A German experiment that placed foster children with pedophiles (2021)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-experiment-that-placed-foster-children-with-pedophiles

by type0 • 4 years ago

119 48 4 years ago

newyorker.com

skilled• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/v88RS

mc32• 4 years ago

It's sad to see two things:

Experts having total unquestioned control (and being able to veto and stop investigations)
The state being derelict in its duty to protect children in foster care.
In addition the psychological manipulation and neutering the kids’ sense of worth and self.

throwawaylinux• 4 years ago

It's also sad that the people don't realize that they are the highest authority and ultimate deciders in a society. Not a politician, not a judge, not a police officer, not an expert, but the people. And the people have an absolute right and responsibility to relieve those delegates from positions of power if they derelict their duty to society.

hulitu• 4 years ago

You so funny. Regular people can do nothing.

tsimionescu2• 4 years ago

The state being derelict in its duty to protect children in foster care.

It's even worse though - the state was intentionally putting these children in foster care with pedophiles, at least at the higher level of decision-making. It's not that they didn't check, it's that the official policy was that it's ok, mostly since these kids are already too far gone for the pedophilia to matter much (a disturbing classist take in itself).

at_a_remove• 4 years ago

Forgive me, this is off the cuff and a bit meandering. This article has provoked a feeling which I have, while often thought of, never attempted to put down in concrete terms.

Contexually, whenever someone starts going on about Nazis and how it led to this undesirable outcome or another, I have begun to flash back to a book I read called Voluptuous Panic, which detailed the post-WWI era in Germany in terms of how crushed underfoot the Germans were, how devoid they were of men (who had largely been killed in the war) and how the country ended up in this mind-boggling debt, the economy was razed, and finally how the survivors were so desperate that their service economy often revolved around prostitution and degradation.

The section on child prostitution is just staggering because it indicates a kind of protracted development of the "tastes" of pedophiles run absolutely wild, given license to indulge. Other abhorrent things are discussed in the book, but that was really the lowest of the bunch. One of the Sin Cities series documentary also explores Berlin of that era, although through rose-tinted glasses.

In any case, it's rather easy to see that after being ground into the muck like that, the people were ready to embrace almost anyone who promised something more clean than what they had been subjected to. And of course someone comes along, they always will.

But we ended up doing something notionally similar after WWII: more grinding of the Germans (this time through division, sanctions, etc), who seem to be now indoctrinated with a spirit of self-abnegation, as if the Germans of today (the locally born sort, naturally) must offer themselves up as some kind of sacrifice to repent of the sins of previous generations. Why, to prevent fascism we must destroy ... almost everything? The nuclear family, the "oppression of children's sexuality," and so on. And so the whole thing is a perverse echo of the previous post-World War episode, wherein the sentiment is that almost everything must be unmade if only to prevent the mistakes of the past ... which hardly worked the last time around. And so academics make a lot of high-sounding noise about restructuring and sexuality and deconstructing things, nevermind Chesterson's fence.

I'm starting to see ghastly echoes of this sort of thing as "MAP" ("minor-attracted persons," supplanting pedophile on the euphemism treadmill) becomes an acronym I see more and more often here in the U.S., and the usual academics begin coming up with bloodless jargon describing their activities.

If I had to pick a new mortal sin, I would say that inculcating someone, or a group of people, with a kind of spirit of self-loathing, a wish to erase one's own existence to extirpate a grievance that did not originate with that person high on the list. Once you have done this, you can lead them into the basest acts; nothing is off the table. And so the almighty prevention of fascism, the new Highest Good, leads to this kind of behavior, approved and encouraged even by government and scholars, who will have largely retired or died by the time any kind of momentum for justice will gather.

KrugerDunnings• 4 years ago

Is the MAP problem a real documented social phenomena or just a type of satanic scare? I understand it is researched as a topic in sociology like the Sambari people that practice ritualised homosexuality by having boys injest semen but that doesn't mean people are trying to make it socially acceptable. Honestly I can't think of a less unacceptable thing.

wellthatsawrap1• 4 years ago

Why do they have to be mutually exclusive? https://mobile.twitter.com/Yolo304741/status/159698131353350...

867-5309• 4 years ago

*Simbari people, pre-Sexual Revolution practices

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simbari_people#Traditional_pra...

(not an easy read - discretion advised)

tptacek2• 4 years ago

There really is a fringe of people, some of them recently accepted in polite society, who attempted to normalize the term "MAP" (none of them publicly condoned pedophilia; their ostensible aim was to destigmatize non-offending people with minor attractions, which was why the term was invented --- to distinguish people who happened to feel disordered urges from people who actually preyed on children). "Prostasia" was (is?) one of the big names here.

