Abstract
In 1981, Cassell Australia published Paul Wilson’s monograph, The Man They Called a Monster: Sexual Experiences Between Men and Boys. In his book, Wilson examines the case of Clarence Osborne, an older man who had “sexual relations” with around 2500 boys and adolescents over a twenty-year period. He uses Osborne’s life to reflect on broader questions of pedophilia in Australian society. In this commentary, I revisit the book to consider its contemporary legacy 40 years on. According to Google Scholar, at the time of this writing, the book has only 50 citations, yet it is a book that continues to live on in our cultural imaginary for a variety of reasons, and in no small part due to its author, Paul Wilson, and his remarkably similar interaction with the criminal justice system in the decades since its publication. This commentary explores the historical context in which the book was written, pays particular attention to the changing social attitudes towards pedophilia, the recent controversy pertaining to its author, and discourses surrounding the sexual autonomy of minors.
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Notes
This fact must be treated with scepticism if the imputation is that no violence occurred because no one came forward. Research into child sexual abuse (Alaggia, Collin-Vézina, & Lateef, 2019; McPhillips, 2016, 2019), the #metoo scandals (Farrow, 2017; Fileborn & Loney-Howes, 2019), and the more generalised “dark figure of crime”, all highlight the ways in which experiences of violence can take decades to come to the surface, if they ever do at all—whether in the family, socially, or in the criminal justice system.
The policeman then took it upon himself, with several colleagues, to investigate Osborne. They staked out Osborne’s home and caught him photographing nude boys. They then searched Osborne’s home, collected tape-recordings, photographs, and files, and returned with Osborne to the police station. Wilson (1981, p. 10) states that the police “were reluctant to take further action against Osborne until the material had been more thoroughly perused and legal advice on what Osborne could specifically be charged with was obtained”. The police then returned Osborne to his home, and later that night, Osborne committed suicide (Wilson, 1981).
Osborne, talking about one boy: “I stopped seeing him at seventeen although he still drops in even though he’s married now” (Wilson, 1981, p. 51).
Wilson (1981) does this elsewhere in the book. For example, see p. 100 where he looks at the dangerousness of the homosexual subject, and argues that this is not fair, “[a]nd so it is with paedophiles”. He also compares the two on p. 111 when discussing “treatment” (from the conversion of homosexuality to heterosexuality, and paedophile to non-paedophile). Also see p. 122: “it is salutary to remember that adult homosexuals were seen as being both “monsters” and as being “mentally ill” a few short years ago”.
Also see Angelides (2005), who persuasively argues that homophobia played a central role in the discursive formation of the “paedophile”, and that ‘the paedophile’ has been, and is, homosexualised to demarcate normal and abnormal sexualities and masculinities.
To be fair, Wilson (1981, p. 131) says “it is not my intention to give detailed submissions on such a bill”, and is only interested in providing an “outline”. I cannot help but wonder, however, why he does not provide a more comprehensive set of arguments given his own awareness of the contested nature of the topic.
Wilson (1981, p. 133) goes on: “If we as a community are genuinely concerned about the fact that children might be sexually misused by adults, then we have a moral, and indeed a social obligation, to provide young people with the most contemporary and most relevant information and the knowledge which will allow them to refuse sexual advances. At the moment children are trained not to refuse adults anything and to accept all forms of physical affection as being the right of an adult to impose on a child. They are therefore not able to learn to trust their own emotional feelings and reactions to people and often become involved in physical relationships which they really do not wish to get involved in”.
Also see Coyle et al. (2009) for more contemporary arguments made by Wilson, a co-author, about the veracity of child witnesses.
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Thorneycroft, R. The Man They Called a Monster: Forty Years On. Arch Sex Behav 51, 1363–1374 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02116-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02116-3