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 18, p.1 (front cover) ------------------------------------ P.A.N. Paedo Alert News a magazine about boy-love NEWS Bloomington, Auckland, London, Paris, Melbourne, Washington ARIZONA BLUES a story by Kevin Esser ON CHILD LABOUR IN THE THIRD WORLD by J. Darling LETTERS Jews and paedophobes; Dr. Groth in Somers BOOKS CLICKING BEAT ON THE BRINK OF NADA, by Keith Hale; PANTHOLOGY THREE BOYCAUGHT Should parents know? by Edward Brongersma THE BATTLE LINE Wishful thinking number 18 ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.2 ------------------------------------ First, an apology for the lateness of this issue. It was caused by a combination of factors: the unanticipated necessity of the Executive Editor devoting the months of January and Feburary to the production of the 1984 Spartacus International Gay Guide, followed by his long-scheduled vacation trip abroad and, finally, our removal to new offices outside of Amsterdam (we retain our old post box address, however). We appreciate the patience of P.A.N. readers and promise that now, with more operating space and, possibly, an expanded staff, we will do better in the future. In fact, we plan to produce P.A.N. 19 within a month. A number of people have written to us worried about the fact that, although they paid for a one-year subscription, they haven't received the promised 5 issues during the past 12 months. We should point out that a "year's" subscription is entered into our records as a subscription for five issues, so the subscriber will still receive his five issues even when, as now, we get a little behind and the last one comes more than a year after the subscription was made. We are planning in the near future a book of boy-lovers interviewing (on cassette tape) their boy-friends or ex-boyfriends. The tapes we have heard so far are vital, honest, relaxed -- and fascinating. The boys described their previous sexual experiences, how they met their older friends, what they thought of their relationship, their sex and the significance of the men in their lives. We are, of course, editing out all references which might identify the participants and submitting the suggested edited text to the adult partner for final deletions and approval. We hope many man-boy couples will spare a couple of hours to tape the boy's thoughts -- and send the cassette on to us. As a source book of what kids really make of their older friends and the sex they share, it could be one more candle to light the darkness about paedophilia. Due to the problems of translation, we are limiting ourselves to English language interviews. Paedo Alert News a magazine about boy-love Number 18 May, 1984 IN BRIEF Bloomington, Auckland London, Paris, Melbourne, Washington 3 ARIZONA BLUES a story by Kevin Esser 15 ON CHILD LABOUR IN THE THIRD WORLD by J. Darling 18 LETTERS Jews and paedophobes; Dr. Groth in Somers 21 BOOKS - CLICKING BEAT ON THE BRINK OF NADA, by Keith Hale; PANTHOLOGY THREE 24 BOYCAUGHT Should parents know? by Edward Brongersma 27 THE BATTLE LINE Wishful thinking 30 Front and back cover photos and interior photo page 28 by Christopher St. George. Internal photos pages 4, 5, 11, 12, 17 & 25 by Pierre Merin. Photos pages 9, 15, 20, 29 & 31 by A.B. PAN is published five times a year by The Coltsfoot Press, P.O. Box 3496, 1001 AG Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Editor, Frank Torey. ISSN 0167.4749 ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.3 ------------------------------------ IN BRIEF . . . BLOOMINGTON, IN, USA "I feel that non-consensual sex is harmful and I feel that a child is not in a position to consent. So it is my personal opinion and that of the Institute that any interaction between adults and children of a sexual nature is wrong and bad for the child and probably bad for the adult as well. But that's the adult's decision. But it is wrong and bad for the development of children, and we are absolutely against it (pederasty)." Jingle-Bells Judy speaking for her Odyssey Institute archipelago? No, Dr. June Manchover <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: Machover> Reinisch of the Kinsey Institute in a speech on Public Radio on 24 January. In the same speech she advocated chemical castration (with Depo-Provera) of "nonviolent sex criminals". Sadly we must conclude that the once brave Kinsey people have gone the way of most social pioneers: having become famous they have turned stuffy, conservative and opportunistic. Two months ago we wrote Dr. Paul Gebhard, with whom we have corresponded on and off over the past years, to confirm or deny these inane utterances of Dr. Reinisch, but have received no answer. We can only conclude the Kinsey Institute is no longer capable of doing honest research into sexuality and advise everyone against co-operating with those people in any way. SOURCE: Public Radio broadcast 24 Jan, 1984; Gay Community News, 2 Feb, 1984; CSC Nusletter, April, 1984. COPENHAGEN, DENMARK The recently formed paedophile group within the national Danish gay organization Forbundet of 1948 reports that already members have written articles for the local newspapers, been invited to participate in radio discussion programs with psychiatrists, and now has branches in three other cities in Denmark. The paedophile group has also contributed to a book on adult/child sex which should be published in early summer. Representatives of the group can be telephoned (Danish or English) Mondays between 8 and 10 in the evening Central European time at Copenhagen 13 19 48. Although willing to give advice to foreign paedophiles visiting Copenhagen, members of the group stress that they cannot make contacts with boys for visitors -- a request they receive by letter with dismaying regularity! BRADFORD, ENGLAND "Also on the menu is lunch or supper of smoked salmon and boys or brown bread and butter washed down with champagne, and again delivered to the door." SOURCE: Bradford Target, as quoted in Punch, 2 Nov 1983. KALAMAZOO, MI, USA Once again chemical castration is in the news. Depo-Provera (See PAN 4-31; 10-5; 11-5; 12-45; 16-9; 17-10) is the "anti-androgen" used in the US and its manufacturer is the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company. Thus it is ironic that when Upjohn heir Roger A. Gauntlett was convicted of haviag <sic> sex with his step-daughter, the court ordered him to "undergo chemical castration" by means of the Upjohn drug. Although American doctors tend to be a conservative lot, one Clifford H. Snapper, M.D. wrote the New York Times, "There is inspired poetic justice inherent in this punishment, but I would like to tell the judge of some of the poten- ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.4 ------------------------------------ tial dangers of Depo-Provera, small but significant: potentially fatal clots in the lungs and allergic reactions including anaphylaxis (shock) in addition to various gastrointestinal and psychiatrtic <sic> effects." He goes on the say that the effects of Depo-Provera are "totally unpredictable" and "its use in this context is contrary to the manufacturer's and health profession's intent. The Food and Drug Administration does not authorize the use of a therapeutic drug for criminal punishment. Let the judge practice law; let the doctors prescribe medication." The State of Michigan Court of Appeals blocked the chemical castration sentence until a determination is made of the harmfulness of the drug. SOURCE: New York Daily News, 31 Jan, 1984; New York Times, 28 & 29 February, 1984. LONDON, ENGLAND England's "Gay Youth Movement" is about the only British organization which has supported PIE <photograph> wholeheartedly in its persecution. It was they who attempted to picket the courthouse at the remand hearing of the three PIE Executive Committee members last October (mistakenly attributed to the Joint Council of Gay Teenagers in P.A.N. 17, page 16). Membership and services are open to every gay person younger than 26 "and obviously we have no lower age limit", according to spokesperson Tom Midgely. Members receive the very up-beat and crusading Gay Youth Magazine, which comes out about every two months. Courageously, they have a pen-pal scheme (open only to members). At a time when the British authorities are determined to "rediscover Victorian values", when the formerly vital Gay News has been taken over by a management which condemns anyone who would let PIE present its case publicly but subjects its readership to endles <sic> photos and articles about fat men dressing up as women, it is encouraging that the gay youth of the land have opted for honesty and courage. OMAHA, NE, USA It seems that the Nebraska School for the Deaf here used to allow its live-in students (age 12-18) an unusual degree of sexual freedom. The kids had sex with each other in the dormitories, and as many as 15 staff members also had sex with the kids. Everybody knew what was going on, including the "house parents". Apparently no one thought it wise to interfere -- and probably many of the staff felt their sexual relations actually benefited the deaf children. For at least two years this sexual liberality prevailed; no complaints seem to have been lodged during that time and there is no mention of coercion, nor even any pregnancies among the adolescent girls. But inevitably -- because so many people were involved -- the situation came to light. Last winter 8 city police detectives and 10 sign language interpreters spent two months questioning all 110 members of the staff and each of the 156 deaf students. (Apparently Omaha is so crime-free and the police department is so over-staffed and ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.5 ------------------------------------ generously funded that badgering teachers and adolescents about their genital activities could become a priority matter.) So the kids had some sex, one might ask: so what? Deputy Douglas County Attorney Marc Delman had a good shrink-think answer for that: "Some of them have suffered real psychological damage. Hopefully, the majority can be helped." Translating this from psycho-propaganda to dollars and sense: the taxpayer, having bought a 36-man-month investigation the chief effect of which was to embarrass or even traumatize deaf kids, will now be asked to pay again through the nose for psychiatrists to "help" these same kids develop suitable feelings of shame about the sex they probably enjoyed very much. SOURCE: Associated Press 20 Feb, 1984. PAGSANJAN, PHILIPPINES Politics and sex make interesting bedfellows. Mrs. Gabatan, Mayor of the village of Pagsanjan, has never been especially disturbed by foreigners coming to this tourist haven and having contact with the local youths. Youths, families and villagers alike have all demonstrated that they can handle this situation with a maximum of profit and fun and a minimum of guilt and secrecy. But Mrs. Gabatan's position is coveted by others, and a certain M. Trinidad circulated locally a (badly supported) petition to the Manila police to intervene in the Pagsanjan "child sex racket". Well, last December the Big City cops came, arrested a few foreigners and then demanded $1,000 for a "Christmas party". Some of the foreigners paid; we have an unconfirmed report that at least one didn't, went instead to the authorities and reported the attempted blackmail, which resulted in discipline for the offending cops. (Other informants have it that the blackmailers weren't cops or immigration officials at all!) At any rate, one of our correspondents freshly returned from Pagsanjan informs us that Mrs. Gabatan's hand has actually been strengthened by all this intrigue. He also informs us that the following signs appear in various places about the town: <photograph> WHAT ARE PEDOPHILES? PAEDOPHILES are male or female adults sexually attracted to children 6 to 15 years of age. They are usually, but not always, FOREIGN HOMOSEXUALS (BAKLA) engaged in male child sex exploitation. PEDOPHILES are known carriers of the highly contagious and incurable disease called AIDS and the equally dreaded disease called HERPES. SAVE YOUR CHILDREN FROM THESE DISEASES!!!! SAVE PAGSANJAN FROM SHAME!!!! DRIVE THE PEDOPHILES OUT OF OUR TOWN!!!! SOURCES: Bulletin Today, 18, 19, 22, 23 Dec, 1983, Times Journal, 12 Feb, 1984. BOSTON, MA, USA Early last December NAMBLA held its seventh