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The pedophile movement was a small, unpopular fringe movement during the late 1950s to the 1990s, in which pedophile membership groups campaigned for social acceptance of pedophiles and "normalization" of sexual activities involving an adult and a child (defined as child sexual abuse by all modern cultures, socially, medically, and legally), legalizing such activities by lowering or abolishing the age of consent laws, legalizing child pornography, often portraying themselves as fighting for the rights of children to engage in sex with adults. Some pedophiles tried to link their goals with those of the LGBT social movements, but that linkage was ultimately rejected by the advocates of those larger movements.

The pedophile movement did not gain any significant public support, declined during the 1990s, and today has no public presence other than through a few websites and internet discussion forums. Previously, pedophile groups had expressed their advocacy through periodicals such as the Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia (1987–1995) and through a few membership organizations that today have only minimal membership or have ceased their activities, such as the Danish Pedophile Association and the North American Man/Boy Love Association.

Public focus on and disapproval of pedophilia has motivated more stringent legislation and stronger criminal penalties regarding child pornography, child sexual abuse, and use of the internet to facilitate these offenses. The idea of pedophile advocacy as a political or civil rights movement is seen as unacceptable by mainstream society. In addition to mass mainstream rejection, there is also organized anti-pedophile activism.

History

In the 1970s, most organized pedophile activity was centered in the Netherlands, and to a lesser degree in the United Kingdom. According to Edward Brongersma, a pedophile movement was active in the Netherlands during the 1970s. In 1979, a petition authored by the Dutch Society for Sexual Reform (NVSH) and others, requesting that the age of consent be lowered, was sent to the Dutch minister of justice and parliment and was rejected by both the government and the public.

In 1974, the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was formed in Scotland, later based in London, where its first meeting was met with street riots. In 1978 the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was formed in Boston and after a short period of support by gay rights advocates was widely rejected by those groups.

PIE and NAMBLA were notorious in the early 1980s due to public outcry against them. Frits Bernard credited this to severely aggressive and radical behaviour of pedophile groups outside of continental Europe, while on the other hand stating his regret of what he called significant ignorance in sexual matters in general in the US. The PIE capitulated to public pressure and disbanded in 1985, however NAMBLA continued to exist. A 2005 newspaper article quoted an undercover police officer who said that in 1995, NAMBLA had about 1,100 members.

In 1982, pedophile advocacy group MARTIJN was formed in the Netherlands. In 1985, the Danish Pedophile Association was formed in Denmark and was disbanded in 2004. In 2000, a Danish TV documentary uncovered DPA members exchanging child porn and giving advice on how to contact children in internet chatrooms. A man was arrested by police in connection with the investigation. In 2001, DPA asked its members to provide misleading information to authorities to help Eric Rosser, a man charged with (and later convicted of) child molestation.

Decline

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, pedophile advocacy groups encountered major setbacks due to increased public awareness and concern about child sexual abuse, and decreased tolerance for child pornography. According to Stephanie J. Dallam, this began to occur even earlier, and prompted a change in tactic for pedophile activists: "The simultaneous rise of feminism led to greater public awareness about the negative consequences of sexual abuse. Recognizing the futility of seeking decriminalization of pedophilia at a time when abuse victims were speaking out, pedophile groups changed their focus. By the 1970s, pedophile groups began to portray themselves as champions of children's sexual emancipation." Jan Shuijer wrote of this:

"...the strategy failed to gain broad approval and understanding. It might have been more successful if it had been adopted earlier by a group concerned with children's rights. For , burdened by its past as a group of pedophiles, it came too late. The aging membership of the NVSH hardly provided an environment to start a working group on youth emancipation. ... Many members had never shown much interest in youth emancipation in the first place, preoccupied as they were with their private concerns."

As the decline continued, the membership of NVSH drastically decreased to below 10,000 (at times it had had up to 240,000 members) yielding a serious financial crisis. Bernard (born in 1920) retired from his occupation as a psychologist, as an expert witness, and from all of his offices in international organizations in 1985; though he made an appearance two years later as a guest on the Phil Donahue show during which he advocated pedophilia as a sexual orientation, accompanied by a 23-year-old male who had been involved in a sexual relationship with an adult as a child.

