NAMBLA Recollections: A Few Regrets, Much to Be Proud of
20th Anniversary edition,
NAMBLA Bulletin, October 1999, Issue 20.2
by Tom Reeves
To
put oneself in the mindset of 1978, when some of us set out - as we
thought - to further liberate our own sexuality as lovers of boys by
founding NAMBLA, is more difficult than can be imagined. It is almost
as much an historical task as trying to imagine what it was like in
Ancient Greece or China. As McLuhan and others have pointed out, change
has greatly sped up. This is not only true of technological and general
social change, but of changes in sexual values and practices sanctioned
or banned by the elite, as well as the behaviors of ordinary people
manipulated and repressed by that elite. For no-one has the change
during these twenty-one years been more extreme than for us.
Back then, I was a self-identified lover of adolescent boys - an
"identity" which I later learned had often been called "the pederast."
I believed, based on experience and reading in literature and history
(not to mention porn and the personal ads), that this "boy-love" - that
is what I called it then - was part of the larger world of male
homosexual relations. I should have guessed, perhaps, that it was not
to be included in the new "gay community."
As I became an
active sexual being in my teens, I found and was found by younger boys
- 12 to 14 to my 15 to 18. It was wonderful and it had no name. We
didn't speak about it, we just did it. In my early twenties, I was
drawn to homosexual meeting places - parks, theaters, restrooms and
eventually bars. Cut off from the younger partners of my school days, I
cruised for sex in those homosexual places. Mostly I was soundly
rejected by older teens and young men, even though I tried. Oh did I
try!
As I have written before, it was a very "non-gay" place
- a working class Baltimore neighborhood which I stumbled on - where I
found that peculiar and wondrous bliss of men and boys loving one
another with no "identity" attached. In short order I was overwhelmed
by the young bodies and spirits of dozens of quite horny youth who also
needed my affection and welcomed my radical pedagogy. Their rebellion
in turn kindled my radicalism.
Jim Becker has pointed out to
me that the pre-Stonewall overt homosexual reality thrived in such
working-class contexts. Middle and upper class "fairies" visited
working-class, often ethnic neighborhoods and found sex partners, but
many of them denied it even to themselves, and their wives, since many
were married. A few independently wealthy men recorded their sexuality
and began the task of its defense. Other middle-class men accepted and
celebrated their sexual desire, but kept deeply hidden for fear of
blackmail. Most "out" queens were working-class or under-class, on the
periphery, daring to be in the face of society - whether they were
street drag queens like those who rioted at Stonewall, or they were
truckers or soldiers and sailors, or rent-boys and boy-lovers.
That
was certainly true of those I met in my early years. All queer sex was
socially taboo, targeting those who flaunted or were caught in the act.
Homosexual acts were not ferreted out and prosecuted in the extreme way
sex with boys is today, and certainly not harped on to kids and adults
alike. Mostly people looked the other way - they snickered; yes,
sometimes (as they do still), they bashed. But there were not often
life-sentences, no high-tech surveillance and monitoring, no life-time
parole or registration. It is true that a few places, like California,
implemented sex offender registration and penalized a lot of queers, as
Harry Hay rightly pointed out, but the effectiveness and breadth of
that experiment, though chilling, were nowhere near as great as what is
going on now. It mostly hit the poor and working class queens who dared
to be open, or those not willing to pay extortion money. Whatever
happened, it affected men-lovers and boy-lovers alike.
After
Stonewall, it was middle-class homosexuals who took up the standard,
seeking their own freedom. Gay rights has been a very white, very
middle-class, very urban movement. As the American
mainstream/right-wing (for the American mainstream IS right-wing)
reeled from the events of the sixties, including gays marching in the
streets, the new "gay leaders" quickly betrayed those on the margins -
especially poor and working class and black and Hispanic queens and
boy-lovers. The long association of pederasty with general homosexual
expression, art, literature and pornography was deliberately broken by
these self-appointed middle class gay/lesbian leaders. Some just wanted
acceptance so badly they panicked at the first straight attack on their
assertion that "gays are just like straights, except for what they do
in bed." Others were more interested in getting cushy corporate jobs or
speculating in ghetto real estate than in anything approaching genuine
liberation. Later on, this process of re-invention continued far beyond
us. After the initial ecstasy of "sex is good" and "free love," AIDS
nailed the coffin shut on most of that, and the gay/lesbian leaders
began censoring publications and parades alike, to make the gay
community a sort of Disneyfied family entertainment.
As Jim
says, this didn't have to happen. It was not inevitable. A particular
set of middle-class, white gay men and feminist lesbians made the
calculated decision to cut the unwashed masses loose - henceforth,
"gay" meant a sanitized, increasingly non-sexual,
consenting-adults-only-in-private business, with prime concern focused
on gay marriage or gays in the military and the Boy Scouts (but not
actual sex in those venues, God forbid). Above all, it was an
acceptable form of modern consumer society. They didn't have to sell us
out - but they did, in order to sell the gay image as socially approved
for the market. What Bill Andriette has called "brand identity" would
replace the primeval, sweaty, sexy homosexual realities that had always
been around. At least they hoped it would for the sake of their
careers. So far they seem to be right.
As it happened, it was
1969 - the year of Stonewall - when boys first found me. I didn't know
anything about the impending shift in the homosexual paradigm. I
thought I saw my place in this glorious gay liberation movement - so
kin to the civil rights and anti-war struggles I'd been part of.
Traveling two years later to Boston in search of that movement, I
joined FAG RAG, whose collective members saw something in my sexual
expression which embodied their radical but playful vision. Over the
next decade, I was involved with many new gay organizations: Gay
Community News, Boston Area Gay & Lesbian Youth (BAGLY), Gay &
Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), the Gay Liberation Front, and
much later Act Up.
Meanwhile, I kept on meeting boys and
loving them. I should have noticed this happened mostly outside the
newly defined gay parameters - back in Baltimore or in other cities'
gritty neighborhoods. I saw my activism and my sex with boys as
parallel. They obviously were not. They overlapped, to be sure. I did
pick up some boys in peep shows and restrooms where gay men cruised
(until the good gays collaborated with police and closed most of those
places). Only once did one of these boys become a "gay activist." He is
the only boy out of hundreds I met and dozens with whom I established
life-long relationships, who later rejected his homosexual behavior and
faggot identity, and now views meeting me as unfortunate. The others
include those who are exclusively homosexual, some bisexual, one or two
exclusively heterosexual, and a few who now love boys themselves. They
all feel good about what we did together back then. The sex was great
and the love was real, but these did not come with an "identity."
When
the tidal wave against "sex with children" began - nationally with
Anita Bryant, locally in Boston with the "Revere Sex Ring" - activists
like David Thorstad, Jim Becker and me naturally turned to our
organizing skills and to the movement context where we'd been so active
and largely successful. Those were heady days when we thought we were
on the cutting edge of complete sexual/social revolution. We'd helped
end a war and the draft. We'd supported Blacks in their civil rights
crusade. Our "gay lib" approach was still trendy, and sexual freedom
was on most young people's tongues - often literally. Straight boys
were pretending to be gay because it was in, and everybody was trying
everything. No wonder we had the guts to champion our own cause when it
came time. We simply (and wrongly) believed that gay liberation meant
sexual liberation for all queers, and who was more queer than we were?
In
Boston it seemed to work! We created the most successful coalition of
gay/lesbian groups in Boston's history (even till now) - the
Boston/Boise Committee. We helped some thirty men escape prison
sentences for accusations - some false, some real but based on
consensual relations - of sex with boys. We organized rallies and
forums that brought out hundreds of radical men and women. One of these
drew Gore Vidal as a speaker and the Chief Justice of Massachusetts as
an attendee - for which he was later impeached and ousted. Another was
an Erotic Speakout that involved more women than men and successfully
lobbied for the abolition of Boston's infamous Vice Squad. Our clout
was so great we organized those arrested for public sex at the library.
At one point we were approached by social workers at the sex offender
treatment center (Bridgewater) to help them find housing, jobs and
community support for released boy-lovers. The Mayor of Boston's gay
liaison reached out to Boston-Boise, and briefly to NAMBLA itself. I'll
never forget his asking me at a public meeting, "What are the needs of
boy-lovers for space in a community center?" It's hard to imagine such
things today, but they really happened.