But a fringe is all it was. If you go looking for mainstream uses of the term "MAP", you're unlikely to find many. If you go looking for a movement to rename the practice of pedophilia, I'm even more confident you'll come up empty.

kaashif• 4 years ago

I'm starting to see ghastly echoes of this sort of thing as "MAP" ("minor-attracted persons," supplanting pedophile on the euphemism treadmill) becomes an acronym I see more and more often here in the U.S., and the usual academics begin coming up with bloodless jargon describing their activities.

Despite living in the US and being one of those terminally online people who spend too much time on HN and Reddit, your comment is the first time I've ever seen the term "MAP" in my life.

I don't know what academics you're talking about, and I think I probably occupy an almost disjoint bubble from them. I don't read psychology papers or wherever that kind of stuff is found.

What you're describing is disturbing and I hope it's not happening. I can't discount the possibility that I'm just out of touch with the places or communities where it is happening though.

5555624• 4 years ago

Despite living in the US and being one of those terminally online people who spend too much time on HN and Reddit, your comment is the first time I've ever seen the term "MAP" in my life.

I first saw it a year ago, in The Washington Post, with regards to an ODU professor [1] I've seen it on both Fox News and/or CNN, as well.

Recently, it was in the news because a Texas teacher was fired, "Stop calling them that. You're not allowed to label people like that. Stop it, Diego," the teacher can be heard saying in the video. "We are not going to call them that. We're going to call them MAPs. Minor Attracted Persons. So don't judge people just because they want to have sex with a 5-year-old." [2]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/11/24/allyn-wa... [2] https://www.insider.com/texas-teacher-faces-termination-a-vi...

yterdy• 4 years ago

I see what you're getting at, and no, speaking frankly and truthfully about America's history of racial discrimination and persecution, as well as its history of other forms of mainstreamed/institutionalized bigotry, in classrooms and the media is not degradation that will lead to widespread cultural debasement and pedophilia.

To be clear, that is what parent is dog-whistling.

gnfargbl• 4 years ago

as if the Germans of today [...] must offer themselves up as some kind of sacrifice to repent of the sins of previous generations.

This isn't a new phenomenon. Regan was criticized in 1985 for expressing similar views -- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitburg_controversy -- albeit in a way which was either politically clumsy or extremely offensive to the victims of Nazism, depending on your viewpoint.

archon1410• 4 years ago

Voluptuous Panic had a section on "Wild-Boys", hypersexual BDSM-style roving gangs of teenagers. This and other characteristics of "Weimar degeneracy" were often discussed on 4chan's /pol/, by white nationalists who often came there to spread their word I assume. Seeing such a mention is what led me to a rabbit hole, I later wrote a short Wikipedia article on Mel Gordon, the writer of that work.

Apparently pedaresty was something treated on par with homosexuality those days[1]—Oscar Wilde was a pedarest, now remembered more for the "homosexuality trial". Many prominent writers, artists and such engaged in it, without much consequence. Perhaps Weimar was a bit more extreme, but the attitude seen there wasn't limited to Weimar alone. It was only much later that pedaresty was fully decoupled from homosexuality. If I remember correctly, NAMBLA was a member of the international LGBT alliance until the 1990s.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6771704

awinder2• 4 years ago

I don’t see a lot of current generation German spirit-busting going on. The 90s saw the myth of the clean wehrmacht finally addressed, this abhorrent stuff is being investigated by younger-gen German academics while the surviving vestiges of people who were empowered around the end of nazism and the power vacuum following try to fight back.

It’s also kinda difficult to separate the self-loathing from being part of a dark system, from the direct affects of reparations, from becoming ground 0 at the Cold War, from knock-on effects of any of the above. But one thing is for sure, prevention of fascism was definitely not a highest good, or at least for long. We released the war criminals and rearmed them the second that an ascendant Socialist power needed to be addressed, with 0 pushback on the demands.

boppo12• 4 years ago

released the war criminals and rearmed them the second that an ascendant Socialist power needed to be addressed

Who/when? War criminals released in West Germany to combat East Germany? Did they somehow not commit war crimes this time?

the myth of the clean wehrmacht finally addressed

Can you explain this a little more? I had a grandfather I never met who was in the wehrmacht. As an American youth I understood it as wehrmacht == nazi, without any distinction. I dismissed what my grandmother said about him hating Hitler as revisionism because A. I disliked her for other reasons and B. obviously a nazi would try to prove their innocence. Being part German felt dirty as a kid and I wanted to be distanced from it.