annual conference -- this time without any overt threatening surveillance by the FBI or local police. Strangely, NAMBLA has re- ==================================== Pan, Number 18, pp.6-7 ------------------------------------ <p.6:> ceived very little hate mail since police/shrink/politician complex started its propaganda drive against it. The most controversial subject discussed at the conference was whether it should actively back the cause of youth liberation, with all its dangers of diversion of aims and exposure to criticism of hypocrisy. Yet, if boy-lovers don't do this, who else will? Certainly not the vested interests of the child-protection industry. The kids themselves? Even if the youngsters could effectively organize, their views would be laughed aside as "immature". NAMBLA adopted a resolution supporting, among other things, the right of minors to self-education, alternate home environments, freedom from corporal punishment and, of course, sexual self-determination. Charles Shively attacked the whole concept of "age of consent": "Everyone is born having consent and the State takes it away," he said. "That's why I argue strongly that these are laws of non-consent. <p.7:> Meanwhile the FBI "with their equipment" succeeded in making 6 arrests of boy-lovers in the greater New York area, including one pediatrician and one lawyer. Unfortunately for their conspiracy theory, none of them were members of NAMBLA. Thus far the special FBI Task Force assigned to wipe out NAMBLA has come up with very meagre results -- one conviction of a NAMBLA Steering Committee member (Jim Cooper, last November, for sexual contact with a 16-year-old boy who "confessed" virtually under torture by one Lt. Thorne of the Bergen County, New Jersey Police). Except for fantasy, which James F. Murphy, special FBI agent in charge of the Queens office (New York) regularly churns out for the tabloids: the agency has "uncovered a nationwide kidnapping ring that specialises in abducting children - primarily young boys -- and selling them here and abroad for the purposes of sex and pornography." This "ring" accepts orders for boys based on height, weight, hair colour and steals children as <the above text continues on p.8:> <coloured box (sidebar), spanning pp.6-7:> <p.6:> MELBOURNE, AUSTALIA <sic> About a year ago Australian paedophiles tried for the second time to launch a viable self-support group (the first, called SYBOL, had to disband after a conservative gay group threatened to give names to the police -- see PAN 7-14; 9-12). Meetings were held throughout the summer in Melbourne, Sydney and other places and several editions of a small magazine, Rockspider, appeared. What the Melbourne paedophiles didn't know, however, was that another conservative gay man (or perhaps a gay paedophile who was being blackmailed by the police) using the name of "Greg Daniels" had infiltrated the group and was taping discussions and conversations and acquiring addresses for the much feared and intensely hated Delta Squad of the Melbourne Police (See P.A.N. 17-13). Last November 5th Delta Squad and their spy acted. Eight men were arrested in a raid on a Melbourne support group meeting (the press was somehow standing by to photograph policemen carrying out garbage sacks of "pornographic material and video-recording equipment"). Three days later the "respectable" but virulently anti-paed Melbourne Herald gave names and addresses of all eight men. As well as getting front-page publicity in most of the national newspapers for several days, Delta Squad was able to cash in on a claimed "international connection" the support group supposedly had, for some of the members seem to have been in correspondence with England's PIE and America's NAMBLA and one of the accused had been to the Philippines and was sponsoring a 15-year-old boy through an American fundamentalist charity called World Vision. The boy, the boy's family and World Vision claimed no sex had taken place with the sponsor, but this didn't prevent Delta Squad from getting publicity in several Philippine newspapers and even the International Herald Tribune. (Vice squads dealing with kids are well funded, as a rule, only if they generate suitable horror stories in the press or over television.) Australian gay media, however, were turning out very different copy. The Gay Legal Rights Coalition issued a public statement (totally ignored by the straight newspapers, magazines and broadcasting service but picked up by all the homophile periodicals) strongly condemning the raids and the persecution of paedophiles. In Outrage Jamie Gardiner said Delta Squad's press conference on the day following the <p.7:> Melbourne raid caused "the most appalling run of misleading and irresponsible media beat-ups I have seen in a long while." Campaign editorialized in support of paedophiles' right to form self-help organizations and publish their views; it attacked the straight media's hate campaign against the eight accused men: "How any of them can expect a fair 'hearing' in court or in public is open to conjecture. They have been tried, found guilty and pilloried from one end of Australia to another." Campaign also urged gays to study carefully and seriously what paedophiles were trying to tell the world about themselves and their relationships with minors. When a teacher by the name of Alison Thorne said in a radio interview that it was important that the rights of paedophiles be defended and that kids from 10 to 16 were capable of consenting to sex, she was fired from her teaching position under pressure from the straight press, provoking another storm of protest from gay publications. (Her union is pressing for reinstatement.) The vigour, courage and clear-sightedness of the Australian gay press in this sad affair stands in brilliant relief to the refusal of most American gay publications to even comment on similar local outrages against humanity, and, even worse, the furious editorializing against allowing paedophiles free expression of opinion in The New Gay News of England, tawdry and unworth <sic> successor to the old standard-setter of the 70s and 80s. Meanwhile, the eight accused were quickly released after their arrest on their own recognisance on AUS$ 1,000 bail and expect their first court hearing to take place later in May. All are charged with "conspiracy to corrupt public morals", and one faces some sexual charges arising from information he gave "Greg" as well. The identity of "Greg" is being closely guarded by his "friend", Detective Senior Sergeant Neil Cromie of the Melbourne Police. P.A.N. will publish his real name and address and telephone number as soon as it is revealed, in the hope that people who feel strongly that his betrayal of the Rockspider support group and possible destruction of some of the people in it was wrong can make their views known to him personally. SOURCES: The Sun, 7 Nov, 1983; Melbourne Herald, 8 Nov, 1983; International Herald Tribune, 14 December, 1984; The Freeman, 5 Dec, 1983; Outrage, Dec 1983/Jan 1984; Campaign, Dec 1983; Truth, 10 Feb, 1984; Daild <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: Daily> Telegraph, 7 Nov, 1983. <end of coloured box (sidebar)> ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.8 ------------------------------------ <this text is continued from the top of p.7> young as 3 . . . Does Murphy back up this assertion with any facts? Of course not. "Infiltrating the child theft ring is difficult . . ." he explains. SOURCE: New York Native, 21 Nov, 1983, 2-15 l:r 16-29 Jan, 1984; New York Daily News, 21 & 22 Dec, 1984. UTRECHT, NETHERLANDS Theo Sandfort, author of The Sexual Aspect of Paedophile Relations, has begun research on the meaning of sexual experiences in early youth. He will be studying people who, before the age of 16, had either 1) no sex contacts at all, 2) unpleasant or coerced sex contacts or 3) positive or at worst neutral sex contacts. Among the factors to be examined will be freedom to participate or not participate as perceived by the subject; preexisting sexual knowledge; feeling of responsibility for the sexual events; degree of arousal experienced; frequency of contacts; whether the partner was previously known; whether the subject took the initiative; whether he felt the sex satisfied his own needs and not just those of the partner; passive or active engagement in the acts by the subject; reactions of parents, police, social workers; use of force by the parter; <sic> degree of physical attraction to the partner; whether or not the subject was in a dependency relationship with the partner; whether the acts were labelled as "sex" at the time of occurrence and whether they took place before or after puberty. WASHINGTON, DC, USA Since President Reagan took office in 1981, the Justice Department has had a 43% budget increase. "We've had the largest percentage increase in dollars and people of any major agency in government, including the Department of Defense," said a jubillant <sic> Deputy Attorney General Edward C. Schmults. By next September, 8,766 FBI agents should be "in place", according to FBI spokesman Lane Bonner. Meanwhile, one Rachel Flick, Special Assistant in the White House Office of Planning and Evaluation, is doing her bit to make sure juvenile misery, and thus crime, increases. "Sex is not for children," she says. "To tell a 13-year-old that it's OK to play with sex if she follows the rules is like telling a 4-year-old that it's OK to play with fire if she is very careful and stands way back." SOURCE: New York Times, 27 Dec & 2 Jan, 1984. ST. LOUIS, MO, USA On the advice of a local shrink (unnamed), a thirteen-year-old South American boy, adopted son of lawyer Howard Munson and his wife Marjorie, was locked up in a 3 by 5 foot cage in their unheated basement because he had emotional problems (bedwetting, shoplifting and "sexual activity"). He was in the cage when police came to rescue him. In this case the boy and his adopted siblings were taken from the Munsons and placed in foster care. SOURCE: Houston Post, 24 November, 1983. BALTIMORE, MD, USA Rev. Christopher Steven Mann, <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: Rev. Fr. Christopher Stephen Mann (see PAN 17:12)> 66, the priest who fell victim to a "confidential" California film developing service (see P.A.N. 17, page 12), pleaded guilty to two charges of having sex with a 10-year-old aspiring altar boy and received 5 years probation. SOURCE: A.P, 2 Dec, 1984. LANSING, MI, USA The trend to pursue convicted paedophiles beyond the criminal courts with ruinous civil suit awards (see P.A.N. 17, page 12) has now spread to Michigan where one Dennis Lee MacKinder, former Director of the Eaton County Juvenile Court, was assessed $658,000 in "damages" to a 15-year-old boy in his care with whom he had had sexual relations during the course of 5 months. The youth's lawyer, one John Ujlaky (who probably will get one-half of this sum if he took the case on a "contingency" basis) noted that MacKinder had no insurance to cover this enormous award and immediately placed a lean on MacKinder's house. SOURCE: Lansing State Journal, 23 Dec, 1983. ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.9 ------------------------------------ PARIS The bizarre Salzmann/Coral scandal of last summer (See P.A.N. 15, page 19 ff) took another bizarre turn recently when juge d'instruction Michel Salzmann's collaborateur Jean-Claude Krief was arrested once again for what he does best: swindling. Perhaps as a payoff for perjuring himself in the judge's crusade to "get" socialist Minister of Arts Jack Lang and a handful of writers and educators on "child molestation" charges, Krief suddenly found himself director of a holiday camp at Berven, Brittany run by the Villages Vacances Loisirs company -- appointed, apparently, by the Paris suburban municipality of Vitry-sur-Seine -- and given control of the checkbook. This despite the fact that, as everyone who reads a French newspaper well knew, Krief had already been charged, long before the Coral affair broke, with swindling and cheque-book theft. Such oversight, or pay-off, cost the good citizens of Vitry 100,000 francs. Meanwhile, Guy Hocquenghem has published an excellent, amusing, racy (and best-selling) policier inspired by the Coral affair called Les Petits Gargons (The Little Boys). In it Salzmann is Juge Salomon, and the descent upon the alternative establishment for kids is carried out with helicopters, tanks and armoured personnel vehicles! SOURCE: Le Quotidien de Paris, 10 Dec, 1983; Gai Pied Hebdo, 26 Nov, 1983. FAIRFIELD, CA, USA It is characteristic of all men who wish to control other men that, when they attack one group of people, they claim their attack is done in the name of "freedom" or "protection". A certain Judge John DeRonde gave a beautiful illustration here of how this works in California these days. A 12-year-old girl named Amy refused to testify against her step-father on a sexual-molestation charge, so he threw her into solitary confinement for a week. Every day, as the trial proceeded, Amy was brought into court and every day she refused to testify. Finally the judge gave up and the case against the step-father <photograph> was dismissed. But no child ever wins when he or she falls into the hands of the Child Protectors. Amy is being taken away from her mother and placed in some foster home in the California juvenile archipelago. Many letters published in local and national papers about this case expressed the opinion that Amy was being mistreated (not Time Magazine, of course, which found it quite acceptable that she stay in solitary and rot till she rats). One interesting aspect of this case is that the step-father, a physician, and Amy's mother had sought professional counselling about the incest situation, and, unknown to the parents, the consellors <sic> were legally required to report the sexual contacts. California boy-lovers should note well that under no circumstances should they speak about sexual matters with shrinks, social workers or professional advisors of any kind. SOURCES: San Francisco Examiner, 7 Jan, 1984; San Jose Mercury News, 6 Jan, 1984; New York Times, 9 Jan, ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.10 ------------------------------------ 1984; New York Daily News, 7 & 9 Jan, 1984; Los Angeles Times, 8 & 11 Jan, 1984; Time, 23 Jan, 1984. PRINCETON, NJ, USA Kinsey's solid volumes on the sexual practices of Americans published in the 40s and 50s are proving a large obstacle to turning the clock back on child sexuality. Florence Rush and her followers were reduced to misinterpreting Kinsey's statistics (Kinsey found that one-third of Americans had sex play with age-mates or older people when young; Rush and company used this to prove one-third of American girls get "molested" or "raped"). Last year one Dr. Judith A. Reisman, formerly sociologist at Haifa University but now back in the US, claimed that Kinsey himself was either a scientific fraud or a collaborator in criminal child sexual abuse. She stated that 9 members of the experimental team used by Kinsey had known histories of child molestation. Many of the 319 children investigated were subjected to varied and repeated sexual stimulation for anywhere from 3 to 24 hours: she claims they trembled, wept, screamed, went into convulsions and "fought their partners -- Kinsey's euphemism for the criminals sexually abusing them." Reisman, in fact, has proved so kooky that she attracted the attention of the Reagan Administration and has just received $800,000 from the Justice Department to further her "research". Although she has no educational credentials (her doctorate was in speech and her dissertation was on unsolicited letters received by a Cleveland talk-show host), belongs to no relevant professional associations, she has been hitting the anti-porn circuits quite heavily of late. Included in her budget prepared for the Justice Department are "42 days of consultation with experts on the neuro-physiological processes by which pictures or words chemically act upon juvenile and adult brain hemispheres," leading to "physiologically predetermined outbreaks of aggression and violence." Her direct boss at the funding level, incidentally, is Reagan appointee Alfred Regnery, head of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Bureau of the Justice Department and whose auto at one time proudly carried the bumper sticker HAVE YOU SLUGGED YOUR KID TODAY. It was this same bureau which announced last year that 1,500,000 Americans under 16 years of age were then involved in prostitution or child pornography and thousands of unsolved murders of children each year appeared related to their having been caught up in the commercial sexual marketplace. (If a murder is unsolved, how do you know what it's related to?) SOURCES: The Village Voice, 20 March, 1984; New York Times, 17 May, 1983 & 4 April, 1984. TORONTO, CANADA This time it is the Customs. Some months ago they seized a shipment of our material (some P.A.Ns and Panthology volumes) going to Glad Day Bookshop (already under indictment for selling homo-porn). Glad Day is appealing and has already lost the first round: in the best Nazi tradition, the seized material was burned -- thus destroying evidence upon which an appeal through the Canadian courts would be based. We, of course, will supply whatever evidence is needed. Meanwhile, Jearld <sic> Mondenhauer, proprietor of the bookshop, is asking the local gay community to help with the legal effort. He can be written to at GLAD DAY BOOKSHOP, 648a Younge Street, <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: Yonge Street> Toronto, Ont. M4Y 2A6. SOURCE: Pink Ink, Jan, 1984. WASHINGTON, DC, USA Last May a review of Theo Sandfort's The Sexual Aspect of Paedophile Relations appeared in the American gay magazine Advocate, which, while generally favourable, said that any US citizen who ordered a copy from us would be put on a list by the FBI as a paedophile and thus subjected to harassment. This elicited an inquiry from a Dutch homostudy group at the State University, Utrecht to the FBI, which responded: "As you stated in your letter, Americans do enjoy the freedom of ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.11 ------------------------------------ democracy and I can assure you that the FBI does not register the names of individuals ordering the book you mentioned." We have never believed that ordering a scientific book like this will get American boy-lovers into trouble, but we wonder how the FBI can maintain that all Americans enjoy the freedom of democracy when they can set up an innocent man in prison to have his teeth kicked out as part of a softening-up process to force him to help them destroy NAMBLA through perjured testimony (See P.A.N. 15, page 29 ff). Sandfort's book fared less well with the New Zealand Customs, who seized a copy last spring. They refered it to something called the Indecent Publications Tribunal which, on 24 August classified the book as "indecent in the hands of persons under the age of eighteen years". Evidently literature "unsuitable for minors" can be denied adults here. PARIS, FRANCE Two top French authors who have worked with paedophile themes, Henry de Montherlant and Roger Peyrefitte, have had their correspondence with one another published in a 320-page volume which has attracted the outrage of Le Monde (always a good sign) and the interest of the French-reading public. Peyrefitte himself edited the book on behalf of himself and his late correspondent. It is called Correspondance and is published by Robert Laffont (85 Ffr). SOURCE: Le Monde, 16 Dec, 1983. CAPETOWN, SOUTH AFRICA One of the finest contemporary writers on homophile and paedophile themes, Mary Renault, died in her home here on 13 December at the age of 78. Novels like The Last of the Wine and her four books about Alexander the Great made her a best-selling author. More than perhaps any other modern author, she understood the classical Greek and Hellenic cultures and could communicate the feel of those times and that world. It is sad to think that there are no more Persian Boys on the way. SOURCE: Him, Feb, 1984. <photograph> WASHINGTON, DC, USA Martin Locker, the U.S. Postal Inspector who will be remembered as using blatant entrapment schemes as a bludgeon against paedophiles (see PAN 5, page 8; PAN 6, page 8; P.A.N. 12, page 6; P.A.N. 13, pages 5 & 29; P.A.N. 16 page 4; P.A.N. 17, page 30), has been transfered out of kiddie porn and into medical frauds, according to a recent issue of Police Magazine. Locker's replacement is one Charles Koczka, Senior special agent in the New York office. MADISON, WI, USA There was a time when "Sesame Street" children sang to their huge juvenile TV audience: If I make friends with a friendly monster I'll let him bounce me on his knee. I'll let him do whatever he wanster, Especially if he's bigger than me. ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.12 ------------------------------------ The point of the song, said Edward Palmer, V.P. of the Children's Television Workshop, was to show children that they "need not fear the different kinds of monster images which their fantasies might conjur <sic> up." But fear is just what children should have in Reagan's America, for there are real monsters out there, the police and the preachers and the shrinks and the politicians tell us -- paedophiles! So in this midwest university town one Marty Deming, mother of two, pressurized the producer of "Sesame Street" into dropping the quatrain, saying "one of the main things we're telling our kids is that they don't have to do whatever a big person wants them to, or allow a big person to do whatever they (sic) want, if it makes the child uncomfortable." SOURCE: New York Times, 9 April, 1984. USA In the moral morass of American media, Time and Newsweek, the two biggest US weekly news magazines, seem <photograph> to vie for first place with CBS Television in the virulence of their uninformed paed-bashing. Last March Newsweek, in a cover story on "Stolen Children" ("Thousands of youngsters are abducted by strangers -- and only a few are ever found") got off some ripe prevarications worthy of Moral Majority itself. Apparently child stealers are psychotics, commercial pornographers, kidnappers, "serial killers" or, of course, "pedophiles: perhaps the largest category. <ARCHIVIST'S NOTE: The previous sentence seems to be missing a double-quotation mark after "pedophiles"> Often an otherwise respectable community member who abducts a child primarily for sexual purposes. A pedophile may abduct a child for only a day or a few hours or he may try to keep him indefinitely -- and murder him when he demands to be taken home." Of the 1,800,000 missing US kids reported each year "anywhere from 6,000 to 50,000" are thought abducted, according to Newsweek. "Only a few cases are solved. Even fewer stranger abducted children are recovered alive." Newsweek describes in some detail nine cases, only one of which involved a missing girl. The reader finishes this 7-page article with the impression that the vast majority of abducted children are boys, that the largest group of abductors are paedophiles (obviously, therefore, homosexual paedophiles) and that the murder of boys by homosexual paedophiles is an everyday occurrence. What can the boy-lover. do about this sort of propaganda? Well, for one thing he can stop buying Newsweek. He can also show his contempt for Newsweek to all his friends at every opportunity which presents itself. After all it is a dishonest, shabby, opportunistic magazine, and this is apparent not just in its anti-sex campaign but in much of its other editorialized "news" coverage. AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND Late last winter extrapolation to New Zealand of American lies about the extent of US "child abuse" led to an interesting controversy in the press. One Heather McDowell, Auckland regional shrink for the Social Welfare Department, said that ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.13 ------------------------------------ one out of ten New Zealand boys were sexually abused before turning 16. Asked to back up this statement she said that this is the figure for the USA and she saw no reason why New Zealand should be any different. Children had to be taught to be more assertive of the rights they had over their own bodies, she said, unaware, apparently, that this would logically imply (except in shrink-think) that children should assert their right to have sex when and if they desired! Then one Dr. Felix Donnelly, senior lecturer at the School of Medecine, <sic> University of Auckland (and a Catholic priest) challenged the American figures, saying that children often exaggerate, adults looking back with shame on their childhood experiences distort them when they speak of them, and, above all, many reported sex contacts were not true sexual assaults. SOURCES: Auckland Star, 22 Feb & 27 March, 1984. PRINCETON, NJ, USA Despite the best efforts of Time and Newsweek, Jerry Falwell and President Reagan, Americans grow more tolerant, on the whole, at least a significant percentage of them. According to the Gallup Pole, for example, 42% would consider voting for an athiest <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: atheist> politician and 29% for a homosexual. What a shame that these Americans are so disgracefully betrayed by their media, their preachers and politicians! SOURCE: The New York Times. 