Meanwhile, European and British law enforcement's efforts to combat child pornography and sexual contact with minors became more aggressive, and the number of convictions and incarcerated sex offenders increased. In the Netherlands, emerging feminist and victim organizations as well as juvenile police units still supported decriminalization as of 1982. However, Dutch police and law officials were increasingly educated by the FBI on "FBI methods of tracking down the makers and collectors of child pornography" (virtually and effectively "guidelines target those who engage in sexual contacts with underage minors"). In 1989, Dutch minister of justice Korthals Althes publicly stated that weekly meetings on these matters with the FBI and British government were established in 1985.

P.I.E was targeted by the Scotland Yard Paedophile Unit, and notable members, including founders of P.I.E. were consequently convicted of sex offenses against children, including:

• Geoffrey Prime – Member of the Pedophile Information Exchange in the UK, convicted in 1982 of three counts of child sexual assault, and of espionage against the British government for the Soviet Union while working at GCHQ in Cheltenham. His espionage crimes were discovered as a result of the investigation into his pedophilic behaviors.

• Stephen King – "A predatory paedophile who established himself as an "expert" adviser to the police and courts on sex crimes. He was jailed for seven years for systematically abusing three girls. One of the victims had learning difficulties and all three had been severely traumatised by the assaults. One had attempted suicide.

• Tom O'Carroll – Author of Pedophilia: a Radical Case and a founding member of both the now defunct Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) and IPCE, formerly known as the International Paedophile Child Emancipation Group, admitted to two counts of distributing indecent images in September 2006, and in December 20, 2006, he was jailed for thirty months at London’s Middlesex Crown Court.

• David Joy – Joy was convicted of possessing 1,129 indecent images of children (some of infants as young as one year); several categorized on the UK child pornography scale as "level 5", the most extreme form, that includes sadism. Joy, a member of PIE's governing committee, pleaded guilty at a previous hearing to four counts of making (reproducing) indecent images between January 1 2000 and January 24 2006, and to seven counts of possession. He had a large number of previous convictions for child sex offences dating back to the 1970s and 1980s, including the attempted rape of a young girl and indecent assault.

After the International Lesbian and Gay Association was granted consultative member status within the United Nations Economic and Social Council in 1994, the United States publicly threatened to cancel its annual financial contributions of US$1 Million to the UN because ILGA had four pronouncedly pedophile activist member groups: NAMBLA, MARTIJN, US-based Project TRUTH, and German Verein für Sexuelle Gleichberechtigung (VSG, "Association for Sexual Equality"). As a result, the UN status of ILGA was suspended and ILGA expelled all four organizations. The German Bundesverband Homosexualität (BVH, "National Homosexuality Association") called for international protests on ILGA for expelling these groups, in spite of the fact that BVH never before had been observed as sympathizing with pedophile advocacy.

In 2006, MARTIJN ceased publication of its pro-pedophile magazine OK. Martijn's website states that in 2004, the association handed out flyers at a gay pride march in Belgium.

Strategies for promoting acceptance

In 1989, sociologist Mary de Young reviewed the literature published by pedophile organizations for public dissemination, in an article called "The world according to NAMBLA: Accounting for deviance." She found that the pedophile organizations she studied used four main strategies to promote public acceptance of pedophilia or the legalization of adult-child sex:

• Denial of injury, the use of anecdotal accounts of children who appear to enjoy sex with adults to demonstrate the benefits and advantages of such relationships to children. Culpability for any harm that occurs to an abused child is displaced onto the reactions of others, such as the child's parents, and the criminal justice and mental health systems.

• Condemnation of the condemners, those who condemn sex between adults and child are portrayed as engaging in even more victimizing or exploitative acts than those for which pedophiles are accused.

• Appeal to higher loyalties, the assertion that they serve the interests of a higher principle: the liberation of children from the repressive bonds of society. Also, the attempt to align with other, less stigmatized, organizations such as the woman's movement or the gay rights movement.

• Denial of the victim, the conceptual transformation of children from victims of adult sexual behavior into willing partners.

Additional strategies have been noted by other researchers:

• Adoption of value-neutral terminology, including redefining and restricting use of the term child sexual abuse, in particular recommending the use of the term "adult-child sex" instead of "abuse" (Rind et al.. 1998).

