The controversial Gaspar Statement

Dr What wrote:I keep thinking about the spring cleaning that went on in 5a.
Am I right in thinking that there was very little, or indeed no, DNA evidence of Maddie ever being there?Now, why would that be? I have read 2 possible explanations;
To conceal some possible parentage issue:
To totally clean a blood soaked crime scene:
Leaving the parentage issue to one side, if one had to clean a crime scene, the possible "crime" would not have covered the whole flat.It might involve one specific area, but not the whole lot.It is illogical to sweep clean the whole flat, particularly when one would expect some evidence of Maddie having been there whether an abduction had occurred or not.Perhaps the spring cleaners were being too clever.
Perhaps the cleaning was required to remove any evidence of someone else being in the flat.Someone whose DNA should not have been there.The whole cleaning exercise was a determined effort to remove all evidence of someone else, not Maddie.But in doing so, they were far too thorough and left no evidence of someone who should have been there, namely Maddie.

Oops.

Very, very good thinking.

Now, who, besides all the doctors visiting apt 5a and whose traces were retrieved and documented there -and kept for posterity- would have been in apt 5a visiting Kate and/or Maddie?

I have to say (with some trepidation...!) that if I was trying to cover something up by cleaning - I would do the WHOLE lot. Perhaps I have ocd....

Badboys wrote:
hadn't thought of that one, however I always thought there was someone there in pdl who didn't want their presence known.

Is anyone able to point me to the list of all tenants at the OC that week? (it was on the fora!) I remember thinking one tenancy was a high-flying politician, but can't remember who!
And who was it that left, suddenly?, on the 4th?
Sorry, my memory 'has been compromised' [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

listener wrote:

Badboys wrote:
hadn't thought of that one, however I always thought there was someone there in pdl who didn't want their presence known.

Is anyone able to point me to the list of all tenants at the OC that week? (it was on the fora!) I remember thinking one tenancy was a high-flying politician, but can't remember who!
And who was it that left, suddenly?, on the 4th?
Sorry, my memory 'has been compromised' [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

This is the arrivals list
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Ocean club check-in list is after the Tapas Reservations
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The high flying politician you probably mean is the nephew of Margaret Hodge, Phillip Edmunds....Margaret Hodge who said when she was Islington councillor that a victim of child abuse was 'mentally disturbed"!! then tony blair made her minister for children!!! I can't remember what Phillip Edmunds does but he left suddenly on the 4th to fly back to switzerland with his 3 boys. he told someone at the Tapas the night before

The Weinburger's are also interesting too

jd wrote:

listener wrote:

Badboys wrote:
hadn't thought of that one, however I always thought there was someone there in pdl who didn't want their presence known.

Is anyone able to point me to the list of all tenants at the OC that week? (it was on the fora!) I remember thinking one tenancy was a high-flying politician, but can't remember who!
And who was it that left, suddenly?, on the 4th?
Sorry, my memory 'has been compromised' [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

This is the arrivals list
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Ocean club check-in list is after the Tapas Reservations
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The high flying politician you probably mean is the nephew of Margaret Hodge, Phillip Edmunds....Margaret Hodge who said when she was Islington councillor that a victim of child abuse was 'mentally disturbed"!! then tony blair made her minister for children!!! I can't remember what Phillip Edmunds does but he left suddenly on the 4th to fly back to switzerland with his 3 boys. he told someone at the Tapas the night before

The Weinburger's are also interesting too

Thank-you very much jd - off for a read!

jd wrote:

listener wrote:

Badboys wrote:
hadn't thought of that one, however I always thought there was someone there in pdl who didn't want their presence known.