NAMBLA was founded by
a caucus after a conference on intergenerational sex organized in
Boston in 1978 (and held at a radical church), to which a number of
mainstream therapists and social workers came, as well as gay/lesbian
leaders. It was mostly boy-lovers who planned the conference, and we
were there in force. In those days we even brought along the boys. Wow!
NAMBLA was the logical conclusion of our experience as radicals in
liberation movements, the gay liberation movement in particular. It was
just one more step toward complete liberation - we thought! I remember
one argument at that caucus was how to be more inclusive than just
U.S., since there were Canadians and a Puerto Rican present. I take the
blame for coining NAMBLA, to allow us to organize the whole continent
and its tributary islands! (I still like the name - it is part of the
English language now. Maybe someday words like "nambling,"
"nambulatory," and other derivatives will describe positive
man-boy-loving activities. Don't hold your breath!) The name was
significant because we wanted to be up front about loving boys and we
rejected classical Greek or euphemistic monikers.
There were
no pedophiles in those days. Nor pederasts either. (I just found
"pederast" in this computer's spell check, but not pedophile!) We were
boy-lovers, and the boys among us were man-lovers - hence man/boy love
included all of us. Actually, almost all of the organizers were lovers
of adolescent boys, not children. I don't think many of us had thought
about "pedophilia." When the issue came along, the radicals among us
(myself included) wanted to be consistent: sex is good for anyone. We
believed that sex itself was entirely a positive and revolutionary
force - a view I no longer completely hold - so it must be good for
children and other living things. As pederasts, we did not want to
repeat what we saw as the error of gay men: selling out the most
vulnerable. So we refused to draw an age of consent. I still agree with
that in principle. But we were acting largely on theory, without
practical knowledge. I certainly had no knowledge of the sexuality of
young children. I didn't even like young children! (Now that I'm a
grandfather - to the children of my adopted son and other foster sons
-boys I met while cruising - I admit to loving even babies, though not
sexually.)
These days a teenage boy is a child (except when
he's very bad). And I am called a pedophile. I won't accept that. My
love of adolescent boys is a different phenomenon from erotic
attraction to pre-pubescent boys, and very different from heterosexual
pedophilia. I know there is overlap and a gray area of age under 12,
but intuitively I feel the difference. I will not condemn pedophiles to
their unjust fate at the hands of a growing sexual tyranny - it now
seems only the death penalty will eventually suffice - but I also will
not allow them to confound my love with pedophilia or the sexual
reality of adolescent boys with those of children of either gender.
Some
have said NAMBLA should not have been founded. It became a lightning
rod for sexual reactionaries. I disagree. First, the reactionaries were
building before NAMBLA began and merely continued their steam-rolling -
we may actually have slowed them down during the first couple of years.
As noted above, the "gay/lesbian leaders" did not have to sell us out.
Secondly, NAMBLA was and is needed in order to state the modern case
for our love as one of the many universal and potentially constructive
forms of sexual relations in all cultures and all ages. It is
profoundly necessary for isolated lovers of boys. Recently I met a
boy-lover (pederast), a bright and together young man in Canada. He
told me that NAMBLA and our writings saved his life - he was at the
point of suicide. "I found you by accident on the web. At university I
read the theory - and now I am putting what you wrote into practice,
and I am happy." (Of course he lives in a better place than those of us
in the U.S. -his love, within bounds, is still possible there.) We have
served that important function a thousand-times over. The more extreme
the repression, the more necessary that work becomes.
Finally,
NAMBLA was a logical extension of the general liberation movement of
the late 1960s - way ahead of its time, to be sure, but had we not
founded it in Boston, it would have been founded elsewhere. Under
whatever name, it would by now be anathema to those who would establish
the global sexual/social tyranny, the "New World Order." I think
NAMBLA's survival through this holocaust is very important. It will
serve as a beacon of real liberation and free consciousness when the
onslaught is over - in twenty years, one hundred years - who knows?
Meanwhile,
of course, things have gone the opposite direction from that which was
supposed by myself and most of NAMBLA's founders. All sex with boys
-and even with young men - is now considered the equivalent of violent
rape. All boys and young men are now children. The draconian laws grow
worse by the year. In Holland and Canada they are considering official
black lists for "suspected" pedophiles (read anyone with interest in
persons under the age of consent - slowly becoming a world-wide de
facto age of eighteen). Such pariahs will be unable to get passports or
work in education, healthcare and other professions where they might
encounter a child or youth. Life-time civil commitment - permanent
incarceration - is now a reality in many places. The Philippines has
put to death two (actual and heterosexual) pedophiles. In the U.S.,
when a man is convicted of any sex with any boy under eighteen, he must
register for life, face ridicule at best, vigilante violence at worst,
and in some cases may have to wear a global positioning bracelet as a
part of parole to keep him on a leash until he dies.
These
and other measures are so extreme - yet civil libertarians and radicals
are scarcely noticing. I am afraid we boy-lovers (pedophiles and
pederasts alike) are just their pilot project before they try the real
thing: total global tyranny, where everyone is monitored and under
surveillance all the time. In Baltimore recently I saw the dozens of
surveillance cameras on church steeples and rooftops, and watched
helicopters shine bright lights on streets and up alleyways, to keep
any boy from meeting any man. This in the neighborhood where boys and
men once met so easily. Our innocent age is gone.
Maybe it
won't come again. But I have the hope that boy lovers and boys alike
are so resilient we will find a way. It was a boy darting from a
side-street who showed me the cameras in Baltimore and boasted, "We're
smarter than the pigs..." It didn't turn out that NAMBLA ushered in
complete liberation. Instead, NAMBLA bucked (and has not yet buckled
under to) the first wave of the most effective totalitarianism ever yet
attempted.
I think NAMBLA and the case of man/boy love may
yet help others realize the dangers of this repression. Out sexual
reality has flourished in so many climes and eras - jungle gardening
tribes of New Guinea, 19th century European slums and royalty, Islamic
mystical circles, Japanese Samurai, Baden-Powell Boy Scout troops,
Native American initiation rites, and of course ancient Greece, Rome,
Persia and China, to name a few. Our love has been a part, albeit
usually unnamed and hidden, of the fabric of most societies. I don't
believe it can be snuffed out without snuffing out the human spirit
itself. Hopefully, as canaries in the mine shaft, we'll not all die
before the other species realize what's happening, overpower the mine
managers and let everybody out to breathe fresh air again.
back
Tom
and others wrote the following statement/petition which was signed by a
number of community activists and citizens in June 1998:
A Call to Safeguard Our Children and Our Liberties
This
is the statement of an informal group of Boston-area educators, health
workers, criminal justice workers and other community activists. This
statement is circulated to individuals and organizations to initiate
discussion, and for additional signatures. It is hoped that others will
endorse this call, or will formulate their own statement, tailored to
their own communities.
As people concerned about children's
welfare and a just society, we speak out against the troubling
direction of current campaigns to protect children from vaguely defined
sexual dangers by criminalizing and scapegoating a wide range of people
and behaviors. These approaches often ignore the realities of childhood
and adolescent sexuality and they sometimes equate affection with
violence. They distract us from the problem of far more serious forms
of violence against children and young people. They erode essential
freedoms for everyone. Current hysteria is so pervasive that anyone who
suggests a more thoughtful discussion risks being branded a child
abuser. To truly protect children as well as empower them to be
themselves, and to protect a free society, we insist on a more sensible
and compassionate approach.
* Most child abuse has nothing
to do with sex. It is important to speak out against true sexual abuse,
which has so often remained hidden and denied within families and
communities. However, non-sexual violence and murder of children is as
pervasive as sexual violence. Poverty, malnutrition, ethnic
discrimination, poor education, and inadequate health care are all
forms of abuse that threaten millions of young people in our affluent
nation. Yet there is no national commitment to halt these deadly and
more pervasive forms of harm to children. Instead, our attention is
riveted by any case involving sex.
* Recent child sex abuse
campaigns make little or no distinction among diverse behaviors and
circumstances. Any sex equals violence, and seventeen-year-olds are
'children.' The brutal rape of a six-year-old girl by her father;
uncoerced sexual relations between a fourteen-year-old boy and a
thirty-year-old woman; an affair between an eighteen-year-old boy and a
sixteen-year-old girl: these are clearly very different cases, yet they
are all portrayed as rape under the law and in the media. We do not
believe that affectionate, mutual sexual expression is the same as
violent rape. To equate them is to trivialize rape. Furthermore, in sex
cases involving children, hard evidence seems unnecessary: the
allegation suffices. It also seems odd that we speak of older and older
youth as children in need of protection from sex abuse, but consider
younger and younger children to be adults when accused of crimes.
