Contents Note on using this e-book edition Preface New preface (1998) by Tom O'Carroll [NOTE: Missing from original .HTML files , so not included here] Chapter 1 The Seeds of Rebellion Chapter 2 Children's Sexuality: What Do We Mean? Chapter 3 The 'Molester' and His 'Victim' Chapter 4 Paedophilia in Action Chapter 5 Do Children NEED Sex? Chapter 6 Towards More Sensible Laws Chapter 7 The Philosophy of Children's Rights Chapter 8 'Consent' and 'Willingness' Chapter 9 Power and Equality Chapter 10 Children in Erotica and Pornography Chapter 11 The Beginnings of Radical Paedophilia in Britain Chapter 12 The Big Bang Chapter 13 A Wider Perspective Bibliography 1998: Further reading Websites of Interest Credits 1998 HTML edition 2013 .PDF e-book edition Note about using this special e-book edition Just think – if this book were e-mailed to all the politicians, lawmakers and journalists around the country (or even the world!) it would make a difference. Do you want to make a difference? Then you be the one to do it now! Paedophilia – The Radical Case by Tom O'Carroll by the Editor of this 2013 special .PDF e-book edition. For the reader's convenience, the table of contents contains “hyper-links” (links you can click) to each Chapter. Other hyper-links aid in navigation throughout the book. Each reference/footnote – indicated by a raised number in the text (i.e. 21) – now includes a hyper-link to the corresponding note. At the end of each reference/footnote is a ^ symbol, which upon “clicking”, will return the reader to the main text. (For an explanation of what op. cit. and ibid. mean, see below.) Please note also that the formatting and pagination in this e-book does not follow the original printed version. The legal situation in many countries has changed since this book was originally published. Therefore some legal information in the book may not be current. New laws tend to be harsher and more restrictive. Be sure to check local laws for current information. For those less familiar with footnotes, the following may be useful: Ibid. is an abbreviation of the Latin, ibidem, which means “in the same place”. A footnote that says ibid. just means you have to look at the footnote above it for the other information, usually the name of the book. So it is easy to know what it is about. Op. cit. comes from the Latin, opere citato, which in a footnote means “in another footnote where the book, etc. was already mentioned previously”. The problem is that the book or other work may have been mentioned in a footnote that you might not have read or may not remember. In this case, you can search backwards in the text for the name, book title, etc. mentioned in the footnote. Eventually, you will find the full reference. To return to the footnote with the op. cit. in it, you then have to search forwards (fortunately, using the same search term or terms) until you find the footnote you started from (the “search box” has an option to search forwards or backwards in the text.) Then you can click on the ^ symbol to return to where you were reading in the text. So, using op. cit.may make it fast and easy for the author while he writes his book, but it can make things difficult for the reader when he reads it. And this has been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years... By clicking the following hyper-link, you will be taken back to the Table of Contents: [Back to Contents] Or you may scroll down to continue reading the book. Preface Considering the passions the subject generates, there are surprisingly few books on paedophilia. It may be that some 'professionals' – psychiatrists, criminologists and the like – are reluctant to express too great an interest for fear of being thought prurient, or self-interested. Their contribution tends to be confined to articles in specialist journals, or the odd page or two in huge textbooks on 'abnormal' psychology. Except covertly, in novels and poems, there have been few contributions from paedophiles either, for the very good reason that being an 'out' paedophile in our society is a hazardous business. In any case the taboo against paedophilia has rendered it literally 'unspeakable' (hence 'unwriteable') except when referred to in the most denunciatory terms. I am a paedophile, and in the chapters that follow it will become apparent why I have felt it necessary to crash through the barriers of societal disapproval by speaking out. The fact that I have been able to do so owes much to the work, described in Part Three, of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), a group with which I have been closely connected, which has been campaigning since its inception in 1974 for the open discussion of paedophilia, and for abolition of the laws against consensual sexual acts between children and adults. PIE's struggle has been a tough one. There have been threats, and violence, against us. Members' careers have been shattered following 'exposure' in the press, and now, thanks to charges of 'conspiracy to corrupt public morals' levelled against PIE's organisers (including myself), this struggle is about to see us into the dock at the Old Bailey. The writing of this book has been jeopardised on two occasions, in 1978 and 1979, when police raided my house, along with those of other PIE members, and seized a large quantity of research material. By the merest good fortune, the material seized on each occasion consisted largely of papers I had already studied and used in the draft of my book. Such pressures are the penalty to be paid for speaking the unspeakable. And yet it is arguable that the 'radical' case presented here is not so radical at all. There are elements of our case on which PIE and myself no longer stand alone, and cannot easily be dismissed as a libertarian 'lunatic fringe': the recent report of the National Council for One Parent Families, Pregnant at School, has called for the abolition of the age of consent, for reasons which are completely in line with those advanced in relation to sex education, contraception and pregnancy in this hook, and there are other, equally 'respectable', bodies that now support the abolition, or lowering, of the age of consent. In the Netherlands, as readers unfamiliar with developments in Europe will discover in the coming pages, even major church organisations and political parties are coming to the conclusion that the laws designed to 'protect' children from sexual experiences actually do them more harm than good. Nor is my aim 'radical' if what is meant by that term is an attempt to 'strike at the very roots of society' by undermining 'family life'. I would be the first to acknowledge that there is nothing warmer, more secure, or more valuable to a child than a stable, loving family, and I can see every reason for supporting the best in family life, not destroying it. At the same time, I see no reason to shrink from the conclusion – a 'radical' and I hope constructive one – that families which deny children their sexual life, including the possibility of sexual contact with adults, are profoundly limited, however good they may be in other respects. Such a view is not dependent upon scientifically speculative premises, Reichian or otherwise. It does not depend on the belief that sexual repression in childhood has a direct, biological impact leading to psychological and psychosomatic problems: what is much more plainly evident than this is that children learn, by being discouraged from sexual expression, that sex is 'bad' and 'dirty' – a belief that subtly dogs them all their lives. My qualifications for making what may appear to be an academic judgement on such a matter may he doubted. But this is not intended to be an academic work, pioneering scientific advances by means of original theory or controlled empirical studies. My contribution, rather, so far as academic considerations enter into it, is to present a paedophile's perspective on what is already known – an exercise aimed at the 'expert' and the open-minded layman alike. My approach has been personal, and committed, rather than spuriously 'scientific' and 'objective', but I have made every effort to use my sources honestly, at all times, and to treat opposing points of view with cool, calm deliberation, rather than impatient dismissal A publisher (not my present one) once told me that a radical book on paedophilia should be 'either a passionate tract or an icy rationale'. I believe that, paradoxically, this book is both. Inevitably, the personal nature of my approach has resulted in certain limitations. As a lover of boys, I find myself tending to write more about relationships between boys and men than other forms of paedophilic encounters, including the apparently far more numerous contacts between girls and men. I have made a determined effort, however, to write a book on 'paedophilia', rather than on 'boy-love. There are already a number of books about the latter which strike me as far too parochial. Some boy- lovers write as though girls did not exist – especially as they fail to address themselves to the all-important question of consent, which can only be fully answered by reference to the impact that adults of either sex can have on children of either sex in sexual encounters. Unfortunately, a book on general 'paedophilia' runs the risk of obscuring important psychological differences, at least so far as male paedophilia is concerned, between boy-love and girl-love – differences which have major implications, especially for feminist critiques of paedophilia, which are sometimes over-reliant on a unitary view of the male sexual psyche.