To the Reader: This file was created with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. It has been edited to correct scanning errors, though some may still remain. We regret any inconvenience. Errors in the original pages are marked inside angle-brackets (<>). Some corrections are made (<ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: >), some comments added (<ARCHIVIST'S NOTE: >), other errors, mostly typographical and spelling, are marked <sic> to indicate that this is how they appeared in the original, and a few mysteries are marked <?>. Researchers are encouraged to consult the originals or the full-page copies available here when accuracy is needed for quotes or other scholarly use. ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.1 (front cover) ------------------------------------ P.A.N. Paedo Alert News - a magazine about boy-love NEWS London, Auckland, Paris, Bangkok, Washington FLASHBACK a story by Kevin Esser THE DANCE OF THE GODS Joe Ackerley's Hindoo Holiday BOOKS Two by Dukahz, The Boy and the Dagger, An Asian Minor, Bom Crioulo BOYCAUGHT Child sexual abuse by neglect by Edward Brongersma THE BATTLE LINE Turning points in the regression Number 13 ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.2 ------------------------------------ Our readers will notice two changes with this 13th issue. First is in our name, which is no longer PAN but Paedo Alert News. We have made this substitution because PAN Books, Ltd. of London claims an infringement of its trading name and feels, in addition, that the content of our publication is inimical to its economic health. It had never occurred to us that our little magazine on boy-love would both threaten and be confused with the paper products of the great English publishing house, but we did realize that, no matter how unjustified the claim of Pan Books, Ltd. might be to the ownership of a Greek satyr predating even the Gutenburg Press by a couple of millennia, its financial resources would enable it to outspend us vastly on any legal contest it wished to indulge itself in. Thus the new name. The second change is that we at Spartacus have acquired the highly respected Coltsfoot Press of New York, brought it to Amsterdam and, in so doing, have transfered to our Coltsfoot Division not only this magazine but all other activities relating to it, including the publication of our new books THE BOY AND THE DAGGER, PANTHOLOGY TWO, etc. None of this signals a change in direction, or even a change in editorial policy, although it does mean that we will be bringing out more books of interest to our readers and making available to them some of the Coltsfoot titles in new editions. All in all an auspicious launch of our second dozen issues. P.A.N.thusiastically yours, <illustration including signature of Frank Torey, and satyr logo> Frank Torey, Executive Editor Paedo Alert News Number 13 October, 1982 WHAT'S INSIDE IN BRIEF London, Auckland, Paris, Bangkok, Washington 3 HOW IT'S DONE IN THE US of A Part III 13 FLASHBACK a story by Kevin Esser 17 THE DANCE OF THE GODS an appreciation of Joe Ackerley's Hindoo Holiday by David James 20 BOOKS Two by Dukahz, The Boy and the Dagger, An Asian Minor, Bom Crioulo 23 BOYCAUGHT Child sexual abuse by neglect by Edward Brongersma 26 THE BATTLE LINE Turning points in the regression 29 All Photos in this issue except for the front cover photo are by Talisman. Front cover photo is by A.B. Sketch on page 18 is by P.N. PAN is published five times a year by The Coltsfoot Press, a division of Spartacus, P.O. Box 3496, 1001 AG Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Editor in Chief, John D. Stamford; Executive Editor, Frank Torey. ISSN 0167.4749 ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.3 ------------------------------------ IN BRIEF . . . LONDON, ENGLAND Tom O'Carroll is at last free! After serving two-thirds of the two-year sentence imposed by judge John Leonard (one of England's intellectual heavy-weight mossbacks), he visited in Norway, then in Wales, trying to recover from the shattering experience of a year and a third of solitary confinement for 23 and one half hours a day and one half hour of systematic brutalization by the prison screws. Long live the indominable <sic> spirit of Tom O'Carrol <sic> -- and may British Justice, from the lowliest preparer of food to the bloated, self-satisfied Judge Leonard himself, tremble with shame over what happened to this totally innocent man. LOS ANGELES, CA, USA Latest heavyweight entry in the child abuse sweepstakes is fading pop poet Rod McKuen who, it seemed, was molested by his step-uncle and step-aunt when he was 7. First his aunt, when baby-sitting, fondled him and he said, "Don't do that. I don't like that." Then her husband took him on a camping trip, got him into his sleeping bag, started "doing things" again and ended up "raping" him. According to McKuen, he told his step-uncle, "Listen, your wife did something like this, too. I'm not going to tell my mother about this, but if you even look at me again, if you come near me again, if you do anything at all, I'm not only going to tell my mother, I'm going to run down the street and tell everybody on the block." Not a bad speech for a 7-year-old. "Something told me it was time for blackmail," McKuen adds. Of course, all the poet's subsequent anxiety goes back to those two evil molestations: "I'm sure that is why I was so confused about my sexual identity . . . I've always had an inferiority complex . . ." He had nightmares for years about the cursed sleeping bag, and he got hooked on sleeping pills. But then "about that time I had great commercial success. I stopped the pills and the dreams went away." McKuen has been touring for the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse drumming up business (and funding) for that lobby. "We need parents to learn the names of the teachers who are teaching their children," the poet says. "We need families to question day-care centers, to question other chidren <sic> and their own as to what goes on. We need to stop and think before we do anything in front of the child that may cause that child irreparable harm." Like being exposed to the (possibly opportunistic) hysteria of Rod McKuen. SOURCE: People, 16 Aug, 1982 AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND At last a man/boy-love group has started in New Zealand, a land where even homosexuality is still illegal. The new group, called MABLOG, will operate within the law, will produce a newsletter, try to counter the pernicious propaganda against boy-love and possibly organize social functions. New Zealand readers can write for information: Peter, P.O. Box 68522, Newton, Auckland. SOURCE: NAMBLA Bulletin, Sept., 1982. PARIS, FRANCE On 21 July the crime of homosexuality was at last totally eliminated from the French penal code. This means that the age of consent for nearly all sexual acts in France is at last 15 years of age. Sexual acts without violence ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.4 ------------------------------------ involving someone under fifteen are still punishable with imprisonment of 3 to 5 years and/or a fine of 6,000 to 60,000 francs. If violence, coercion or surprise is used, or if the older person is a father, guardian or someone in authority over the minor, or if more than one person is involved sexually with the minor, the penalty is 5 to 10 years of imprisonment and/or a fine up to 120,000 francs when the minor is under 15, and 6 months to three years and/or a fine up to 20,000 francs when the minor is over 15. All of this is certainly progress, especially at a time when in England and the United States it seems that all people with public responsibilities have taken leave of their senses in the area of juvenile sex, but one sad result has been a stepped up rate of prosecutions in France for sexual contacts involving one or more partners beneath the age of 15. Especially in provincial towns, the police are reported to be very unhappy at having to stop arresting men for sex with boys in their late teens and now are working overtime to entrap boy-lovers loving younger boys. As this magazine goes to press a new "ballets bleu" scandal has erupted in Gard in the south of France. A certain school for handicapped children in Aimargues, a little village between Nimes and Montpellier, called "Coral" had been attracting attention over the past five years. It was a member of a group of some thirty French "Ecoles Differentes" (alternative education institutions) and reports about it and articles written by director Claude Sigala appeared frequently in such excellent publications as Possible. Some of the teachers and "therapists", it seems, had been quietly advocating (and allegedly practising) sexual relations with the children as a pedagogical and psychological tool. But one tragic incident had occurred. In 1977 an 11 -year-old boy died at Coral with his head in a pail of water. The autopsy revealed that he had been anally raped and later killed; further investigation established that a certain probationary teacher, identified only as "Jean-Pierre L.", was responsible. Jean-Pierre was put in a psychiatric hospital for a few months, later released, and soon was <photograph> ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.5 ------------------------------------ back working at Coral. Thereafter it seemed that there were many weekend visitors to Coral. The present scandal broke when an ex-employee, one Jean-Claude Krief, was picked up by the police for another crime and interrogated about some kiddie-porn photos found in his car. He then told of sexual assignations between the minors at Coral and visitors, and of photographic sessions -- and gave names of the children. These, in turn, were questioned, and this led to a number of arrests. In the second week of October several employees of Coral were indicted and, a few days later, some of the alleged visitors, including Professor Rene Scherer, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris and one of the literary luminaries of the French gay/paedophile world at the moment (see BOOKS). Scherer vigorously denied any sexual contacts and was released pending trial. Gabriel Matzneff, another famous writer on paedophile themes (Les moins de seize ans), was also questioned, although not indicted. Where the scandal will end no one knows at this point, but it has been making front-page headlines in the right-wing French press. SOURCE: Le Monde, 27 July & 21 Oct, 1982; France-Soir, 21 Oct, 1982; Possible, April-May, 1982. ANTWERP, BELGIUM The Studiegroep Pedofilie has produced a 1983 calender <sic> with pen-and-ink drawings by four (contemporary) Flemish artists. Cost is 490 Belgian francs or equivalent, but overseas customers should add a bit on for airmail postage. Write Studiegroep Pedofilie, Breughelstraat 31, B-2000 Antwerp, Belgium. VAN NUYS, CA, USA All boy-lovers should be warned that a certain sleazy S&M publication called Fetish Times (P.O. Box 7109, Van Nuys, CA 91409) has been cooperating with US Postal Inspector Martin Locker (see PAN 5, page 8; PAN 6, page 8; PAN 12, page 6) in the entrapment of boy-lovers. Fetish Times is still running the following advertisement, despite full knowledge that responses to it have already resulted in at least two convictions and jail sentences: CUMKID HAS NEW NAMES $.20 may bring you contacts with special interests. Write Cumkid, Inc., Box 240, Canal St. Station, New York, NY 10013. One of our readers did just that, and after a long correspondence with Locker under various aliases, a meeting in a motel room was arranged (the Feds, obligingly, picked up the tab) to which our victim was encouraged to bring along his pornography collection. Once there he was arrested, charged with 18 counts of promoting porn, was convicted on one after spending three and a half months in jail because he couldn't raise $25,000 cash bail money. The publisher of Fetish Times goes by the name of Wilton Place. When our entrapment victim wrote Place about his experience, Place replied that "if you get