* Demonizing any class of people as devoid of humanity and beyond
redemption is wrong. Laws now brand any transgressor of under-age sex
rules as a 'sexual predator,' even when no violence or force is
alleged, and even when the young person is a month or a day shy of the
legal age of consent. In addition, society's fears and hatred of
homosexuality often leads to a scapegoating of gay people, falsely
stereotyping them as child molesters. Demonization is destructive even
when applied to truly violent offenders. Those who commit sexually
violent crimes do not come out of a vacuum. They come out of our
communities and families. The message conveyed is that the main danger
to children is the stranger about to pounce on them, the pedophile whom
we can expose and stigmatize. Yet most sexual contact between adults
and minors is among family and friends. To view dangerous offenders as
totally 'other' than us prevents getting to the roots of such crimes.
Permanent stigmatization not only makes impossible re-integration into
society of those who are rehabilitated, it signals a breakdown in civil
society.
* "Protect the children" has been a battle cry to
expand coercive state power and imprisonment. The past two decades have
seen many new forms of state repression in the name of protecting
children: There are sweeping new censorship laws; registries to track
people for life and expose them to public ridicule; civil commitment to
incarcerate those not convicted of a crime but deemed 'dangerous;'
life-time parole for sex offenders in some states; and mandatory life
sentences without parole for second offenses; thought police empowered
to monitor those imprisoned, on parole or under 'civil detention' with
mandatory lie detector tests and aversive therapy in some
jurisdictions; mandatory reporting laws that turn doctors and
therapists into agents of the state; prohibitions against freedom of
association; and extra territoriality -- allowing prosecution of
citizens for behavior outside the state or nation, even when that
behavior is legal in the other jurisdiction. These assaults on civil
liberties have befallen us because so few have been willing to risk
being seen as 'soft on child molesters.' We hold that civil liberties
are indivisible. We argue that longer sentences, harsher treatment in
prison or calls for the death penalty merely escalate and perpetuate
the violence. Repressive state powers cannot be neatly applied only to
'bad' people. They threaten us all.
* The power and
capriciousness of the laws and attitudes wrought by these campaigns
have put up a destructive barrier between adults and children.
Currently, caring adults may reasonably fear that any affection will be
branded as abuse. This fear means that adults -- whether parents,
teachers or strangers -- often withhold that which all kids need most:
affectionate, respectful attention.
The real challenge is to
support and expand programs for children and youth which develop
caring, loving, thoughtful, whole human beings. Among these are day
care, after-school care, sex positive sex education, and better
training and pay for those who work with children. The aim of all these
programs should be to empower young people to learn to make their own
decisions about their lives. Children and youth need to view themselves
not as potential victims, but as part of a community which supports and
nurtures them, encouraging them to speak up and act responsibly on
their own beliefs. We want children to love life, not fear it. If this
is to happen, there must be adults courageous enough to demand an
honest and constructive approach to sex and youth and to call for an
end to the prevailing hysteria. Only then will we be able to safeguard
the liberties we all need to develop fully.
SIGNED: Dr.
Richard Pillard, psychiatrist; Paul Shannon, educator; Cathy Hoffman,
peace activist; Chris Tilly, economics professor; Marie Kennedy,
community planning professor; Eric Entemann, mathematics professor; Tom
Reeves, social science professor; Bob Chatelle, writer &
anti-censorship activist; and Jim D'Entremont, playwright &
anti-censorship activist; Ann Kotell, health worker; Carol Thomas,
social justice and religious activist; French Wall and Bill Andriette,
gay writers and editors; Nancy Ryan, feminist activist; Reebee
Garofalo, popular culture professor; Dianne McLaughlin, community &
criminal justice worker; John Miller, economics professor; Molly Mead,
urban social planning professor; John MacDougall, sociology professor;
Laurie Dougherty, social science researcher & editor; Monty Neill,
educator & political activist; Rev. Margaret Hougen & Rev.
Edward Hougen; Roswitha and Ernest Winsor, criminal justice advocates;
Paula Westberg, teacher; Rosalyn Baxandall, American Studies professor
& community activist (New York); Chris Vance, bisexual youth &
education worker; Mark Salzer, teacher & political activist; Barry
Phillips, educator; Clark Taylor, Latin American studies; Sarah
Bartlett, educator; Rachelle Simon, incest survivor; Noel Rosenberg,
computer support tech; Adolph Reed, political science professor (New
York); Rev. David Olson; Phillip Kassel, civil rights attorney; Jim
Hunter, social worker (Maine); Howard Zinn, historian & activist;
Ruth Hubbard, educator & women's health activist; Jenifer
Firestone, gay family activist; Chip Berlet, researcher &
journalist; Michael Bronski, writer & gay activist; Horace Seldon,
anti-racism educator; Jamie Suarez-Potts & Kazi Toure, Criminal
Justice Program, American Friends Service Committee (Cambridge); and
others.
back
Army of Lovers: interview with Tom Reeves by Rosa von Praunheim
Interview taken from the 1979 film "Armee der Liebenden oder Aufstand der Perversen" by German gay film-maker Rosa von Praunheim
A
selection of interviews were printed in his book "Army of Lovers"
published by Trikont Verlag in 1979, with an English translation
published by Gay Men's Press in 1980.
Introduction (by Rosa von Praunheim)
And
so to Boston, where we were confronted with radical paedophiles, and I
was glad for the first time to get to understand their problems and
needs. Tom Reeves is a lecturer in contemporary history at a black
college in Boston, and a spokesperson for the Boston/Boise Committee,
set up to campaign for the rights of paedophiles. Tom is a fantastic
man. His warmth and humanity make him an honest and convincing fighter.
He is in no way a dirty old man who has to get boys into bed by some
kind of trick, as the fairy-tales say and the press repeats in a
million copies. Children and adolescents have a right to their
sexuality. In most cases it is children who try to seduce older people,
and not the other way round. Boys have a natural need to express
themselves sexually. And it is heterosexuals, not gays, who torment,
beat and kill children, including their own.
Tom Reeves was
one of the first people to come out as a paedophile. He is not ashamed
and doesn't conceal himself, although the State of Massachusetts has
the highest penalties for sex with minors. Tom lives in a working-class
district of Boston with his lover and several boys. He wants to make
all teenagers who grow up in a repressive authoritarian family aware of
their sexuality, to show them that they have more varied and freer
options in life than just the one-sided, robot-like family.
Tom
and the Boston/Boise Committee were campaigning for the rights of 24
men who were arrested near Boston in a so-called sex ring. They were
accused of having raped children. The press alleged that children of
nine years old were involved, which was a complete lie. The children
were 14 and 15, and in some cases loved the men involved. For the first
time in the history of the gay movement it became possible for the men
accused not to confess to their alleged crime in a shamefaced way, but
to plead innocent, defend themselves against the charges and struggle
for a change in the law. It is not just the gay men's groups in Boston
who support the struggle of the paedophiles; so do lesbians and some
heterosexual groups. This is quite amazing, for generally paedophiles
are a minority in the gay movement who are even discriminated against
by other gays. The idea is that it is necessary to be particularly
diplomatic and behave nicely. Tom Reeves has a different view. He says
we must struggle quite radically for all the rights that gay people
need to guarantee us a more human and freer life in future. Interview
RvP: How did you first get interested in boys? Was it too long ago to remember?
TR: My
very first sexual experience was when I was about 13, with another
13-year-old. He took me unawares when we were playing football, and
after the game he kissed me right on the mouth and I liked that very
much. I was very well aware from then on. But first of all, of course,
I thought, what's wrong with me, and tried to be heterosexual. I even
attempted to get married. I was engaged, and involved in all that. But
I knew that I didn't really have the feeling for it. And then in
Germany, in Berlin, I finally said to myself, 'I am gay'. I tried the
bars and all that, then I visited the 'Keller'. That is a club that
still exists. Somehow I found myself sitting in the bar, and quite
alone. I didn't get to know anyone, and didn't understand what was
wrong with me. I wasn't heterosexual, but I also wasn't happy as a
homosexual. In Germany I found a couple of boys, in the park and
around, 15 or 16 years old, and that was tremendous fun. But in the
bars and clubs, on the gay scene, I didn't find anything. Then when I
was back in America, and working every day as a professor at the
American University in Washington DC, I went to a funeral in Baltimore
and quite by chance saw a couple of youngsters there. They were sitting
in the street and made an approach to me. At first I was worried, I
thought they might be thieves. But they wanted to have sex with me, and
that surprised me and was also very enjoyable. Naturally I went back to
that district and got to know many boys. And then it turned out that
the whole district is a kind of 'boys' club', where all boys
regularly...