Is anyone able to point me to the list of all tenants at the OC that week? (it was on the fora!) I remember thinking one tenancy was a high-flying politician, but can't remember who!
And who was it that left, suddenly?, on the 4th?
Sorry, my memory 'has been compromised' [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

This is the arrivals list
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Ocean club check-in list is after the Tapas Reservations
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The high flying politician you probably mean is the nephew of Margaret Hodge, Phillip Edmunds....Margaret Hodge who said when she was Islington councillor that a victim of child abuse was 'mentally disturbed"!! then tony blair made her minister for children!!! I can't remember what Phillip Edmunds does but he left suddenly on the 4th to fly back to switzerland with his 3 boys. he told someone at the Tapas the night before

The Weinburger's are also interesting too

philip Edmunds is connected with stemcore, also connected with oppenheimers.

tigger wrote:I think the reason they didn't sue the Gaspars is because of the p-word.
None of the others you named have even suggested this. Suing somebody because of the 'slur' would be too risky imo. If anything at all came out in the press it would be the 'no smoke without fire' reaction from the public and then some more creatures might be coming out of the woodwork or from under stones as the case may be.
Besides, the PJ were ignorant of this statement for about 6 months - by that time they were safely back in the UK. At that time the publicity was not exactly favourable for the McCanns - far too dangerous to add to it by suing the Gaspars.

Curiously, Yvonne Martin worked in Plymouth for a time as did the Gaspars. Don't know if it was at the same time. DP is connected to Plymouth I believe.

Michael McCann, husband of Ruth McCann who owned 5a at the time of M disappearance came from Plymouth.
Mr McCanns obituary, published in the Plymouth Herald, says that he died 7th July 2006 at his home in- Liverpool.
Just another coincidence.

Hicks wrote:

tigger wrote:I think the reason they didn't sue the Gaspars is because of the p-word.
None of the others you named have even suggested this. Suing somebody because of the 'slur' would be too risky imo. If anything at all came out in the press it would be the 'no smoke without fire' reaction from the public and then some more creatures might be coming out of the woodwork or from under stones as the case may be.
Besides, the PJ were ignorant of this statement for about 6 months - by that time they were safely back in the UK. At that time the publicity was not exactly favourable for the McCanns - far too dangerous to add to it by suing the Gaspars.

Curiously, Yvonne Martin worked in Plymouth for a time as did the Gaspars. Don't know if it was at the same time. DP is connected to Plymouth I believe.

Michael McCann, husband of Ruth McCann who owned 5a at the time of M disappearance came from Plymouth.
Mr McCanns obituary, published in the Plymouth Herald, says that he died 7th July 2006 at his home in- Liverpool.
Just another coincidence.

Des Taylor, the architect who designed RM villa in Praia Da Luz is from Plymouth.

James Gorrod has offices in Plymouth.

RM has an Aunt /cousin, Sally Everleigh, who with her husband Ralph( who runs a bed and breakfast near the village of Burgau) live in Plymouth.....

What is telling in regard to a crime scene is, not only what is there that shouldn't be, also what should be there and isn't.

 A crime scene which is missing the expected such as DNA from people who were known to be there, fingerprints, footprints even, hair, saliva, boogers (especially if there are children who were known to be at the location.)Apartment 5a should have been drenched in DNA from the 3 children in particular as well as kate and gerry.

Also to be expected is DNA nad prints form all who were allegedly doing the checking, who visited the apartment for any reason, other children.

I would expect to find fingerprints, saliva, boogers, even urine and faeces from the 3 children since we all know how sticky they can get, how theydribble and go rooting in their nostrils.

I would expect  saliva etc in their bedding and on the furniture.

I would expect to see clutter in the apartment from toys played with by the children, clothing etc.

What is telling is how clean the apartment was, how little forensic evidence there was in an apartment lived in for a week with 3 young children.

In this case it seems when they cleaned up evidence of a crime they over cleaned which is just as revealing as if they had left everything as is.

Why did they give the search dogs a towel from the apartment which had allegedly been used by Maddie?

We don't know if they all had their own towels or if it ws shared with the twins, it is possible that Maddie's scent was not on the towel at all and the dogs were tracking someone else, either a sibling  or kate or gerry.

What should have been used for the dogs to get the scent from is an item of clothing from that day, underwear would be best as that would be full of her scent ( it could also have been used to get a DNA ample from)

heck they could even have used her bedding, her shoesetc, no, the PJ got a towel.