1 Sep, 1983. LONDON England's "respectable" press can be counted on to publish all the silliest outpourings of the nation's right-wing kooks, especially when they deliver themselves of their (anti)sexual thoughts. One Dr. Adrian Rogers has been pushing the view that children should have no rights except those parents are willing to grant them. And he admiringly reproduces a marvellous quote from another anti-sex kook, Valerie Richards of the Responsible Society: "The Children's Legal Centre is just about in favour of every radical anti-authoritarian policy in the book; contraceptives for chidren, ban on the cane and even the promotion of lesbian and homosexual centres." SOURCE: The Daily Telegraph, 30 Dec 1983. HOUSTON, TX, USA Some ten years ago a school for troubled teens here called Artesia Hall was closed down by county officials for "irregularities". The owners, Joseph Farrar and his son Dale sued the county. Last Spetember <sic> the affair finally came to court, and it turned out that Farrar had "sexually abused" two teenage boys, and that was "the sorriest thing you could do to a child who was so totally in your control," said Zeke Zbranek, attorney defending the county officials. Oh, yes, a few other minor improprieties the Farrars were suppose to have committed included scrubbing naked kids with scouring pads until they bled, tossing them in the septic tank, solitary confinement and two murders, none of which resulted in indictments at the time. SOURCE: The Houston Post, 26 Sep, 1983. WASHINGTON, DC, USA The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect reported that in 1982, 331,500 US children were maltreated. Media coverage of this phenomenon habitually stresses sexual abuse (which in the US includes mutually consensual sex) to the near exclusion of non-sexual mistreatment: physical and deprivational abuse. Yet Center figures show that "sexual abuse" took place in only 7% of the 331,500 cases. SOURCE: Associated Press, 31 March, 1984. SALT LAKE CITY, UT, USA How puritan social sanctions against sex endanger people was once again revealed here when one Arthur Bishop, bookkeeper and former pillar of the Mormon church, was sentenced to death for killing five boys with whom he had had sexual ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.14 ------------------------------------ contacts. Bishop was given the choice of being shot by a firing squad or receiving a lethal injection (he chose the latter). The reason the condemned man gave for the killings was that he feared the boys would expose him as a child molester. Obviously, if sex with kids in America didn't result in such draconian punishments (in neighbouring Nevada, Robert Butler is serving 22 consecutive lifetime sentences for mutually consensual sex with one 14-year-old boy) these five boys would be alive today. SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, 24 March, 1984. VALENCE, FRANCE Last February 7 a nine-year-old boy by the name of Francois Gerard was abducted from near the railway station here when he had become separated from his travelling companions and was, according to police, raped and strangled around midnight. The police questioned local gays, causing much indignation, but thus far the affair hasn't attracted the kind of opportunistic hysteria-mongering it would have received in Great Britain and America. SOURCE: Gai Pied, 18 Feb, 1984. USA Two new possible US Postal Service entrapment plots have been brought to our attention since P.A.N. 17 appeared. Most suspicious was "Research Facts", P.O. Box 91971, Cleveland, OH 44101, claiming to be "a small, old established firm". "Your name was given us by a 'friend' who felt you might be interested," President T.L. Edwards wrote one of our correspondents. "If you believe in the joys of sex and the complete awareness if those lusty youthful lads and lasses of the neophyte age, we would like to hear from you. If you are not interested in any of the sexually fulfilling situations mentioned, throw this letter away. . . ." The letter follows the usual pattern of Postal Inspector come-ons: one's name was given by a "friend" (actually, Postal Inspectors invariably get names of their intended victims from seized shipments of overseas pornography, or from your response to an entrapment advertisement run in such anti-paed sex journals as Fetish Times). It is also short, uses a post office box, is narrowly directed to men who want to obtain child pornography and/or be put in contact with minors for sex, and uses suggestive language designed to sexually stimulate one into making contact with the entrapping agent. Incidentally, for a $3 fee, any American can find out at the post office the person under whose name any post-box is rented. "Crusaders for Sexual Freedom", P.O. Box 3050, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137 supplies a more general 4-page questionnaire with its first correspondence contact, claiming one's name was received "from one or more mailing lists which were contributed to us". One is asked what kind of material one likes, how often and how one purchases it (and adult-minor sex is only one of many choices listed). If this is a postal trap it is a much more sophisticated one, but perhaps that is the trend of the future, now that funding for, among other things, "behavioral research" has increased so much in America recently. Anyone who has further information about either of these enterprises is asked to write us so that we can publish it in the forthcoming P.A.N. The effectiveness of postal traps was once again demonstrated last February when 29-year-old Queens (New York City) resident Michael Rakoff was picked up on a federal warrant for selling kiddie-porn video-tapes. Last summer US Customs intercepted a porn shipment posted to him from Europe. Then Postal Inspector Daniel Mihalko, using an alias, of course, started a correspondence with Rakoff, who later wrote Mihalko that he was "looking for some kids, specifically boys, between the ages of 10-15 preferably. I am interested in sex with them and together with possibility photographing them . . ." Rakoff arranged to sell Mihalko video tapes at $20 each, at which point he was arrested. SOURCES: Confidental <sic> private correspondence; New York Daily News, 17 Feb, 1984. ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.15 ------------------------------------ ARIZONA BLUES by Kevin Esser Stay tuned, brother, for traces of a happy ending. But for now . . . I moan. Occasionally I whimper. Always I stare in light-headed amazement as boys saunter past, heedless of my reverence, my adoration . . . my pain. "But why," you ask me, "do you like them so young?" "Because," ricochets the reply, "I recognize beauty when it slugs me on the chin . . . don't you?" So . . . alone now, for a moment, I have time to remember them. All of them. An odyssey beginning in Nogales brought me, first, to Nathan. His name was stenciled in white across the back of his red cherry-bright T-shirt tucked neatly into blue gym shorts tight-tight-tight over plumply muscled buttocks. White knee-socks and sneakers . . . left his heartbroken admirer ogling two sturdy legs bare and sun-browned from knee to mid-thigh. Standing beside him in the lobby of our motel, I heard his mother informing the desk clerk of his age: fourteen. The boy stood drumming his palms against his hips, grinning, his light brown hair <photograph> ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.16 ------------------------------------ streaked blond by desert sun and falling soft and straight over his ears . . . and when he turned, vaguely noticing my gaze, I stared astonished into eyes blue as gas-flame, brilliant as sapphire frost, icy hot, melting me as they burned colder. Nathan. "You got a bathroom down here, Ma'am?" he asked the woman behind the desk, his voice a husky croon, a delicious velvet drawl thick as caramel and ripe with Southern charm. No, Darlin', she sure didn't, so I stepped forward, rushing in where angels etc., and offered my services . . . upstairs. May I, Lord, be allowed to follow this boy up a stairway that winds forever into the clouds? . . . near enough to see the golden puppy-fuzz on the back of his thighs, the flexing of gristle behind each knee, the thin thread of sweat etched down the seat of his day-glo blue shorts. Usually, yes, I moan . . . but smiled now in dreadful joy as he stepped in front of my door and turned with a nonchalant grin, brushing his honey-goldened hair behind first one ear, then the other, leaving one strand to fall back soft as a yawn against his cheek. I raised my hand like an obsequious doorman. "Pasa." "Hah?" "Sorry, sometimes I lapse into Spanish." Nogales sun-swelter scrambled my brains. I could feel the jellied convolutions bubbling like a hot broth. "Come inside." Then listen, listen to the splashing melody of micturating boy. "There's more to life," I hear you saying, don't deny it, "than listening to youngsters answering nature's call." Oh sure, I suppose . . . there's watching them, too, and I did, discreetly, through the slyly co-operative mirror that caught light like a descending Paraclete above his head as he glanced around and he must have known, he must have known, but said nothing as he let his shorts snap back up into place. "You sound like you're from Texas, Nathan. Am I right?" "Yes, sir, from Dallas," and he smiled (hold me up, Doc, I feel faint), once again brushing back that unruly strand of silk the color of maple syrup sparkling with sun. "On vacation with my mama and daddy. We bin all the ways out to San Diego." But enough. I prefer whenever possible to live happily ever after, but today I died an agonized little death as Nathan bounced down the stairs with gazelle-nimble skip and waved a griefless farewell over his shoulder. "So, what did you expect? This is life, chum, not one of your raunchy little fantasies." Maybe. Sometimes it's hard to tell. From Nathan I whimpered abjectly to Keith, who appeared beside me at a gas station near Tucson beneath a furnace-blasting sky of phosphorescent blue flame. There seemed no limit to nature's cruelty as I pushed up my sunglasses and let my eyes roam up and down and up again over this exquisitely tanned little imp leaning against the pop machine and sipping from a sweaty can of Coke. He posed in nothing but brown leather sandals and denim cut-offs rolled into narrow cuffs around dancer-slim thighs burned red as Arizona clay. Each rib stood out in sharp relief around the cavity of pubescent belly. He had to be twelve, an age that clubs any connoisseur over the skull like so many pounds of granite. But of course I'll never know, because this is, as you will recall, the torture chamber dubbed "reality", and I must content myself in heat daze with the recollection of his name -- yes, Keith -- shouted by his impatient father through the rolled-down window of their neon-orange Buick, with the wonder of aqueous green eyes bright as the emerald-shimmer of tropic lagoons, with round pixie face toasted almond-dark beneath a sweaty cluster of lemon-blond curls . . . and as he passed by, nearly brushing my arm, he also waved a griefless farewell, but without lifting a hand, his lean little behind swinging a supple adios as he strutted pigeon-toed back to the car. There comes a time to call a halt to any and all affairs of madness, and I do . . . constantly. But my lunacy carries its own imperative, an addiction to illicit passion ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.17 ------------------------------------ that sends me staggering in pursuit of death-angels like a droop-eyed junkie fumbling with lethal hypos. . . .then buzzing