Quotes from reports

Read some striking quotes taken directly from the boys' reports.

„Without him, it would certainly not have taken me long to put my suicidal thoughts into practice. So he saved my life. How can I be a victim and he a perpetrator?!? This law is just sick.“

Lukas, 9 years old when the relationship started

„There are situations where children have important non-sexual needs that they may be able to accommodate with well-structured and loving pedophiles, perhaps without taking more harm than e.g. has already been caused by neglectful family relationships.“

Ralf Binswanger, swiss psychoanalyst, 2019

„Michael Jackson changed the world and, more personally, my life forever. He is the reason I dance, the reason I make music, and one of the main reasons I believe in the pure goodness of humankind.“

Wade Robson, 2009

„I had caught him, attracted only by his good looks I had walked seemingly by chance past his house, even spoke to him at some point. Soon I tried to be his friend and be close to him.“

Max, 13 years old at the time

„This was not being fooled around with by the bellhop or cuddling with my cousin but rather a full sexual expression of real feelings. With Walter, an intelligent, thoughtful, fellow actor, I learned that sex could be connected to love.“

Joel Grey, american actor, 12 years old at the time

„Today, all such relationships are so completely demonized as to destroy souls and psyches on both sides of the purely arbitrary 18-year-old divide. All you have to do is talk to people on both sides to see it.“

Samuel R. Delany, first experiences at the age of 6

„He was forty years old and it was great. It was so important to me. That is point one. And the other thing I want to say: I'm gay, I wasn't allowed to be who I was for a long time, and I hope that everyone can imagine what it's like when you can't be who you are.“

Older guy at a panel discussion, 13 years old at the time of his experience

„I'm 52 now, and if this relationship ever had any negative consequences, I should have noticed it by now.“

Ivo van Hove, 12 years old at the start of the relationship

„Recently, while browsing old photos, I found a letter from the monastery times, a shy love letter that was written to me by a priest, when I was twelve years old. And he had enclosed a photo of himself.“

Josef Haslinger, Austrian author

„As for Stan, I’ve always said, if I didn’t meet Stan when I did, I’d probably be dead, in jail, or hooked on drugs somewhere. Stan became the reason I stayed out of trouble. Because I knew there was somebody out there who cared. Who really cared.“

Joe tells his story. The relationship to Stan began when he was 13.

„In any case he is still remembered, an unfaded photograph in the mind's eye, as my first love and the first love I lost.“

Lindsay Anderson about his teacher

„I liked the fact that Carol was a fairly shy intellectual who didn't know how to respond to such a provocative boy like me. I liked to tease and provoke him a bit. To be frank, I had the feeling that I was the dominant party within the relationship.“

Zven Szambruth, 14 years old at the time

„He loved my body and I loved that! He was the first one who gave me pride. He's the greatest man in my life.“

Carleton Gajdusek, American nobel laureate about the relationship to his uncle at the age of 7

„I still know him. He’s married, has kids, and I don’t think he’s a gay man. He’s bisexual, it seems, because – I found out later – he used to have sex with many women as well. So he just wanted to have sex. And in a sense, maybe, I guess I lucked out.“

Aziz, 10 years old at the time, Bangladesh

„What I told you ... how common is this?

I began: Frank, childhood sexual abuse is very common. Approximately one in five children -

No, not the sexual abuse part, I know kids get abused - for Chist's sakes it's in the papers all the time... What I am asking is if other kids react to it like I did ... you know, do what I did?“

Frank, 42. From a case study by Susan Clancy in the book 'The Trauma Myth'.

„And I suddenly realized at that moment, we’re not gonna have sex tonight. It’s not gonna work. Something’s changed, and it was only four years ago. That’s when I realized he was a pedophile.“

Jason, 19 years old at the time

„I wasn't willing to do the same things to him that he did to me.“

Howard, 11 years old at the time

„When I was eight, I seduced a 32-year-old at the swimming pool“

Mark Medlock, German Singer

Psychologist: [...] And in order to do that, I’m afraid, Stephen, you’re going to have to accept that you really were traumatized as a child in quite a number of ways. And I know that you don’t want to think about that because you think it’s weak and suppy.

Fry: No, not that it’s weak. I want to be honest. I want to be absolutely honest.“

Stephen Fry, british entertainer, about experiences when he was 13

„I mean to say that Malcolm wasn't interested in me solely because I was young—he thought I was an interesting person, he thought spending time around me was a really enjoyable thing to do. The fact that I was young just made it a little extra novel, I think.“

John, 13 years old at the time

„As a boy, I had a sexual relationship that was very important to my gay development with a man whom I later learned was a pederast.“

Kurt Hartmann

„I think if this sort of thing was tolerated I would not have felt so fucking alienated, so hated, as a child, I would have not been an outcast.“

John, 17 years old

„When I was 10 and 12 I had sex with guys my age. It was miserable! In puberty I wanted an experienced man who showed me how to do it. I think if the communication is right and everything is based on mutual consent, everyone should be able to do what they want.“

Kirk Read, American author about his relationship to men at the age of 14

„But then I began to detect something else in his eyes. Something that reminded me of my dog, Brutus. It was hunger that I saw. And being a hungry, attention-starved teenager myself, I gave him back the same look he gave me.“

Augusten Burroughs, about an experience with a priest when he was 14 years old

„But can you be blamed for that? Certainly, you are not responsible for the fact that society rejects sex between adults and children and that this made me struggle with feelings of shame and guilt. The only thing you can be blamed for is that by allowing sex in our relationship, you left me with a problem that I didn't know what to do with as a 12-year-old.“

Ted van Lieshout, Children's book author

„So it was true! My feeling hadn't deceived me. I eyed the man sitting next to me and he took off his sunglasses and put them on my nose.“

Engelchen

„When I was being beaten up, the authorities did nothing. Now I'm gay and want to have sex, they're suddenly very concerned about my welfare.“

Lee, 14 years old

„The first time, I went back to Sceaux on the subway and I kept thinking, “If people around me knew …” Knew that I just made love with a man. How would they have reacted, these stupefied housewives with the stare of a melancholic cow, these little businessmen in their lousy suits, these students with glasses …“

Guy Hocquenghem, then 15, about the way back home from his teacher

„Interviewer: So you can say that because Ferdinand is pedophile, that that is a negative aspect?

Johnny: No! Being pedophile itself is not a negative aspect! But just to explain that to my family, or to keep his orientation hidden from them.“

Johnny's relationship with a man started when he was 12

What do you really think yourself about your having sex with Bert?

I think it's very nice, but I also want to do it with a girl.“

Theo, 13 years old at the time of the interview

„I remember an agreeable session when I was at Lancing, lying on top of the Sussex downs with a man of about fifty. At the time I was in quarantine after a bout of measles and had been allowed out for a walk from the school sanatorium: I only hope he didn’t catch anything. The pleasure was mutual, the fault, if there were one, mine.“

Tom Driberg, a british politician, about his experiences when he was 12 or 13