Any right minded person would think perhaps kate and gerry were setting a false trail, having the dogs track someone who was alive and not missing.
Why would innocent parents want to mislead the PJ in finding their abducted daughter?

Any abductor in the apartment would have left a trace of themselves behind, fingerprints of door handles or on the window or shutter, there would have been hairs lost when picking her up and carrying her away.
There would have been footprints on the tiles floor, clothing fibres detached when he picked Maddie up (same with hair)

If he had been in the apartment  whilst gerry was there, his presence would have been noticed, his body would have disturbed the air currents, he would have been smelled ( aftershave, soap, shampoo, washing powder/ fabric conditioner on his clothing, even his breathing, a rumbling tummy even.
It is very hard to be undetectable in a room no matter how well you hide.
Where would the alleged abductor have hidden, there was nowhere based on gerry's story.

Since gerry didn't notice open windows or shutter, we know the window was kept closed and the shutters down.

How do i know this?

metal shutters when bein raised or lowered make a hell of a racket, just listen to the store shuuters being closed when the shop staff lock up for the night.

In a small village, on a silent street, if the shutters had been opened to make an escape, jane, gerry and Wilkins would have heard them being moved,and, since they were right next to the apartment, on hearting the noise, instinct would have been to look in the direction the noise came from ( thus spotting the allged abductor, giving chase etc, or even going so far as to check  the apartment shutters to not only be on the safe side ( a child perhaps playing with them, or to be nosy or to check your apartment was still as you left it and the children all asleep, resulting in the abductor being spotted and chased down and Maddie recovered.

No one has mentioned anything about the shuuters being hear to move, thus the logical conclusion is the shutters and the open windows were not from Maddies being abducted as claimed ( kate was being truthful when she referred to the shutters as being a red herring)

Lying is stressful so most lies will have in them somewhere a tiny nugget of truth, to explain away some known fact or evidence.
Creating a false reality a la casey anthony is not that common.
Lying by ommission is more common, however by lying by ommission you leave a truth shaped hole leading us tio focus on the sensitive  area, such as i didn't do that, we didn't do that.
For there to be a that there also has to be a this.

If you didn't do that, what did you do?

Listen for the pronouns, expected , particularly with the moms is the pronoun I as losing a child is intensely personal.
When the subject uses pronouns such as WE ( unity, co-operation, sharing) or YOU ( 2nd person distancing. telling us what we would see, feel, do or say) rather than what the subject  feels, says, sees or does.

Look to see where they appear, where they don't appear and what pronouns are used.

The mccanns have told us Maddie is dead, they have told us how she died and that they moved her body (swiftly)


What is also interesting is the deafening silence from  gerry and david payne( in particular) in relation to the allegations of paedophilia.
Accusing a man of being a paedophile or calling him a paedophile is one of the worst things you can call a man.
Innocent men would protest loudly and often they are not a paedophile, they would even sue, the stigma of being called such a pervert is so awful, given such crimes against children are abhorrent to any right minded person, they could never bear the thought of being labelled as such.

Instead of the alegation being loudly and strongly denied, we hear silence.

this is unexpected.
This causes one to then ask, why are they not denying these allegations, why are they staying silent, what are they hiding?
What would making a public and loud denial result in?

Would it cause people to come forward and say hang on he is lying,  he likes this, he did that, there is a CATS file etc.

I wonder if parents whose children come into contact with  the mccanns or david payne have made enquiries as to whether they  have a history or not.

If parents did ask and got confirmation they could not release that info to the public as it would breach their human rights etc, the rights of the abuser being more important than the rights of the public to be safe and make judgements in relation to who can interact with their children and who should be avoided. ( personally i am all for megan's Law where we know who the perverts are, where they live and what they look like)

It is also worth noting the neither gerry nor payne has sued Mrs Amaral for alleging paedophiles were in the tapas group ( at least she doesn't have paedophiles for friends or something similar in her letter)

Hobs wrote:What is telling in regard to a crime scene is, not only what is there that shouldn't be, also what should be there and isn't.