suddenly with a sweet-hot rush I saw a bicycle skid to a stop beside me in the parking lot of my Phoenix motel. A boy drizzling sweat leapt off and sprinted inside to the office, returning with a can of spray paint before I could complete my obligatory sighs. "Slow down, you'll get there faster." The galloping lad pulled up short, his mouth open as he gulped for breath and cocked his head. "Say what?" He was Mexican, with exotically slanted obsidian eyes, cafe-au-lait skin and sweat-damp black bangs plastered against his forehead. "It's an old Gypsy saying. Meaning haste makes waste and all that jazz." "Yeah, right," and he swung his leg up like a pup taking a leak and hopped onto the bike. "I gotta go." "Where to?" "It's a party." He shoved off with his foot as if launching himself in a canoe, then bore down on the pedals and streaked away in a blur of pumping legs, his hair whipping like the soot-black mane of a little colt. Off to his party. With a can of spray paint. I didn't understand . . . until later, when he returned, and I waved to him from the doorway of my room, where he joined me with his hair tinted a mossy green. "It was a dress-up party," he informed me, "and I was the Incredible Hulk." He grinned with a soft sniff, his nose wrinkling as he grinned wider and touched his verdant monster hair. "Could be a problem." "With what?" "Getting the paint out." "Aw, it'll be OK." He touched his hair again and rolled his eyes up in a futile attempt to inspect his own bangs. "You're thirteen, right?" "How'd you know that?" "It always amazes me, too." He ended up on my bed watching a Three Stooges rerun and alternately sipping and munching from a can of grape soda and a bag of corn chips obtained from the vending machine outside. His name is Jeff, and his mother runs the motel . . . and after he popped the last chip into his mouth he accepted an invitation to shower in my bathroom. Five minites <sic> ago I handed him the shampoo, feigning indifference as he pushed upon the frosted glass door and stood bouncing on his toes, every naked inch of him toffee-brown and glistening and flecked with soap lather. I now await his appearance in the doorway, when I will offer with a cheerfully avuncular smile to dry his back. I dare not probe any further into the future than that. No visions of drawn shades and crumpled sheets and warm, sleek-soft boy flesh. Reality threatens always to creep slyly into daydream. But I refuse to indulge it. Nathan and Keith and Jeff deserve better than the treacle of fantasy. Only the truth can hint at their splendor. Then Jeff appears, a painfully beautiful creature of drenched black hair and brown skin and lean adolescent sinew . . . and we share a secret smile. <photograph> ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.18 ------------------------------------ On Child Labour in the Third World, and on the problem of power in man-boy relationships by J. Darling In P.A.N. 14 I wrote a letter concerning the misunderstanding that can arise from the term 'child protection'. I indicated, by my own experience in El Salvador and Morocco, that a sense of obligation towards the beloved should not be reviled by the ignorant as 'payment for services rendered'. The fact is, of course, that those who use such phrases, especially journalists, are not interested in reasoned argument, only in head-hunting. Yet the paedophile must make a defence -- even if, at present, his arguments be contemptuously brushed aside. At least his ideas will stand upon the record, and his actions will become part of History. The popular press, in the form of Newsweek and Time magazines last January, drew attention to two further aspects which concern the paedophile. Newsweek, in an 'expose' of child labour in the Third World, showed a heartless indifference to children's rights, especially their right to earn their own living. Time, in a full-page article applauding the attempted destruction of NAMBLA by police action, baldly stated that paedophiles are people who suffer from an obsessive need to dominate -- in other words, the old charge of excessive power imbalance in an adult-child relationship. I have recently been travelling in South America. With reference to experience there, I shall attack the assumption that a child should not be allowed to work, and I shall reject the notion that the paedophile is a sexual megalomaniac. The Newsweek article rightly pointed out how children could be abused, physically and emotionally, by being forced to work in mines, quarries and factories. Unfortunately, the article made no distinction between different kinds of labour. Naturally there had to be a section condemning child prostitution, even though the evidence presented in the article itself showed that the children much preferred earning their living on the streets to being forcibly detained for their own moral 'betterment'. What affronted me in the article was the lack of any concept that the child, as a human being, should have any freedom and independence. The article's answer to the problem of child labour was compulsory education, schools to be used like cattle-corrals to confine the under-age over-population of the Third World. How this works out in practice can be seen by what is happening in Colombia. While in that country, I read, in an issue of El Tiempo (January 1983), about the escape of sixty pequeiros delincuentes from some kind of child prison in Medellin. Apparently these children, young beggar-boys, had been rounded up from the streets and incarcerated as vagrants. After two months the authorities had made no decision as to what to do with them. In the end the boys had rioted and broken out of their jail. The newspaper, instead of condemning the arbitrary and indefinite imprisonment of children whose sin had been their ability to fend for themselves in a harsh and callous environment, merely deplored the lack of metal doors in the detention centre. In Bagot itself, the famous gamines are having to survive under increasing repression and hostility. The bourgeois press complains about the number of indigents roaming the downtown streets. ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.19 ------------------------------------ In fact, the gamines are becoming difficult to find the the city-centre. They are forced to be nomadic. The streets are tirelessly patrolled by squads of green-uniformed police. Any scruffy boy is liable to be picked up and put into a juvenile prison. In consequence, the boy's existence is a harassed one. The gamine of Begot earns his living by begging. To my mind, why should he not do so? All children are natural beggars. Can he not be allowed to form friendships and ask for favours at his own discretion? Instead, he is shockingly treated by the worthy citizens of the capital of Colombia. An unattached child of eight is regarded as a threat to the social order. If a poor boy enters a restaurant or a shop to ask for money, he is roughly thrown out. He is refused charity with the detestation that implies that he has no right to exist. Walking the streets of Bagot is a depressing experience, for one who is constantly presented with evidence of this hatred of the boy, the boy who has no family and lives with his young companions in the open air. In another South American country where I lived for five months, there are many jobs for children which certainly make their lives happier*. <:see footnote> Instead of the child being locked up all day long, as in the developed countries, his school day lasts for only a few hours in the morning. By noon he will be ready to hit the streets. There I was able to become ----------------------------------------------- <footnote:> * In the draft of this article submitted to P.A.N. I mentioned the name of the country and the city where I had lived. As I implied that meeting boys there was easy, P.A.N. took exception to my geographical specificity. I was informed that hordes of paedophile package-tourists would descend upon this virgin paradise, ruining it for the cognoscenti; close behind, I was warned, Terre des Hommes and the Los Angeles Police Department would follow as part of a world-wide anti-boy campaign. Although it offends my sense of historical accuracy, I have therefore refrained from naming that nation and city where I foraged in a veritable Roman salad of boys. P.A.N. is not a sex-tourist magazine: the boy-lover should do his own research as to which countries are most favourable for him. <end of footnote:> ----------------------------------------------- friends with many children (too many) who sold you little cups of hot coffee, purveyed peanuts and quails' eggs, or who shined your shoes. Their form of work allowed these boys to wander freely around the city enjoying adventures as they came. This is hardly a deprivation. Perhaps, to the anti-boy brigade, the life-style is to be discouraged because the youngsters will meet such a depraved man as myself. For these working boys were only too delighted to stop with me for lunch, accompany me for a swim and call upon me in my apartment. Their ambition would be to spend the night with me, and they would be considerably offended if, by morn, I had not shown a due interest in their dusky bodies (of which, I had to admit, they had a right to be proud). I was happy to compensate them for their lost working time, and, in order to get some peace for myself, to provide them with their bus-fares home. I suppose the bigoted would term all this child prostitution: the destitute Third World boy forced to sell his flesh in order to eat. Nothing could be further from the truth. Before proceeding to the second topic of this letter, I shall add a note about the figure, quoted in Newsweek, of the fifteen thousand child prostitutes (girls) in Belem, Brazil, a country which I also visited. I had read earlier of this fantastic number in a sensationalist article by Kenneth Freed and distributed through The Los Angeles Times and U.P.I. As I was visiting Belem, I hoped that I might come across just one of the fifteen thousand. I was deeply disappointed. I plodded the streets, in spite of the suffocating tropical humidity, and went to those bars mentioned by name in the article where the youthful merchandise was supposedly on sale. All I found in such dives were quantities of fat ladies approaching grandmotherly years. In my frustration I get drunk and, after several hours, found myself in bed with one of these harridans. Next morning I had to go to a clinic for an emergency dose of antibiotics. It brought home to me how much purer and physically cleaner is sex with a fresh young boy. ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.20 ------------------------------------ The article in Time depicted paedophiles as emotionally deprived and power-mad maniacs. Ominously, in the final sentence, it stated that whatever arguments paedophiles put forward to defend their behaviour, no society can tolerate such men and survive. The evil of the article, in a general sense, was its false charge that paedophiles have an irrepressible urge for sexual dominance. One is reminded of Suetonius' allegation that the Emperor Tiberius, sequestered on Capri, perverted the instincts of newborn babes in order to have himself fellated. In contrast, I had to leave the country where I had made so many friends in order to be liberated from my youthful circle. I had arrived there from Morocco, with its bigoted Islamic attitudes, and perhaps I overly-compensated in what, at least as far as morals go, is a relatively free country. I had begun by entertaining the company of any attractive boy who engaged to bring himself to my notice. I had an apartment on the ocean front. Boys had a habit of announcing themselves as my guests to the uniformed doormen without having had any clear- <photograph> ance from me. Once in the apartment they would run about overturning cushions, throw bananas to their friends in the street below (from the seventh floor!), escape into the corridors of the building and in their courses laugh and scream. All this would have been all right if I had lived on a farm, but, in a building stuffed with geriatric and monied dignitaries, it was inappropriate behaviour. I was summoned by the Administrator of the building and told that if I continued to let boys into my apartment steps would be taken to have me evicted, and, ever worse, the police would be called. When I asked what the police had to do with it, I was told that it would be on the grounds of my 'over-association with minors'. It would be quite obvious to anyone dealing with children that rules have to be set and obeyed. I told my young friends to telephone me first if they wished to visit me, not just turn up outside the building. Any boy who behaved in such a way as to draw the attention of other residents (e.g., shouting out of the window, running in the passages), I sent home at once. I also requested boys not to spend more than one night at a time with me, lest there be parental complaints. I limited my boy-intake to one or two per day. Naturally the boys protested at these measures, but they weren't fools. Nobody could accuse me, in trying to establish some authority in my own house, of suffering from delusions of absolute power. If my friendships were not to be broken up by the anti-boy brigade, with all its horrible threats, I would have to be in control. My actions were entirely devoted towards not allowing extremely happy, well-loved and sexually-rampant young boys from dominating me, the abject, over-indulgent paedophile, whose unfortunate instinct is more to spoil the cheeky angel, to delight in his mischief, than to discipline him. Peace reigned for a while, a routine was established and followed. All would have continued well if I had not been sharing an apartment with an androphile homosexual. This man-lover, however, became himself enchanted with the local ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.21 ------------------------------------ boys, especially when he saw what good fun I was having. Formerly he had dwelt in the gay-lib societies of San Francisco and Miami. Hence his attitude was that everything and everybody should be completely free. His boys stormed the apartment and stayed there, accumulating as one or the other was picked off the street. My closet was broken into and money stolen. My rules were swept aside. If I tried to enforce them I was laughed at. I feared to bring my own friends up, as it was impossible to carry on a responsible paedophile relationship in such a mad-house. Irate mothers began appearing in search of thir <sic> sons. Sons, as my colleague believed in free sex, begged money from me to make up for their lost earnings. The final straw was when the doormen began to leer and mumble obscene inuendos. After an argument with my ex-androphile flat-mate, I bolted. Finally, I had been possessed not by the uncontrollable urge to dominate, but to escape the scene of puerile anarchy. In discussing the child's right to economic and personal independence, and the question of power in an adult-child sexual relationship, I have refered to my own observation and experience. This should not obscure or trivialise the fundamental arguments in defence of human freedom, of which the defence of and justification for paedophilia are a part. Any important idea, as Alfred North Whitehead has written, should be upheld by more than an intellegtual <sic> defence. Active paedophilia is not the unrestrained behaviour of a diseased brain, but the dedicated pursuit of a life-philosophy, the realisation in historical time of what is implicit in the structure of Nature. The action as much as the idea may persuade the ignorant. After all, the film E.T. -- The Extraterrestrial, which portrays vividly the experience of boy-monster love, will have as much succeeded in persuading the anti-monster public of the correctness of a child's passion for an inter-steller <sic> deformity as would a published tract on the Rights of Boys, and on the liberty due to human and alien psyches. LETTERS P.A.N. is a magazine I like and consider important enough to have bought and read every one of its seventeen issues. I commend you for the generally fine job you have done, and respect you for dealing with the adversity that someone who puts together such a magazine must often face. From time to time, however, I find observations and opinions that seem to me to be not very well thought out. Examples that come to mind include how Reagan's cut-back of federal aid to poor families might benefit boy-lovers, and how gays supposedly escaped persecution by the FBI under Hoover as a result of his closeted homosexuality. The most distressing example, however, has to be issue seventeen's Battle Line claim that Jews are primarily responsible for the current climate of persecution of boy-lovers. To begin with, it was Anita Bryant, not Judianne Densen-Gerber, who terrified the public with her "Save Our Children" campaign. It was Robin Lloyd, Lloyd Martin, Garret <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: Garrett> Byrne, John Briggs and Jerry Falwell who did the most to fan the flames. That there are members of other persecuted minorities -- Jews, blacks, gays, women -- who seek accpetance and respectability by joining in these attacks on another persecuted minority is not terribly surprising and certainly not unique to any one group of people. It is more surprising that we can find staunch supporters of man/boy love who are members of these other persecuted groups. In the United States, the only person of celebrity status who has come out in strong support of NAMBLA during its darkest hours is Allen Ginsberg. Like Densen-Gerber, Groth, et al., Ginsberg happens to be a Jew. NAMBLA's treasurer, Peter Melzer, also happens to be a Jew. Newspapers put out by the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party, I ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.22 ------------------------------------ am sure, would claim that they support man/boy love because they are Jews, because of "some pathological chemistry working in the Jewish sub-culture and infecting a significant number of its members." But the fact that they are Jews, or that former Massachusetts Chief Justice William Bonin is a Jew (he was impeached for attending a speech Gore Vidal gave for the Boston/Boise Committee, you may remember) has nothing to do with their support of this most hated of minorities -- boy-lovers. It may be comforting to fool ourselves about our own degree of responsibility for the current state of affairs by scapegoating another minority. But I think it would be more productive if we stopped blaming other groups and started taking responsibility for the effects of our own actions. As Edward R. Murrow observed about Joe McCarthy, hateful people have always been among us and always will be. What was special about McCarthy was that the American People gave him the permission and the power to commit the attrocities he committed. It is the American people, all of us, who must take ultimate responsibility for allowing him to do what he did. Some may wish to place the blame upon the religious -- whether Jew or gentile -- upon feminists, upon conservative gays, upon government agents, upon any grouping we may want to put other people into. But the real enemies are our own inertia, our own silence, our own self-paralysing fears and our seemingly eternal hope that we can somehow gain our freedom without making great sacrifices and enduring great losses. Edward Yarsinsky, the Polish poet who survived a Nazi prison camp only to die in a Soviet one, said, "Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you; fear not your friends, for the can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, who allow the killers and the betrayers to safely walk the earth." Martin Luther King, Jr., in Stride Toward freedom, wrote, . . . ..the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people." Let's not worry about what Jews "should have learned" from World War II, and concern ourselves with the lessons boy-lovers should remember. World War II and the events leading to to it should teach us that hiding from our persecutors only allows them to grow stronger. Escaping to more tolerant countries only makes it easier for them to persecute those who remain and encourages them to spread their hatred to the places we run. Those who try to buy security and freedom by collaborating with their persecutors are only buying a little time, and are paying for it with the lives of their real friends and allies. Security and freedom are not found in collaborating with our persecutors, in running to more tolerant countries, or in being "discreet" (i.e., silent and closeted). They are found in standing up, speaking out, joining together and fighting back. -J.F. I first met Dr. A. Nicholas Groth, (See PAN 9-3, 9-11, 10-3, 10-28; P.A.N. 11-11; 12-7; 13-7 & 8 & 29 ff; 15-8; 17-8, 21 & 30) when he was in private practice. I was then seeing him on a court related matter, as I had charges of non-forcible rape of a child and so-called child abuse pending against me. At our first meeting I became very fond of the doctor. His soft-spoken and understanding manner made me feel very comfortable; I believed he was on my side. He told me he was researching men who abuse children; hopefully he could make the general public understand us better as non-violent people so we would not have to go to jail. At that time I was a very naive person with no understanding of the nightmare workings of the System. Although I had high hopes of probation, I was given a sentence of 8 to 10 years, to be served in Walpole State Prison, even though I was a first offender. P.A.N. 15, pages 29-39 (The Battle Line) paints all too true a picture of what happens not only in Massachusetts prisons but in most prisons and county jails throughout the US to men who are incarcerated for being involved with boys. Dr. Groth became head of the sex- ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.23 ------------------------------------ offender clinic at Somers, Connecticuit <sic> State Prison in the summer of 1978. Just before he took that position Somers had received a lot of negative publicity over the dangerous electric shock treatments men who had been sexually involved with children were receiving there. But when I discovered Dr. Groth was now at Somers, and after he convinced my family that I would be better off there (I would be in minimum security with a liberal furlough policy), I requested a transfer from Massachusetts to Connecticut. The transfer was okayed; I got to Somers in the summer of 1979. Then a whole new nightmare began. After two months in the classification block, I was transfered to one of the only two maximun security blocks in an already maximum security prison. I had no work and was locked up 22 hours a day. The Assistant Warden (now full Warden) was strongly prejudiced against men like myself: he was determined to punish us as much as he could. I was locked up with the most hardened and violent men of the prison. I now found out that Connecticut had a blanket policy for all sex offenders: no furloughs. During this trying time in that hell-hole block (a very depressing mental period for me) I tried to get Dr. Groth to help me in any way he could, but he chose not to get involved. Finally a university law professor took an interest in my case and had me transfered to a more humane block and put to work. I eventually made it to minimum security camp a year and a half after I arrived at Somers. During my stay at Sommers <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: Somers (see above!)