trapped for playing with kids you should be burned." Also, "We do not touch anything here that deals with kiddies, pre-teen or bestiality." Except, of course for "Cumkid" ads placed by known postal inspectors. BANGKOK, THAILAND Tim Bond, the self-styled "sociologist" for Terre des Hommes (See PAN 8, page 5; PAN 9, page 4; PAN 10, pages 8 & 38; PAN 12, page 12) and muckraker British journalist John Pilger seem to have been taken by a rather clever Thai con artist when Pilger "purchased" an 8-year-old girl from a "slave shop" near the Bangkok railway station. He paid about $175 for her to an intermediary who was a friend of Tim Bond's. Pilger, after milking a lot of publicity out of the episode in the London Daily Mirror, returned the girl to her presumed mother in a little village in north central Thailand. The only trouble was that the whole sale and reception of the child was a fake: the little girl lived all the time with her mother in Bangkok and went to school there and the money was split three ways between the mother, the ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.6 ------------------------------------ intermediary and another woman who had accompanied the child on the trip north for the fake reunion. This tale was smoked out by reporters for the Hong Kong based weekly news magazine The Far East Economic Review. SOURCE: Daily Mirror, March 27, 1982; AP, 17 July, 1982. SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA California Senatorial Candidate Gore Vidal (yes, the writer) was talking to a group of Democratic gay clubs in the Bay Area last winter and some of his remarks were aired over radio station KPFA-FM. There one Bob Turner asked a question which really put him on the spot. It went something like this: "If you have followed the fledgling man/boy-love movement, you will know that it is a very controversial issue in the gay movement today. What is your position on age of consent laws?" The actual taped answer which Vidal gave was, "The age of consent laws and the man/boy movement . . . Well, it's a tricky one but I tend to, uh . . . (scattered guffaws) I take the view that Mother Nature knows something that the statute books don't know (applause) and whenever a male or female becomes sexually competent and able to reproduce, even if it is at a very embarrassingly young age, they are then sexual, and I cannot see any reason why they should be denied sexual outlet. If you want to speak of sexual exploitation that's something else -- that comes under morality -- but I'm talking about nature. I don't see that -- not until you're 18, 16, 15, 14, male or female -- that you're prohibited against having sex. You should be prohibited from being exploited, so -- you should also probably not be put in reform school which is generally where they like to put them, where they're tortured (applause) and raped." Well, that's obviously as good a position as California voters are likely to get this time around. It is strange, however, that Vidal would link permission by the State for sexual outlet with attainment of reproductive maturity and gloss over the fact that many pre-pubertal children have just as intense sexual feelings and orgasms. Perhaps he felt it was unwise, as a politician, to deal with preadolescent sexuality. MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA Once again a paedophile support group has been formed in Australia. The first was destroyed a year ago by a group of conservative gays threatening to turn everyone in to the police unless it disbanded (See PAN 7, page 14 & PAN 9, page 12). The new one is being very cautious, but paedophiles can gain information about it by calling the Melbourne Gayline (329 5555). Meanwhile, reports pour in from our Australian correspondents about the very favourable impact Paul Wilson's The Man They Called a Monster is having on public opinion, the positive response Roger Moody enjoyed at his meeting with a number of gay groups last summer and the general opening of gay opinion toward boy-love in this country which, until so very recently, was as intolerant as America. SOURCE: City Rhythm, July, 1982. NEW YORK, NY, USA About a year ago Time Magazine ran a one-page article on adult-child sex and gave rather accurately the conclusions of such informed spoilsports of the burgeoning child abuse lobby as psychologists Frits Bernard, Larry Constantine and Thore Langfelt <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: Thore Langfeldt> (See PAN 10, page 28, PAN 12, page 11), before putting it all in the "right" perspective of the anti-sex professionals ("Child sex is playing with dynamite" one of these worthies was quoted as saying!). But that was before the media and the politicians and the cops cranked up the US witch hunt another couple of notches. On 9 August Newsweek ran a three-page special which, for sheer lazy reporting, bigotry, illogicality, hatred, concentrated lying and gratuitous meanness, puts London's sleazy News of the World to shame. Not one responsible researcher is quoted. Out of the woodwork crawl all the embezzlers and opportunists who have made themselves rich, ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.7 ------------------------------------ legally and otherwise, from child molestation. Densen-Gerber's Odyssey House, despite its gruesome record of misappropriation of state and city funds and sadistic mistreatment of adolescent inmates, is called upon for expert commentary. SLAM, a grass roots, militantly anti-sex pressure group in California, (see PAN 9, page 13) is praised because it argues that "the best way to treat child molesters is to keep them locked away from their prey". Of course Gene A. Abel and A. Nicholas Groth (See PAN 9, pages 9 & 11; Pan 10, pages 3 & 28; PAN 11, page 11; PAN 12, page 7) are held up as the New Prophets of anti-sex -- in fact the five staff writers credited with the article seem to have done little more than talk with these two parasitic PhDs and the illiterates out at SLAM. Abel believes that "molesters" can be "successfully treated". He and his staff of 17 use "behavior-modification techniques to make child-oriented fantasies repulsive to molesters". (In other words, aversion therapy, a legalized form of sex torture which most competent psychologists know doesn't work, not at least in the long run.) A thoroughly disgusting piece of mendacious propagandizing which casts strong doubt upon the accuracy of any story this rapidly declining publication prints. SOURCE: Newsweek, 9 Aug, 1982 LONDON, ENGLAND The infamous Mr. James Miskin, O.C., the Recorder of London, was off again against paedophiles. Miskin will be remembered (see PAN 8, page 9) as the Old Bailey judge who forgave a 16-year-old schoolboy boxer by the name of David John Parris for strangling to death (and then setting fire to the body of) youth club leader George McKenzie because (according to the boy -- there are no other surviving witnesses) McKenzie had proposed sex with him. We later learned that Miskin himself was a boxing enthusiast, had been Appeals Steward of the British Boxing Board of Control and had been mixing a little favouritism with his prejudices and his law (see PAN 9, page 10). Last summer he was thundering down more hatred from his bench. "Society is entitled to express its outrage at this sort of revolting behaviour," he said, jailing for five years one 41-year-old man by the name of Raymond Bailey and another 25-year-old man named Christopher Wickens who admitted having had sex with six pre-pubertal boys. "It should be understood by everybody with paedophiliac tendencies," he continued, "that the consequences of this sort of appalling behaviour will always be significant prison sentences." What will be understood by everyone with humanistic tendencies is that the consequences of retaining people like Miskin on the bench will always be appalling miscarriages of justice. SOURCE: Daily Telegraph, 18 Aug, 1982. WASHINGTON, DC, USA For two weeks last summer the American public was entertained by another boy-love scandal - this one involving US congressmen and senators and their pages. One Jeff Opp, a 16-year-old curley-haired, chubby-faced lad with a pleasant grin from <photograph> ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.8 ------------------------------------ Colorado, told justice officials of sex and dope exchanges between his colleagues (he, of course, had never done anything like that) and legislators. Then along came an 18-year-old black man, Leroy Williams, ex-page from Arkansas, now serving in the military, saying he had had lots of sex with several congressmen. And then other pages, so the wire services reported, told similar tales anonymously. Moral Majority's ex-spokesman, ex-congressman Robert Bauman (See PAN 7, page 5; PAN 8, page 9), desparately <sic> trying for re-election after being indicted for blowing a teenager in one of the Washington parks, gave up his candidacy and decided the nation's climate (which he helped create) was not with him. And then (surprise) the whole scandal blew over. Everyone discovered the pages really hadn't been doing anything nasty (and if they had they were really young men), the nation's leaders weren't homosexuals or child molesters after all (perish the thought). Leroy Williams flunked a lie-detector test -- and found himself in hot water with the Army, which claimed, if he had been all that randy back in Washington, he'd lied at his induction about never having had homosexual relations before he enlisted. So the nation's newspapers got on with their attack on NAMBLA and Swithinbank and Cooper and Ahlers, Newsweek cranked out its 3-page gutter piece on "child molesters" deifying psychiatrists Abel and Groth and California's SLAM. Nothing if not street-wise, the media simply decided it was more profitable to leave the powerful alone and attack the defenceless. The Advocate, discovering that this particular kiddie-sex scandal threatened gays and not just boy-lovers, did some fine detective work and published a devastating attack on the television networks, showing how they all virtually built the scandal from a few rumors and a pair of FBI informers whom they passed off as garden variety Washington street hustlers. Well, we wish the pages all best luck - and hope a few of them, at any rate, can find some nice congresional <sic> heads into which to pillow-talk a little human sense. SOURCE: UPI 1 Aug, 1982; San Francisco Chronicle, 1, 3, 13 & 19 July, 1982; Bay Area Reporter, 8 July, 1982; AP 8 & 10 July, 1982; Advocate, 14 Oct, 1982 WALDECK, WEST GERMANY Last winter the local Boy Scouts were all set to sing before the TV cameras when the scout leaders, still smarting from some unspecified previous "trauma", accused the cameramen of injecting a "homoerotic element" into the taping when they wanted to film the boys in their nice white tunics. SOURCE: Der Eisbrecher, May, 1982. NEW YORK, NY, USA Jacqueline Livingston, the photographer who attracted the Virtue Vendors and got fired from Cornell University for nudes of her 6-year-old son Sam fondling himself (See PAN 4, page 10; PAN 5, page 4; PAN 6, page 7; PAN 9, page 7), has opened a private gallery in Greenwich Village. She intends to show only her own works -- and the first exhibit is called "Sam in Living Color" -- featuring, naturally, Sam, who is now twelve. There is a lovely postcard (nude) of Sam for $1. The address is Livingston Gallery, 118 Prince St., New York City. LOS ANGELES, CA, USA A certain Cathy Stubblefield Wilson, 43, divorced mother, owner of 4 cars and a fancy home, was arrested here last August and held in lieu of a quarter-million dollar bond, charged with 14 felony counts of distributing kiddie porn. According to Sgt. Donald Smith of the Los Angeles Police Force, Wilson controlled 80% of the country's child pornography. Few kiddie porn customers in America had even heard of her. It seems she funnelled orders through a Denmark mailing address and salted her money away in banks in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. SOURCE: New York Times, 22 Aug, 1982. ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.9 ------------------------------------ LONDON, ENGLAND The gutter dreadfuls were after PIE again this summer. First, in mid-August, The News of the World discovered that PIE Executive Committee member Steven Smith was employed by a firm under contract to the Home Office and actually worked in the basement of a Home Office building on its computerized heating and lighting system (and that his bosses knew about Steven Smith's connection with PIE). The News of the World then demanded that Steven Smith's employers fire him, which they immediately did. A week later the Daily Star began a new "Monsters who prey on our children" series. Under the headline SECRETS OF THE PIE MEN, it printed photos of David Joy ("Neighbours speak of 'evil' man upstairs"), Steven Smith ("Wierdo in a 'horror' mansion") and Peter Bremner ("The face at the window"). As always, addresses of the men they attacked were printed, with the result that rocks were thrown through Steven Smith's windows and local ruffians beat up one of his visitors. Some 15 months ago the Daily Star decided to "infiltrate" PIE and induced a certain Charles Oxley into becoming an undercover agent. Oxley joined PIE but his "revelations" of PIE activities, as printed by the Star, were pretty tame, actually; Oxley's photo appears along with his story. Oxley is principal of two independent schools, the 400-pupil Tower College at Rainhill, Merseyside and the 700-pupil Scarsibrick Hall, <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: Scarisbrick Hall> Southport, Lancashire. His "cooperation" with the Star raises many questions. It seems odd that a totally straight provincial headmaster, no matter how strongly he might feel that paedophilia was bad, would cooperate spontaneously with one of London's seamiest yellow journals, attend meeting after meeting of PIE people, attempt to make social contacts with the kind of men he was supposed to despise. Is he a naive off on a James Bond ego trip? Is he a guilt-ridden boy-lover satisfying both his prurience and his need to punish? Is he a paedophile who got caught in the act and was blackmailed by the authorities, the newspaper, his fellow teachers? If someone out there knows the true story we would like to hear about it -- and so, we are sure, would PIE. The famous "cuddlesome Conservative" MP Geoffrey Dickens from Huddersfield (a man probably just literate enough to read the Star without moving his lips) immediately announced that he would seek to introduce a bill in Parliament to "outlaw" PIE (but not, presumably, MPs who keep "other women" on the side -- See PAN 8, page 21 ff). SOURCE: Daily Star, 21 & 23 Aug, 1982; Gay News, 2-15 Sep, 1982. WASHINGTON, DC, USA Last July 2 the US Supreme Court opened the door to much more "child pornography" prosecution, reversing a New York Court of Appeals decision which had held the state kiddie-porn law unconstitutional. "Child pornography" has now been declared by the highest court of the land a "category of material outside of the protection of the First Amendment". (In the US, the "First Amendment" is a constitutional protection of free speech.) Thus it could be regulated by the states regardless of whether it was "obscene" or not. The overriding concern of the justices was the conviction that photographing children engaged in sex somehow harmed them (we have the psychiatrists to thank for that, presumably). "The legislative judgement, as well as the judgement found in the relevant literature, is that the use of children as subjects of pornographic materials is harmful to the psychological, emotional and mental health of the child," wrote Associate Justice Byron R. White in his separate opinion. It is difficult to know just how far eager born-again prosecuting attorneys will attempt to apply this mandate. One straw in the wind was the withdrawl <sic> by St. Martin's Press, New York, of Show Me, a photo-illustrated sex education book for small children with photos of kids playing with their genitals and the genitals of others, (see PAN 1, page 7). Opinions are divided as ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.10 ------------------------------------ to whether the decision might be applied to erotic art (sketches, paintings, etc.) or erotic literature. White continued, "We note that the distribution of descriptions or other depictions of sexual conduct, not otherwise obscene, which do not involve live performance or photographic or other visual reproduction of live performances, retains First Amendment protection." The court did not address the delicate question of whether distribution in the US of photos of children or adolescents engaged in sexual acts in, say, a culture where such things were normal (a rather wild National Geographic photo-story, perhaps) or a medical textbook on child sex would be protected by the First Amendment. Also unanswered was whether books which contain no photos, only prose and poetry which by anyone's standard clearly was obscene, come under First Amendment protection. Probably they would, because the underlying reason the justices gave for their decision was protection of the depicted child against harm, and harm would be difficult to prove where the child existed only in the author's imagination. Meanwhile, the various states were busying themselves with new laws to take advantage of the Supreme Court decision. On July 20 Massachusetts Governor Edward J. King signed a new kiddie-porn law (saying, "The exploitation of youths for pornographic purposes is an act of hideous villainy") which provides 10 to 20 years of imprisonment and a ten to fifty thousand dollar fine for anyone who "hires, coerces, solicits or entices, employs, procures, uses, causes, encourages or knowlingly <sic> permits" a child under 18 to pose in the nude or engage in sexual activity "for the purpose of visual representation or reproduction". Presumably a father and mother with naked baby pictures of their son could be put away for 20 years in Massachusetts -- for the good of the baby, of course. SOURCE: New York Times, 3 July, 1982; Gay Community News, 7 Aug, 1982 MINNEAPOLIS, MN, USA Even judges get victimized by the gutter media in America -- but sometimes they escape the hysteria. Last winter Minneapolis TV-station WCCO did a shocker-special series on "juveniles and sex" and in the course of its "research" one boy let it slip that he had had sex on four occasions with a certain Crane Winton, 55-year-old judge in the Hennepin District of Minnesota. As a result Winton was indicted for several felonies and misdemeanors, pleaded guilty to the latter in the course of plea-bargaining and was fined $300, escaping jail completely. (In the US, where one poor man is serving 22 consecutive lifetime sentences for carrying on a sexually expressed love affair with a 14-year-old, it sure helps to be a judge!) Winton, it seems, had a very good reputation. Even Chief Judge of the District Court Harold Kalina said he would be pleased to see Winton return to the bench: "I look at each judge's production, not moral beliefs or standards," he said. Winton admitted he had kept his homosexuality secret. Thus he made only commercial and furtive contacts. "So it was when the sense of loneliness became more than I could bear, I sought a form of companionship that I otherwise would not seek." SOURCE: AP, 23 June, 1982 SAN DIEGO, CA, USA It is no secret that, years ago, the institute founded by Alfred Kinsey was seriously, actively engaged in taking sexual histories of children. Gays and boy-lovers alike eagerly awaited results of this research, but they were never published except for a brief summary in Steward Frazer's <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: Stewart E. Fraser's> Sex, Schools and Society (Aurora Pubs., 1973) with the warning that all data were gathered before Kinsey's death in 1956. Now, in an interesting article in the August Childhood Sensuality Circle Nusletter writer "Erosmith" attacks the post-Kinsey Institute under the chairmanship of Wardell Pomeroy for stopping this research and repressing data already gathered, out of timidity, fear of venturing into tabooed ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.11 ------------------------------------ areas of sexuality and in search of easy funding for "safe" sex studies. "What social progress might have been made during the past quarter century had Kinsey's successors at the Institute for Sex Research accepted his mantle of scientific inquiry and social responsibility?" the writer asks. "What human suffering might have been alleviated and prevented had Pomeroy, et al, been less discomfited and more aggressive in pursuing the truth? What inroads might have been made into the problems of alienation and violence in our society? Indeed we are all suffering because of Dr. Kinsey's betrayal." SOURCE: C.S.C. Nusletter, No. 45, Aug, 1982 TRENTON, NJ, USA Not long ago New Jersey nearly passed a sex reform bill (see PAN 2, page 5) which would have lowered the age of sexual consent to 13 (if the partner was not more than 4 years older than the child), but at the last moment, under pressure from the conservatives, raised the age back up to 16. It is a sign of the times that the same state Assembly Judiciary Committee is now seriously studying a bill introduced by Assemblyman Christopher Jackman, Democrat from West New York, which would allow judges to order men convicted of "sexual attacks" (in other words, all sexual relations, consensual and otherwise) on youngsters under 13 to either serve 25 years in jail or be surgically castrated. SOURCE: New York Daily News, 8 June, 1982 HAMPTON, NH, USA Judianne Densen-Gerber, the embezzling, off-pitch Barbara <sic> Streisand of America's child abuse lobby, was back in the news again, as usual passing out her lox and bagels of dubious fact. Calling upon President Reagan and the nation's governors "to launch a war on producers of child pornography" (as if there was any left in the US), she strayed a bit afield. It seems she has information on a powerful group headquartered in Boston with 22,500 members (!) advocating elimination of the age of consent - she wants a special investigator to "look into" it. (So would we!) And then things in Scandinavia would seem to have become vastly more liberal recently. Sweden, according to Jingle-Bells Judy, has no age of protection law "and Denmark kept theirs by one vote". When last we checked with our friends in Sweden, the age of consent for sex was 15 and all naked photos of kids under 18 in publications dealing with sex were illegal, while our contacts in Copenhagen insist that the age of consent there, too, is 15, although naked photos of children are permitted providing there are no erections or other indicators of overt sex. SOURCE: Boston Herald-American, 24 July, 1982 LOS ANGELES, CA, USA Frustrated boy-lovers will sometimes do the strangest things to get in contact with kids. According to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, a 33-year-old local CBS television newscaster by the name of Mac Heald posed as a doctor doing research on blood pressure in <photograph> ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.12 ------------------------------------ young people and called on a certain family with sons of 2 and 12 years of age. The mother grew suspicious during the older boy's "examination" behind closed doors, took down the car license number of the so-called doctor and, in questioning the boy later, learned that sex had indeed taken place. When charged, Heald slashed his wrists but was rushed to hospital in time to save his life. SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, 28 June, 1982 NEW YORK, NY, USA A New York filmmaker by the name of Arthur J. Bressan previewed last June a documentary called Abuse. The one report we have seen on the film suggests it is not one of the usual child abuse lobby propaganda pieces. In it a graduate-student preparing a documentary film on child abuse encounters a teenage boy victim and the two of them fall in love. Apparently the film contrasts the