Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 17:25, 15 November 2013

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (November 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Thomas Victor O'Carroll (born 1945) is an Irish writer (with dual Irish/British nationality), activist for pedophilia advocacy, and a convicted distributor of child pornography. O'Carroll is a former chairperson of the now disbanded Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) and was at one time a prominent member of IPCE, formerly known as International Paedophile and Child Emancipation.

Criminal history

In 1981 O'Carroll was convicted for "conspiracy to corrupt public morals" over the contact ads section of the PIE magazine and was imprisoned. Dan Franklin, who had edited Paedophilia: The Radical Case, wrote an afterword for the book’s American edition about O’Carroll’s two Old Bailey trials (the second followed a hung jury in the first) and imprisonment.

In 2002 O'Carroll was found guilty of evading a prohibition on the importation of indecent photographs of children from Qatar. He was given a nine-month sentence on the basis of three images, a sentence later quashed by the Court of Appeal which held that the trial judge had been overly influenced by O'Carroll's campaigning. The photos were described in the ruling as having "the quality of indecency in the context in which they were taken, but were of the kind that parents might take of their children entirely innocently".

O'Carroll was convicted in 2006 of conspiring to distribute indecent photographs of children after supplying an undercover Met police officer with a cache of child pornography obtained from his co-defendant, Michael John De Clare Studdert's vault of 50,000 pornographic images. He was arraigned 1 June 2006 on child porn charges. In September 2006, he admitted to two counts of distributing indecent images of children. On 20 December 2006, he was jailed for 2½ years at London's Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court.

Activism

His activism with PIE cost him his job as a press officer at the Open University after the Sunday Mirror published a piece on his membership of the group.

In 1980 O'Carroll's book Paedophilia: The Radical Case was published, in which he advocates the normalisation of some adult-child sexual abuse. In the book, O'Carroll states his belief that each stage of the sexual relationship between an adult and child can be 'negotiated', with "hints and signals, verbal and non-verbal, by which each indicates to the other what is acceptable and what is not". The book gained mainstream reviews which were either scathingly dismissive or sympathetic.

In March 2003 he made an extended appearance on the Channel 4 discussion programme After Dark, alongside Helena Kennedy, Esther Rantzen and others.

O'Carroll's book on singer Michael Jackson was published in 2010 under the pen name "Carl Toms". Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons, a 624-page work, essayed a comprehensive review of the late entertainer's controversially intimate relationships with young boys. Published in the UK by Troubador Publishing Ltd, the book received pre-publication endorsements from five professors: D. J. West, emeritus professor of clinical criminology, University of Cambridge; Richard Green, emeritus professor of psychiatry, UCLA; William Armstrong Percy III, professor of history, University of Massachusetts; Thomas K. Hubbard, professor of classics, University of Texas; and James R. Kincaid, professor of English, University of Southern California.

After publication, J. Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University writing in the academic journal Archives of Sexual Behavior describes the author as “an unapologetic pedophile”. “Anyone wanting to understand Michael Jackson" he wrote, "will need to read it.” Bailey noted that the book takes “a pro-pedophilic stance”. Bailey, a family man, wrote, “The idea that pedophilic relationships can be harmless or even beneficial to children is disturbing to many people, including me.” But, he continued, “The lack of scientific evidence supporting my largely visceral reactions against pedophilic relationships has been one of the most surprising discoveries of my hopefully ongoing scientific education...O’Carroll argues against my intuitions and he argues well.”

In 2010 following complaints to Amazon about a book by another author, Phillip R. Greaves, which encouraged sexual contacts between adults and children the bookseller Amazon.com dropped it and several other books that were judged to promote paedophilia, including O’Carroll’s earlier book, Paedophilia: The Radical Case.

References

1. D.o.b. and British nationality confirmed in the publicly accessible abstract of a pay-to-view legal page on O'Carroll v United Kingdom in the European Court of Human Rights: http://vlex.com/vid/carroll-v-the-united-kingdom-26781379 (accessed 25 June 2009). This page also discloses that the ECHR case was in connection with his conviction for importing indecent photographs. O'Carroll's Irish nationality is noted in the Irish Times of 12 Dec 2006: Irish paedophile faces sentencing in UK
2. ^ BBC NEWS | UK | England | Coventry/Warwickshire | Two jailed for child porn library
3. ^ Paedophile rights campaigner jailed for child porn distribution – breakingnews.ie
4. Franklin D., Afterword, in Paedophilia: The Radical Case, Boston, Mass: Alyson Publications, 1982, pp. 252–256
5. "Paedophile campaigner walks free", BBC online, 26 November 2002 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2516383.stm (accessed 25 June 2009)
6. Men jailed for making and distributing indecent images of children – Metropolitan Police Service
7. "Paedos' champ arrested", The Sun, Mike Sullivan, 25 January 2006
8. "Paedophile activists guilty of possessing child porn", theratbook.com, 20 December 2006 http://www.theratbook.com/Articles/Article/paedophile_activists_guilty_of_possessing_child_porn (accessed 4 June 2010)
9. ^ "Pair admit to child porn charges," September 2006, BBC News.
10. Olivia Richwald "Police charge man over child sex ring", The Northern Echo, 1 June 2006
11. For example, the Sunday Mirror ran an editorial in August 1977 calling for his dismissal from the Open University
12. Tom O'Carroll, Paedophilia: The Radical Case, Peter Owen Ltd, London, 1980 (hardback); Alyson Publications, Boston, Mass., 1982 (paperback). ISBN 0-7206-0546-6
13. Mary-Kay Wilmers "'Young Love", London Review of Books, 2:23 · 4 December 1980, pp. 9–10 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v02/n23/mary-kay-wilmers/young-love
14. Charles Rycroft "Sensuality from the start", Times Literary Supplement, 21 November 1980
15. John Rae "Suffer little children", Times Educational Supplement, 17 October 1980
16. Maurice Yaffé "'Age of Consent", New Statesman, 7 November 1980, p.31
17. Eric Taylor "Too young to love?", New Society, 30 October 1980, p.246
18. 'BBC braced for paedophile row', Guardian Unlimited, 4 March 2003
19. The identity of Carl Toms and Tom O'Carroll is confirmed in Michael Bailey's review of the book: http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/JMichael-Bailey/articles/MJOCarrollReview.pdf
20. http://www.troubador.co.uk/image/news/Spring10.pdf
21. ^ http://www.dangerousbooks.co.uk/index.html
22. ^ http://www.dangerousbooks.co.uk/details.html
23. http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/JMichael-Bailey/personal.html
24. http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/JMichael-Bailey/articles/MJOCarrollReview.pdf
25. http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/JMichael-Bailey/articles/MJOCarrollReview.pdf, p. 3

External links

O'Carroll's weblog at WordPress

Template:Persondata

• 1945 births
• Living people
• Irish people imprisoned abroad
• Pedophile activism
• Prisoners and detainees of England and Wales