 A crime scene which is missing the expected such as DNA from people who were known to be there, fingerprints, footprints even, hair, saliva, boogers (especially if there are children who were known to be at the location.)Apartment 5a should have been drenched in DNA from the 3 children in particular as well as kate and gerry.

Also to be expected is DNA nad prints form all who were allegedly doing the checking, who visited the apartment for any reason, other children.

I would expect to find fingerprints, saliva, boogers, even urine and faeces from the 3 children since we all know how sticky they can get, how theydribble and go rooting in their nostrils.

I would expect  saliva etc in their bedding and on the furniture.

I would expect to see clutter in the apartment from toys played with by the children, clothing etc.

What is telling is how clean the apartment was, how little forensic evidence there was in an apartment lived in for a week with 3 young children.

In this case it seems when they cleaned up evidence of a crime they over cleaned which is just as revealing as if they had left everything as is.

Why did they give the search dogs a towel from the apartment which had allegedly been used by Maddie?

We don't know if they all had their own towels or if it ws shared with the twins, it is possible that Maddie's scent was not on the towel at all and the dogs were tracking someone else, either a sibling  or kate or gerry.

What should have been used for the dogs to get the scent from is an item of clothing from that day, underwear would be best as that would be full of her scent ( it could also have been used to get a DNA ample from)

heck they could even have used her bedding, her shoesetc, no, the PJ got a towel.

Any right minded person would think perhaps kate and gerry were setting a false trail, having the dogs track someone who was alive and not missing.
Why would innocent parents want to mislead the PJ in finding their abducted daughter?

Any abductor in the apartment would have left a trace of themselves behind, fingerprints of door handles or on the window or shutter, there would have been hairs lost when picking her up and carrying her away.
There would have been footprints on the tiles floor, clothing fibres detached when he picked Maddie up (same with hair)

If he had been in the apartment  whilst gerry was there, his presence would have been noticed, his body would have disturbed the air currents, he would have been smelled ( aftershave, soap, shampoo, washing powder/ fabric conditioner on his clothing, even his breathing, a rumbling tummy even.
It is very hard to be undetectable in a room no matter how well you hide.
Where would the alleged abductor have hidden, there was nowhere based on gerry's story.

Since gerry didn't notice open windows or shutter, we know the window was kept closed and the shutters down.

How do i know this?

metal shutters when bein raised or lowered make a hell of a racket, just listen to the store shuuters being closed when the shop staff lock up for the night.

In a small village, on a silent street, if the shutters had been opened to make an escape, jane, gerry and Wilkins would have heard them being moved,and, since they were right next to the apartment, on hearting the noise, instinct would have been to look in the direction the noise came from ( thus spotting the allged abductor, giving chase etc, or even going so far as to check  the apartment shutters to not only be on the safe side ( a child perhaps playing with them, or to be nosy or to check your apartment was still as you left it and the children all asleep, resulting in the abductor being spotted and chased down and Maddie recovered.

No one has mentioned anything about the shuuters being hear to move, thus the logical conclusion is the shutters and the open windows were not from Maddies being abducted as claimed ( kate was being truthful when she referred to the shutters as being a red herring)

Lying is stressful so most lies will have in them somewhere a tiny nugget of truth, to explain away some known fact or evidence.
Creating a false reality a la casey anthony is not that common.
Lying by ommission is more common, however by lying by ommission you leave a truth shaped hole leading us tio focus on the sensitive  area, such as i didn't do that, we didn't do that.
For there to be a that there also has to be a this.

If you didn't do that, what did you do?

Listen for the pronouns, expected , particularly with the moms is the pronoun I as losing a child is intensely personal.
When the subject uses pronouns such as WE ( unity, co-operation, sharing) or YOU ( 2nd person distancing. telling us what we would see, feel, do or say) rather than what the subject  feels, says, sees or does.