supportive man-boy love affair with real sexual abuse. According to the San Francisco Sentinel the film poses "staggering questions . . . about social-service and legal systems that threaten the rescuer and protect the abusers. SOURCE: The Sentinel, 10 June, 1982 CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA At the 8th National Conference of Lesbians and Homosexuals held here on September 3-6 there was a workshop on paedophilia led by Mr. Emu Nugent. The conference itself seems to have been badly organized and the straight press, at best suspicious, was first invited to the keynote speech but barred from the workshops (they retaliated with acid-bitchy articles on all the vice they had missed). But the paedophile workshop was attended by some 40 people (all but 4 male -- lesbians still tend to view man-boy love with great suspicion) and occasioned no outcries over an airing of the subject. SOURCE: Campaign, Oct, 1982; The Star, 10 Sep., 1982, The Canberra Times, 5 Sep, 1982. ALBANY, NY, USA Ho hum, another boy-love "ring". We had thought Conyers and company had exhausted that subject in the nation's congress back in the summer of '77 (See PAN 4, page 26), but, no, New York Republican State Senator Ralph J. Marino (from the Long Island county where Swithinbank was recently convicted -- see How it's Done in the U.S. of A, Part Three) has convened a "mini" Conyers" in the state capital, a Senate Select Committee on Crime investigating child prostitution and pornography. This time the ring is Mafia-controlled, makes hundreds of millions of dollars selling secrets to the Russians (we're not making this up), provides dial-a-boy service in at least six major cities ("You could call a number in Houston from Washington and have a young boy brought to your room in Washington," explained a certain Washington, DC detective by the name of Carl Shoffler). All of this rather baffled vice-squad lieutenant William Groswird in San Francisco (one of the six sex centres), who said he knew nothing about such a ring. And when he tried to contact Washington police detective Anne McKenna, source of much of this myth (boys as young as 12 ferried to six cities . . .), he got her superior, who said everything had been taken out of context. It was something she "came on to about three years ago when she was working in juvenile. She thought the ring came out of Houston and she thought a Houston radio or television station did a documentary at that time." As for San Francisco, Groswird said, police occasionally arrest teenage boys involved in street prostitution but he could not remember any boys as young as 12 being arrested. None of this discourages the child-abuse lobby from beating their drums and raising their funds. Kiddie-porn is bigger than even Densen-Gerber would have us believe. According to an article by reporter Barbara Basler of the New York Times, one Robert M. Pitler, chief of the Manhattan District Attorney's Appellate Bureau, "very conservatively" esti- ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.13 ------------------------------------ mated that about 5% of all pornography in the US dealt with children and that child-pornography was a $200,000,000 a year business. Well, now, on a dollar basis, this must mean that pornography in general is a 4 billion dollar a year business, about a tenth that of the military budget, with presumably some half-million or million Americans working in the industry! What is absolutely incredible is that this kind of self-evident, blatant, hysterical lying by publicity-seeking cops, DAs and fifth-rate journalists never seems to go unchallenged; <ARCHIVIST'S NOTE: the authors probably meant that these things "always seem to go unchallenged;"> the rule seems to be that any kind of lie about kids and sex is acceptable (might even get you a government grant) as long as you paint it black enough. SOURCE: San Francisco Examiner, 27 July, 1982; New York Times, 6 June, 1982 HOW IT'S DONE IN THE US of A - Part Three The fruit of the emergency American national effort to "get" NAMBLA and destroy its leadership began to be plucked last summer by the media, politicians and cops. Biggest winner of all the red-blooded virtue vendors was a certain Nassau County (New York) Assistant District Attorney named Elaine J. Stack, who not only gained adulatory publicity in East Coast press but was allowed to indulge her instinct for child abuse and showed an imagination in it which would give Densen-Gerber, perhaps even some latter-day Caligula, an idea or two. First came the trial of Martin Swithinbank in May, presided over by a homophobic, hanging judge (a recent sentence of his was for 125 years) by the name of Edward Baker. Stack had been a veritable Ilsa Koch in her abuse of two families of teenagers (the Bakers and the Johnsons) in the 10 months following the arrest of Swithinbank on 11 July, 1981. Now, in the courtroom, a 14-year-old witness by the name of Matthew wasn't producing quite the effect she wanted (he was obviously unhappy at -- illegally -- being made to testify against his long-time friend), so she had the judge declare a five-minute recess. According to one NAMBLA observer, she "seized Matthew by the arm, and dragged him off, out of the courtroom, and into a back room, where she no doubt continued the threats and other oppression so well documented by the boys' reports to NAMBLA and by the official police reports themselves (they admit to grilling Matthew and his brother for twelve hours straight on the day after the raid, without parents or legal counsel present, and bringing them home at 3 in the morning). When she returned, ten minutes later, with a very reluctant and distressed Matthew, she had so drilled him on what he was to say that he did come out with some statements about sex between Martin and his older brother, and Martin and himself, that sounded rehearsed and unbelievable (jury members, questioned later, after the trial, said that they did not believe them)." A number of interesting things came out at the trial. The FBI had been investigating NAMBLA for over a year before the raid on Swithinbank's home took place. There was no legitimate complaint made by any private citizen against Swithinbank: the closest thing was one neighbour saying he thought he saw a naked boy in the house. The cost of the year-long surveillance by city, county, state and federal personnel on Swithinbank and his acquaintances was well in excess of one million dollars. What probably finally persuaded the jury to convict was a short videotape showing Matthew and others involved in oral sex. This seems to have been a spur-of-the-moment home taping which Swithinbank evidently forgot to erase and was seized in the raid. Swithinbank plea-bargained and was sentenced on July 8 to seven and a half to fifteen years. He is now languishing in infamous Attica Prison, the toughest in New York ==================================== Pan, Number 13, pp.14-15 ------------------------------------ <p.14:> State and one of the worst in the US outside of the Bible Belt and the South. It would seem, as in all of these witch-hunt trials, that a number of errors were committed by Judge Baker, and it is possible that an appeal will be successful. The next event was the arrest in Paramus, New Jersey on June 18, of Jim Cooper, who had been handling publications for NAMBLA. According to a short article by Wallace Hamilton (author of Kevin, see PAN 7, page 26 & PAN 8, page 31) in the New York Native, "The teenage informant in Cooper's case was closely associated with other youths who had frequented Swithinbank's home and had thus come under police surveillance, and the interrogation of the youth led to Cooper's arrest on 50 counts of 'aggravated sexual assault'. The prosecutor's office did not explain how the youth had withstood 49 aggravated assaults and still came back for more." Contrary to some rumors, the authorities did not take away the NAMBLA membership list when they raided Cooper's home, but they did acquire a "floppy disk" with information about orders for publications (the disk was coded and latest information is that the authorities hadn't broken the code). Cooper is free on $35,000 cash bail. He has been doing a lot of volunteer work for NAMBLA over the last two years and hopes sympathizers can contribute toward the cost of his legal defence. Donations should be sent to Jim Cooper, Box 73, Paramus, NJ 07652. The trial of Karl Ahlers in Kingston, NY (see PAN 10, page 16) was finally staged on the second week of July and was marked by the usual American media sexual hysteria. To begin with, all witnesses, including the Johnson boys who had been coerced into testifying against Ahlers, were issued with subpoenas on the Friday before the long weekend of the Fourth of July (American Independence Day, thus one of the principal holidays) demanding appearance in court on the following Tuesday. The Johnsons, it seems, had been previously told that the trial would be in August and the younger generation was on a camping trip in Vermont and could not be located immediately. When the fateful Tuesday arrived and the boys hadn't called in, the authorities threatened to jail their mother until her sons were produced. NAMBLA's <p.15:> David Groat had been working with Mrs. Johnson ever since she and her children had complained to NAMBLA in July about police/prosecutor abuse of the family. Groat offered to drive to Vermont to pick up the Johnson boys himself, but this struck terror into the heart of Assistant District Attorney Donald Williams (would Groat try to de-terrify the kids, inform them of their rights as human beings?), and the state actually hired a private airplane to fly at public expense to an airfield in Vermont and bring the boys back, after which they were incarcerated, <the above text continues on p.16> <coloured box (sidebar) spanning pp.14-15:> <p.14:> Mr. John McLaughlin Newark Star Ledger Newark, New Jersey June 19, 1982 Dear Sir: 1 recently read your article that appeared in the Ledger for June 6, 1982. I am writing to you since I feel that I am well qualified to do so for the following reasons: No.1 I am one of the "victims" in the case that you wrote about. No.2, I have been intimately involved in this case since it started. No.3, four cousins of mine and four close friends are other "victims". No.4, I was 16 years old at the time this case broke. I do not know who gave you your information for that article, but whoever they are fed you with nothing but lies, and you accepted these lies as truth without any further investigation, and printed them! First and foremost, the "kids" involved in this case are from about 12 years old to the oldest, my cousin who is 18, not 8 to 14 as you printed. According to the press release put out by the Nassau County D.A.'s office when the case broke (July 11, 1981), signed by a person named Grilli, those 300 films you refer to (Oliver Twist to The Devil and Miss Jones), were 300 videotapes of pornography. Who is right here? Have you checked on that? Someone lied somewhere. The men involved in this case were not "all . . . card-carrying members" of NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, not the North American Man Boy Lovers Association as Ms. Stack loves to call it. And, by the <p.15:> way, they do not have any slogan as you quote: "Get 'em before eight or it's too late." I resent the fact that you printed the lie where you quote Stack as saying: "Most of them have learning disadvantages of one kind or another." There is only one of us that has a learning disadvantage, and his problem is dyslexia, which you should research before shooting your mouth off about. In fact, one of the younger boys would put most adults to shame with his learning abilities . . . being able to read off rows of Roman numerals . . . playing chess with a computer, and winning . . .can you or Stack do this? The other kids and I have had many hours of discussion on this case, and it is the opinion of all of us and our parents that we "can't forget". No, we can't forget about the harassment, the threats, the