June 27, 1997
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June 27, 1997 |
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The man who loves boys Angela Johnson interviews Kevin Bishop who does not look like a pedophine. KEVIN BISHOP does not look like a paedophile. Not that I know what a paedophile should look like, but certainly not this fresh-faced youth who jumps up to shake my hand as I enter the sushi bar he had picked for our meeting. At first glance I guess him to be aged 17, and a student, judging from his colour-clashing grunge clothes. "Lots of people think I'm a student because I have long hair and don't dress conventionally," says the 27-year-old in a cheery voice. It is not just his clothes that make this computer network consultant stand out. Bishop is a paedophile who had his first sexual experience at around age six, and would like other children to have the same early physical awakening with an adult - especially if it is their parents. "Not all inter-generational sexual activity is abusive or damaging to the children," he insists. We are not long into the interview but already I am feeling less than objective about my subject. It is hard to sit and listen to someone when you badly want to beat him up and stamp the brand "pervert" on his forehead. But as I really want to hear the argument with which Bishop has come armed, I suppress my hysteria and remain seated when he dives into his rucksack for a folded piece of scrap paper, on which he has scribbled nine pertinent issues for discussion. Top of the list is this statement, which he asserts boldly: "Scratch the average homosexual and you will find a paedophile.'' Shocking words, I know, but coming from the lips of a man who admits to being gay (after having first denied it) it seems apposite to repeat them. It would be easy to dismiss Bishop as a crackpot and an attention-seeker, a troubled young man in need of counselling. But he has set himself up as the voice for a controversial campaign group aimed at scrapping the age of sexual consent, and some may think that dangerous. The North American Man Boy Love Association, the largest paedophile group in the United States, believes sex should be practised freely between adults and children, and South Africa seems to be its next port of call. Bishop was boldly touting the idea at the recent annual general meeting of the Freedom of Expression Institute, much to the disgust of a number of concerned parents who found their liberal commitment rocked by the thought of the association moving into their backyard. "People react negatively because we challenge the accepted viewpoint that children are non-sexual, and so should be kept ignorant about sex. But you can empower children by teaching them about loving sexual relationships at an early age, and giving them the opportunity to make an informed decision about having it." Now there's a thing. Most children can't even decide what is best for them to eat, let alone whether to consent freely to having intercourse with an adult. In any case, the empowerment issue is just a smokescreen for men to get their rocks off with young boys, I say emphatically. Bishop, who describes himself as "polymorphously perverse'', accepts one of the weaknesses of the association is that it is male-dominated. "It's a fact of history that it is always easier for men to speak out about sex and what they want. There's more legitimacy for men to speak about their sexual prowess because they don't suffer from the same madonna-whore complex." However, he says freedom for the association will mean sexual freedom for all - including lesbian relationships between women and girls. This restructuring of society would also legitimise social taboos like incest and bestiality. "Two women psychologists in America say the healthiest introduction to sex for a child should be with their parents, because it is less threatening and the emotional intimacy more comfortable,'' he opined. While I might have some sympathy with any argument which says the age of consent should be the same for heterosexuals and homosexuals, or that teenagers should not be persecuted for having sex with each other, I believe children must be protected from the unequal power balance of a physical relationship with adults. Bishop's fundamentalist preaching - that there should be no age of consent - smacks of sexual anarchy. So I challenge the eloquently prepared ideological argument of this Rhodes University graduate by asking at what age he would draw the line: six years old, five, three or nine months? A long pause ... "I might have a problem if it causes physical harm." Another long pause ... "These are important questions," he says ruefully. "But that pushes it too far." This is the first of several occasions when he fails to answer adequately a challenging question about his activities as a paedophile. I continue to push the question. But how young would you go? He looks distressed and peers at me from under heavy brows through rectangular steel-rimmed glasses: "That's a tough one. I'm not sure I want to answer that. Let's just say I won't do anything illegal.'' The look in his eyes suggests he's lying. I am convinced he is when, later, as we drive past a young teenager, Bishop oozes, "Oh sweet", in a theatrically lecherous voice. We make our way to his one-room cottage in Westdene, Johannesburg. Pictures of young men hang on the wall, including one of a young Ricky Shroeder in the movie The Champ. But what I find particularly distressing is the assortment of pornographic magazines packed with photos of half-naked teenage boys that are in plentiful supply. These children like having sex with older men, he reassures me. "I was very sexually active from about age six.'' Apparently there was little else for children to do in Oranjemund, a small diamond-mining town at the mouth of the Orange River in Namibia where he grew up, except to play mummy and daddy having full intercourse. "I can't remember how I found out about sex, but I remember being very sexual. I hurt myself once by tying a piece of string around my penis and lighting it when I was about seven." To hear him tell it, the whole town was one huge under-aged sexual orgy, with children holding bonking sessions while their mothers held afternoon tea parties. "I'm sure people would say I'm repressing my own sexual abuse, because the only way I would know about sex at such a young age is if I had been taught by an adult. But I was definitely not.'' Bishop claims he only had sex with an adult man when aged 17. "I can't remember having the desire to have sex with an adult before that,'' he says. "But that doesn't mean other young boys won't choose to do so.'' When his mother ran off with her lover, the three-year-old Bishop, his older brother and younger sister stayed with their father in the desert. Did this lead to his early sexual experiments? "I don't think so. It was hard. Every little boy is in love with his mother and I missed her terribly, but that has nothing to do with my sexual preferences then and now." As a teenager he arrived in Johnnesburg to live with his mother, who imports Christmas decorations, and ended up "getting away from home'' by reading psychology at Rhodes. It was there that he began to intellectualise about paedophilia. "I was researching child sexual abuse in 1989 and noticed that some of the literature had footnotes showing alternative opinions and research to the common theory that it was pathological and deviant.'' He scratched around and discovered some of the literature was secured in the vaults of the University of South Africa (Unisa), alongside Karl Marx's Das Kapital and anti- apartheid literature. It took a while, but he managed to get access after receiving a written undertaking from his professor that it was for research purposes. "It showed me there were alternative scientific opinions which considered this a sexual preference that has been around for decades, not something pathological.'' A little more research led him to the North American Man Boy Love Association, founded in Boston in December 1978, in response to what Bishop describes as "a witchhunt of men and boys in that city''. The group believes the next biggest issue modern Western politics will have to deal with is sexual ageism. "I'm not saying the age of consent should be dropped now, but that we should be working towards it. That's why we need a branch of the association here, and in every country in the world.'' He might as well have said he was planning to bring back apartheid, so appalled was I to hear of his ambitions. It was one of the most unpleasant interviews I've done since arriving in South Africa over a year ago. I felt grubby, and a little guilty that I was even giving him an opportunity to spread his views. I could not even bring myself to shake his hand.
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