Look to see where they appear, where they don't appear and what pronouns are used.

The mccanns have told us Maddie is dead, they have told us how she died and that they moved her body (swiftly)


What is also interesting is the deafening silence from  gerry and david payne( in particular) in relation to the allegations of paedophilia.
Accusing a man of being a paedophile or calling him a paedophile is one of the worst things you can call a man.
Innocent men would protest loudly and often they are not a paedophile, they would even sue, the stigma of being called such a pervert is so awful, given such crimes against children are abhorrent to any right minded person, they could never bear the thought of being labelled as such.

Instead of the alegation being loudly and strongly denied, we hear silence.

this is unexpected.
This causes one to then ask, why are they not denying these allegations, why are they staying silent, what are they hiding?
What would making a public and loud denial result in?

Would it cause people to come forward and say hang on he is lying,  he likes this, he did that, there is a CATS file etc.

I wonder if parents whose children come into contact with  the mccanns or david payne have made enquiries as to whether they  have a history or not.

If parents did ask and got confirmation they could not release that info to the public as it would breach their human rights etc, the rights of the abuser being more important than the rights of the public to be safe and make judgements in relation to who can interact with their children and who should be avoided. ( personally i am all for megan's Law where we know who the perverts are, where they live and what they look like)

It is also worth noting the neither gerry nor payne has sued Mrs Amaral for alleging paedophiles were in the tapas group ( at least she doesn't have paedophiles for friends or something similar in her letter)

 .

When I think about the Gaspar statements my mind takes me immediately to M in the make up photo.
Just wrong on so many levels.

Another thought, could it be significant that M went missing on the day before the MC'S were to return home ?

Some very thought provoking points made in your post Hobs. Thank you.

Hicks wrote:

Hobs wrote:What is telling in regard to a crime scene is, not only what is there that shouldn't be, also what should be there and isn't.

 A crime scene which is missing the expected such as DNA from people who were known to be there, fingerprints, footprints even, hair, saliva, boogers (especially if there are children who were known to be at the location.)Apartment 5a should have been drenched in DNA from the 3 children in particular as well as kate and gerry.

Also to be expected is DNA nad prints form all who were allegedly doing the checking, who visited the apartment for any reason, other children.

I would expect to find fingerprints, saliva, boogers, even urine and faeces from the 3 children since we all know how sticky they can get, how theydribble and go rooting in their nostrils.

I would expect  saliva etc in their bedding and on the furniture.

I would expect to see clutter in the apartment from toys played with by the children, clothing etc.

What is telling is how clean the apartment was, how little forensic evidence there was in an apartment lived in for a week with 3 young children.

In this case it seems when they cleaned up evidence of a crime they over cleaned which is just as revealing as if they had left everything as is.

Why did they give the search dogs a towel from the apartment which had allegedly been used by Maddie?

We don't know if they all had their own towels or if it ws shared with the twins, it is possible that Maddie's scent was not on the towel at all and the dogs were tracking someone else, either a sibling  or kate or gerry.

What should have been used for the dogs to get the scent from is an item of clothing from that day, underwear would be best as that would be full of her scent ( it could also have been used to get a DNA ample from)

heck they could even have used her bedding, her shoesetc, no, the PJ got a towel.

Any right minded person would think perhaps kate and gerry were setting a false trail, having the dogs track someone who was alive and not missing.
Why would innocent parents want to mislead the PJ in finding their abducted daughter?

Any abductor in the apartment would have left a trace of themselves behind, fingerprints of door handles or on the window or shutter, there would have been hairs lost when picking her up and carrying her away.
There would have been footprints on the tiles floor, clothing fibres detached when he picked Maddie up (same with hair)

If he had been in the apartment  whilst gerry was there, his presence would have been noticed, his body would have disturbed the air currents, he would have been smelled ( aftershave, soap, shampoo, washing powder/ fabric conditioner on his clothing, even his breathing, a rumbling tummy even.
It is very hard to be undetectable in a room no matter how well you hide.
Where would the alleged abductor have hidden, there was nowhere based on gerry's story.

