offences Against the Person Act
menstruation 175 (1875) 128
mentoring, and child grooming Okami, Paul 146
38–9, 41, 60, 67–8 O’Neill, Oona 128
Microsoft Windows 28 online grooming see internet
military iconography 172–4 grooming
Miller, F., Vandome, A. & orgasm
McBrewster, J. 67 babies and young children 106
‘misery lit’ 3 and boys 123
model of human sexuality 89 and girls 103–4, 110, 112–14, 123,
Mohr, R.D. 161–4 152
monastic tradition, male 171, 173–4 infant/young males 109–11, 146
Money, John 132 Kinsey on 92, 98, 109–14, 123,
Monkey Dust (cartoon series) 64–5 126, 152
moral panic 203 in prepubescent children 105
Morris, Chris 64 Other, the 71, 197, 204
mothers Outlook Express 27
in ideology of transcendence
172–3 paedophile community online
boys identify with 134–5 46–53
MSN Chat 34, 36–7, 39 law-abiding lifestyle 47
MUD (multi-user dungeon) 23, 25, norms 48–9
35 and self-identity 48, 52–3, 201–2
muscular oriented therapy 146 paedophile fantasy 143
mutilation, bodily 180–90 Paedophile Information Exchange
MySpace 9 (PIE) 148
Mysterious Skin (film, dir. Araki, 2004) paedophiles 2, 42, 143
66–7 civil rights for 14–16
concept of 19–20
NAMBLA (North American Man Boy definition of 56–7, 195
Love Association) 12–15, 63, demonization of 18
66–7, 82, 84, 131, 148, 158, 193 as ‘father’s rival’ 156
Namora, Pedro 10 images of 4
Napster 28 ‘non-contact’ 19, 168, 195, 201–4
Neeson, Liam 194 in popular discourse 2–3, 60–1
neonatal ‘exercises’ 152–4 in post-peak civilization 203–4
Nepal: trafficking 179–81 stereotypes of 61
Netherlands 149 paedophilia
Netherlands Society for Sexual Reform cultural context 168–74
(NVSH) 132–3, 135, 137, 142 as normal (Kinsey) 195–6
new sexual minorities 81 paedophilia erotica 84
New York Times 177 Paedophilia: The Radical Case
News of the World 2–3 (O’Carroll) 68
newsgroups 26–7, 29–30, 48 Paidika 80
Niven, J. 193 Papua New Guinea 72–4
Nowlis, Vincent 98, 117, 120 Parel, David and Ely, Suzanne 7
 Index 225

Parents for the Online Safety of Protection of Children and Prevention

Children (POSC) 43–4 of Sexual Offences (Scotland)
Patrick (Wikipedia user) 34–5, 38 Bill 34
Payne, Sarah 64 pseudonymous servers (nyms) 28, 30
pedagogic Eros 70 puberty, age of onset 129
pederasty 41, 45, 67–71, 80, 84, 176 public school system, British 69–70
pedo boards 26, 30
Pedophilia: Biological Dimensions Rainbird (Wikipedia user) 38–9
(Feierman) 80, 146–7 rape 176–7, 204
Percy, William Armstrong 68 cultural context 176
Kinsey on 93, 113, 116, 122–4, 126
Personality and Psychopathology (series)
Rapson, Syd 64
145
Reisman, Judith 116–17, 120–2,
Perverted-Justice.com 39, 43–5, 51
124–5
petting, Kinsey on 92–2
rejection
Pharaonic circumcision: see female of physical body, cyber-culture 173
circumcision violent, and ideology of
Pieterse, Monica 144 transcendence 172, 174, 196
Platonism 173 religion
Plummer, Ken 19, 148 and military iconography 172–4
Poe, Edgar Allen 128 and reproduction 169
Polanski, Roman 4, 54–5, 161, 164, see also transcendence, ideology of
192–3, 197 René Guyon Society 120, 151
Pomeroy, Wardell 86, 88, 97, 99, Reno, Jean 65, 194
103, 106, 120, 125, 144, 149–50, Rich, A. 82
152, 155 Roberts, Rick 12–13, 17
girls and orgasm 103–4, 110, 114 Robinson, P. 93
Popham, P. 11 Ronaldo, Cristiano 8
popular discourse 2–3, 60–1 Rookiee Revolyob (Wikipedia user)
pornography 37–8, 42, 44
child 57, 59, 62 Ross, J. 182–3, 197
child, on internet 26–7, 29–31, Rowling, J.K. 8–9, 158
35–7, 39–40, 49 Rubin, Gayle 81–2
showing to a child 34–7, 39–40 Rush, F. 83
Porter, Darwin 7 Ruskin, John 128
Russell, Diana 160
Portman, Natalie 65–6, 193
Portugal 9–11, 56, 158
sado-masochists 81
power 138–9, 149
Sambia tribe 73–4
Presley, Elvis 128 Sandfort, T. & Rademakers, J. 144
Pretty Baby (film, dir. Malle, 1978) Sandfort, Theo 70, 144, 155, 157,
65–6, 193 160
Primates World (website) 76 age, and experience 140
privileged categories 191–2 and age of consent 127–32, 140,
Professional, The: see Leon /The 142, 156
Professional Boys on their Contacts with Men
projection 11–12, 31, 49, 173–4, 198 (Sandfort, Brongersma &
prophets, Hebrew 171 Naerssen) 131–43, 148
prostitution 178–80 case studies 135–7
226 Index