RvP: But not a club, a district?
TR: Yes,
a district, a neighbourhood - the whole neighbourhood. No, no bars or
anything, just on the street, and after a couple of months I got to
know one particular kid called Rickey. At that time he was 13 years
old. When I was that age I didn't know anything about sex, and it
surprised me that someone so young could have had so much experience.
It really was him who seduced me. And I really loved him. Then we were
together - how long was it? - we were together for four years. He lived
with me. His mother knew all about it, I spoke to her and she was
completely ok about it. She said, it's better he goes with you than
with someone who's not so good. She was quite happy, and everything was
fine. And then I also got to know his elder and his younger brothers,
and they were all the same. And all of his friends in the
neighbourhood. In that district alone, I slept with perhaps 40 or 50
boys.
RvP: How do you explain that?
Do you mean that all the kids in the district were homosexual or was
that just a stage they went through at puberty?
TR: Perhaps
it was neither a stage, nor were they gay in that particular sense of
the gay movement. I think that there is that phenomenon in some areas,
that all young boys have sexual and other relationships with older men,
and then later, when they themselves are older, they have various
relationships with younger boys.
RvP: But they get .......
TR: They get married and have kids. It's that kind of phenomenon. It's neither a phase, nor...
RvP: Is it connected with bisexuality?
TR: No,
it's not bisexuality either. I think there are too few words in the gay
movement for all these different things. And I think it's some-thing
particular. It's often in really working class districts, where the
Catholic church is very strong. The church also forbids
hetero-sexuality, but that makes no difference. The boys also have sex
with girls. It isn't as if they can't have sex with girls. Right across
the United States there are areas where you come across this
pheno-menon of boy-love.
RvP: Do you think the parents often know what their children are doing?
TR: Oh,
yes. Not often, almost always. I've spoken to lots of mothers, and
fathers too. Many fathers have also had sex with boys. Rickey, for
example. His father, a few years later - this is also very typical for
these areas, that after a while, perhaps after eight or ten years, the
men move out and live by themselves, but round the comer somewhere, in
an apartment. And then they also have sex with the boys in the
neighbourhood. Rickey's father has been to bed with all of Rickey's
friends. And even his grandfather, too, was a boylover. And Rickey -
Rickey is now grown up, of course, he's now 25. Because he got to know
me, he found out that there is a gay move-ment and a gay world.
Otherwise he wouldn't have known about it, or only read about it or
seen it. Through me, he found out that there was this gay movement, and
because of that I think Rickey is now completely gay and lives together
with his lover and is quite open with his mother, and the whole
district knows that, and he is quite open as a grown-up gay.
RvP: You said that this happens particularly in working class towns. Why do you think that is?
TR: I
think it's got to do with class consciousness, that's what I believe.
That isn't just a theory. I somehow believe that this boylove has got
something to do with rebellion, something to do with alienation.
RvP:
When you say alienation and class consciousness, do you mean that gay
workers are freer, that the middle class constructs more rules?
TR: That
is what I mean. I'm also from a working class family. We have sex much
earlier, and remember it, and because we can think about it and
understand it sooner than the middle and upper classes, and also
because there is far more sexuality, many different kinds of sexuality
are accepted, without talking about it or emphasising it. It's just
natural and accepted like that.
RvP: How have you found it here, in Boston?
TR: I
came here, and immediately discovered that there are certain comers,
for example this park at weekends, where several boys hang out, all
waiting for older men. This doesn't mean they want money, like happens
elsewhere, they just want to have sex and some kind of relationship
with an older man. It's not at all dangerous here, in another way too.
In some neighbourhoods and districts in America you can see a group of
young kids and straight away you're afraid you'll get beaten up. But in
districts like this, they just nod at you, quite friendly. But I must
say that I think this whole thing with relationships between grown-ups
and young boys has a political significance, at least in our society,
an ethical significance of inde-pendence and self-discovery and
autonomy.
RvP: But what do you
think attracts you so much about boys, and what do you think attracts
boys about grown-ups, both sexually and in a human sense?
TR: Well,
I must of course speak from my own experience. There are other kinds of
'boylove', for example classical pederasty, that's something quite
different. But in this sense, what I like is having a relationship with
a kid, with a boy, whether it's sexual or not. He's not a child any
more. He has the potential to be a mature person, he has all
possibilities. But he has not yet chosen to get involved in society,
and that's why it's refreshing and very stimulating and revolutionary.
Just at that time he has the choice, the possibility of making a
choice, but he has not yet made a decision, and there is something
still revolutionary and humanist in that possibility, which has
disappeared for 99 per cent of grown-ups. That's really the most
important thing for me.
RvP: That's more important than the sexual side?
TR: Oh,
of course. Sex comes into that, sex is a part of it, and only a part.
Very often the kid approaches me, very often they make the first move,
and I think for these kids I am something unusual, be-cause I refuse to
be fully grown up. My life is not like the life of a grown-up, in the
sense that I take on these responsibilities, that I mustn't do this or
that, because I've got this important job, I've got this obligation,
and so on. No. I've rejected that. It seems like I'll always be a
child, but on the other hand I am grown-up and so I do have experience
that is important for these kids and can help them, and perhaps even
educate them in passing. But precisely not as an official educator. I
join in, like a boy.
RvP: You mean, not so authoritarian, not so compulsive. What would you say is the dividing line, when someone becomes grown-up?
TR: There
isn't really a dividing line. A boy has this potential, this moment of
freedom, when he's no longer a child, and before he has completely
decided to be grown-up, and this moment sometimes begins around the age
of eleven, though that's unusual. Generally with 13 or 14. But it can
be as young as ten. Today, for example, we were talking with kids who
already got into this moment of freedom at eight years old. But more
usually it comes with puberty. And the division at the other side - at
present I've been having a relationship with my lover for almost six
years, he's 27, but for me he's still a boy. He's not grown up. He
doesn't want to take on these important responsibilities, and so on,
and so he really irritates a lot of grown-ups, because he's not
grown-up enough for a 27-year-old. But for me it's wonderful that he
still has this freedom, this freshness, this life in him, this
vitality. So there aren't any limits. Generally 13 to 19, but you can't
say for definite. It could be 11 and it could be 80.
RvP: How do you see the legal situation? Do you want to see the laws changed?
TR: Yes.
For me as an anarchist, the state has nothing to do with such ethical
things, at least it shouldn't have, sexual and ethical decisions should
be free decisions. People must decide freely for themselves, and that
applies to everyone, children as well as adults. Otherwise we can never
be genuine individuals. That's why there shouldn't be any laws about
such things. This has a lot to do with community. If someone said, how
can we protect children, if there aren't any laws?, then I'd reply that
in America every year a million children are injured by their parents,
so that the law doesn't protect them from their parents. I think that
community is the answer. We must try and organise the whole society in
such a way as to promote more humane and more individual relationships.
The community would not allow a child to be injured, either mentally or
physically or sexually. Naturally I'm against any kind of injury to
children, whether sexual or violent or anything else. I think we are in
a position to build such a community, a community of trust, solidarity
and equality, in which it will be impossible to injure children. All
these laws simply create more problems and more injuries to everyone,
children and men and women. Everything is criminalised, and in this way
relation-ships are criminalised.
RvP:
How do you see the situation if force is used, like if men rape
children or someone has sex with a five- or six-year-old, where the
child really doesn't have any choice?
TR: I'm
against it. I'm against sex, if the child really doesn't have any
choice. But I'm not certain what choice means, and when someone really
begins to be able to choose. I think that this whole area needs far
more investigation. I'm not sure. It's clear to me that 13-, 14-,
l5-year-old girls and boys already know what they want and that they
can choose, of that I'm convinced. Of course that doesn't apply to
every single situation. I think one has always got to ask what is
ethical, what is human.
RvP: But now you're speaking for yourself that you have a certain morality.