Since gerry didn't notice open windows or shutter, we know the window was kept closed and the shutters down.

How do i know this?

metal shutters when bein raised or lowered make a hell of a racket, just listen to the store shuuters being closed when the shop staff lock up for the night.

In a small village, on a silent street, if the shutters had been opened to make an escape, jane, gerry and Wilkins would have heard them being moved,and, since they were right next to the apartment, on hearting the noise, instinct would have been to look in the direction the noise came from ( thus spotting the allged abductor, giving chase etc, or even going so far as to check  the apartment shutters to not only be on the safe side ( a child perhaps playing with them, or to be nosy or to check your apartment was still as you left it and the children all asleep, resulting in the abductor being spotted and chased down and Maddie recovered.

No one has mentioned anything about the shuuters being hear to move, thus the logical conclusion is the shutters and the open windows were not from Maddies being abducted as claimed ( kate was being truthful when she referred to the shutters as being a red herring)

Lying is stressful so most lies will have in them somewhere a tiny nugget of truth, to explain away some known fact or evidence.
Creating a false reality a la casey anthony is not that common.
Lying by ommission is more common, however by lying by ommission you leave a truth shaped hole leading us tio focus on the sensitive  area, such as i didn't do that, we didn't do that.
For there to be a that there also has to be a this.

If you didn't do that, what did you do?

Listen for the pronouns, expected , particularly with the moms is the pronoun I as losing a child is intensely personal.
When the subject uses pronouns such as WE ( unity, co-operation, sharing) or YOU ( 2nd person distancing. telling us what we would see, feel, do or say) rather than what the subject  feels, says, sees or does.

Look to see where they appear, where they don't appear and what pronouns are used.

The mccanns have told us Maddie is dead, they have told us how she died and that they moved her body (swiftly)


What is also interesting is the deafening silence from  gerry and david payne( in particular) in relation to the allegations of paedophilia.
Accusing a man of being a paedophile or calling him a paedophile is one of the worst things you can call a man.
Innocent men would protest loudly and often they are not a paedophile, they would even sue, the stigma of being called such a pervert is so awful, given such crimes against children are abhorrent to any right minded person, they could never bear the thought of being labelled as such.

Instead of the alegation being loudly and strongly denied, we hear silence.

this is unexpected.
This causes one to then ask, why are they not denying these allegations, why are they staying silent, what are they hiding?
What would making a public and loud denial result in?

Would it cause people to come forward and say hang on he is lying,  he likes this, he did that, there is a CATS file etc.

I wonder if parents whose children come into contact with  the mccanns or david payne have made enquiries as to whether they  have a history or not.

If parents did ask and got confirmation they could not release that info to the public as it would breach their human rights etc, the rights of the abuser being more important than the rights of the public to be safe and make judgements in relation to who can interact with their children and who should be avoided. ( personally i am all for megan's Law where we know who the perverts are, where they live and what they look like)

It is also worth noting the neither gerry nor payne has sued Mrs Amaral for alleging paedophiles were in the tapas group ( at least she doesn't have paedophiles for friends or something similar in her letter)

 .

When I think about the Gaspar statements my mind takes me immediately to M in the make up photo.
Just wrong on so many levels.

Another thought, could it be significant that M went missing on the day before the MC'S were to return home ?

Hobs wrote:What is also interesting is the deafening silence from  gerry and david payne( in particular) in relation to the allegations of paedophilia.
Accusing a man of being a paedophile or calling him a paedophile is one of the worst things you can call a man.
Innocent men would protest loudly and often they are not a paedophile, they would even sue, the stigma of being called such a pervert is so awful, given such crimes against children are abhorrent to any right minded person, they could never bear the thought of being labelled as such.

Perhaps certain organisations are advising suspected paedophiles to remain silent.