It was not until adulthood and digging through old family records that I realized there was a potential distinction between party members and the wehrmacht, or that they were drafting all able bodied men at the end. Though my grandparents clearly weren't heroes of any sort, I realized I had perhaps been too brutal in my assessment. But perhaps not! I just don't really know.

One day I'll get around to requesting his military record from the German government, though I don't know the integrity of those records, given the post-war political situation.

wrp• 4 years ago

If you are interested in how interwar conditions led to the twisted nature of Nazi society, one book I recommend is Lothrop Stoddard's Into the Darkness: Nazi Germany Today (1940). An American historian took an extended tour around Germany just before the war. Along with observations and interviews, he makes some mention of how the extreme conditions of 1920s Germany had a deleterious effect on public character.

Publication of the book basically destroyed his academic career, because he didn't come across in the book as sufficiently anti-Nazi. His writing approach was to relate his observations without judgement, and let the reader draw the implications.

LargoLasskhyfv• 4 years ago

Another name comes to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Cohn-Bendit

Not directly related to this case, but as part of the political climate which enables such things.

luckylion3• 4 years ago

Prepare to wait for another 30 years until this can be openly and honestly discussed in Germany: until the perpetrators and their then-allies are all dead.

At the moment, it's in a weird state. Everybody knows it, you can talk about it, but you mustn't go too far, and you mustn't ask for consequences, as many of those who where involved then in the propagation of pedophilia are still in positions of power in politics, academia and the press.

I was sent to an after school children's place that was founded with the same principles of sexual hyper-openness. While I'm not aware of any abusive actions against myself, every child knew that some of the staff were too eager to "play" and "show and tell". Others were great people to have around children, but the ideology (in these progressive circles) at the time made it far too easy for actual pedophiles to hide in plain sight, and far too hard for anyone to sound the alarm, as they'd be called a prude and excluded.

hannob• 4 years ago

Everybody knows it, you can talk about it, but you mustn't go too far, and you mustn't ask for consequences, as many of those who where involved then in the propagation of pedophilia are still in positions of power in politics, academia and the press.

Can you name a single person in power in politics, academia and the press today in Germany that was involved in any of this? (Closest I can think of are some politicians who are past their career end and have no official position today.)

luckylion3• 4 years ago

Daniel Cohn-Bendit is one of the most prominent ones who was also very open about his stance back then. I think he's no longer MEP, but he's still a powerful player (much like a president or chancellor doesn't lose all of his power when the stops being the president). There are many more, I know a few at the local level in the city I grew up in, but they (like most, I assume) weren't people you'd know beyond the city.

Active and complete uncovering would hurt them & their parties/platforms/organizations today, providing plenty of incentive to keep the topic out of the spot light. It's not that they can stop discussion and investigations (they're not that powerful), but it's like a criminal case: outsiders investigating can only draw a very rough picture, and will only see so much.

With today's tribal situation, people look at everything through the lens of "how will this affect my tribe?". When the people involved are no longer around and sufficient time has passed, this equation changes and shifts from "I will lose the next election if this is a major topic" to something for the historians (at least that's what I expect, but it'll take a few more decades).

fakedang• 4 years ago

My German fiancée and her relatives would often be told by their elders during their childhood to stay away from certain teachers at school and certain church priests for exactly this reason. Seems Germany has a very underlying disease when it comes to children's safety.

lm28469• 4 years ago

Same thing in France, in the 80s we had pro pedophilia militants on TV, talking about lowering age of consent, about sexually educating kids (1-6 years old), how pedophilia and homosexuality were similar and as such pedophilia shouldn't be illegal, &c. it mostly came from left wing philisophers and academicians who wanted to go further with the "sexual revolution" of the 60s/70s and somehow were either blinded by their ideals or pedophiles themselves

For the past decade or so more and more people are starting to talk about systemic rapes and sexual assaults in the church too

VictorPath2• 4 years ago

Prepare to wait for another 30 years until this can be openly and honestly discussed in Germany: until the perpetrators and their then-allies are all dead.

In 1977, a date the article mentions, the president of the Confederation of German Employers Associations was a former SS Untersturmfuehrer. The BND was founded by former SS/SDers under Gehlen. Talk about waiting years to discuss openly.