TR: But
it's not just an individual morality, it's got to do with class
consciousness, with politics, with social relations, and so on.
RvP:
But the society says that there are very many individuals who don 't
have any morality in that sense, but exploit other people. In other
words, they have sex with children, and don't have any morality about
it.
TR: That's a kind of circle,
when people say, there are these individuals, so let's make laws, and
then the laws create more dangers and more individuals like that.
There's no end to it. I think we must try to-gether to build a society
in which all of our genuine inner feelings can be expressed. My belief
is that all men and women, i.e. all people, have the capacity for a
co-operative life. Marx said the same. I don't share the view of the
Christians and Jews that man is really a sinner. I don't agree with
them at all.
RvP: This is a good point to speak of your family. You said that you had your family here in Boston.
TR: Yes, my own family. I don't mean my parents.
RvP: How does that work out? How do you live together with your kids?
TR: First
of all, I do now have a real son. I adopted him. He came to me when he
was 13. Actually he was still 12, but then he was 13. Now he's 19.
We've been together for six years. We live together with my lover,
who's 27, and we've been together for many years. We are a family, also
with our dog and our cat and so on. We've been every-where together.
RvP: And do you all have sex together?
TR: We
have had. But that's not very central for our relationship. For example
I now only have sex with Kenny very rarely. And generally, I've always
been of the opinion that I only want to have sex with a boy if he wants
to. I don't impose any demands. With Kenny it's rare. But it happens.
RvP: You mean that you don't have any exclusive relationships?
TR: No, not at all.
RvP: But you have sex with different kids.
TR: Yes.
And also with older men. I've even had sex with a person of 80, sure. I
don't just have sex with 13-year-olds. But this 80-year-old is still
young in his mind, still a boy, because he also hasn't accepted society.
RvP: How is it with your job? You're a professor at a college ...
TR: Yes, in political science and history.
RvP: Have you ever had difficulties at your college for being openly homosexual, openly committed as a boylover?
TR: No,
not this year. In fact it was really only this year that I came out
quite openly as a boylover. I've been openly gay for years, but as a
boylover, that was another step, since that is strictly forbidden and a
taboo and so on. In December last year I published an article and said
quite openly that I slept with kids. This led to a controversy, and
some people in the college said, that's dreadful, we should expel him,
and they held a meeting with 400 people, and I had to explain why I was
gay and why I slept with boys, and that was quite good. It really was
an education for everyone. And after that, 80 to 90 per cent of the
students, and 99 per cent of my colleagues, said, yes, he's a good
teacher, and we don't care who he sleeps with.
RvP: What is your response to what Anita Bryant says about recruiting?
TR: I
think the gay movement has said that we do not recruit children and we
are not interested in adolescents. Well, I am interested in recruiting
teenagers. I am interested in recruiting every gay teenager who is out
there. I want him to know he is gay. I want him to be proud of it as
soon as possible, as early as possible, because of all the pain and
suffering that kids go through that makes their lives fucked up from
then on. I think a teenager can know and be aware of his sexuality when
he is 13. And it is so much more easy for him, and his whole life fits
better for him, than if he has to painfully struggle and find out when
he is in his twenties. Also, I am very happy to say that I recruit
people away from the middle-class, uptight, violent family, from
creating more of those. And that does not mean that a boy would
necessarily be exclusively homosexual, but that he simply would not
want to reproduce exactly the robot kind of family he grew up and was
unhappy in. I would like to see that disappear and new forms of
relationships emerge. I would like to see everybody rebel against that.
So it is a lie. We do not want to recruit in that sense.
RvP:
You also said, about your house and your family, that the neighbours
don't say anything. The only thing was when a black person...
TR: We
live in a working-class, Irish neighbourhood, primarily. That is one of
the Irish boys standing over there, who is gay, but he can't be openly
gay in the neighbourhood. We have not flaunted our gayness, but at the
same time we have been ourselves. And certainly it is clear to our
neighbours that we have boys here constantly. All of our neighbours
know that. I think the neighbours are very aware, and I have been on
television. I said 'boylover' openly. They have all seen it. Some of
the teenage neighbourhood girls told me that they have seen me on
television, but we have never had any difficulty. It was only when a
black, West Indian, woman friend of mine visited us here in the house
that we had our first real harassment from the neighbours, so that the
racist issue seems to be more of a problem here among this
working-class neighbourhood than boylove. In some ways I think boylove
is more acceptable in a working class neighbourhood than, say,
effeminate homosexuals or camp homo-sexuals or people who go in for
style. But even with the black thing, and even with our being gay
openly, the majority of our neighbours are still very friendly. And the
two elderly women next door who were questioned by police and were
asked if they saw anything unusual or suspicious going on, described us
as nice young men who had helped them and who were good neighbours. I
think it is possible to live openly.
RvP: Could you tell us about the Revere court cases? How you got involved, etc., how it happened?
TR: Well,
last December right here in the house about eight of us who put out the
magazine Fag Rag, which is a radical, anarchist, gay pub-lication, were
reading in the newspaper about 24 men who had been arrested in this
supposed child-molestation ring. And also the police had established a
hotline, and they were asking for any citizen to call in tips of
suspicious sexual activity among men and boys. And this seemed to us to
be a witch-hunt. So we investigated the cases and found out much of
what was said in the papers was untrue. They had said that these men
had raped eight-year-old children. First of all, there were no
eight-year-olds involved. It was all lies. There were 14. and 15-
year-olds involved. And in fact most of the cases had occurred years
before and no one had been raped. But in the State of Massachusetts
rape for a person under 18 could include just simple kissing. If I kiss
a 15-year-old boy, I rape him in the eyes of the law, even if he
consents. We found out that there were many lies. The original
headlines had these men being pornographers when there was no
pornography at all involved. So we formed a committee to protect the
rights of the men who had been accused of child molestation. And we had
a demonstration. We marched angrily into the District Attorney's office
and demanded an end to the hotline. In court he voluntarily withdrew
the hotline rather than go through our suit, so we were successful. We
stopped him. And it was the first time in history, I think in the
United States at least, that a large group of men openly demonstrated
for the rights of men accused of sex with boys. In a sense it was like
a demonstration for gay people in the 1940s. We were out there
demonstrating for the rights of men and boys to have sex and not to be
harassed by the police.
Then we began to organise the gay
community around this issue. I think the real important story is that
we, a group of radical faggots and boylovers, have gotten virtually the
whole Boston community behind us - all of the gay groups, the lesbian
groups, women's groups and many of the straight organisations are
behind us - to the point where we can finally have meetings of nearly
2000 people, including Gore Vidal and other writers. And of course it
was in that respect that the chief justice of the Massachusetts supreme
court visited one of our meetings and was, within a week, suspended
from the bench, for coming to our meeting. I think the other thing that
is so significant is that in the whole history of the State of
Massachusetts, there has never been a case where men have been accused
of raping boys under 18, when they have not either been in jail within
six months or they have pled guilty to lesser crimes and then been put
into mental hospital as sexually dangerous persons. Here we are, six
months after the fact, and not one of the 24 men has pled guilty to
anything. They are all standing for their rights. This is something
new. And none of them are in jail. So this is very significant. I think
the last thing that has to be mentioned is that Massachusetts has the
most severe penalties in the United States for sex between men and
boys. So that for each case of simply kissing or touching a
15-year-old, you can receive life in prison. For instance the man who
is going to be tried first in this case is accused of having sex four
times with the same boy over two and a half years. He is conceivably
going to receive four consecutive life sentences, which means he could
literally never get out of prison.
RvP: How old was the boy?
TR: The boy was 14 to 16 at the time of the alleged incidents.
RvP: What do you think will happen in the court case? Do you think there is a good chance of avoiding a long term?
TR: Each
of the 24 cases is so different . . . But there was no force or
violence in any of these cases. The police have said this. Not even any
drugs, no manipulation, no coercion. In at least 15 of the cases all
that was involved was affectional sex between one man and one boy, not
involving money. And I think in some of the cases where it was just a
man and a boy, many of the boys have told us, and even made signed
statements under oath, that they were forced, harassed and coerced by
the police. They were threatened with arrest for prostitution. They
were threatened with exposure. And several of the boys have told us
they love the men who supposedly raped them. We had the most extreme
thing happen. One of the boys who is now 16 heard about our meetings
and came to one of the meet-ings, one of the boys who was allegedly
raped. And at the same meeting, the man who allegedly raped him also
came. They did not know each other was coming. They saw each other at
the meeting and the boy ran over, threw his arms around his alleged
rapist and kissed him. And yet the same man could go to jail for life
for the sex that he had with that boy. So for cases like that man, I
think we have a very good chance, for the first time, of beating some
of these cases, of these men going free. It is at least possible.
