Transcript of a TV documentary
by the Finnish state Broadcasting Company,
the documentary series "MOT"
by journalist Matti Virtanen [*]
aired in Finnish television on 9.10.2001.
[* < http://194.252.88.3/motweb.nsf/sivut/virtanen >), the man that was in Berlin [in 2001]
The programme "MOT" is famous for trying to create scandals, and
not always checking their facts too well. Anyway, some of their
documentaries have been very accurate and good and created very
much discussion in Finland. The "Child sex network" programme was
not one of the better ones. The Berlin meeting was just one part of
the programme.
All the notes below are from the manuscript of the actual programme,
I found the manuscript at the following address (in Finnish)
< http://194.252.88.3/motweb.nsf/sivut/ohjelma?opendocument&pageid=Content53AB3 >)
Actually I see now that my mail will be quite long, because I think
I need to translate all of the manuscript concerning the Berlin
meeting.
1. The programme beginns with a description of a man in Finland who
tried to get money to monitor chat rooms for young people, he didnt
get the money but turned out to be a child rapist...
2. The journalist goes in on a chat site and pretends to be a young
girl , a man starts chatting with the "girl" and they arrange a
meeting. The journalist phones the man and tells that it was a
fake and interviews him.
3. The journalist inteviews Finnish and Swedish police and a
representant for the swedish "Save the Children" organisation.
4. The journalist have found two Finnish internet sites with bl-
content. he have e-mail contact with the webmasters of theses sites
and shows the sites on TV. One of the sites contains lots of
pictures of boys in a Finnish school that can be identified. Just
normal pictures.
(The head master of the school actually arranged a
crisis meeting for the parents after this programme was aired, but
the parents unanimously saw nothing wrong with the pictures and
asked the headmaster to stop panicking! Anyway, both these internet
sites went offline because of the programme but today they are
online again)5. The Ipce-part of the manuscript:
(Apologies if the translation is bad, I am unfortunately extremely busy at the moment :()
"Among the hundreds of pedophile internet sites that caughts ones
eye, there is one were the discussion is more legitimate. An
organisation called Ipce has collected a lot of litterature on the
subject. There are no pictures on the site and no links to child
pornography.
It is possible to become a member of Ipce by application. We
constructed a fake identity, a middle aged man who is interested in
travelling and art photography. We produced an internetsite for him
and wrote a polite application for membership to the dutch Ipce
leader Frans Giles.
Giles is a doctor of educational sciences with an extensive
experince in helping troubled children. He has organised peer
support group therapy in his home country Holland, with the idea to
prevent pedophiles to sink into depression, commit suicide or
engage in criminal activity. The results are said to be good: the
risk of repeated offence in abuse crimes is lower than in forced
therapy conducted by psychiatrists or psychologists.
Our fake internet site was good enough for admittance into Ipce.
For a membership fee of 20 NLG we were allowed to participate in
the discussions by the elite of pedophiles, at first through e-mail
and later IRL.
The annual Ipce meeting was held in June in Berlin. About 20
pedophiles from different parts of the world gathereed at a hotel
favoured by backpackers. Among them several doctors; medical
doctors, sociologists, former teachers, several computer
specialists, students and a couple of journalists. The vast
majority presented themselves as boylovers, but there was also some
who likes small girls more. To this category can we also count the
only woman in the group.
I tried to be as open as possible, I admitted to being a journalist,
but I did not admit that I was doing a documentary for television.
Regardless of this, my precence was rightfully concidered
suspicious. I also did not have the nerve to speak about my own
sexuality, because I did not want to be under suspicion for being
abnormal.
Filming or recordning of the meeting was out of the question. The
following is based on my notes.
In the beginning I learn that Ipce is the abbreviation of
International pedophile child emancipation. The organisation used
to operate under the gay and lesbian organisation ILGA, but was
thrown out in the end of the eighties.[Not true]
The beginning of the meeting resembles very much a therapy session
where everyone tells there life story and the happy and not so
happy moments from the last year.
There are not many happy moments to tell about. Almost all the
participants have at some point been in trouble with the law, even
if they, according to themselves, have never done anything wrong to
the children. So, how have they become pedophiles? Almost everyone
say that they were born this way. This leads to the conclusion that
the problems are to a great extent caused by society, who judges
and limits the sexuality of children and "intergenerational
relationships", as they are defined. One of the participants tells
that he has been trying to commit suicide recently.
Many of the participants have been forced to move abroad because of
the bad publicity they have got at home. Especially the English
speaking countries seem to be distressing places for pedophiles. In
the UK and USA the mentality is very close to witch hunt. Germany
and Holland are concidered to be more openminded.
Lets take a minor sexual offense as an example: masturbation in the
presence of small boys at a summercamp. In Germany you get away
with a fine of few thousand EUR, whereas in the US you can go to
jail for several years for the same offence.
The results of scientific research interests the participants. The
discussion is especially intense about an article in the
publication of the American Psychologist Union. the article
concludes that sexual contacts between adults and children are not
at all so damaging to the child as is generally thought. Especially
for boys these encounters are often positive or makes no difference
to the boy.
Unfortunately the American psychologist society have withdrawn its
support for the article as a reaction to political pressure. There
is dissapprovement at the meeting: the freedom of research is in
danger if the editor of a scientific publication acts on the basis
of moral hysteria.
Another interesting research have shown that as much as 25% of
normal men get excited by child porn. If this is the case,
pedophiles can concider themselves almost normal.
During the Ipce meeting there is also an interesting discussion
about ethics. Chair Giles presents his principle: the child has to
make the first move and the child always has to have the right to
end the relationship. Sex is never a tradeissue, i.e. it is wrong
to buy a child. It is also wrong to ask the child to keep
unreasonable secrets.
Gieles thinks that the last point is most difficult, because the
culture we live in considers a sexual relationship between an adult
and a child unquestionably wrong. He recommends abstinece from
sex with children for all pedophiles.
At the meeting the UK journalist Tom O'Carrol was also present,
whos book from 20 years ago is the "bible" for pedophile activists.
He thinks its unreasonable to tell all young pedophiles that they
will never have a chance to fulfill their dreams. If a minor
participates in sex out of own will and the sex does not harm him/
her, what wrong could there be?
The meeting also closes the accounts and approves the budget. At
the end of the meeting the host organisations pedophile groups
present themselves. There are peer groups accoring to the Giles
model in almost every bigger city in Germany.
The discussion is continued in the evening at a restaurant in
Berlin. I wait in vain for the discussion to turn to child contacts
or distribution of child porn. Ipce is the organisation for
responsible pedophiles and there are nothing illegal going on at
the meetings.
The weekend at the pedophile meeting was confusing to me. The thing
that bothered me the most was that there seemed to be no doubt what
so ever among the participants that children want sex. If this
assumption is proven wrong, the logic of the pedophile activists
will collapse like a house of cards."