Show and Tell
OK children, time for Reading The Newspaper.
Now this one, here, is The Sunday Times, all the way from Perth. It's from the 19th of May, 1996 and it says (can you read it from there? that's it):
WA PERVERTS TO BE NAMED
Convicted and suspected WA paedophiles and sex offenders will be named in a directory tipped to go on sale in August.
It will list the names, towns, ages and occupations of offenders and detail their offences. Photographs of some offenders will be included in the guide, to be sold by newsagents and targeted at parents.
And now ummmm How about a little story?
Her hair's a mess, her linen suit is sweat-tacky, wrinkled, the skirt clings to her thighs like cellulite, the bloody lights refuse to change, she should be in that lane, she's three-quarters of an hour late for picking Peter up from day care and she's just run out of cigarettes. She whips across two lanes and into the newsagents where she picks up her smokes and, on impulse, a Woman's Day, a Women's Weekly and a Paed Monthly , the new one with the Christian Brother centrefold. 'How's it feel to be out?', she teases the proprietor, who's the latest victim of a Paed Register misspelling. They chat. She tells him about Peter's special commemorative badge, for the double rolling hitch knot he used when lynching his scout master. And how he'd- Ohh, gotta go.
She zips past the park where, only last week, another pigeon-feeding pensioner was involved in a vigilante hit-and-run incident involving 17 prams and A Little Golden Book, ignores the mob of mothers beating a suspect Mr Whippy driver to death with tupperware lunchboxes, and scrabbles with the wheel for a reverse park outside the child care centre. She cranes her head and whooommm! her heart pinballs round her ribcage, her guts flip inside out like a soggy plastic glove. That flock of blond curls, that's Peter, he's out on the footpath, and there's a strange man strangerdanger strangerdanger in a navy suit, bending over him, fiddling with his clothes. She leaps from the car, mace in hand, halfway through a scream, the man turns and-
It's her brother. It's just good ol Uncle Steve, come to pick up his own boy. Phewww.
Peter's safe.
Isn't he?
THE DOUBLE LIFE OF DAVID YELDHAM1
And some practice at letter-writing:
Dear David
Just a note to say that CC10, A17 and I are thinking of you at this difficult time. [section here deleted for security reasons]
Dave, you're damned no matter what you do. Look at us. We're case-studies at opposite ends of a homophobic spectrum. We both married, had kids, early success, high-flying careers.
You stayed married and scared, did beats when you couldn't help yourself. I came out, had a longterm committed relationship.
You were sloppy, reckless, indiscreet. I was honest and open and just as reckless.
You endured gossip and discouraged investigations, you were wide open to allegations of corruption, blackmail, bribes, judicial interference, a sad, frightened lonely old man so desperate you'd wank on railway station steps.
I was upfront with the Dept all down the line: Hayden as Foreign Minister personally approved cohabitation with my partner and full defacto status even as ambassador. And where'd it get me? Into an international set-up financed by World Vision and the Federal Police, sponsored by the DPP, a botched double-blind experiment to trial the Child Sex Tourism laws.
And what did the Age correspondent have to say? I quote: "But for all the conspiracies, real and imagined, it might also be argued that Mr Holloway2 helped to make himself an easy target and contributed to his own misfortune." Why? Next sentence: "He was well-known as an active and gregarious member of the gay community and for years the father of five adult children had been open about his homosexuality."
The media played with us, turned platitudes on their backs, scratched the urban myth underbelly to make the moral outrage purr.
Closeted, bisexual, non-gay men who have sex with men, out-n-proud poof: it makes no difference. CC6 called you a cat, police slang for either homosexual or paedophile: what's the difference?
Paedophilia is to the 90s what Communism was to the 50s and AIDS to the 80s.
Refuse to remain a victim, David. Fight.
John
THE ENEMY AMONG US
And now, boys and girls, we're gunna play a game. It's a special game, cos it's 2 in 1: Spot the Sex Offence and Dress-Ups.
My name's Richard and I'm 17 and the very model of a major private school boy. In 1995 my goals were: to top science, become a prefect and seduce my trumpet teacher. My school has a reputation for breeding high achievers.
My name's Mark, and I just turned 11, and I'm in St Vincent's Orphanage. It's 1959. Last year I got belted with a steel ruler for getting my maths wrong and I watched a Brother rape a 10 yr old in the change sheds. This year, my turn.
My name's Chris, and I'm gorgeous and 19 but made to look and act a leetle urchin schoolkid for a glossy fashmag photo shoot.
Me name's Bernadette, and I'm a 17-yr-old ward of the state, well, since I got away from me drunken mum who used to hit me cos I was there. Me case worker fucked me, me counsellor didn't believe me, I got shoved in a detention centre.
My name's David, and I'm 15, and embarrassed cos I'm a cliche. Last month I went on a Beach Mission camp on the Mornington Peninsula, and I lost my virginity, with some accidental pain and lots of fumbling, to . . . my 17-yr-old Christian Youth Leader.
My name's Peter. I'm 6. It's 1996. Uncle Steve did it. I can't say. Made me promise. But I can't say. I don't know the words.
My name's W3 and I'm 14, got picked up in May hitchhiking by Tony Bevan in Wollongong. He took me on a joyflight, motorbike rides, gave me money for clothes, paid me $10 every time I came when looking at his porn mags, then I let him wank me, soon I'm wanking him, then we fuck, then I join his herd of boys going down to Sydney, at Costello's in Kings Cross, to fuck men for 20 bucks a time: I'll keep this up for a year.
My name's Rohan, I'm 15, this goatee's my pride and joy, it's 1983, gay sex is still illegal so I can't come out BUT I can escape the suburban gulag, lie my way into a nightclub and get some hot trade to take me home.
My name's Patrick and I'm bored and tired and 19. Almost too old to keep hockin me box down the park but I've been at this since I was 13, got habits to keep up, rent to pay, no job, no prospects, no safe-sex leaflets, no plans. I can pass for 16 at night though.
My stage-name's Sally and I'm 24 and a star of the best-selling Chick Extreme straight porn series. I'm in Vol. 7: 'Teen Bizzare'[sic], and Vol. 8: 'Final Exam at Sex School'. I get to wear the uniform, got these cute ponytails and my favourite subjects are fisting and double penetration.
My name's Dean and I am (just) 15. I'm a succulent boy with flowerstalk legs, one held by a radio announcer, the other by Constable [M], the police community liaison officer with the neon smile from off Agro's Cartoon Connection on weekend TV, and both men are fucking me at once. I'm tranquilliser-numb, nerve-abraded by amyl nitrate.
I'm here out of curiosity, greedy for experience, procured by the basketball star I'm in lurve with. I'll bleed; feel dirty, wanted, real, brave, sale-able, adult; and I'll do it again cos I think this is the way to learn and this is how men do it.
And I'm here now to say: generalisations on man-boy sex are as impossible as age of consent laws are unfair, moral panic is as unreasoning as the gay-paed link is unbreakable. It is easier to believe in monstrous homosexual strangers than to suspect a neighbour or family member.
Meanwhile, this last year in Sydney, at least seven gay men - suspected, investigated but uncharged - have killed themselves over allegations of what, had it happened in Canberra today, would not be a crime.
1 Justice David Yeldham, a Supreme Court judge, who committed suicide in 1996 after questioning by police and then by the Wood Royal Commission, a police-corruption inquiry investigating paedophile rings: hence the coded witness names. 2 John Holloway, Australia's former ambassador to Cambodia, underwent an 18-month legal campaign against him on eventually-dismissed charges of paedophilia.
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