• Promoting the idea that children can consent to sexual activity with adults. The reconceptualization of children as willing sexual participants along with the decriminalization of consensual sexual relations is perhaps the key change sought by pedophile advocates, as stated by Tom O'Carroll (convicted of distributing child pornography), in his book Paedophilia: The Radical Case.

• Questioning the assumption of harm. Numerous pro-pedophile advocacy groups have quoted the Rind study in support of their efforts to lower or rescind age of consent laws, and defense attorneys have used the study to argue for minimizing harm in child sexual abuse cases.

• Attempts to declassify of pedophilia as mental illness. For example, Richard Green argued that pedophilia should be removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

• Historical anthropological references. Edward Brongersma referred to ancient Greece, and 19th century French Polynesia, situations in which adult-child sex interactions were not illegal.

• Attempts to link pedophile advocacy with other minority activists. This argument was advocated by Harris Mirkin. and Camille Paglia Some pedophiles use the term "pedosexual", positing that pedophilia should be seen as a distinct sexual orientation as with homosexuality and heterosexuality.

• Pointing to juvenile sexual activity in animals. An example of this is advocates referring to the Bonobo monkeys, where sexual touching of infants (described by activists as infant-initiated) is described by some researchers as part of the bonobo's everyday life.

• Terminology - the terms "Childlover", "Boylover" and "Girllover" are terms of self-identification used by some pedophiles;

Legal issues

Law enforcement officials and psychologists have asserted that the movement's online support groups help some pedophiles to justify engaging in illegal adult-child sexual contact. They claim that adults arrested for child molestation frequently cite the positions of the movement as justification for their actions (Finkelhor, 1984). In an interview with KCTV5, Phill Kline, Kansas Attorney General, characterized the goal of certain pedophile activists to change age-of-consent laws as "twisted." Some psychologists consider various positions of the movement to be the “cognitive distortions” characteristic of sexual abusers. While "pedophiles often maintain that pedophile membership websites are little more than support groups,” according to the New York Times, "epeatedly in these conversations, pedophiles said the discussions had helped them accept their attractions and had even allowed them to have sex with a child without guilt."

Child abuse cases in relation to members of NAMBLA

Many such incidents involve members of NAMBLA, the organization most widely known to the U.S. public. Incidents include:

• The infiltration of NAMBLA by an FBI agent, who secretly tape-recorded discussions at annual conventions in 2003 and 2004, resulting ultimately in arrests of members for planning a sex tourism vacation. Within half an hour of meeting the FBI agent at the 2004 convention, a NAMBLA member expressed frustration at the group's political agenda. "I don't know who's lying to who or if ... they're lying to themselves and saying, 'This is all political. This is all to change society,'" Mayer said of conference organizers in the tape-recorded conversation. ", it's like, bring on the boys."

• The parents of a murdered 10-year old boy filed a $200 million wrongful death suit against NAMBLA, Curley v. NAMBLA, claiming that, "immediately prior" to his crime, the murderer - Charles Jaynes - "accessed NAMBLA's Web site at the Boston Public Library". By 2005, $1 million and five years had been spent to prove this claim. The ACLU protested against associating NAMBLA with this case and represented them, asking the case to be dismissed. In April, 2008, the case was dropped because of a lack of witnesses for the prosecution. According to an attorney for the ACLU, "There was never any evidence that NAMBLA was connected to the death of Jeffrey Curley". Charles Jaynes was originally convicted of murdering a 10-year-old boy then having intercourse with his body in 1997;

• John David Smith, a San Francisco man convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old boy he was babysitting, met an undercover investigator through his activities as a NAMBLA member. According to the investigator, Smith used his contacts with NAMBLA to trade child pornography and arrange sex with children.

• Johnathan Tampico was convicted of child molestation in 1989 and paroled in 1992 on condition of not possessing child pornography. After breaking his parole, he was found after a broadcast of America's Most Wanted. He was arrested and convicted on child pornography charges. In his sentencing, the court found that Tampico was a member of NAMBLA, that NAMBLA supported a foster home in Thailand that sexually exploited children, and that Tampico and others traveled to Thailand in order to have unlimited access to young boys at the foster home, as evidenced by a number of Polaroid pictures, provided by Thai officials, depicting Tampico with young Thai boys sitting on his lap.