RvP:
Do you think the courts and the police are actually very much aware
that there is a group who are fighting for these men? And are they much
more careful now?
TR: Oh yes.
Absolutely! And the media, the press and the television are more and
more careful. They are still homophobic, they still make mistakes. But
the difference between what they were saying in December and what they
are now saying is extreme. They were saying anything. They were calling
those men rapists and child pornographers and everything in the book.
And now they are very careful with their words. The District Attorney's
office was wanting to get these trials over with quickly because they
wanted to have big publicity. Now the District Attorney's office is
trying to postpone the trials. That, to us, says the DA now believes
they are going to be harmful to him rather than helpful. He is running
for re-election. He is 81 years old. He has been DA here for 25 years.
Prior to that he was assistant DA for another 30 years. So this man is
obviously doing this for his own good. And now suddenly he has found
out it is not to his own good Political analysts in the city say that
this issue, the issue of these men and these boys, may be the issue
that finally gets rid of this man who has been DA and assistant DA for
over a half-century. This is not the first case like this. Every
election year he comes up with some kind of sex ring. The same DA was
the man who prosecuted the black doctor in the most famous abortion
trial in America about four years ago. It was this same DA who banned a
series of books and musicals and other things in Boston, that gave
Boston the famous 'banned in Boston' title. One of the things he did
not allow the people of Boston to see was the musical Hair, which has
appeared all over the world. Bostonians were never able to see that
because DA Burn banned it in Boston. And so over the years he has done
this. This is perhaps going to be the first time that it has back.fi
red. And he may be actually defeated this year.
RvP: What exactly are the sodomy laws in Massachusetts?
TR: In
these cases, if it is with a girl under 16, then if it is to be called
rape, it has to be proved there was penetration. But if it is a boy,
you can be charged with what is called 'rape and abuse of a child'.
That means if you did anything sexual, including just kissing the boy.
And it is automatically rape if the boy is under 18, whether there was
consent or not. Now, that is one set of laws. Another set of laws says
any kind of sexual behaviour in a public place is lewd and lascivious
behaviour, and you can be charged with lewd and lascivious behaviour
with a child or with a person under 18. The rape law carries life
sentence. The lewd and lascivious law carries sen-tences of up to 15
years.
RvP: How about homosexuality?
TR: Homosexuality,
as such, is still illegal in terms of the law, but the supreme court of
this State has said that homosexual acts among consenting adults will
not be prosecuted, if the acts took place in private. However there are
so many other laws on the books through which adult homosexuals can be
persecuted. For instance, shortly after these cases, over 100 men were
entrapped and arrested at the public library in Boston, under a law in
Massachusetts which says that if a person asks you to have sex in a
public place and you accept the request, it is illegal, even if you say
you want to do it at home in private. So the police can come up to you
without a uniform and say 'Do you want to go home with me and have
sex?'. If you say yes in a public place, that is a punishable crime.
RvP: So that was entrapment?
TR: Yes, there were 101 of these cases in the Boston public library.
RvP: At once?
TR: Yes,
within one week. Not 101 at one moment, but within a week. All
entrapped! In addition, about 20 of the cases are still pending. About
30 or 40 of the cases pled guilty. About ten were found guilty. And the
remainder of the cases were found to be innocent. A number of the cases
were tried in court and found to be innocent. We believe there is a
real witch-hunt going on in Boston against homosexuals. And it is part
of the whole Anita Bryant campaign. It is going to happen all over the
United States, we believe, and I think possibly all over the world
nowadays. And the fact is, since Christ-mas, that is six months, over
300 men have been arrested and face trials just in Boston. And that is
the most in recent history in Boston, and it is the most in any city in
the United States. So we consider that an all-out war against
homosexuals in the city.
You realise actually right now that
the three of us could be probably brought up on rape charges? Even you!
At least with 'intent to rape'. I forgot to mention that. For intent to
rape in the State, all you have to establish is the likelihood that
someone intended to rape someone or intended to have sex. You can get
up to 15 years in prison just for thinking about it. In other words, if
it seems you intended to have sex with him, then that is up to 15 years.
©1980 Gay Men's Press
back
NAMBLA's Third Conference, PAN Magazine, 04 February, 1980
BALTIMORE,
U.S.A. The third conference by the North American Man/Boy Love
Association was held here on 13 October in the World Trading Center.
The Baltimore Gay Alliance was host later to a dance. About 75 men and
boys from 20 states and Canada attended (by invitation only). Dr.
Thomas Reeves of the Boston/Boise Committee opened the conference with
a talk on "Ethics of Man/Boy Relationships", staking out a much more
radical position with respect to contemporary society than have such
previous commentators as Den Nichols, whom he criticised for attempting
to help youths adjust to American life as it is. "The core of our
identity must be unashamed love of boys as boys," Reeves said. "The
authentic boy-love identity is not apologetic, does not view sex as
temptation, and does not see the need for therapy or 'help' of any kind
to reform or modify his sexuality. Love of boys as they are rules out
any attempt to mould boys into what society expects of 'adults', and
certainly not into 'normal' heterosexual men." In other action, the
group established a Defense Fund to be used helping men and boys
arrested for non-coercive sex and voted to select the case of Richard
Peluso, now serving a life sentence for sex with a minor in
Massachusetts, for its first effort. The next day, Sunday, 14 October,
50 men and boys marched under the NAMBLA banner in the gay march on
Washington.
back
Massachusetts' Bridgewater Treatment Center, PAN Magazine, 08 April 1981
BOSTON,
USA Tom Reeves, of Boston/Boise Committee fame, North American Man/Boy
Love Association and Gay Community News have taken on no less
formidable a presence than the Massachusetts "correctional" authorities
in an attempt to get men convicted of having had consensual sex with
boys set free. Last December Reeves wrote a touching article in Gay
Community News about some of the men incarcerated in the infamous
Bridgewater Treatment Center. There "sexually dangerous persons" are
held "from one year to life", which means until they convince some
prison psychiatrist that they are no longer likely to do the "sexually
dangerous" thing which got them in trouble in the first place. Reeves
also spoke with two of these psychiatrists. At first one of them
claimed almost none of the "patients" at Bridgewater were convicted of
non-violent sex with boys. When Reeves said he knew of at least 25 such
people locked up in Bridgewater and forgotten, possibly forever, the
psychiatrist said, "You know, we never really think about that. If it's
with a boy under 16, the law says it's rape. So we don't distinguish."
Some psychiatrist! The main thrust of NAMBLA's efforts is to get
Richard Peluso, the fall guy in the Revere scandal and in Bridgewater
for several lifetimes, re-tried. Prison officials have seized films
from visiting NAMBLA officials and tried to stop the first-ever
demonstration outside an American prison to pressure officials to cease
locking up men who have mutually consensual sex with kids. They have
had some success in the Peluso matter. The courts agreed at least to
hear his re-trial motion and to review his status as a "sexually
dangerous person".
back
TRASHING THE PARTY OF THE NUTTY NURSE, Gay Community News,
13 December, 20 December, 1980, 3 January, 10 January, 1981
One
could write volumes about victimology. A likely candidate can be
anybody with what he thinks is a disadvantage -- a Jew, a black, a gay,
a boy-lover. Once he has identified himself as vulnerable there are a
hundred bullies eager and ready to turn him into a victim. And they
have the tracts to justify it: Mein Kampf, the Epistles of St. Paul,
laws in the penal codes, even the unending stream of prurient "exposes"
in gutter journals too numerous and well-known to mention.
A
good case can be made for civilisation advancing only when victims stop
being victims and turn on their bullies. People might feel sorry for
the hundreds of thousands of Middle-Age Catherists who went to their
firey deaths as the priests of Rome danced about them clutching bible
and cross -- but the Catherists didn't leave much behind them. It would
seem to be no coincidence that anti-semitism in the Western world
didn't diminish one iota as the world learned of the Warsaw ghetto and
the torture/extermination camps -- but it did after Israel was
established and, for better or worse, showed a national aggressiveness
the Jews had never been thought to possess.
