Sensational as the vertiginous plunge of Sir Jimmy Savile’s reputation has been in Britain, sinking from national treasure knighted by the Queen and the Pope to reviled pervert, the Oktoberfest of news about him turns out to have been merely the hors d’oeuvre ahead of a Christmas feast of celebrity arrests for the tabloids to gorge on. There was little surprise when “usual suspect” glam rocker Garry Glitter had his collar felt yet again (not so glam these days, sadly), but comedian Freddie Starr, DJ Dave Lee Travis and TV presenter Stuart Hall were quite another matter. And now, most stunningly […]

Abel Sexual Abuse Prevention (ASAP), appears to be the latest wheeze of snake-oil salesman Gene Abel. It sees Abel and his colleagues, though that is too polite a word, touting for business among distressed Minor Attracted Persons (MAPs) who have “not been detected by the authorities”. The not-so able outfit does not claim outright to “cure” paedophilia, but the website implies as much by saying it is a treatable disorder, when really the best that can be claimed honestly is that a good therapist might succeed in reconciling paedophiles to their sexuality. Heretic TOC’s attention has been drawn to ASAP through

Hot from the BBC, news of a rare victory for “paedophiles”: A convicted sex offender has won a High Court order for the removal of a Facebook page set up to monitor paedophiles in Northern Ireland. A judge ruled some content amounted to prima facie harassment of the man and risked infringing his human rights. See Facebook given 72 hours to remove paedophile monitoring page. Time to break open the champagne? Sure, why not enjoy the moment, although this humane court decision is sure to provoke a whopping backlash, with predictable howls that it is an example of “human rights gone

In a first for Heretic TOC, this blog brings you news before it has even happened: a story from New Zealand datelined 30 November, even while a good few hours of 29 November remain to be completed here in Britain. As usual, though, the news is not good. A defendant found guilty of “historic offences” a few months ago is now faced with losing his house to a forfeiture order, on the grounds that the house itself facilitated sexual offences. That’s what the prosecutor said about Michael Jackson’s Neverland (see book extract below), but Jackson was never threatened with losing ownership.

Heretic TOC loves writing and has dozens of tasty topics in mind just bursting to get onto the page. Unfortunately, it is time for a really boring post that cannot be further delayed. In my About page I say my aim here is to present a “discourse of resistance”. It is time to emphasise that the “resistance” I am looking for is precisely one of “discourse” rather than resistance to the law. In other words, it is fine for commentators here to argue that laws should be changed. It is not at all fine, though, to encourage, or appear to be

So Germany is to ban “bestiality” under animal welfare law, according to yesterday’s Guardian. Like young children, animals cannot give “informed consent”. Interesting, then, that Peter Singer, pioneering philosopher of animal rights, has not condemned sex with animals. Some years ago he reviewed a book on the subject. Among other interesting points, he said this: …sex with animals does not always involve cruelty. Who has not been at a social occasion disrupted by the household dog gripping the legs of a visitor and vigorously rubbing its penis against them? The host usually discourages such activities, but in private not everyone objects

Mary Beard kindly replied after Heretic TOC queried by email the accuracy of her radio statement that the age of consent in England was 12 for many centuries. The eminent classical scholar conceded that “what happened between 13th and 19th century is complicated”, adding “and how far driven by LAW is not clear”. Yep, no argument with that. Thanks to excellent work by reader Peter (see comment to Mary, Mary, wonderfully contrary) we can now refer to important information in Carolyn E. Cocca’s book, Jailbait : the politics of statutory rape laws in the United States, which goes back to the

Heretic TOC was going to write about the latest craziness in Britain: last week’s “sexual exploitation” report from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England – a portentous sounding outfit that ought to be helping the young but which in practice contributes to their oppression, or at least suppression. I must come back to that – prod me if I don’t – but it would be a shame to let the agenda here be dictated utterly by the latest mainstream news, much of which is so repetitious: more stats, more reports, more cases of “offending”. All this should not be

There has been no shortage of bloodcurdling oaths against “paedophiles” since the Savile scandal broke, but none I have heard none to beat the ravings of Harry Potter star Richard Griffiths some years ago. I’d feed all paedophiles into a tree shredder,” he vowed, “and anything left the police can have. Remember Griffiths? He was Harry’s bullying Uncle Vernon, the one who made the young magician sleep in a cupboard under the stairs. Seems he was a natural for the role. In fact this Dick Dastardly turns out to be a serial offender. On another occasion, he reportedly said: Now, me,

The admirably unshockable Mary Beard, Cambridge classics professor, must have raised a few eyebrows in her TV series earlier this year when she was talking about the scandalously early (by modern standards) age of marriage in Ancient Rome. As she also put it in the Guardian: Some girls were 12 or 13 when they married. We call it paedophilia; they called it marriage. That’s one of the exciting things about Roman culture. It’s different from ours. Only a woman these days, and one who is also an eminent historian, could express such a view without reputational damage. What male scholar, after