coercion, the fear that was dished out to us by Stack and other authorities in this case. We all knew Martin for over five years before these moralists (Stack and the rest of them) entered our lives. Our lives had been peaceful, content and happy. Since the advent of their interference we have had nothing but suffering and fear. The young boy that I spoke about two paragraphs above had been an A student in school up to July 11, 1981. Since then he has been failing. One 13-year-old was called '"queer" and "faggot" so many times by the authorities that he recently went out to prove his manhood and got a 15-year-old pregnant, got so despondent over it that he contemplated suicide. The 18-year-old has deteriorated so much in the last few months that he sits and stares at the wall most of the time. These things started after these kids were "protected" by Stack and her ilk. The other kids and myself were never forced into doing anything that we did not want to do (outside of helping with the dishes once in a while or helping clean up a mess that one of us made) by either Martin or any of his friends. As far as Stack's talk about us kids having "very serious sexual hangups", it is very obvious to us and probably to most open-minded psychiatrists and other professionals that she and her cohorts are the ones with the sexual hangups . . . why else would she go to such lengths to force kids into saying that others had forced them into doing something sexual, when it reality we were doing things we wanted to do, and enjoying them? Stack herself wrote one of the mothers a letter in which she threatens to have the mother and the kids locked up if they wouldn't co-operate with the authorities! This is justice in America? All of us kids have had quite an experience during the last year, and it has resulted in extremely negative results. No, we won't be able to forget . . . we will shudder with hate every time we think of these sick people and what they have done to us, Martin and our friends and families in the name of justice and morality. I, and the others, too, want an answer to the question that Martin raised at his trial: We "don't understand why children don't have rights", either. Why not? Yours truly, Harold R. Baker, III <end of coloured box (sidebar)> ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.16 ------------------------------------ <this text is continued from the top of p.15> under police guard, in a motel (where their mother was also being held incommunicato <sic> as prisoner.) As for Groat, Williams threatened him with charges of interfering with one of "their" witnesses - and kidnapping! Meanwhile the Bakers, also state witnesses from New Jersey, hadn't appeared at the appointed time, so the prosecutor had the boys extradited from New Jersey, and the police "literally dragged them away kicking and screaming to the same motel, under guard," according to Groat. At the trial NAMBLA itself was as much the defendant as Ahlers. At a previous Grand Jury hearing the Johnson boys had all, after much duress and coercion, given incriminating statements which they now wished to deny, but ADA Donald Williams threatened that if they changed their testimony he would have Mrs. Johnson and her boy-friend (she is divorced) locked up. So, although the boy's and youths had all planned immediately to tell the judge then about the threats and abuse they had been subjected to, they felt compelled to corroborate their earlier statements, although what they said was vague and conflicting in the extreme. However, Ahlers' counsel called the boys a second time, this time as witnesses for the defence, at which time they did testify as to the police and prosecutor abuse and stated that no sex had actually taken place. In addition, Mrs. Johnson said that they were all ardent nudists, that of course she knew her sons ran around the house naked. The obvious move of ADA Williams was to claim that Groat, as one of those well-known NAMBLA monsters, had made everyone change his testimony. So the judge had to decide which set of testimony he was going to believe, that elicited by the ADA or that by the defence attorney. He chose the former, and found Ahlers guilty of some 9 charges of 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree sodomy. While he was awaiting sentencing, Ahlers, unlike most "criminals", was receiving some interesting letters from his "victims": I am sorry what happened to you and when you get settled down I will visit you -- take care and we all love you. 'Bye -- of course with love -R. I hope you get out very soon. We all miss you a lot. I hope they don't sentence you at all and let you go. You deserve to be let go. Don't get down on yourself. Keep Truckin' big guy. Keep fighting. Don't let go of them until they let you go. 'Bye. -B. Just a few lines to let you know how things are going. I love you so much and I wish you were here. I love you Karl. I hope you get bail cause I'm going nuts without you here. Hopefully Joe (the attorney) will talk the judge into letting you out on bail. Let's hope the work you're doing gets the District Attorney out of a job soon. If the judge does sentence you after your speech, I hope you hang the judge by his balls. Sorry this letter is so short. Love. -Harold R. Baker III This same Harold Baker had been involved in the Swithinbank affair. When a local Neanderthal vigilante reporter on the Newark Star Ledger by the name of John McLaughlin wrote a scurrilous article about Swithinbank, NAMBLA and child-sex, Harold sent a letter to the editor. Of course the Star Ledger didn't print Harold's letter, but we do herewith (see box) <ARCHIVIST'S NOTE: pp.14-15>. Karl Ahlers was given a sentence by Judge Francis Vogt of 18 to 48 years of imprisonment and supporters who wish to write to him can do so (Karl Ahlers, 82A-4134-2-C-18, Box F, Fishkill, NY 12524, USA). He will be first eligible for parole two years before the next millenium <sic> begins. Ahlers is appealing and, considering the irregularities of the trial, is given a fair chance of success once the matter gets out of the lower court and popular press. Harold Baker is taking care of Ahlers' house pending the appeal. Contributions in this important process are needed and should be sent to Karl Ahlers Defense Fund, Box 29, Chichester, NY 12416, USA. SOURCES: Newark Star Ledger, 6 June, 1982; Newsday, 28 May, 1982; New York Daily News, 28 May, 1982; New York Native, 5-18 July, 1982 ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.17 ------------------------------------ FLASHBACK by Kevin Esser "Get the water out and you can see better," I advise. "Believe me. I wouldn't lie." And so the young dude with the red headband wipes his eyes of the windy tears. "Yeah. You're right, man. But then you know that." A German Shepherd lopes by like a tornado on a leash, dragging sunburnt boy oh-so-bright in yellow and blue and flame red, feathery hair singing in the musical breeze. Musical. Tunes floating to Olympus on furry wings. Stopping at our balcony to say hello and goodby. "Look at that sky." My roommate nods. "Nice, man. You're right." Goose bumps and mororcycles <sic> eating at dreams just beneath the surface. Then vanishing as the breeze tears away a piece of sun and coats the balcony and campus and bicycles in milky way of shimmering yellow . . . too hot. Bob Dylan pumps out a Tom Thumb Blue with raison <sic>-coated windpipe of almonds and alfalfa. Smell and taste the jingle-jangle rain and bourbon cutting like broken beer bottles through brain tissue. . . . "Nice." The young dude in red headband squints and licks his lips of all demons and sun gods . . . lurking. Looks up. Clouds exploding in puffs of smoke. Sun polishing the blue chrome of heaven. Don't look up. Too dangerous. Might forget where you are. Much too risky. Look down. Tennis rackets scraping the sky and, Christ, I remember what's happening now. Dogs screwing and, man, you know it's spring! And boys in sweaty shorts, sun-tanned legs, freckled shoulders peeling under laser sun. Balls thumping on red clay, kicking up dust. Melee of soccer. . . . Nimble lads in emerald-green, ruby, lemon -- white knee socks -- hair flopping, damp behind the ears -- sweet whiff of sweat. Primal whoops in schoolyards, tearing up grass with dirty sneakers . . . and wait. Cold spray of showers teasing lathered bellies, hips, pale thighs. Swirl of suds. Glance down, brother, then up. Towels sliding in slow anticipation, tucked here, draped there, slipping away down young brown legs. Standing in pool of tepid water, dripping, feeling the eyes from behind. A jiggle of flesh , still wet, pink, then turn away. Hurry. . . . OK. "It is hot, though," I sigh. And, yeah, that's right, too. Hot. Skin the colour of rouge on whore's cheek. But you know that's not right. He said so, didn't he? He glances around. "Now here's the solution." "To what?" "To everything." Brushing back hair and grimacing as the sitar wails. "Eat. Always eat. And play. Have fun. And when you see something you like, smile." "Sounds very simple." "But it's not, you know. No one ever does. it. It's much too complex, really, for the average chump." So watch the languid princes with honey curls, strutting, snug denim cut-offs frayed above the knees. Procession of beauty too rich for use . . .Romeos with codpieces bulging. I watch, tastefully, eyes darting behind sunglasses in discreet lust. Every little bit helps. Smile at slender brown cupid in lime T-shirt cut away below the nipples, loose white gym shorts stained in back with dagger of sweat -- sway of hips, tilt of head, finger exploring satin belly. . . . It can't be. Tell me it ain't so . . . as he bends over, keeping knees stiff, to tie a shoe. Then a sly glance over the shoulder, lips moist, hinting at smiles and whispered lies. Daylight. Moonbeams. Dawn. Some dew . . . some ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.18 ------------------------------------ <illustration> don't. . . .don't give in. Never. "You're wrong, chum," I conclude. "Am I? "Sure you're wrong. This is all wrong! And that's what's wrong. It's so hard. I can hardly breathe sometimes. Like now. I'm all confused. Inside of a brick. Struggling. And no one sees. And if they did, I wouldn't even know." Kites flapping in circles. Walking. People always walking. And shouting, and braying the same tune as yesterday and yesterday and yes, today. The music plays, but you've heard it. Last summer. And it's half a lifetime old. Way down. Twinkle, baby, twinkle. "You are in trouble, then." "Sure, baby, I'm in trouble. And that's all that keeps me going. Because my troubles are mine, and you can't have 'em." "Maybe they're not just yours, my friend." Do a handstand, and walk five steps to the right. Or left. Now bend over and quack. . . . "Who can tell," I wonder. "Maybe I can." White shorts. Blue shorts. White T-shirt. Blue striped. Smile. Don't you dare. Or do you? "I doubt it. But I don't really. And that's my trouble." "Ah!" "I'm not really here. Or if I am, I shouldn't be. Or I should, but I don't want to be. Is that fair?" "Not really," he informs me. "You don't have that right. Nobody does." But I see the barefoot scamp in faded jeans, holes at the knees. Too-tight zipper pulled up, not quite, leaving peephole of white. Fishing pole and baseball cap. Tramping through sun-mottled forest in afternoon cicada-rasping heat. And the tree accepts gentle little-boy splash of gold as he pauses, whistling, gazing down . . . lazy fish-flop in solitude, reflection of black curls, yellow curls, bending together, almost touching, watching, eyes blinking rapt in summer silent sun. "How do you ride those things?" No answer, of course. But bicycles zoom, crisscrossed. Youngster with sun-pinkened nose, damp cheeks, stops suddenly, grasping handlebars, hops three steps before catching his balance. Stands straddling his bike, grinning and panting in sweaty puffs, jeans stretched to busting as he stoops to touch my shadow. . . . Crouching, splashing paint on the fence, golden arms speckled white, the boy glances around, tips back straw hat with nudge of his finger, smiles. . . . Remember the smile . . . and the yellow sun that once exploded through the blackness of the balcony -- I remember. Now dead. A bit of orange, too. Or is it red? When I paint my masterpiece. . . . "Well?" I turn. "Well?" "Well, what is your problem?" "Are." "Are?" ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.19 ------------------------------------ "What are my," dog sniffing at a lamp post, "problems." "Well?" "I like legs." "Really?" "Lovely hairless young legs." "Not too strange." "I love to look at them." "When exactly?" "When they're moving. Or standing still. You know, it really doesn't matter. But they've gotta be young. Slim." "How attractive." "Of course, man. Beauty. Eternal verities, and all that. That's what keeps me going. And solar complexities. And football games. And days turning into evenings and nights without anybody noticing. Stars, moon, the whole thing. Very rhapsodic." "Yes." Smell of young feet in year-old tennis shoes . . . slippery . . . damp . . . dirty toes wiggling free. Arrows point the way toward salvation. Remember. "Shall we go inside?" "Why?" "Wind. Getting chilly." Si, si. Hot. Very, very good! "Well, yeah, if you really want to." Standing and watch your head. I shrug. "It's useless, man. I can feel it. I'm all knotted up inside. Little balls of thread doing <sic> nowhere. Ravelled up. The sleeve of care . . . you see?" "Say more." "I don't see why I should. Who cares, really? In the end, I mean. I could use a cherry pie. Or at least a piece. But I'm too lazy, you see? Can't even buy food anymore. Too lazy. And too cheap. So what am I waiting for?" "Tell me." "You're great, man. Or should I call you 'Sigmund'? You need a little grey beard, you know? You'd be a smash. A sensation. Which reminds me, what am I doing here?" "You're living, babe." "Yeah, I suppose. You should know. But it really doesn't matter. I'm living on a treadmill, that's the thing. . . ." So think of the old swimming hole, sap! (I think, therefore I thwim.) Eager shedding of damp T-shirts, tattered blue jeans. Flash of sun on copper-slick limbs. Brown ripple of flesh beneath pale green water. Legs flexing in languid rhythm. Glisten of knees breaking the surface. Sturdy boys sun-browned and grinning, stretching up arms -- smooth beneath -- to stroke the sky. Pants hanging in wrinkled defiance on "No Swimming" sign as sleek pups revel. Let the water caress, son . . . velvet fingers, so warm . . . and two boys, paddling lazily in place, glance down giggling through the shimmering play of water. . . . Blond boy floats on his back in sparkle of sunlight, eyes closed, water beaded on cocoa cheeks, feet gently treading, hears a giggle and opens his eyes . . . glances down where his friend's gaze leads him, past glisten of lean brown belly. . . . Slender lad in snug swimming trunks the colour of fresh blood -- saunters away up the beach, kicking at sand with brown toes as I watch in sweaty charade of indifference -- shoulders moving in lazy feline roll, stoops to grasp a shell, raven curls unruly in fickle breeze . . . a fine sparkle of sweat on his bare arms, bare legs, cooler now as evening shade deepens -- shivers, hugs himself, looks around in slow dissolve, lips parted . . . all breath stops . . . and two boys, cousins, stand up after lounging in noon sun, brushing sand from their backsides, dark thighs powdered with dried salt . . . stealing a downward glance, grinning, beginning to shiver in eager remembrance of young fingers teasing . . . then a shy, boyish caress. Enough! "I feel like my insides are stuffed with bread and sugar. All sticky and messed-up and nowhere to go. So futile. I keep getting knocked down and standing up and getting knocked down on my ass again. What happens if I don't get up? That's what really worries the hell out of me. What if I just don't get up?" Young lad ambles past in powder-blue splendour. Flying mane of spun gold. I get up. And up. . . . Amen. ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.20 ------------------------------------ THE DANCE OF THE GODS by David James Late in 1923 a young and strikingly handsome BBC talk-show producer by the name of Joe Ackerley left England for the obscure Indian state of Chatarpur to become, for six months, secretary-companion to its Maharajah. Ackerley was by gifts, background and temperament well suited for what he was destined to find there. His guardsman father had been bought out of the Army twice, at ages 16 and 21, by older men who had fallen in love with him. Ackerley pere soon grew out of this, however, and became a solid heterosexual bigamist, fathering and supporting two familes, neither of which knew of the existence of the other. "I was a cherubic little boy," Joe Ackerley wrote in his autobiography, My Father and Myself, "with large blue starry eyes, and at the public school older boys soon began to make advances to me. In my very first term there the head of my house, who seemed to me more like a man than a boy, used to sit on my bed in the darkness, night after night, begging to be allowed in." Ackerley rejected these advances, but fell in love with a boy called Snook and published an unequivocal poem about his feelings in the school magazine (he forestalled official wrath by slyly entitling it Millstones!) He went on to Cambridge and thence to the War, in which he was seriously wounded and which provided background for his successful stage drama of 1925, The Prisoners of War. In a foreshadowing of coming literary themes the hero of this play reacts when someone says he does not care for the fair sex by snapping, "The fair sex. Which is that?" Three years earlier he had met the novelist E.M. Forster. Forster himself had spent a half-year as secretary-companion to one Indian Maharajah and wrote a book about his experiences (The Hills of Devi, Arnold, 1953). After a long and confused correspondence Ackerley's application was accepted and he arrived in Chatarpur in December, 1923. The Maharajah proved to be a strange man who looked every one of his fifty-eight years. Forster's biographer P.N. Furbank described him as a little hobbling figure "excessively ugly with a face like a Pekinese, <sic> his nose being completely bridgeless and his tongue a nasturtium-colour from habitual betel-chewing." Forster himself described him as "incompetent, ruse, exasperating, endearing" but acknowledged his innocence and charm. It was Ackerley, however, who was to immortalize him. It soon became clear to Ackerley that the Maharajah was a boy-lover who had set up a private theatre for which he composed miracle plays, little dance-dramas of endlessly repeated incidents performed by beautiful young boys. In one respect these productions were remarkably original: they arose from his own mind entirely, for there was no genuine Indian tradition out of which they could have grown. He called the boys his "gods" and his recruitment and training of them were a great delight to him, and a great trial. Ackerley's Hindoo Holiday, published 8 years later in 1932, is a whimsical and loving portrait of this wonderful man (called in the book the Mahajarah <sic> of Chokrapur), a major comic figure presiding over an anarchic Gilbertian court. "He wanted someone to love him," the book begins, and it chronicles as it unfolds the Maharajah's confusion over his feelings about boys. When a British lady shows enthusiasm for the beauty of his robes he says, "I do not like them. I like people." He complains to Ackerley that he needs "a good, wise and beautiful friend", and when the two of them sit ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.21 ------------------------------------ watching the colours of the setting sun he waves a regretful hand: "I want a friend like that." His "gods" offer the Maharajah his principal consolation. At the time of Ackerley's employment there are five, ranging in age from 12 to 16 (17 is considered retirement age). The Maharajah takes Ackerley to his private room, all gauze and cushions, from which they can watch the dancers unobserved. "And you must tell me which you like best," the Maharajah says. Krishna was dressed in bright green and wore bells around his ankles, which indicated that he was not a lily of the field like Rama, but was able, at any rate, to spin; he began his performance by singing from his throne in a pleasant, rather monotonous voice, gesticulating awkwardly from side to side with stiff brown hands. Then he rose to his feet and performed a fine exhilarating dance, beginning with heel taps and slow, stiff, dignified gyrations, which got faster and faster until he sank to the carpet and whirled like a top on his knees." The Maharajah's greatest infatuation, however, is with a twelve-year-old boy called Napoleon the Third. The Maharajah first sees him dancing in a travelling company of players. "Thirty years I have dreamed of that face," he exclaims. "It is entangled in my heart." The boy's uncle asks an outrageous price and the boy is sold instead to another dancing company in Calcutta, whence the Maharajah arranges to have him kidnapped. He was diminutive and dark, with very large eyes and an air of self-possession. A streak of white paint decorated his forehead, a single pearl his nose, and his cheeks were vividly coloured with vermilion. After a time he danced, and danced very prettily, with tremulous, almost imperceptible movements of his head and hands, like a bird fluttering its wings, and the gold tissue, shaken from his whirling skirt, filled the air around him with glittering dust. The British Political Agent is, not surprisingly, somewhat disturbed by the Maharajah's hobby. When he is disinclined to pay its costs with public funds the Maharajah accuses him of "political interference with my luxuries". Ackerley, meanwhile, is amusing himself with the Maharajah's slightly older teenage entourage and, despite a number of excisions he made in the Hindoo Holiday manuscript before it was published, Ackerley's friend Forster felt that, in these descriptions, "Joe went too far". Told that the Brahman caste are the lips of God, just as the lowly Sudra caste are the feet of God, Ackerley asks, "How can I worship my God better than by kissing his feet?" And certainly before the end of the book a good number of feet have been kissed. The two principal objects of Ackerley's interest are the Maharajah's valet and clerk. Sharma, the slim young valet, is first encountered bringing a hookah for his master to smoke. His face is handsome, fairer than usual and lighted by large glowing dark eyes, which every now and then rested curiously upon me. Sharma is "the Maharajah's lover-boy" and Ackerley judges it impolitic to ask of him any more than the occasional kiss. <photograph> ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.22 ------------------------------------ Narayan, the clerk, is just as handsome, "with very gentle eyes" (Ackerley always mentions the eyes) and his demeanour is reserved, thoughtful, attentive. He falls in love with Ackerley, and towards the end of the book there is the kind of exchange travelling boy-lovers have been having with their boys since the beginning of time: "I want to love you very much," he said. <photograph> "You mean you do love me very much." "I want to." "Then why not?" "You will go to England and I shall be sorry. But you will not be sorry. I am only a boy and I shall be sorry." Ackerley writes that he kissed Narayan on the lips again, "and this time he did not draw away". There is also Ackerley's stocky little servant-boy Habib, a dusky boy of about twelve, with thick brown lips, eyes like wet toffee, and very dirty feet. Most boy-lovers will agree with Norman Douglas's assessment: Hindoo Holiday "might with advantage have been lengthened to twice its size." Evelyn Waugh said it was a book difficult to praise temperately. The Aga Kahn <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: Aga Khan> wrote that it showed "more understanding of India than any other book by an Englishman, including Kipling". He even named one of his race-horses after it. In the last years before his death in 1967 Joe Ackerley took a number of trips in Europe and Asia which, according to his published letters, convinced him that his sexual preference was changing; he was drawn now to boys rather than men. In them we can read of his attempts to smuggle Athenian boys into his hotel, seduce Japanese boys in Tokyo bars. There is a feeling of exuberance and gratitude in them which puts one in mind of Wilde's letters from his post-prison exile. He complains to a friend, I don't think you ever took me to a Secondary or even a Public School or Borstal. My tastes, I now realise, lie in that direction. Whatever his sexual regrets, however, he was by all accounts a charming and loveable man, and posthumously we can honour him for having penned one of the undisputed modern masterpieces of boy-love. Hindoo Holiday was published by Chatto and Windus in 1932 and My Father and Myself by The Bodley Head in 1968. Both were also Penguin paperbacks. Ackerley's Letters were published by Duckworth in 1975. ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.23 ------------------------------------ BOOKS In the world of contemporary boy-love literature, one American writer, and really only one, can claim serious attention as an artist. No matter that the vein he mines is narrow, that he choses comedy as his tool: the vein is of remarkable purity and the comedy is riotously funny just because it cuts close to human truth. Casimir Dukahz, in twenty years, has become a classic. A Dukahz book is a blend of the verbal legerdemain of Nabokov with the American tall tale. It is a string of erotic episodes linked with the slightest of plots. The finely tuned, intricate counterpoint of the first-person narrative (irony within irony, puns, invented words and word sequences which tease the eye or crash upon the eardrums) is in strong relief to the natural, slangy, four-letter-word-filled speech of the many boys who romp, sleep and mate with the scheming but at heart totally vulnerable "Duke". There is simply nothing like a Dukahz book in the whole range of erotic literature. As a reader you find yourself laughing, aroused and reaching for a dictionary all at the same time. In the process of acquiring The Coltsfoot Press we have also acquired the remaining hardback copies of Vice-Versa, Dukahz's second novel. His first book, The Asbestos Diary, has long been out of print and we are producing a paperback edition of it, due out in December (see the December issue of P.A.N. for further information). Finally, Dukahz has written a third book called It's a Boy! and we hope to be publishing this in paperback format early in 1983. One of the most popular pieces in Panthology One was The Tale of Ahmet, the Treasurer's son. Its author, Asger Lund, is a prolific Dane who over the past ten years has penned a detective novel, a space-fiction novel and a thriller, as well as many short stories and fables -- all with a boy-love theme, and all written originally in Danish, which he then translated into English. This month we have brought out a paperback of yet another novel of his, The Boy and the Dagger, a kind of boys' adventure tale for boy-lovers set in 1592 and beautifully illustrated by 15 pen and ink drawings by his close friend and associate Richard Steen. The story is of a "lansquenet" (16th Century sword-for-hire) who meets a 14-year-old boy in a German inn of dubious reputation. It tells how they fall in love and become involved in the politico-religious intrigue which was tearing apart Europe at the time. The trail of their adventure leads them through France and Spain to North Africa; along the way they meet several other man-boy couples in "The League of the Dagger". Sword fights and acts of love follow quickly, each upon the heels of the other, until the tumultuous resolution at the end. Like most of the stories in Panthology One, The Boy and the Dagger is intended as light reading, bedside material, a tale simply to brighten the day (or the dreams) of the English-reading boy-lover and makes no pretence of establishing a "paedophile aesthetic" or even offering profound commentary upon boy-love as a phenomenon. Gerard Marot is a French photographer/book producer publishing paperback boy nude studies. His most recent is Anatomie du Dormeur (Anatomy of the Sleeper) which features a number of boys approaching and in the throes of ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.24 ------------------------------------ <advertisement:> ASGER LUND'S <illustration> THE BOY AND THE DAGGER a boy-love historical novel Prices, including packing and postage (airmail outside of Europe): AUS$ 7.50, OSch 105, BFr 300, CAN$ 8.25, DKr 55, IR£ 4.50, FMk 35, FFr 45, Drch 485, LIt 9,000, Yen 1800, HFl 16, NZ$ 9.75, NKr 45, Esc 630, Rand 7.50, Ptas 700, SKr 45, SFr 13, £3.50, US$ 7.50, DM 16; Cent. America & N. Africa US$ 8; all other countries US$ 9. <end of advertisement> <this text continues from p.23:> puberty against a black background. There are some comments (in French) about the aesthetic of the boy nude by Rene Scherer. It is all very serious, safely (for US and English purchasers) artistic. There is only one smile (well, the beginnings of a smile) in the whole book. There is no mention of boy-love or sexuality, so it is doubtful whether customs or postal officials could argue that this is pornography. What is depicted here is not the boy as a spontaneous creature of enthusiasm and energy, but the ideal boy dreamed of and posed by a particular adult. The French price is 100 francs and the book is obtainable from Editions Imagine, 20 lie de Migneaux, F-78300 Poissy, France. <advertisement:> <illustration> BOYS IN ART Statues Reproductions of paintings Art prints Calenders <sic> New catalogue: DM 5 (Overseas: US$5.- Airmail) PojkART Verlag Jugend in der Kunst Harry Turne Hogenbergstr. 16 - D-8000 Munchen 21 Tel. 089/5 80 30 74-75 <end of advertisement> ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.25 ------------------------------------ SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION Prices in the currency of each country include postage (airmail outside of Europe). All copies are sent in a plain, sealed envelope via printed matter rates. For the current copy of P.A.N.: AUS$4, OSch 60, BFr 160, CAN$ 5, DKr 30, IRE 3, FMk 20, FFr 25, Drch 250, Lit 5,000, Yen 1000, HFl 8, NZ$ 5, NKr 25, Esc 350, Rand 6, Ptas 400, SKr 25, SFr 8, £ 2.25, US$ 5, DM 8; all other countries US$ 5. For 5 copies (one-year subscription): AUS$ 20, OSch 300, BFr 800, CAN$ 25, DKr 150, IRE 15, FMk 110, FFr 125, Drch 1250, Lit 25,000, Yen 5000, HFl 40, NZ$ 25, NKr 125, Esc 1750, Rand 30, Ptas 2000, SKr 125, SFr 40, £11.25, US$ 25, DM 40; all other countries US$ 25. (Many back issues are still in stock: price is the same as above for a single copy.) How to make payments to Coltsfoot/Spartacus <here follows a table listing the various countries and payment options> .............................................. SUBSCRIPTION FORM SPARTACUS, P.O. Box 3496 NL-1001 AG Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS Please enter my one-year (5-issue) subscription to Paedo Alert News Name ______________________________ Address ___________________________ I enclose ....... for a one-year subscription, beginning with number ............ ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.26 ------------------------------------ BOYCAUGHT by Dr. Edward Brongersma Child sexual abuse by neglect When, for the first time, in 1962, C. Henry Kempe and his associates described the "battered child syndrome", the public became suddenly aware of the number of young victims whose bones are broken, skin scarred, skulls smashed by cruel or impatient parents. Everyone had to face the alarming frequency with which this horrible and disgusting crime of child abuse was committed. As soon as the problem was studied more intensely, it was gradually realized that there was still another form of this crime, less sensational, less conspicuous: guilty neglect. Children are exposed to hunger or cold by parents quite well enough off to provide them with the necessary food or clothing. Children are intentionally left alone to play at the side of busy motor-roads. Their suffering may well be far more intense than the pain caused by a blow or a burning cigarette, as it is continuous over a long period of time. And then a third, even more insidious form was recognized: mental child abuse. This, too, can be intentional and violent. There was the physician who for some reason disliked his five-year-old son and daily drilled him on long and difficult words quite beyond his childhood capabilities and ordered him to repeat them. Failing, of course, the boy was told he was stupid and bad. It is easy to see how enormously damaging this kind of cruelty can be. Besides turning the child's life into hell, it deprives him of the last sparkle of self-confidence, is likely to make him shy and timid and dumb for the rest of his days. Much better to have a leg broken in an outburst of paternal anger. than to be helplessly exposed, year in year out, to an authority which makes you believe you're a lazy imbecile! Other parents and teachers cause mental damage in children not because they want to harm them but only because they are unthinking. This unintentional mental abuse is a fourth form of mistreatment. Never say to a boy, after he makes a careless mistake, "You're stupid": he might believe you and, if it happens often enough, give up hope and ambition to learn better. Say, rather, "That's a stupid mistake. If you'd considered the problem more seriously you wouldn't have given such an answer." And never forget -- this is even more important -- that a child needs to feel that he is loved, that he is safe, that he is cared for. The unloved child will never be a loving child, a loving man. He may become a hardboiled businessman but he'll never be a nice friend, a good husband, a fine father. Abuse by neglect is the killing of every human feeling. Sexual elements may be present in all these forms of child abuse, although they are sometimes partially camouflaged. There was the boy who wrote me about his life in a German home for neglected children: he had very well ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.27 ------------------------------------ observed that the proctor who caned him for punishment always got an erection when he did. And then in the recent discussions in England about whether the caning of schoolboys should be permitted, the intensity of the emotions of those attempting to justify the practice beautifully revealed the sexual motives which lie at the root of this form of child abuse. Evidently addicted teachers wouldn't abandon their cherished and lustful hobby. In other cases the abuse is more frankly sexual. There is rape and indecent assault. They may be -- of course -- very traumatising, but abuse of authority in order to satisfy sexual needs, while less violent, is an even more damaging form. Children who are well-behaved, disciplined by their parents to obey and honor adult people, are -- and this is often not realized -- much easier prey to child-molesters than the unruly ones: when an adult orders them to have sex with him, they simply don't dare refuse. Being compelled to submit, forced into resignation like a slave, inflicts much more lasting and serious damage on the victim's self-esteem than being conquered and subdued in a violent struggle. All these forms of sexual abuse have been known, and practiced, since the origin of mankind. It is only recently, however, that we're beginnning <sic> to perceive that here too, besides intentional, overt, active child sexual abuse, there can also be child sexual abuse by neglect. "It is not good for man to be alone," the Bible says on one of its first pages. Man is not made to be alone; he needs someone else, not only spiritually but also physically, someone with whom to bring his body in contact and finally to unite with it. It is therefore of vital importance for the young to learn how to do this, and the human child learns