Sandfort, Theo – continued sexual behaviour

Childhood Sexuality (Haworth) 132 male, mainstream 83
paedophiles in society 143 normal (Kinsey) 99–100
on power 138–9 and sexual attraction 19
research sample 132–4 sexual contact, concept of 20
Sanger, Larry 33 sexual desire, female 174–5
Saudi Arabia: dry sex 189 sexual development 72
scapegoating 12, 31, 197, 203 ‘sexual liberation’ discourse 12,
Scientific American 75 20–1, 98, 124, 126–7, 155, 192,
‘scraping the girls clean’ 188 194, 200–3
Second Life 9, 25 Sexual Offences Act (1956) 128–9
Secret Histories: Kinsey’s Paedophiles Sexual Offences Act (1967) 116, 128
(Tate) 117–19, 125, 149 Sexual Offences Act (2003) 128
self-discipline 171, 174, 196 sexual offenders, details on internet
Senegal: dry sex 189 12–13
sex sexual offenders’ database 3
abnormal (Kinsey) 94, 123, 126 sexual outlet, Kinsey on 89–93, 126
compulsion in 107–9 ‘sexual radicals’ discourse 19, 81–4,
and male violence 77–8 145, 155, 159–60, 190, 192, 201–3
sex-negative 159 sexual selection 77–8
sex offenders as ordinary people, sexual violence 18–19, 83
Kinsey on 108–9 sexuality,
sex offending alternative 81–2
as common 195–6 continuum concept of 19, 21, 53,
Kinsey on 93–4, 98, 108–9, 114–16 81, 83, 148, 158, 161–2, 168,
sex play, pre-adolescent 103–13 195, 204
sex with men, Kinsey on 96–8 and cultural practice 169
Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders, for as plastic 163
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry as unitary 181, 190–1
Clinics of North America sexuality, adult, consensual 124
(Yates) 151 sexuality, childrens’ 20
sexual arousal to children sexuality, male 198
prevalence of: clinical studies 57–8 normative 196
prevalence of: surveys 58–9 and sexual outlet 89–93, 126
prevalence of: women’s sexuality, women’s, ownership of
experiences 59 189
sexual attraction sexually expressed friendship 131–43
to children, as normal 21, 79–80 shame 198
concept of 20 Shields, Brooke 158
and sexual behaviour 19 shoes 182
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female Sinclair, M. 66
(Kinsey) 20, 87, 95, 101–2, situational offenders 57
108–9, 111–13 Smiljanich, K. & Briere, J. 59
authorship 88 Smoking Gun, The (website) 6
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male social networking sites (SNS) 9, 28–9
(Kinsey) 20, 86–8, 91–2, 94–5, Somalia: female circumcision 185
97, 99–102, 110, 113 Sousa, Marcello Nuno Rebelo de 11
authorship 88 South Africa: dry sex 189
as scientific study 88–9 South Korea: brothels 178
 Index 227

