'Are you a pedophile?'
I am not a member of MARTIJN, but I want to share the following experiences with you. I'm afraid that they are extremely recognizable. Having newly settled in another town, my parttime foster son and I set out to explore the neighborhood. We pay visits to the local pubs to find out if there's a place where a fourteen-year-old is allowed to play pool.
The two of us enter a café just around the corner. A couple of people greet us politely and welcome us, but one man remains silent. He's not just any man, but someone seated next to the owner's wife at the table for regulars. "Are you a pedophile?" the man starts a 'discussion' in which I'm hardly even involved. Within ten minutes the man violates the laws concerning libel, slander, defamation, and threat. I 'had best not return here', he would 'know to find me' and 'keep a close eye on me', and should he 'notice anything, I wasn't going to survive it'. The man doesn't ask me whether I am on the Internet - no, he claims I will 'probably be on the Internet' and this seems to be a very wrong and dirty thing in itself. To him there's no doubt about it. All this is said at the table for regulars, next to the owner's wife and within earshot of the owner. Neither of them intervene. A woman attempts to take junior under her wing and quietly tells him: "Never mind." "I'm going to drink my coke and I guess then we'll be going," says junior. "We're never going to return there!" we agree after having left swiftly.
What happened here? Have I been the subject of discussion before: 'that guy taking a boy along' who moved to this town without even being married? Or was this an impulsive reaction? Or is every loud-mouth suddenly free to utter their slogans and threats? It happened shortly after the Zandvoort case (a Dutch child pornography scandal).
The next evening, junior persuaded me to visit another café with him. We'd been there before and he could play pool. This time we were welcomed quite differently: "Hey!! Dennis!!" was how a woman greeted him, embracing him tightly and kissing him a couple of times. She knew his father. We moved on to a table, and later on we sat at the regulars' table. We explained what being a 'part-time foster parent' meant and this was understood. My efforts were praised and the woman plainly called Dennis 'a cutey'. If he wanted to, he could visit her and even stay over. "We both love children," her husband explained, "but we got married rather late and we both have a job. So we decided to have cats: you could call them 'our children'."
Why, that's quite a different approach. Which is possible if you're a woman. Being a man, I can't imagine myself embracing and kissing a fourteen-year-old boy in a café, calling him 'a cutey'...
This experience has made me understand the members of MARTIJN and the regular readers of OK magazine. Don't think these things can only happen to you: every single man with a child and an Internet connection is immediately suspicious and apt to fall prey to any drunken bigmouth. These days there's no pub owner who will stop such a person. We'd best wish each other courage and wisdom, and many boy-enthusiastic women.
G.F.
source: Letter to the editor by G.F.; Translated from Dutch; OK Magazine, no. 67; March 1999