Danny Whittaker has a website "My Own Worst Enemy", and recently took the unusual step of interviewing Tom O'Carroll for nearly 3 hours and posting the entire interview, <unedited>. Tom O'Carroll is a pedophile activist, and he has been in favor of legalization and acceptance of adult-child sexual activity for a long time. In 1980 he published "Pedophilia: the radical case" to promote his view, and he has never wavered from it, as with the passing of decades society's views have become ever more intolerant of the idea.
Whittaker includes a 38-minute introduction to the interview, where he defends and explains his decision to interview Tom. One thing he explicitly considered was going to Virtuous Pedophiles to find someone to interview, and he gives his reasoning for rejecting that approach. My main purpose in this post is to analyze the reasons he gives and rebut them.
He is correct that central to the concept of Virtuous Pedophiles is the idea that many pedophiles never molest children. He reasonably notes that if we are all or mostly lying about that, it undercuts our position. No one can prove definitively that they do not molest children. Whittaker says Tom with his radical agenda has nothing to hide -- but if Tom had ever physically forced himself on a struggling boy, it would undercut everything he says. Whittaker himself has no way of proving to us that he's never molested a child. But he offers specific reasons for doubting Virtuous Pedophiles in particular.
To interview a virtuous pedophile is "pointless because, having seen the comment sections underneath these articles about Virped, most people refuse to believe or just care about the non-offending claim." This fiercely independent thinker is now justifying his decisions by appealing to what people put in comment sections.
"...it's just like a ticking time bomb ... and to be fair ... I don't think [the public who writes comments's] suspicions are entirely groundless". He notes that Todd Nickerson was the most famous Virped example "angling for sympathy by claiming that he's never sexually abused a child, never would, because he knows the harm it can cause because he himself suffered abuse as a child. However, it was later discovered that Nickerson had been posting in forums".
He makes it sound like Nickerson was devious, hiding his past. But in the original article, Nickerson says "In the midst of that dark era in my life, I discovered an unhealthy pedophile forum... Many of its most influential members were pro-contacters ... I found myself taking up the same pro-contacter chants, if only to feel like I belonged somewhere." That's perfectly clear, without going into detail about things he no longer believes. There is no dishonesty or subterfuge here at all. Nickerson's supposed deviousness and untrustworthiness is the key claim that underlies much of the rest of Whittaker's argument. Based on a faulty premise, it collapses.
Here's the first place it leads: "... if the best representative that the likes of Salon can conjure up to put forward as an example of this apparent compatibility between pedophilia and virtuousness is somebody who sounds like they're only committed to virtue so long as they're under duress to do so... If the virtuous aspect of virped is seen by some of its members as just a hurdle to be scaled rather than a grounding principle, then sort of what's the point? Because virtuous pedophiles minus the virtue are just pedophiles."
But let's go back to what Nickerson said -- suicidal, confused, desperate to fit in with the only group who didn't hate him just for existing. Whittaker describes his post as, "if the law were different and we lived in a more sex-positive society he would indeed engage in sex with a child if she was in love with him and she both wanted and initiated it." There are a lot of conditions there that will never in fact be met, but the girl's welfare is central to his thinking. He's not saying that he'd molest her if he could get away with it. Now, society is never going to change to make such relationships accepted in the first place, so his speculations would never have been tested even if he had continued to hold that view. There were plenty of barriers to his becoming a molester, even when he was most vulnerable and thinking least clearly, but to Whittaker he's just an amoral opportunist. It's as if Todd said that if he could take a million bucks from the bank, and everyone else was doing it, and it was legal, and the bank didn't really mind, he might do it. But Whittaker, the fiercely independent thinker, ignores all that and just follows the public emotional reaction in calling him a bank robber.
Much later in his introduction, Whittaker (with admirable openness) confronts some evidence O'Carroll gave that maybe adult-child sex isn't all that bad. Finnish youth who had sexual relationships with older people found it positive an awful lot of the time. And Whittaker notes that if that's true, we ought to reconsider whether adult-child sex is wrong after all. And yet -- Nickerson at his lowest point was entertaining ideas based on this possibility, and those musings remain in Whittaker's thinking as solid evidence that he is devoid of virtue and a molester if he could get away with it.
Whittaker speaks as if Salon went to find the most virtuous pedophile they could, and if after combing through 2,000 they could only find Nickerson, then surely the rest must be awful. (They didn't actually go hunting for a spokesperson -- Nickerson approached them.) I argued that Nickerson is actually pretty good. But the truth is that Nickerson is part of a very small group -- virtuous pedophiles who are "out" to the entire world. Most pedophiles we hear of have been forced into the public eye because they've been caught committing a crime. Journalists understandably much prefer sources whose identity they can verify. But pedophiles who are "out" to the entire world are subject to devastating consequences even if they've done nothing wrong. They will lose jobs, friends, family, housing, and even their church. They risk physical violence. If journalists insist on an "out" non-offender as a source, they have a very small handful to choose from. Some journalists recognize this reality and are willing to interview pedophiles whose identities remain secret. It's not ideal, but the extenuating circumstances are compelling indeed. The vast majority of virtuous pedophiles have kept their attraction a secret, with the same skill and judgment they have used to never commit a crime. The Nickerson who outed himself way back on his pedophile forum was by his own account a dysfunctional and suicidal person. The same pain that led him to come out is related to his past pro-contact views. The fact that he's not the 100% ideal poster child for Virtuous Pedophiles is related to why he is willing to be "out". I have nothing but admiration for him and think he's done great things. But know this: the ideal poster children for Virtuous Pedophiles stay hidden. For a quick look at the variety you can find if you're willing to listen to those who remain hidden, see https://medium.com/pedophiles-about-pedophilia.
Later in his introduction, Whittaker defends interviewing O'Carroll on the grounds that he and his conservative brethren really have to look at unpleasant realities if they're going to actually make progress against child sex abuse, instead of just signaling their virtue. Whittaker thinks the general idea of non-offending pedophiles is interesting as one piece of a puzzle for moving forward. But there is one basic question in the air: is adult-child sex a good thing, or isn't it? The vast majority of the public think it isn't. Shared values are an important part of dialog between different groups. Virtuous Pedophiles shares that basic premise. But Whittaker has unfairly vilified those who share that premise, and given a 3-hour platform to someone who doesn't. It seems like a very poor choice if your desire is truly to move forward on reducing child sex abuse.
Whittaker's interview of O'Carroll is acknowledged as being painstakingly fair. But in its clarity it is still a view that conservatives (and 99% of liberals) find highly repugnant. It has the effect of presenting pedophiles in the worst possible light. It is standard fare in polarized debates to find the most extreme proponents of the opposing view and tag the entire opposition with those extreme claims. I will give Whittaker the benefit of the doubt and not claim he intended this, but it is still the net effect.
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