ManuelKiessling• 4 years ago

Prepare to wait for another 30 years until this can be openly and honestly discussed in Germany

I’m not sure this is the case:

A few days before my visit, the Berlin Senate had announced that it would commission scholars at the University of Hildesheim, who had published the preliminary report in 2020, to do a follow-up report about pedophile-run foster homes in other parts of Germany. Sandra Scheeres, the senator for education, had apologized to Marco and Sven, and the Senate offered them more than fifty thousand euros—in Germany, where compensation for damages is much lower than it is in the United States, this was seen as a significant amount.

snowpid• 4 years ago

This is being discussed. Be it an article in the FAZ, the resignation of Volker Beck and a recent exhibition on the entanglement of the paedophile and gay rights movements in the Rosa Museum.

rowanG077• 4 years ago

I Think you also need to consider that almost all of the people involved most likely had good intentions. It's not like they cam together and decided to fuck up some kids. They truly thought that this what was medically correct to do. And they were supported by scientist at the time.

It's horrible what happened but I also think it's wrong for people to be blamed for following standard medical practice at the time.

lapcat• 4 years ago

(2021)

dang2• 4 years ago

Added - thanks. Turns out there was a previous thread too:

The German Experiment That Placed Foster Children with Pedophiles - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27889476 - July 2021 (26 comments)

VictorPath2• 4 years ago

I have to laugh about all these comments talking about the left and pedophilia, as if conservative religious organizations are not rife with child molestation.

mardifoufs• 4 years ago

Isn't that whataboutism ?

postalrat• 4 years ago

What part of "whataboutism" is a bad argument?

zenogantner• 4 years ago

Why even "the left"? When Marco from the article was put into foster care, both West Berlin and West Germany had conservative governments.

luckylion3• 4 years ago

Mostly because the idea that children are sexual and can consent to sex was carried by movements and organizations that later became the German Green party. They're socially progressive (and economically center-left, I'd say, but clearly much less on the left spectrum about economic issues) and are generally considered to be part of "the left".

Helmut Kentler, the psychologist mentioned in the article, was also generally considered to be part of "the left".

drekipus• 4 years ago

I think there's two sides of looking at it, one of individual and secretive, the other is academic and desire for governmental policies

Vt71fcAqt7• 4 years ago

I think the key difference is that "the left" is more open to adding previously taboo activities or beliefs into its mainstream which can be used as a vector to legitimize abuse. While on "the right" it's more about abusing the power and trust that already exists in conservative communities. Which is worse? I don't think it matters to the victims, but in terms of discussions a difference certainly exists.

0xdeadfa65• 4 years ago

I have to burst your bubble here. Conservative institutions suffer from much less child abuse accounts than progressive, "leftist" institutions. If you want a good example, compare rates of child abuse between the Catholic Church and US public schools. The latter is rife with such accounts, both in relative and absolute terms. I say there is an association where the greater the deviation from conservative, traditional values, the more scandalous idiosyncrasies of the individuals manifest.

Is this funny to you? Or are you using some rhetorical flourish to morally grandstand? Either way, your style of retort is what I dearly hate about the present world. Maybe spend less time laughing at strangers on the internet and consuming raw propaganda; and more time education yourself on the statistics of the topic your are weaponizing.

Just a thought. Let me know if you want me to substantiate any of the points I mentioned.

https://sites.law.duq.edu/juris/2019/03/16/catholic-priest-s...

remarkEon• 4 years ago

Interesting comment.

As a Catholic, it's interesting because we (Catholics who pay attention to this drama) all know exactly where the pedophilia scandal originated from and how it happened, and we know that it was several orders of magnitude smaller than the ongoing child abuse that happens in public schools. I hate to sing this same song, but the media really does use this scandal as a headline grabbing tool because the Catholic Church is still a somewhat powerful institution in the United States. And so people imagine or invent a meme of the Church as some kind of pedo factory, when in reality you can identify a specific cohort of people who all went to Seminary at the same time for specific reasons and spread the disease.

0dayz• 4 years ago

What a lovely username you got.

It's incompatible to compare 1 institution that is as broad and govern by different bodies of rules, regulations and laws in contrast with another institution that is whole private and is mostly run as a decentralized club.

Especially when a teacher is not arbitrary put into the position, which is why people and the media is more pissed with religious institutions rather than individual teachers.

spookie• 4 years ago

I really hope that our society won't continue to turn a blind eye to these cases. From this, to the church, and beyond real life. I'm really sad for what has been happening on the internet, the necessity for kids to be exposed on such an open and risky environment, from such an young age. I don't want to prohibit my children from accessing the internet, nor stalk them. But, I've seen myself in VR chat, how these people are able to corner kids, and progressively doing more and more disturbing interactions.

A German experiment that placed foster children with pedophiles (2021)

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