Criminal cases in relation to other pedophile activists

• Ad van den Berg, co-founder and treasurer of the pro-pedophile Partij voor Naastenliefde, Vrijheid en Diversiteit political party in the Netherlands, was convicted of molesting an 11-year old boy in 1987.

• In 2003, a the founder of the German pedophile advocacy group Krumme 13 ("Crooked 13"), Dieter Gieseking, was convicted and jailed in for circulating child pornography and advocating the sexual abuse of children. Krumme 13 is known for visiting pedophiles convicted of child sexual abuse in jail and counseling them to continue those practices after their release.

• American James P. Finn III was arrested in July 2007 for possession of child pornography on his computer after he was spotted by members of Perverted-Justice openly espousing pedophilia in online chat rooms. In 1998, James Finn III ("Jimf3") was the webmaster of one of the oldest pro-pedophile online sites, BoyChat, for 18 months.

See also

• Age of consent reform
• Age disparity in sexual relationships
• Anti-pedophile activism
• Child sexual abuse
• Pedophilia
• Sexual Morality and the Law

Notes

1. ^ Stanton, Domna C. (1992). Discourses of Sexuality: From Aristotle to AIDS. University of Michigan Press. pp. p405. ISBN 0472065130. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help) Cite error: The named reference "stanton" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
2. ^ Jenkins, Philip (1992). Intimate Enemies: Moral Panics in Contemporary Great Britain. Aldine Transaction. pp. p75. ISBN 0202304361. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
3. Dr. Frits Bernard,. "The Dutch Paedophile Emancipation Movement". Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia. volume 1 number 2, (Autumn 1987), p. 35-4. {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
4. Levesque, Roger J. R. (1999). Sexual Abuse of Children: A Human Rights Perspective. Indiana University Press. pp. pp1, 5–6, 176–180. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
5. "United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child". Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 1989.
6. ^ Spiegel, Josef (2003). Sexual Abuse of Males: The Sam Model of Theory and Practice. Routledge. pp. p5, p9. ISBN 1560324031. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
7. "The Case for Abolishing the Age of Consent Laws," an editorial from NAMBLA News (1980), reproduced in We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics. Ed. by Mark Blasius and Shane Phelan. London: Routledge, 1997. pgs. 459-67.
8. ^ Eichewald, Kurt (August 21, 2006). "From Their Own Online World, Pedophiles Extend Their Reach"". New York Times.
9. Harris Mirkin. "The Pattern of Sexual Politics: Feminism, Homosexuality and Pedophilia". J.Homosex. Vol. 37, No. 2 (1999). {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help)
10. Heinze, Eric (1995). Sexual Orientation: A Human Right : An Essay on International Human Rights Law. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. pp. 150–1. ISBN 0792330188.
11. Trembley, Pierre. (2002) "Social interactions among paedophiles."
12. Hagan, Domna C. (1988). Deviance and the family. Haworth Press. pp. p131. ISBN 0866567267. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
13. Benoit Denizet-Lewis (2001). " Boy Crazy," Boston Magazine.
14. Mattei, Monique (2004). Investigating Child Exploitation and Pornography: The Internet, Law and Pornography. Academic Press. pp. pp7-8, 112–113. ISBN 0121631052. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
15. Bocij, Paul (2004). Cyberstalking: Harassment in the Internet Age and How to Protect Your Family. Greenwood Publishing. pp. pp160-176. ISBN 0275981185. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
16. Clark, Mathew D. (2002). Obscenity, Child Pornography and Indecency. pp. pp74-76. ISBN 1590333969. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
17. Jenkins, Philip. Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. pg. 78: "Pedophile implies coercion, exploitation, and even violence, so that to show any tolerance or sympathy for the condition is socially unacceptable."
18. Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. pg. 116.
19. ^ Best, Joel (2001). How Claims Spread: Cross-national Diffusion of Social Problems. Aldine Transaction. pp. p150-152, pp161-163. ISBN 0202306542. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
