The Other McCain

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British Group Claimed ‘Research’ Showed ‘No Identifiable Damage’ of Child Sex

Posted on | March 3, 2014 | 14 Comments

Last week, we reported on the controversy about British Labour Party officials’ ties to a group that lobbied on behalf of pedophiles in the 1970s (“The UK Left’s Pro-Pedophile Past“). The controversy has continued, as the dishonest excuses of officials are exposed:

Evidence has emerged that the views of the Paedophile Information Exchange influenced policy-making at the National Council for Civil Liberties when it was run by former Labour Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.
PIE members were lobbying NCCL officials for the age of consent to be reduced and campaigning for “paedophile love”.
Their view that children were not harmed by having sex with adults appears to have been adopted by those at the top of the civil liberties group.
Today we publish extracts from an NCCL report written for the Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1976 when Mrs Hewitt was general secretary.
It says: “Where both partners are aged 10 or over, but under 14, a consenting sexual act should not be an offence. As the age of consent is arbitrary, we propose an overlap of two years on either side of 14.
“Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage.
“The Criminal Law Commission should be prepared to accept the evidence from follow-up research on child ‘victims’ which show there is little subsequent effect after a child has been ‘molested’.
“The real need is a change in the attitude which assumes that all cases of paedophilia result in lasting damage.
“The present legal penalties are too high and reinforce the misinformation and prejudice. The duty of the court should be to inquire into all the relevant circumstances with the intention, not of meting out severe punishment, but of determining the best solution in the interests of both child and paedophile.”

When people put words like “victims” and “molested” in scare-quotes, when they complain that “the age of consent is arbitrary” and talk about “misinformation and prejudice” against pedophiles, it is not unfair to say such people are pro-pedophile. Labour Party officials tried to cover up their shocking record:

Explosive documents in Patricia Hewitt’s name arguing for the age of sexual consent to be lowered and that incest should be legalised have forced the former Labour minister into a humbling apology.
The former Health Secretary finally said sorry after more official paperwork laid bare the disturbing links between National Council for Civil Liberties and the vile paedophile group that campaigned to allow sex with children.
Miss Hewitt finally apologised when doubt was cast on her claims she had never ‘condoned’ child abusers from the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE).
The Labour minister was the sole name on an NCCL press release issued in March 1976 which says ‘NCCL proposes that the age of consent should be lowered to 14 with special provisions for situations where the partners are close in age’.
The press release came out as NCCL issued a report on sexual law reforms, The Sun said.
In further remarks, Miss Hewitt added: ‘The report argues that the crime of incest should be abolished. In our view, no benefit accrues to anyone by making incest a crime when committed between mutually consenting persons over the age of consent.’
The minutes of a meeting held at the Mother Red Cap pub in north London in January 1976 showed further close links between senior Labour figures and calls to legalise sex with children.
The meeting was attended by 27 people — including Miss Hewitt and her lawyer husband Nicholas Birtles, Jack Dromey and Sir Henry Hodge, the husband of former Labour minister Margaret Hodge until his death in 2009.

This has led to damaging headlines in the UK:

Senior Labour figures
in new paedophile link
— The Sunday Times

Labour MPs’ child sex link row deepens
— Telegraph

Home Office ‘gave Paedophile Information
Exchange £70,000′: Group allegedly given
taxpayers’ money between 1977 and 1980
— Daily Mail

It would have been a tenable defense — probably not popular, but tenable as an argument — if these Labour officials had admitted the truth and said, in effect, “Hey, it was the Seventies. We were a bunch of callow 20-something radicals. Ideas about ‘sexual liberation’ were quite fashionable. When pedophiles came along and made claims that lined up with other popular ideas about ‘rights’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘equality,’ we were sympathetic, and really didn’t think through these arguments very well. Obviously, in retrospect, we can see we were wrong. Also, everybody was doing a lot of drugs at the time.”

Such an explanation would not exculpate them, but at least it would be honest. What they did instead was dishonest, and this raises questions not only about their judgment, but also their integrity. Of course, if they had any integrity, they wouldn’t be in Labour, would they?