> Dr. Groth had me and about 8 other select inmates go to his clinic and talk with groups of outside people, tell them who we were, about our feelings, our past, etc, etc -- sometimes 3 or 4 times a week. I was led to believe that the information about ourselves we were giving would be shared with others in his field and would be used to help educate the general public about what kind of people we really were. I didn't then suspect the real nature of the message he was giving these groups, but a couple of things began to strike home: each group interview was the same: we would be questioned gently, our opinions solicited; we were always assured we were human beings, no different from other men, not animals -- a lot of nice words to make us feel comfortable. But the promise of offers to help were never kept, letters were never answered; each group was the same: after the people left you never heard from them again. I began to see what was really going on. Instead of using our testimony and experience to further understanding of paedophiles, we were being used as research guinea-pigs in such a way as to discredit paedophiles, and the information we provided was being transmitted all over the USA and the whole world. When I saw that clearly I requested a transfer back to Massachusetts but dropped the request on the advice of my lawyer, for it now seemed I was stuck in a Catch-22 position: transferring would kill my chances for parole since I would be dropping out of the good Doctor's program. (Although participation is not mandatory in Connecticut, refusal to participate, as a practical matter, means no parole.) Reluctantly I stayed in Connecticut, dropped out of the group sessions and stayed one-on-one with the clinic staff. Dr. Groth has been on the Committee of Criminal Justice in Washington, DC for quite some time now, and in the last 3 years has been on nationally televised talk shows where he has openly stated that sex offenders, especially where children are involved, should be punished and placed in jail -- a complete turnabout from what he told me in his office in 1978 and during my incarceration at Somers. -Name withheld for the ex-prisoner's safety. <coloured box (sidebar):> Subscribers are urged to make gift subscriptions to P.A.N., through us if they wish, to their brothers serving time for mutually consensual sex with boys. <end of coloured box (sidebar)> ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.24 ------------------------------------ BOOKS Clicking Beat on the Brink of Nada is a warm and engrossing novel about a young homophile man emerging from the cocoon of the American school system and entering mainstream Little Rock, Arkansas, life. Even though published by Spartacus, we would not be bringing it to the attention of P.A.N. readers but for two important considerations. First, a major theme of the book is a love/sexual relationship between the hero and a fourteen-year-old boy. Second, its thrust runs counter to the "serious" homophile novels which have attained high popularity in the English-speaking world recently. Contemporary gay literature often gives the impression of wallowing in self-pity. True, there is a slow emergence from this slough, as homophile writers put behind them self-images of criminality, sinfulness and psychological affliction. But the 1983 homosexual best-seller was Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story. After a good beginning (actually a short story published some years ago in Christopher Street of how the hero, then 15, was seduced by a younger boy -- see PAN 5, page 4) the novel settles down to describing with almost Dickensian repetitiveness two of the dullest parents ever to earn so much printer's ink, and then details how their son fritters away his adolescence by not daring to do anything except feel sorry for himself and let down, even betray, various people who hadn't done him any real harm. It is the kind of sour (but, admittedly well-written) story which is likely to be most enjoyed by bitter men who have lived unsatisfactory lives themselves and who feel adversity can never be overcome except in little, bitchy ways. It also intensifies the public image of gays as treacherous, passive hot-house slugs who might as well be squashed as tolerated. Clicking Beat gives us, in its three main male characters, people no one would want to squash. "Trotsky", the hero-narrator, is an attractive, loving, reflective 17-year-old who has no difficulty being accepted as an average adolescent by his Little Rock peers. His love/friendship with his clasmate <sic> Cody, intellectual, jock and leader, likewise causes no jibes or rejection. The two of them move in somewhat far-out circles for Bible-belt America and explore all of the physical, spiritual and intellectual fronteers <sic> of their relationship. Trotsky is gay, Cody hetero, but this does not prevent them from having physical intimacies. What does cause trouble in the community is Trotsky's mother's insistent "socialism" which she dares talk about at the University where she is a professor of economics. Some of her economic arguments are recorded here and strike this reviewer as almost embarrassingly naive, but they are presented in such an engagingly human context that they don't intrude. Momentarily one even wants to believe that an all-embracing government could be run by the likes of Trotsky's mother and would allow diversity of sexual, creative and scientific expression -- an illusion which after all is commonly enough encountered in sex-lib circles. The real triumph of Clicking Beat is it's portraits of adolescent love, an examination which is anything but naive. This reviewer can think of no recent novel, gay or straight, which has done it better. ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.25 ------------------------------------ Trotsky's love for his younger brother -- and his brother's best friend who becomes Trotsky's lover -- for his classmate Cody, and even, on a platonic plane, for a slightly older girl, is so warmly described as to put to rest forever the myth that the homophile male is damaged goods -- unless one accepts the proposition currently being pushed by Time Magazine and the Reagan people that having a loving rather than a fighting nature is evidence of emotional damage. And Keith Hale has the gift of humour, of crafting scenes and setting down spot-on adolescent conversation with its peculiar humour and conveyance of much more than what is really said. Here is Trotsky's first meeting with 14-year-old Mark: One day I came home to find another boy in our house. He was in the kitchen with Freddy, apparently making some peanut butter sandwiches. They were both sweaty and I could easily detect that unique odor that comes from fourteen-year-old boys when they perspire. I said hello to Freddy, then looked at the new kid. Since Freddy didn't offer an introduction, I said, "My name's Trotsky. Who're you?" "Mark," he told me. "I'm in Freddy's class at school." There didn't seem to be anything more to say, so I didn't say anything. I never was much at making small talk with Freddy's friends. I clicked on the black-and-white TV on the counter, then spread out some of my books on the bar at the other end, thinking I'd get my homework out of the way in case something came up later I wanted to do. "Are you sure you aren't hungry?" Freddy asked Mark. "Not really. I'll just drink a Coke and watch you eat." "Okay, but my eating habits aren't that entertaining." "You might be surprised," I said, without looking up from my book. "Funny, Trotsky," Freddy said sarcastically. There was another silence as I read, Freddy ate, and Mark watched him. Mark eventually broke the silence by asking me what grade I was in. "I'm a senior," I said. "I told you that already," Freddy said to Mark. I glanced up, saw Mark staring at me, then tried again to concentrate on my lessons. "You must be a good student," he said to me. I looked up again just briefly, smiled at him, and muttered something to the effect that I got by. "Come on, let's go," Freddy said, grabbing Mark and heading for the door. "Hey, how 'bout putting those in the dishwasher?" I said, indicating their dirty glasses and knives. Freddy performed the task quickly, then they left. "See ya 'round," Mark said on his way out the door. I hesitated just a moment after the door was shut, then went to the front window and looked from a distance through an opening in the curtains. I saw them get on their bikes, pop wheelies, circle each other indecisively, then race <photograph> ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.26 ------------------------------------ off down the street. I tried to analyse what I was feeling, finally having to reprimand myself, "No way, Trotsky! He's too young!" Like many literate boys in their late teens, Trotsky and Cody read Hesse, discuss Camus and Buddhist theology (Jesus of Nazareth is dismissed as "that unfortunate saviour I'd been hearing so much about lately"). For a time they even share simultaneous and parallel dreams, which unnerves them until they finally come to accept this as part of their cosmic closeness. One of the most touching parts of the book is an epilogue of poems, "Excerpts from a Friendship", written by Trotsky and Cody, in which the two boys share common themes within their individual preoccupations. <advertisement:> <two illustrations> Clicking Beat on the Brink of Nada and Panthology Three, two indispensable <sic> books for P.A.N. readers, published by Spartacus and The Coltsfoot Press. Prices for each book: AUS$ 9; OSch 130; BFr 400; CAN$ 9; DKr 65; IRE 6; FMk 40; FFr 60; Drch 600; Lit 11,000; Yen 2000; HFl 20; NZ$ 12; NKr 50; Esc 800; Rand 10; Ptas 1000; Skr 55; SFr 15; £4.75; US$ 8; DM 20; Middle East, Cent. America, N. Africa US$ 8; All other countries US$ 9. Order direct from: Spartatacus <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: Spartacus [!]> /Coltsfoot P.O. Box 3496 1001 AG Amsterdam The Netherlands <end of advertisement> Fortunately Keith Hale is as good a poet as he is a novelist: at least two of them, Mercy, those American Boys and A Dream Above a Cody Creation: My denim God are as moving as any love poetry written by males about males you're likely to read this year. And here's a poem for Mark that Trotsky dashes off: Virile and pulsing full of movement, full of life. Three-fourths my age and stealing my heart, you are driving me off the edge and I love it. Somewhere between mother's milk and father's misplaced sanity you struck truth head-on and did not blink. Clicking Beat strikes truth head-on and doesn't blink before the most romantic of human feelings. It is the kind of book which can only be written when you are close enough in years to late adolescence to retain its very heart-beat in your ears, yet have achieved sufficient distance and technical skill to recreate it. It is a very considerable achievement. We missed Christmas by a few days with it, but Panthology Three is now out and available both in bookstores and from us by mail order. Once again it is a collection of boy-love stories -- erotic, dramatic or humorous, but above all honest in their depiction of relationships between men and boys. There are stories by Louis Colantuono, the very original American author who taught himself how to write in a California prison, and by familiar authors like Steven Wood, Alan Edwards and, of course, Hakim. In this years volume there are three stories by a new writer, Meriwether Wren, who shows promise of becoming one of the fine boy-love short story tellers of the time. For P.A.N. subscribers, descriptive flyers of both Clicking Beat on the Brink of Nada and Panthology Three are enclosed, together with a form for ordering the books. ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.27 ------------------------------------ BOYCAUGHT by Dr. Edward Brongersma It is always best if the parents are fully acquainted with the relationship a boy has with an adult friend; this is doubly true when the beloved boy is still very young. Some boys may delight in having a very intimate secret -- that depends upon the character of the boy and the character of his parents. But one of the attractive traits of young boys is their openness, and it is a pity if this openness cannot be carried into his affectionate life, too, and for as long as possible. Mostly, however, this can't be done, because parents tend to be shocked by intimate contacts with people outside the family; they all too often interfere and destroy them. Thus secrecy becomes imperative. Pros and cons have then to be balanced, the cons being the reduction of openness in the boy, the necessity to tell lies and the pangs that the preservation of secrecy may cause him; the pros being his growing independence, his heightened self-consciousness and all the pleasures, physical and spiritual, that he may get from being loved. As he grows older the cons diminish in importance and the pros increase in weight. In former boycaughts something has already been said about the feelings that cause parents to show such violent emotions on the discovery that their son likes or loves a boy-lover. There can be the conviction that their children are their property and therefore not to be touched by someone else. Or the insecurity of their own love-relationship with him can give rise to jealousy. Their own unconscious paedophile tendencies towards their sons, carefully suppressed, can be stirred up; the knowledge that soneone <sic> else has not suppressed his paedophile tendencies towards the boy, and has done to him what they unconsciously desired to do themselves, can drive them to fury. They can hold to convictions that a thing like sex is still beyond the experiential world of the child, who shouldn't become acquainted with it too early. This idea was firmly inculcated into our culture in former generations, and, however mistaken and erroneous it may be, it is still very much alive in the minds of most parents. Every loving father and mother will feel a pull at his heart when the moment comes for the child to leave home and to stand on his own; watching a child, long before it can be independent, go on his own separate way and seek and find love with another adult may well give them the feeling that they're losing him much too soon. Some of these feelings do not deserve our sympathy, some are founded on error, some are quite respectable. But I think they're all wrong. Every time I observe a boy-love relationship where the parents of the boy are fully acquainted with what takes place and are permissive or even encouraging, I see something happening that is quite unexpected. A child loves his parents much more, is much more open with them, if he can share with them his joy over his intimacy with an adult friend. And the latter, being on good terms with the parents, may prove the best collaborator of all in their upbringing task. The journalist Michiel Berkel interviewed the mother of 12-year-old Menno for the Dutch weekly Haagse Post (March 18, 1978). This mother allowed her son to spend weekends with Kees, an adult man, though she knew Kees loved ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.28 ------------------------------------ <photograph> boys (he had told her so himself), had been convicted for it and now had sex with Menno. "I trust this relationship," she said. "Why should I try to stop it? Kees is a close personal friend of mine. After my divorce I had the feeling that I had completely lost touch with Menno. The child was wholly alienated from me. I told Kees and he said, 'Send him to me, let me talk to him.' Well, since then Menno has gone almost every weekend to Kees. I saw a strong affection grow up between them, so I thought it was just normal that they spend so much time together. I saw that Menno was becoming much more open towards me again. The change in his behaviour was striking. My oldest son observed it, too. Menno had lost his trust in people and Kees gave that back to him. I don't know what goes on between them sexually. I don't have to know. Wherever sex does happen I think it can only be a big help to a boy if he has a man like Kees to guide him in this area. If everything they do springs from a base of tenderness and friendship, how can it be wrong?" Karl, a German schoolboy, took a great liking to Hans, an unmarried friend of his parents and, as the man lived in another city, he often stayed with him during holidays. One day Karl arrived looking worried and depressed, and as soon as they had a chance for a confidential talk, he told Hans that he had made a disgusting discovery: his father was a homosexual! He had surprised him in sexual embrace with another man. Karl was extremely shocked and from that day on he had hated and despised his father: their former good relationship was over. Hans didn't say very much to this. He quietly told his young friend some facts about homosexuality and left him to his own reflections. But that night, while the boy was taking a shower, he got into Karl's bed. When Karl came back from the shower he asked, surprised, "What are you doing that for?" "Come here. There's plenty of space for two." Karl hesitated but finally crawled into bed beside his big friend. Without saying a word, Hans started to fondle him. Then, as the Swedish author Gorling (949) so aptly put it, "his body betrayed him". No matter what may have been going through the boy's mind at that moment, his body showed an immediate response of pleasure and excitement. Vanquished by such feelings, Karl whispered after a few minutes, "Wouldn't it be nice if we took off our pajamas?" The next day no word was spoken about what had happened. But that evening Karl, already pajamaless, slipped unasked into Hans' bed. For two whole weeks they slept together and had sex every night. Before returning home, Karl had another long, intimate conversation with Hans. From his own experience he was now able to understand his father's love-making, and soon good relations were restored between them. It had been a "pedagogical seduction", Hans said when he told me the story. Another fourteen-year-old, Jim, had a big friend in Phil. Man and boy grew more ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.29 ------------------------------------ and more intimate and one day sex simply happened between them, spontaneously, as the very human and common expression of affection and need it is. Jim's parents, loving and beloved, accepted Phil and liked him as a close friend. Obviously he made their son happy and had an excellent influence upon him. Then Jim's mother became seriously ill and went into hospital. Jim, a sensitive and delicate boy deeply attached to her, was extremely upset. Part of him grew desparate; <sic> the other part tried to believe that her health would eventually be restored and she would be back home with them again. His eyes saw her decline; his mind couldn't accept it. Then Jim's father invited Phil over for a three-way discussion with his son. When they were all together he said, "Jim, I have some very bad news to tell you. The doctors have given up all hope for your mother: she is dying and soon she won't be with us any more. Phil, I wanted to tell Jim this in your presence so you can help him and he won't have to be alone. Please sleep with him in the guest room tonight." The next morning Phil went to the hospital for a farewell visit to Jim's mother. He told her what had happened the previous day. Her sunken face became radiant with happiness. "This is marvellous," she said. "I always feared that my husband might be jealous of you because Jim loved you so much. It's so good to hear that you stand together. Soon Jim will have no mother to care for him, but at least he'll have two fathers!" Only parents who have never won, or tried to win, their sons' affections lose their sons to boy-lovers. They may fight - often, alas not without success -- to destroy the competitor, and yet discover that they have lost the war. Will a boy ever forgive his parents for using him as a tool in the destruction of his best friend? Menno's mother and Jim's father were wiser. They were not upset by the discovery that someone else loved their sons. Indeed, weren't those lovers right? Didn't they prove that their sons were lovable? <photograph> ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.30 ------------------------------------ THE BATTLE LINE Confidence in the media, we are told, has declined to an all-time low. Perhaps, if public figures and the people who report on them tried as a last-ditch measure honesty, candor and compassion, it would be restored. How refreshing it would be to read: "So a half dozen boys fooled around sexually with some local geriatrics and earned a bit of pocket money. Nobody got hurt, did they? Now, I have to sort out a fourteen-year-old girl who got thrown out of her home because her boy-friend knocked her up because nobody in town would sell her contraceptives or even tell her how to use them . . . Will you excuse me?" Social Worker D.W. in The Brattleboro Rattle "We militantly support the right of children over 11 years of age to work. We militantly oppose the infantilisation of the adolescent by keeping him in school if he has no need of schooling. Let him enter society as soon as he is ready -- and make him ready as soon as possible." K.D. of the Trade Union Council, in The Guardian "Of course sex doesn't hurt a kid, if he or she enjoys it at the time. But the long-term consequences can be catastrophic. The kid may end up in the hands of one of my colleagues, and if hysterical parents, police detectives, judges, social workers don't destroy him, his psychiatrist almost certainly will." Dr. A.P. of the American Psychoanalytic Institute, in Time "We are throwing all the boys out of the borstal, closing it down and taking the money and giving it to the kids. They have already distributed themselves around various squats and moved in with aunts, friends and lovers. Since they get money from us they don't have to steal and are managing their lives very well, on the whole." G.R., former director of Shady Lanes, in The Sunday Times "What goes on sexually between a man and boy is something we, as women, just don't know very much about. I think we should listen to what man-boy couples can tell us about their relations rather than generalise from our own experiences with heterosexual men." L.E. in The Feminine Fist "Depo-Provera? Androcur? Aversion therapy? Sure I think they should be used. Every judge who approves of such a sentence should be given a course of anti-androgens himself to see what it feels like to grow breasts. Or get an injection so he'll throw up whenever he gets a hardon." Dr. M.B. of the Pharmacotherapy Center, in Newsweek "Decriminalize kiddie sex? Are you crazy? Are you some kind of communist or something? We'd all be out of a job!" Police Chief L.P., Los Angeles Police Department, in The Los Angeles Times "Third World 'boy prostitutes' are not, as a rule, poor kids, at least in their own society. Most of them are from middle class families, most of them go to ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.31 ------------------------------------ school at least a few hours a day, most of them spend relatively little time 'being prostitutes' and most of them simply wish to be left alone by us. 'Saving' these boys usually means arrest, incarceration, rape and severe mistreatment at the hands of local authorities. And it distracts us from performing the real services we are capable of giving." T.E. of Swiss Charity Enterprises, in Le Monde "Yes, we know a small number of boy-lovers come to our country seeking a companionship they cannot find at home. Where exploitative situations develop, and we learn about them, vigorous steps are taken to expel the foreigner. But our religion does not regard man-boy intimacy in itself as a bad thing and preliminary studies show that on the whole these men do no great harm -- some European men, in fact, become long-term patrons of the boys they meet. In any case, the people of this country wish to deal with this problem, if it is a problem, in their own way and strongly object to pressure and embarrassment brought upon them by Western charitable associations invited into our country to perform quite other tasks. Minister of the Interior R.S., The Republic of Xanadu, in Asia Week "The Church has erred in making a distinction between Divine Love and Physical Love, for the latter is but one manifestation of the former and cannot be considered sin unless carried out with meanness, hatred and cruelty. What better way to open your heart to God than to feel His divinity coursing through your body as you unite it in sex with a beloved woman or man or boy!" Archbishop C, in The Church Times "We are processing a number of complaints against the newspapers for their reporting of the 'Rockspider' affair. Only the side of the police was given; statements by the accused and the organization itself were never printed. Wild exaggerations were published as truth as were outright lies. All of this will undoubtedly result in severe reprimands for virtually all of the big city dailies, as well as the tabloids." E.P. of The Australian Press Council, interviewed on ABC television. "I am giving fair warning to the police and prosecuting attorneys that I will look very hard at all charges of 'sexual exploitation' of boys where it is not obvious to me that the boys themselves have complained. And I mean real complaints, not phoney confessions you people have wrung out of them after hours of mental, and sometimes even physical, mistreatment." Judge H.V. in the Midwest Minotaur "Mary, just shut up." The Prime Minister, in The Telegraph <photograph> ==================================== Pan, Number 18, p.32 (back cover) ------------------------------------ <full-page photograph>