20. ^ Brongersma, Edward (1988). "Schutzalter 12 Jahre? - Sex mit Kindern in der niederländischen Gesetzgebung ("Age of Consent 12 years? Dutch legislation on sex with children")". In Leopardi, Angelo (ed.). Der pädosexuelle Komplex ("On the topic of pedosexuality") (in German). Frankfurt/Main, Germany: Foerster Verlag. p. 214. ISBN 3-922257-66-6.
21. ^ Jan Schuijer (1990). "Tolerance at arm's length: The Dutch experience". Journal of Homosexuality. 20: 218. Cite error: The named reference "tolerance" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
22. Jenkins, Philip. Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. pg. 124.
23. glbtq >> social sciences >> NAMBLA
24. Soto, "FBI Targets Pedophilia Advocates", San Diego Union-Tribune, Feb. 18, 2005.
25. Champion, Dean J. (2005). The American dictionary of criminal justice: key terms and major court cases. Scarecrow Press. p. 174. ISBN 810854066. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help)
26. - Man arrested after paedophile TV documentary - October 31, 2000
27. IOL: Paedophiles exposed by undercover journos
28. The man with the naked piano | Salon People
29. ^ Stephanie J. Dallam (2002). "Science or Propaganda? An examination of Rind, Tromovitch & Bauserman (1998)". Journal of Child Sexual Abuse. 9 (3/4): pp 109-134. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
30. ^ Bernard, Frits (1997). Pädophilie ohne Grenzen ("Anti-authoritarian pedophilia") (in German). Frankfurt/Main, Germany: Foerster Verlag. p. 47. ISBN 3-922257-83-6. Cite error: The named reference "grenzen" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
31. Paul Peachey (14 March 2001). "Prime released after 19 years in jail for spying". The Independent, UK.
32. "Paedophilia expert abused girls". bbc. 2004.
33. Irish paedophile faces sentencing in UK
34. Paedophile rights campaigner jailed for child porn distribution | Ireland | BreakingNews.ie
35. "Paedophile campaigner jailed over child images". guardian.co.uk. 2007.
36. "Expulsion of organizations marked as pedophile from ILGA" (HTML).
37. http://www.martijn.org/page.php?id=206094
39. de Young, Mary (1989). "The World According to NAMBLA: Accounting for Deviance". Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare. 16 (1): 111–26. Retrieved 2008-10-20. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
40. De Young M. (1988). "The indignant page: techniques of neutralization in the publications of pedophile organizations." Child Abuse & Neglect, 12 (4), 583-591.
41. Geraci, J. (1994). Interview: Gilbert Herdt. Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia, 3 (2), 2-17.
42. http://www.taasa.org/library/pdfs/TAASALibrary85.pdf Is pedophilia a mental disorder?
43. Mirkin, Harris. "The Pattern of Sexual Politics: Feminism, Homosexuality and Pedophilia." Journal of Homosexuality. 37.2 (1999), 1-24.
44. Spilka, Mark, What Does Kincaid Want?, a review of James R. Kincaid'sChild-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture, page 1, retrieved May 242007, example of use of term "child-love"
45. Forde, Patrick (1988). "Paedophile Internet Activity" (PDF). Trends And Issues In Crime And Criminal Justice (97). Australian Institute of Criminology. Retrieved 2007-05-24. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
46. "Isolation, gratification, justification: offenders...[Issues Ment Health Nurs. 2003 Sep-Nov] - PubMed Result". Retrieved 2008-01-28.
48. Wendy Kaminer (November 20, 2000). "Speaking of". The American Prospect. 11 (24).
49. O'Reilly, Bill (April 26, 2005). "Factor Follow Up Segment: Victim of NAMBLA?". Fox News Channel.
50. Finucane, Martin (August 31, 2000). "ACLU To Represent NAMBLA". The Associated Press.
51. "ACLU asks federal judge to dismiss case against man-boy sex group". The Associated Press. July 18, 2001.
52. Parents of slain boy drop lawsuit against NAMBLA
53. Rubenstein, Kathryn (2001). "Massachusetts v. Salvatore Sicari "Molestation Murder Trial"". Court TV.
54. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/data2/virginiastatecases/1546974.wp
55. "Tampico v. United States Of America" (HTML). 2001.
56. "Tampico v. United States Of America" (HTML). 2001.
57. "Court refuses to ban Dutch pedophile party" Associated Press, July 17, 2006
58. "Sex is good for children -German ex-cop". IOL. September 30, 2003.
59. Jason Alley (2007-06-22). "High bond for suspected pedophile". {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |subtitle= ignored (help)
60. , retrieved July 19th, 2007
61. Paedophilia NVSH website
62. Alert!: Right-wing demonstration prevented

• Pedophile activism