everything, as we plainly see, by observation and experience. Until about two centuries ago, this sexual learning process of children posed no problems. All over Europe, until the eighteenth century, the whole family -- father, mother, children, servants, guests -- slept in one big room, everybody quite naked when it was warm enough and naked beneath the covers when it wasn't. There was no need to explain to children the 'facts of life': they saw them. They saw the difference between male and female, between children and adult people, they saw the changes of puberty, they saw sexual intercourse, they saw birth, they saw old age and death. There were no books for sexual instruction because there was no need for them. Moreover, adults discussed these things openly whether children were present or not, and they used what we now call "vulgar" words in doing so because they hadn't yet got the strange idea that things become more decent if you use a Latin word for them. Parents and friends fondled the sexual organs of children because children evidently liked this. No one saw any harm in it. Children belonged to the same world as their elders. In the last two centrues <sic> our world has drastically changed. Society became stratified into age groups, each with its different way of life. Middle-class and gentry started to become ashamed of nakedness and sex. The growth of science and technology made necessary many more years of schooling and apprenticeship before a young man became capable of earning enough money to nourish a family of his own. Longer and longer grew the period between physical puberty and marriage. There was now no legal outlet for his sexual drive (conception couldn't be prevented until recently): it therefore had to be suppressed. The simplest way to suppress it was to deny its existence. A good, well-educated boy had no sexual desires; he was "innocent", asexual. Hence the increasingly violent campaigns against sexual instruction, masturbation and sexplay of any kind whatsoever. Every lie, every deception was permitted if only it kept youth from sex. The tide is turning now. It started to turn when anticonception made it possible to separate sex from begetting children. Once again sex could be seen simply as an expression of love, or as ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.28 ------------------------------------ <photograph> only delightful play. Homosexuality gradually ceases to be immoral, or sick, or deviant, and becomes respectable. At the same time we are becoming aware of the criminal sexual abuse of children by neglect -- criminal not because of the personality of those who commit the crime (well-meaning but overly timid parents and teachers) but criminal because of the unnatural, perverted philosophy which inspires and intimidates those people. Our civilisation has driven boys and girls to suicide, has made them nervous wrecks by mortal fear, has rendered them aggressive and loveless, by witholding <sic> the sexual instruction they need, by not telling them that masturbation is a common and healthy practice, a habit of young and old alike, by preventing them from having sexplay with comrades and friends, by not giving them the oppurtunity <sic> to experiment with sex and to exercise it, just as they have to experiment with and exercise every other capacity of their body. Parents don't even teach their children the necessary vocabulary with which to discuss sex, at least not to discuss it frankly and openly. Many really nasty child-molesters (rapists, aggressors, importuners) have escaped detection because the child simply didn't know how to tell his parents what had happened! Contemporary youth in the western world is, in general, cruelly neglected, deprived of the knowledge, instruction and information it needs, kept ignorant, denied the liberty to develop and live according to human nature. No wonder so many marriages fail! We wouldn't allow parents to abuse their children in such a scandalous way if food or clothing or other elementary knowledge was at stake; we shouldn't allow them to abuse their children sexually by such neglect. And we must fight to prevent our western stupidity, ignorance and cruelty from spreading to other countries where children are educated with more wisdom, more liberty and in closer harmony with nature. <photograph> ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.29 ------------------------------------ THE BATTLE LINE For boy-lovers who are used to thinking in terms of human progress, of enlightenment, of the general tendency for humanitarianism and reason to gain ground at the expense of cruelty and superstition, the current regression in The United States and England in the face of general progress elsewhere in the world is rather bewildering. Why those two countries in particular? A number of reasons have been advanced for it; it is interesting to try to tease out a few causes and signal significant turning points. Certainly it all began in America. The first event, strangely enough, was probably the death of long-time FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. People have been reluctant to speak about Hoover's sexuality in the straight press. It has not gone unnoticed, however, that he never married, that he lived with a younger FBI agent for the last decades of his life, that despite initiating vindictive campaigns against various minoritiy groups (blacks, communists, etc.) he never went after gays and paedophiles -- that he was, in fact, rather understanding when public figures were caught with their pants down, so to speak, in the public toilets of Washington. In Hoover's time police fantasies of multi-million-dollar boy-sex rings just didn't surface. Within a couple of years of his death, however, there was a remarkable number of arrests and the yellow publicity baloon <sic> which now shadows the American boy-lover's life began its ascent. One point of gossip which has only been gaining strength recently is that Hoover's own sexual preferences included teenagers, especially the husky 14- to 18-year-old surfer type. The people carrying these tales are not all rumor-mongers or men on the nutty fringe; many are men who were well acquainted with the fledgeling <sic> gay enterprises of decades past. It is interesting to speculate upon the possibility that the much-maligned Hoover may have been, quietly and perhaps for reasons which were not especially idealistic, one of our best underground friends and kept not only his own organization but, by example, other police forces in check. Whatever the reason, the descent after Hoover's death was steep. Robin Lloyd's 1976 potboiler For Money or Love (See PAN 2, page 24) still retained a bit of reality. But where the author guessed there were some 30,000 kids in the US who had commercial relations with men, this figure within two years had reached 600,000. Now out of the woodwork crawled the virtue vendors, the opportunists: Densen-Gerber, Lloyd Martin, Robert Leonard, William Katz, Sam Janus, Clifford Linedecker, Martin Locker, A. Nicholas Groth -- some embezzlers, some criminals, even, but all getting rich: kiddie-porn and child prostitution had, indeed, become a multi-million dollar industry -- for those who were presumably fighting it! But an opportunist, by definition, takes advantage of situations which he didn't create; the opportunities must be there already before he goes to work shaping them to his own ends. The fact is that since 1976 life in The United States and England has taken a turn for the worse. Although all of the West has suffered during the recent recession, England has been particularly hard hit, and America, with its emblematic faith in the advance <the above text continues on p.31> ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.30 ------------------------------------ <full-page cartoon> ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.31 ------------------------------------ <the above text is continued from p.29> of material prosperity, has been simply stunned by a new reality of smaller cars at astronomical prices creeping along on its new expressways at the speed of a Model-T. No matter that blame rationally rests upon a combination of energy problems and uninspired leadership. When superstitious people feel things going wrong they look for irrational causes: some turn to astrology; many more return to religion, especially Old Time Religion. Something has obviously displeased the gods -- or, perhaps even worse, threatens to bring back the Chaos which existed before the gods put an order (of sorts) to the universe. In his fascinating book Homosexuality in Renaissance England, Alan Bray points out that in the 17th Century the threat to the natural order was heresy (or Popery in protestant England), witchcraft, and homosexuality, the latter being inextricably linked with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. People don't worry about heresy much these days, witches are no longer burnt and, since Stonewall and the capitulation of the American Psychiatric Association to the forces of gay awareness, the idea that men making love to men causes natural or social disaster can no longer be sold in Washington and London. This leaves the paedophiles (and perhaps the S&M people, the couplers with sheep and goats and dogs) alone in the cities of the plain to face the wrath of the Almighty Government, deserted lock, stock and electro-shock by the psychiatrists whose literature has become the Bible upon which the resulting pogrom has been justified. For, to the superstitious, the pious or the psychiatrically trained, paedophilia is "unnatural" or one of the "paraphilias" (See PAN 12, page 44), and, as such, it threatens, or is at least contrary to, the natural order of things. Ask any reflective politician whether he really thinks a man coupling with a boy brings on successive increases in the price of petroleum, unemployment or high interest rates and he will say of course not, but ask the average American or English voter who put that politician into office whether God might not be punishing our society at least in part because we permit our children to engage in immoral sex acts and he will probably take a long time answering you. It is significant that in most states and in most Christian countries you can go to prison for many years for having intercourse with an animal (up to 5 years, for example, in Victoria, Australia); if the man in the street were asked whether this was right he would probably say it was, although he would be hard put to tell you how either man, beast or society had been harmed by the coupling. <coloured box (sidebar):> Sometimes we feel we spend a lot of time preaching to the converted. It has been suggested by a number of our subscribers that we invite our readers to subsidize gift subscriptions to men and women of influence in their communities. Such books of ours as The Sexual Aspect of Paedophile Relations should certainly be read by everyone dealing with boys. If you know of someone who should receive our publications and you feel you would like to strike a blow for better understanding of man/boy love and sex relations please subscribe for him. And remember, too, that many men in prison for loving boys are receiving this magazine and our books: through the generosity of some kind-hearted boy-lover. <end of coloured box (sidebar)> The myth of Sodom and Gomorrah is not so deeply buried in our collective consciousness: it comes back in those devil-hours before dawn -- and when people make decisions based upon intuition rather than reason. "If you get trapped for playing with kids you should be burned," yells the publisher of an S&M and water-sports magazine (see IN BRIEF). As more and more of what presumably went on in those mythical cities is liberated from superstition, that which isn't yet absorbs all of our irrational terror. Especially after our protectors die and the quality of life alters for the worse. ==================================== Pan, Number 13, p.32 (back cover) ------------------------------------ <full-page photograph>