It might seem
that we spend a lot of time in these pages talking about Boston - and
that Massachusetts paedophiles are subject to an unusual amount of
victimization. This is only because we hear about it. (Does a stone
cast in a pond really make a noise if it is unheard? Does a boy-lover
screaming the truth in some police cellar, abandoned by friends,
abandoned by gays and other boy-lovers, really make a noise either?) In
this one medium-sized American city there is a small group of people
who refuse to let the bullies get away with everything they want. These
men are very much out of the closet. They are excellent at getting
attention in the press, over the radio, even on TV. And the authorities
have left them alone.
Their latest success was trashing the
"Nutty Nurse" caper. It seems that Boston University has a rather nasty
nursing dean by the name of Ann Burgess ("the living image of Nurse
Ratchett in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," according to Tom Reeves)
who somehow inveigled $50,000 out of the US government to
"rehabilitate" children photographed by paedophiles. No sooner was the
cash in hand than she put on a wing-ding party (excuse us, a
conference) -- and invited a fine cast of bullies to participate. There
was Lloyd Martin, of course, as the keynote speaker at the celebratory
banquet. The affair was to begin in the morning of 12 March at 9 am in
the Curtis Auditorium of the Boston University School of Nursing. The
nutty nurse herself would kick off with a one-hour presentation called
Linkages Among Child Victimization: Prostitution and Pornography
(evidently grammar was not one of the required subjects in her
education). This was to be followed by a Dr. Roland Summit talking on
Incest Patterns. After lunch the cops were to hold forth on State and
Federal Laws and Investigation of Child Pornography. Then there was to
be an "Interagency Panel Discussion Identifying Child Pornography:
Roles of the Various Federal Agencies". In case all of this had been a
little too serious, participants could unwind at a "cash bar" at 6:00
("Har, har, har, you shudda seen that little scout-leaders face when
the judge slapped him with a lifer -- make the next one a double,
Harry!") Finally dinner at seven, and the Lloyd Martin Show would start
with the ice-cream.
Well, the party went off almost as
planned, except for a little background music from the opposition. Tom
Reeves attended the "serious" part of the affair, the morning and
afternoon conference. "The day got off to a swinging start," Reeves
reports, "with Nurse Burgess standing at the podium beneath a huge
screen on which slides of boys were shown. The first were slides of
boys fully clothed, playing ball, swimming, sitting around, wrestling,
etc. These she called 'innocent but essentially pornographic to the
paraphiliac (sic)'. She explained that certain men lurk near
playgrounds, etc., sometimes using zoom lenses, but sometimes actually
photographing the boys up close. These types do not ever even touch
their 'victims', but later masturbate over the photographs, imagining
vile scenarios.
"The next photos showed boys in the process
of undressing. 'This is typical,' she confided. 'There is something
special about slipping in and out of underwear and bathing suits, and
they seem to prefer red ones. It is possibly the image of innocence
before the fall.' Next came nudes. 'These were seized from a man
(George Jacobs ; see PAN 5, page 7) who made over 90,000 such slides
and is now serving a prison sentence. A part of his plea bargain
included a deal that he would work with us, and he is now working with
us, especially to identify the victims and their families so we can
interview them, and also to lead us to other potential paedophiles and
to the rings.' The nudes were individuals and groups of boys, really
beautiful, well-photographed artistic photos, of apparently happy,
uncoaxed, relaxed boys. Each one, though, had its special significance
in her mind. Regarding one photo of three boys, about 12-13, wearing
little black haloween <sic> masks (and nothing else), 'Now, this
means something, probably sado-masochism. It follows a pattern.
Secrecy, that sort of thing. And games -- the paedophile loves games
and puts his boys through all sorts of tricks for the camera.'
"She
showed several photos of nude boys (not aroused) on beaches, in woods,
fields, etc. 'This is very frequent. It definitely means something that
they always want them outdoors.' She showed one photo of two boys,
about 10, pissing. 'This is a real specialty. Urination is a request --
they take big orders for this: golden showers, you know.' (Lots of
laughs, guffaws, ribald remarks, as at a stag party.) Next were a
series of ten photos of different boys taken by another photographer --
I saw nothing peculiar about them. 'What do you see?' Burgess asked.
Nobody responded. 'They all are skinny! That was especially true of
this man. He was very fat. But a lot of these men are overweight and
you will see as you examine the pornography collections circulating in
these rings that the boys are usually skinny. I mean, look at that boy,
look at how skinny he is!' (The boy was lovely, lying on his stomach,
nude.) 'Just imagine this old, fat man looking at this photo and you
can perhaps get inside the paedophile for a moment. He is imagining
that the boy is himself, as he once was or wishes he had been! We find
that this is what they are usually fantasizing. Especially where there
are two or more boys, they are imagining they are one of the boys in
the photo. Essentially it is narcissism.
"'I hope I have
prepared you now by these slides, because I have to show you the
hard-core stuff now. It is important to prepare people slowly, to let
them get used to the easier slides, before moving on to the really bad
stuff.' She flipped through about a dozen slides of boys with
erections, mutual masturbation, fellatio, and commented, 'They have
this oral fixation. Oral is definitely in. They get a lot of orders for
special things. Now look at this one . . .' Virtually every boy in the
slides has looked like he was having fun. She seems suddenly to notice
this and says, 'They often drug the boys first . . . They usually
smile. They obviously are cued to smile, they tell them they do have to
smile. Or sometimes you can see the stupor, they are just stoned.' Not
one of the boys in the photos she showed looked stoned. They looked
incredibly innocent and having fun.
"The slides stopped.
'This whole thing is a big business,' she said (Later, incidentally,
this was contradicted by the chief New England FBI officer who tells
the conference that they have not been able to prosecute a single case
of organized, commercial pornography under the child porn law in 4
years because they don't seem to exist, 'or we can't find them.'). 'The
most important thing for us after we are in on the raid of a ring is
the follow-up. We seek out the victims and their families. Many of them
won't talk. This one boy -- one of the ones you just saw -- would not
talk at all at first. He is 13. But we talked to his parents and they
were frantic at what damage might have been caused by this. They were
so disturbed. So we went back and we just kept insisting . . .' The
upshot was that the boy finally confessed he was gay, into S and M and
hates the man who seduced him when he was ten and 'made him that way.'
"'The
self-loathing is so great among the boys who have been victimised,'
Burgess continued. 'They blame themselves as well as the offender, and
they carry the awful secret which they must keep from their parents and
those they love . . . That is the usual course for these things. The
boy meets the man --usually a neighbour, an uncle, someone known to him
-- he poses nude, he feels funny taking off his clothes, but his
friends do it. Next comes sex. Then the photos. Then he starts doing
the sex for money. He goes downtown. And it's all over.'
"Father
Mark Janus is introduced as Director of Bridge Over Troubled Waters
which works with street kids, especially sexually abused kids. Actually
he is a 'consultant', not the Director. Janus explains that the kids
are in the grasp of pimps and pushers the minute they step onto the
streets. They 'are out there ready to jump right in when they see a
fresh face, a new body."' Tom Reeves chronicles the good Father's
analysis of the kinds of kids who end up "on the street" and concludes
with what he calls the "typical spiral down." "'Sexual abuse is the
start,"' Reeves quotes Janus. "'It is where the money is. It is fun. It
is exciting. The streets are alluring - where else is there so much
excitement in today's boring world? But then comes the exposure to cold
nights, diseases, VD, drug overdoses, fights, being thrown out in the
middle of the night, suicide, murder. Many of the boys make the circuit
over and over: Boston, New York, Florida, California and back. The
longer they stay, the worse they look. I don't know what happens to
most of these kids. They become missing persons. It may be when they
are 12 or 30, but I really believe what happens is (pause) they die!"'
Most
quotable of the afternoon speakers seems to have been Detective Tom
Rodgers of the Indianapolis Police Department. According to him the big
problem with child porn is that much of it is not commercial. Most of
it is "deep underground in the child sex cults. We need laws to deal
specifically with these underground cults. They are organized into big
groups like PIE in England and PAL and PAN in Germany (sic) and they
have cult magazines like BSJournal and Man Boy Love Journal and the
sole purpose of these groups and mags is to protect child molesters and
exchange photos. The groups maintain they are not involved in illegal
activity. Our task is to prove they are. Where that is not possible we
can link individual members of the groups to sex crimes and discredit
the groups."
