March 13

Events

1884 - Who cares what the plot is? This is HOT stuff!!! - Sir Hugh Walpole, pedo, teacher, and a writer who specialized in stories of boys, was born on this date. In addition to his novels, he wrote for the screen. He adapted both David Copperfield and Little Lord Fauntleroy for the cinema. In The Adventures Of The Imaginative Child he wrote, "John flung off his clothes and appeared in the doorway quite naked, and, with the most enchanting smile on his face, cried, 'Mr Johnson, can you do this ?' and was suddenly down on his hands, and started walking, feet in air, across my room. Midway he paused, and with a most amazing little chuckle, began to turn somersaults round and round and round. I've always done my best to curb my too-tempting imagination, and I intend in this case simply to tell the truth, but something extraordinary occurred in that room as that little naked figure went tumbling from side to side.... I sat staring, scarcely venturing to breath, lest the enchantment should break. He stopped; with a kind of jerk he was on his feet in the middle of the floor, an ordinary naked smiling little boy. 'You couldn't do that, I bet, Mr Johnson,' he said."

1996 - How to make a modern Frankenstein's monster - Thomas Hamilton, a man rumored to be a pedo, shot and killed 16 children between ages 5 and 6 in Dunblane Scotland on this date. He also killed a teacher and then himself. There is reason to believe that Hamilton's reason for the killings was that he just cracked under pressure from his community that assumed he was a pedo and persecuted him for it. Kids threw stones at him in the streets. Mothers threw rotten eggs. In death, the media pilloried Hamilton further. The Daily Record reported with horror that Hamilton took boys swimming "wearing only swimming trunks". The Daily Mail even summoned a graphologist to reveal: "He was almost certainly a sexual misfit" with "homosexual leanings" because "...the lower loops of his handwriting lean heavily to the left". An otherwise innocuous picture of Hamilton steadying a boy vaulting in a gym was printed on the front page of The Independent and described in the Daily Express as the "demon in disguise" grabbing "hold of a bare-chested child". Hamilton once wrote, "I have no criminal record nor have I ever been accused of sexual child abuse by any child and I am not a pervert". The Daily Record set up a hotline begging anyone to come forward who had been in contact with the killer. No one came forward with any substantial evidence suggesting Hamilton took sexual advantage of young boys.

2001 - Anti-pedo initiatives make for strange bedfellows - the opposition Canadian Alliance Party proposed legislation in Canada that would see the creation of a national sex offender registry. The governing Liberal Party joined them in supporting the proposal - a rare event in parliamentary democracy. On this date the Canadian Parliament voted 255-0 to create such a registry. But well over a year later, when the registry was announced, it lacked some of the teeth opposition members wanted. The registry was finally created as a non-public one - for use by police agencies only.

2001 - "Mad"? At least they admit they are insane - Carrie Kohan of Calgary, Canada founded an organization called Mad Mothers Against Pedophiles (MMAP) on this date. The organizations first public act was to organize a rally (or is that a lynch mob?) to promote longer sentences for pedo-related crimes. At the demonstration, a Canadian Member of Parliament presented a petition he put forward to Parliament as a private member's bill. The bill, known as "Carrie's Guardian Angel Initiative," would have replaced the current 10-year maximum sentence for sexual offences against children with a 20-year minimum jail term, and a maximum of life imprisonment. The bill did not pass.