South Park 63–4 and mothers 172–3

spirituality of empathy 169–70 and prostitution 178–80
splitting 49–50, 174, 198 rape 176–7
Stitches77 (Wikipedia user) 45 self-discipline 171, 174, 196
Stoltenberg, John 1, 198, 203 and violent rejection 172, 174, 196
stranger danger 84 transsexuals 81
Sudan: female circumcision 185 transvestites 81
Sun, The 2 Trant, Lawrence 12–13
Swedien, Bruce 7 Tremblay, Pierre 46–7
Tripoli, military brothels 178
Tackling Sexual Grooming Conference Tripp, Clarence 106, 117–20, 123–4
(2003) 42 Trobriand Islands 72
Tahiti 74 trust, abuse of 129
Taiwan
foot-binding; 183 underground cabal 40
prostitution 180, 203 United Nations report 155–6
Taoism 170 United States military 178, 192
Tarvainen, S. 158 University of Cambridge
Tatchell, Peter 130 Institute of Criminology 145,
Tate, T.: see Secret Histories: Kinsey’s 155, 194
Paedophiles University of Central Lancaster
Telegraph 8 Cyberspace Research Unit 35
Temple, Shirley 66, 158, 193 University of San Francisco National
Terry, John 8 Sexuality Resource Center 73
Thailand: prostitution 179 Unix 28
Thompson, Dave 62 ‘upper level’ males, Kinsey on 91
Thorstadt, David 148 urethral insertions 92
‘Three-Inch Hook’/ ‘Golden Lotus’ USA Today 77
182 Usenet 26–7
Time 178
Times, The 8 vagina, in cultural practice 183,
TKGL website 35 188–91, 197
trafficking 178–80 Verstraete, B. & Provencal, V. 67
transcendence, ideology of vetting and barring 3, 158
bodily mutilation 180–90 vigilante activism 16, 26
and contempt 172–4 Vincent, Norah 199
cultural context 170–3 violence
denial of temptation 172, 175, male 77–8, 199–200
196–7 sexual 18–19, 83
disparagement of women 174–80, von, Erck, Xavier 44–5
197
and dissociation 171–4, 197–8 Waites, Matthew 130–1
dry sex 189–90 Wales, Jimmy (Jimbo) 33
and empathy 169–70, 179, 196 WaReZ boards 26
and female circumcision 184–9 Warren Cup 69
and foot-binding 181–4 Washawaka Orphanage 100
hatred of material world 180–91, web-cam 27
196 Weeks, J. 124, 202
hierarchy 171, 174, 196 Werner, Dr 118
228 Index

West, Donald 147–8, 155 sex with (Kinsey) 91–2

White, Esther 117 sexually devalued 170–4
Wikipedia 31–43, 52 Woodhouse, T. P. 147
anti-paedophile activity against Woodsman, The 65, 204
43–5 Wordsworth, William 163
‘child grooming’ article 32, 34–43, world-wide web, establishment of
53, 60 23–4
‘child pornography’ article 35 see also internet
‘neutral point of view’ (NPOV) 34, Wrangham, R. and Peterson, D. 77–9
36–41
‘online chat’ article 35 XavierVE: see von, Erck, Xavier
point of view 25, 36, 43
‘sexual abuse’ article 35
Wikisposure.com 31, 44 Yahoo 39
Wolfenden Committee 115–16 Yates, Alayne 144, 151–5
Wolfenden Report 128 Yoshimi, Y. 178
women
control of reproduction Zaire: dry sex 189
169, 174 Zambia: dry sex 189
despised/disparaged 174–80, 197 Zanthalon (Wikipedia user) 44
negative view of (Kinsey) 92–3 Zimbabwe: dry sex 189
ownership of sexuality 189 Zoroastrianism 170, 172, 175