Like all policemen, his mouth watered at the
thought of what the micro-chip might do. "So far there is no
nation-wide, computerized system on child molesters, child sex cults
and sex offenders, but we are working on one and hope to have it in
place by 1982.' (Surely he meant 1984!) 'Then we will have every name,
every group, every address and even before specific laws are broken,
and we will share this with all law enforcement agencies. Colorado is
an example of a state with exciting new innovations in law . . . (Here
you ) can get severe penalties. We must raise the penalties for these
offenses to discourage the acts . . .
"Someone talked earlier
about the 'innocent' photos. We have to have some way to deal with
those guys, because they are usually at the bottom of it. They just
take these photos of children fully clothed, but the guys later use the
photos sexually and they sell this kind of item for a lot of money."
A
little later Rodgers described the typical paedophile: "He usually
lives alone and is lonely. His only adult friends are other
paedophiles, with whom he is competative <sic> and jealous. The
paedophile with boys is not usually intersted <sic> in
penetration. Now we have wondered about that, and we think it is
because penetration leaves evidence. You know, if you penetrated the
anus of a small boy he might bleed to death. And these men don't mean
to hurt -- they always say that. One paedophile told me he wanted to
penetrate, but it wasn't practically possible. He especially liked
little babies, up to about 4 years, and penetration was just out.
"We
don't usually get involved with the victims. The kids are often
uncooperative. They usually deny they had sex at all. You have to
establish rapport with them, explain to them that they have been
victims. They usually don't know they are victims, and some don't know
it was wrong. Once they admit it they usually say they were drugged,
drinking or asleep . . ."
At one point during the afternoon
session Boston Vice-squad cop Skippy Halliday came up to Tom Reeves,
flashed his badge and said, "Let's go out in back and work this thing
out." Reeves refused. The Nutty Nurse had obviously ordered Halliday to
get rid of Reeves, although she denied it later.
The dinner
got off to a tense start when guests had to enter through a picket put
up by NAMBLA members carrying signs which read STOP KILLER COP LLOYD
MARTIN and FIRE DEAN BURGESS AND DETECTIVE MARTIN. A flyer entitled Who
is the LAPD Det. Lloyd Martin whom B.U. honors tonight? was passed out
detailing the terrible career and horrifying statements of California's
most famous paedophobe. The flyer demanded that Martin be suspended
without pay immediately by L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates pending an
official investigation of his activities and asked some pointed
questions: "Why is Martin here at Boston University tonight? Why is
Martin using the Kiddie Protection scam to kill and imprison so many
faggots? Why do Martin and others like him continue to deny youths the
right to full sexual consent? What crimes in his own past is Martin
covering up? How can a cop who has terrorized kids by hanging them by
their ankles over a cliff (See PAN 6, page 9) now pose as a protector
of children?" The flyer also demanded that B.U. investigate the
connection of its nutty nurse with Martin and the illegal entrapment of
homosexuals behind the smoke screen of supposed statutory sex offenses
and kid porn. Finally it asked the university to make a public apology
to the gay community for allowing Nurse Burgess to invite "criminal-cop
Martin to this city."
Tom Reeves and reporter Mitzel attended
the banquet and actually dined with Detective Martin -- and his wife,
who seems to have come along with him on this federally-funded junket
all the way from Los Angeles. "During coffee Skippy Halliday and
Burgess joined us," Mitzel reports. "Burgess was trying to neutralise
us by being sweet. Tom asked her if she was heterosexual and -- I
actually counted the seconds -- she took six seconds to decide how to
answer."
After the banquet speech (see box) Mitzel told a
conspicuous assistant of Burgess "that what I had observed was the
grossest orgy of unscientific pandering of homophobia and gross
manipulation of children's lives for phonies to make bucks that I had
ever seen and I would leave the room and go out into the community and
work tirelessly for the immediate firing of Nurse Burgess." That, of
course, brought the nutty nurse herself, who asked, "What did you say
about getting me fired?" "I repeated my line," Mitzel continues. "She
grabbed my wrist and said, 'No, please don't!' Well, if she thinks I
can do it, perhaps I can!"
The following day there was a
follow-up "evaluation" session, and this was attended by George
Jacobs's attorney Tom Butters. Martin and the nutty nurse "were furious
at our presence," according to Mitzel. "We had ruined it for them. They
couldn't talk about anything else. Burgess kept wondering 'when are
they going to drop the other shoe'."
NAMBLA is putting
together a press release and packet demanding a federal investigation
of the $50,000 of taxpayer's money the nutty nurse received. Pressure
is also being mounted in California -- with the speaker of the House,
the Attorney General, a pro-gay L.A. City Council member -- to get
Martin at least discredited and possibly investigated and fired.
And
it all might just happen. Bullies like victims: they are afraid of
fighters. And in Tom Reeves, Mitzel, Tom Butters, Michael Thompson and
the others behind the magnificent trashing of the nutty nurse's little
federally-funded party they have found a group of wily fighters indeed.
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The Nicholas Groth Conference, PAN Magazine, 11 March 1982
BOSTON,
MA, USA The A. Nicholas Groth conference on child molestation went off
last autumn at Boston University without all the fireworks predicted
for it. Tom Reeves of NAMBLA was invited to participate if he would
call off the promised protesters. When it developed that Reeves would
simply be the target for the questions and denunciations of other
members on the "panel", he declined and informed Groth and Company that
it was to be total war. The result, according to one observer who works
in the building where the conference took place, was "total paranoia"
-- security checks, frisks, plain-clothes cops. And all for nothing,
for no protesters showed up.
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Tom Reeves Arrested, PAN Magazine, 11 March 1982
The
bad news is that Tom Reeves and Michael Thompson, of Gay Community
News, were arrested on 19 January and charged with sexual contacts
several years ago with a teenage transvestite hustler. Although this
would seem to be the break the FBI had been looking for in their raids
on the houses of Swithinbank and Fox (See Pan 10, page 16), the whole
thing appears to have been a kind of accident involving another runaway
boy, homophobic parents, a chance meeting, etc. The radio/TV media
carried the affair for a few hours and the Globe, which has been
struggling for years to be America's worst newspaper, seemed to be off
on a fantasy trip totally unrelated to the facts of the arrest. Giving,
of course, Reeves' name and address, it went on to accuse him of rape
and reduce the ages of the boys involved. But the good news which
followed was that the case was soon thrown out of court by the judge
when the principal witness, the boy who had been badgered into making
the charges, was prevented from testifying at any procedings
<sic> because he himself was facing criminal prosecution on a
variety of felonies quite unrelated to sex. Everyone is now waiting to
see whether the present District Attorney will, in the best tradition
of Boston Irish politicians, appeal and try to use the arrests for
political advantage.
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Club International Raided by FBI, Police, PAN Magazine, 12 July 1982
BOSTON,
MA, USA A huge effort by the FBI and the police of several states
resulted in a raid on a gay establishment here called Club
International, the arrest of 5 people on prostitution charges -- and a
veritable bonanza of scurrilous reporting by the Boston press
(international child prostitution ring . . . sent boys as young as 13
to Mexico, Canada and several US cities for $500-plus sex weekends . .
.) One 18-year-old and one 16-year-old were also arrested. NAMBLA
spokesman Tom Reeves swung into action and appeared on a local radio
talk show: "I called this afternoon and asked the District Attorney's
office how much money was spent in prosecution of the case of the
murder of the black man in Savin Hill recently, and he told me, after
several calls, that it was about $5,000." (Reeves was referring to just
one of several recent homophobic assaults in Boston.) "Estimating from
what the newspapers say, this particular investigation . . . . involved
five different agencies, including the US Postal Service, for four or
five months. According to today's Herald, they actually rented the
apartment where the prostitution went on; the Postal Service rented the
apartment and set up these elderly men in that apartment. I estimate --
and I would challenge them to disprove this -- that this raid cost the
taxpayers $250,000." Well, that's about the right proportion for the
corrupt Irish political machine which runs Boston: one dollar to solve
the murder of a black man, fifty dollars to entrap an elderly
paedophile into having consensual sex with a boy just under the age of
consent. Sources: Boston Herald-American, 3, 4, 6 & 9 May, 1982; Boston Globe, 3 & 4 May, 1982; Gay Community News, 15 May, 1982.
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