Dr Ken Plummer, currently Professor of Sociology at Essex University, was a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange, member #236 in fact. I’m sure Dr Plummer has a plausible explanation why he was a member of PIE, research purposes ?
Nevertheless, it is remarkable that as well as his contribution to Perspectives on Paedophilia, Peter Righton and Dr Morris Fraser, also members of PIE, also contributed chapters, is it not ?
On a separate issue, more later on the SEVEN boxes of ‘evidence’ seized at Peter Righton’s home, including correspondence between Righton and other PIE members, including the recently arrested Charles Napier, which prompted the Operation Fairbank investigation.
Dr Ken Plummer
Mr Rossman deals with paedophilia from, so it is stated by L&GCM, a totally non-judgmental point of view. A strong libertarian streak is indeed highly visible for over two hundred pages of input from pederasts and their boys. Those of his conclusions which concern counselling boys through early homosexual phases and into heterosexuality are nearly sensible, and seem strangely unconnected with what went before, but it is clear early on that Rossman is arguing against “repression” of sexual feelings and against what he calls “stringent laws” in sexuality. I do not think I have done him an injustice, for he says at one point: “It may be that nature intended older males to tutor adolescent boys in sex, and unconscious or repressed pederast or homosexual tendencies are intended to stimulate an interest in such tutoring.” 18 This latter statement of Mr Rossman’s is unsupported in his book by any evidence whatsoever. “Sexual Experience between Men and Boys” received the following praise from Ken Plummer in Gay News:
Any study that can take adult-child sexuality out of the zone of shrieking horror and place it in the demystified zone of everyday experience must be welcomed. (Ken Plummer “Gay News” from L&GCM on a flier)
The same reviewer, who is sociologist Dr Kenneth Plummer of Essex University, sent a “warm message of support” for “Betrayal of Youth,” and, in company with Nettie Pollard (qv) and Professor Donald West (qv), also read, made suggestions and then praised “Paedophilia the Radical Case” receiving “heartfelt thanks” from its author, Paedophile Information Exchange Chairman Tom O’Carroll. Malcolm Macourt of the helplines, involved as he was with the Tyneside Gay Teenagers’ Group, also finds Rossman, O’Carroll, and “The Age Taboo” edited by American paedophile Daniel Tsang “useful.” 20
When another sociologist, Dr Brian Taylor of Sussex University, edited his book “Perspectives on Paedophilia,” Dr Plummer contributed an article detailing the history of PIE “from below.” Brian Taylor adopted the pseudonym “Humphrey Barton” when he was research director of the PIE magazine “Understanding Paedophilia,” being co-opted to its executive committee. Another contributor to his book was a PIE EC member from 1976-77: Peter Righton, who was Director of Education at the National Institute for Social Work. He contributed a chapter entitled “the adult.” He too is quoted in praise of Tom O’Carroll’s book.
Peter Righton was arrested in May 1992 and convicted for possessing indecent material. He told the Daily Mail that he was openly homosexual and lived with a headmaster of a school for disturbed children. Mr Righton, whose past membership of PIE is a matter of public record, was described in the Daily Mail article as “the leading authority on council residential care of children.”
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