 

 

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Category: Great Britain, Sex

Comments

14 Responses to “British Group Claimed ‘Research’ Showed ‘No Identifiable Damage’ of Child Sex”

  1. DaveO
    March 3rd, 2014 @ 3:04 pm

    Is this the same Labour Party that gave the UK its universal healthcare, with patients left crippled with pain, disease, and outrage as centralized government panels decided who lives, who dies – not based on medical viability but likelihood of voting for Labour? Is this the same Labour that managed the UK’s decline in international relations, economy, and supported unchecked immigration and amnesty for illegals in return for votes? Why am I not surprised?

  2. smitty
    March 3rd, 2014 @ 3:07 pm

    Hold before yourself the ultimate truth that, if UKIP as any worse, it would be the American Tea Party. Also, pay no attention to reality, Britain.

  3. RKae
    March 3rd, 2014 @ 4:13 pm

    My first sexual experience was with a girl who was very open, liberal, easy and casual about sex. I later found out that she and all of her siblings had been raped repeatedly from early childhood by their “very cool and groovy” father.

    I then knew that all of her openness about sex was actually damage. To her, sex had no mystery, no affection, no seriousness.

    I was like a jerk who had found a house where robbers had broken down the door, so I had just strolled in to take a few of the things left behind.

    The reason I bring this up is that the people who are driving our entire civilization into a ditch don’t see any of the damage that results from pedophilia because such victims become the very people that the sex-crazed creeps want: people who are blasé about sex; who will have sex anywhere, anytime and with anyone. To them, that is a person living his or her full potential.

  4. maniakmedic
    March 3rd, 2014 @ 4:33 pm

    That’s awful (what happened to the girl and her siblings).

    Before I continue, full disclosure: I do not agree with extra-marital sex at all. That being said, it is not my place to push my personal standard in that respect on other people. What I find mind-boggling is that the fact that I don’t view sex as casual at all makes ME the repressed sex-hater to these freaks while if I were to just jump in the sack with anything I found even remotely attractive while walking down the street I would be applauded for being the perfect modern woman. It’s a sad commentary on modern society that this is the attitude being sold as the norm.

  5. RKae
    March 3rd, 2014 @ 4:41 pm

    She became a real hardline communist. Her dad did no time, as he’s a lawyer. Her mom became a serious church-going Christian (which was what finally made her snap out of her trance and put a stop to the madness in her home).

    I never got involved with another woman, until my wife. I now believe that sex is not a hobby, but I’ll never stop feeling filthy about taking advantage of someone else’s damage. Of course, I didn’t know that’s what I was doing at the time… and that’s the way our current society wants us to think.

    My sexual ethics now are just a tad bit more conservative than a Jane Austen novel.

  6. rmnixondeceased
    March 3rd, 2014 @ 5:03 pm

    Sounds like the DNC …

  7. Finrod Felagund
    March 3rd, 2014 @ 5:21 pm

    Two pieces of rotten fruit from the same diseased vine.

  8. Oscar Slam Dunk: Because Slavery or Something | Regular Right Guy
    March 3rd, 2014 @ 5:38 pm

    […] British Group Claimed ‘Research’ Showed ‘No Identifiable Damage’ of Child Sex […]

  9. Bob Belvedere
    March 3rd, 2014 @ 7:20 pm

    Taking all that you’ve written here as the full Truth, it is obvious that you have no reason to feel filthy at all. You did not know her situation.

    At worst what you did was a mistake, but you cannot blame yourself for a situation of which you were unaware of in your youth.

  10. Zohydro
    March 3rd, 2014 @ 7:22 pm

    The brits should remember the AoC debacle in Canada after homosexual “marriage” was legalised there…

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_reform_in_Canada

  11. Kirby McCain
    March 3rd, 2014 @ 9:51 pm

    Which why I posted on another blog, we can’t lower the AoC. You’ll end up with sex tourism. This isn’t about sexual freedom. It’s about protecting children.

  12. wbkrebs
    March 3rd, 2014 @ 11:57 pm

    What I remember about the early 70s was a smug, dim-witted push for children’s rights. (As I recall, Hillary Clinton was tied up with that for a while right after she got out of law school.) I note that the references you cite frame the age of consent issue in those terms.

  13. RKae
    March 4th, 2014 @ 12:48 am

    Yeah… but I could’ve just kept the ol’ zipper up.

  14. Bob Belvedere
    March 4th, 2014 @ 7:49 am

    That’s what I’m saying – yes, you made a MISTAKE, not committed some heinous act.