An inconvenient truth about paedophilia

The busting of a large child-porn ring involving prominent South Africans including a private school headmaster unwraps another sordid layer of our society. It wasn’t difficult to put a name and a face to the headmaster in question. It appears that he was a very good and popular headmaster. Putting myself however in the shoes of the parents of that school, I can imagine the anger and the shock, the “lock him up and throw away the key” gut reaction which is inevitable and understandable, even if his crime was limited to accessing and keeping child porn alone and he never harmed any child directly under his care.

To act as a civilised society in response I think it is worth taking a closer look at paedophilia, lest we overreact, and what we find is an inconvenient truth indeed. Paedophiles cannot help their attraction to children.

It is unarguable that any act involving the sexual exploitation of children including the possession of child pornography is criminal and deserving of punishment.

Being a paedophile, however, is not a crime. Having a sexual attraction to children is in itself not a criminal act, any more than wishing someone dead makes one a murderer. Acting on those impulses however most definitely is.

A paedophile, according to scientific studies summarised conveniently here, has no choice in what turns him or her on. There is good evidence that the brains of paedophiles have a wiring fault that deflects the objects of sexual arousal from the normal path of adults onto children, that the triggers pertaining to kids — big head, big eyes and round face that define “cuteness” — lead to the sexual arousal centre, rather than to the protective nurturing centre and the activities one would expect of an adult relating to a child. Paedophiles literally can’t help themselves. Their search for love takes them to love objects that are unobtainable in normal civilised society.

Medical treatment for paedophilia, from psychotherapy to medication, even chemical castration, has been tried with very few positive results. Paedophilia appears to be a psychiatric condition of disordered sexual identity for which there is no known cure and minimal likelihood of rehabilitation.

The issue of whether one chooses ones sexual identity is still very topical and worth expanding on. How history has treated “other” sexuality is seen in modern attitudes towards homosexuality, and in particular whether one gets to “choose” ones sexuality. Please note, I don’t equate being gay to being a paedophile in any sense whatsoever.

Whether being gay is a matter of choice is still hotly debated. In 2012 Cynthia Nixon, star of Sex in the City, announced she had changed her orientation from straight to lesbian with about as much nonchalance as if she’d announced a preference for McDonald’s to Burger King, provoking outrage from LGB activists, mad that she had used the word “choice” at all

But not all LGB folk agree. Here is a powerful argument by a lesbian writer as to why saying that LGB people have no choice plays into the “hands of the enemy” in affirming that being gay is essentially an accidental misfortune. Or just bad luck. She makes a strong point.

Nevertheless the civil liberties that the LGB community has fought for on the whole still seem to hold the “absence of choice” argument as central. So what do we do with the paedophile, who similarly has no choice, but no legitimate outlet for his sexual identity?

The distinction is that a paedophile acts out on a child who is always a victim, and society cannot allow this to happen. But short-term incarceration is not a great option because the paedophile cannot be rehabilitated. Reintegration into society always carries a risk because the paedophile’s urges will never disappear. The only hope is a system that reports and monitors paedophiles so that they are kept on the “straight and narrow”. In this day of the internet it would involve the type of NSA surveillance being heavily criticised after being exposed by Edward Snowden.

The vast majority of paedophiles never hurt any children. Read about their own stories and their efforts to protect children here. Perhaps the best solution for paedophiles is to “come out” to an organisation like this, run by people who know what it is like to live with the affliction.

One alternative is to do with paedophiles, who have crossed the line, what is done with psychopaths and the criminally insane — that is to keep them captive indefinitely, in safekeeping as a protection to society. This seems an especially harsh punishment for a person whose perversion was acted out in private, as might describe the headmaster at the start of the post.

That a human being can be born with a defect that causes him or her to look for love in the wrong places is tragic. We cannot as a society afford to let paedophiles practice their sexual orientation, that is definite, but perhaps accepting that they themselves are victims of biological accident will lead us to a solution that is fair to us, them and to all children everywhere.

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Martin Young is an ENT surgeon living an idyllic life in Knysna. He is a firm believer that "the unexamined life is not worth living", writes for a hobby and is happy to speak truth to power [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] or @MartinYoung

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