Thursday, February 9, 2012

A Boy's Own Story*


 AS READERS of this little blog will have noticed, many serious topics are treated with a measure of levity, an approach the former Mrs Bunyip dismissed as the symptom of a greying and perpetual immaturity. Well, she would approve of what follows because a six-year-old boy brought into being to satisfy a gay male couple’s happy-family fantasies is a very serious matter indeed. As the Fairfax comics reveal this morning beneath David Marr’s byline, the lad is now in protective custody in Los Angeles while his adoptive father and father are investigated for their intimate connections to members of a child-porn syndicate. The story is shocking, even on the strength of the  Fairfax paper’s nuanced headlines and the details that quality journalist Marr, who is rather keen on the gay business, has somehow neglected to include in his copy, at least as it has been published.

“Boy taken from gay parents” announces the lead story on the Phage’s home page. If skimming readers gain the impression that the couple are victims of intolerance and homophobia, one guesses there would be few objections in Fairfax newsrooms. “Kid seized in porn probe” would have given a much better indication of what Marr reveals, but as the reporting of straights facts is so often these days framed as a manifestation of prejudice and intolerance, succinct accuracy probably didn’t have a chance.

That is a minor quibble, however. More disturbing, although not at first glance, are these lines from the former Media Watch host’s account:
The men blame their predicament on innocent visits to three men in the US, New Zealand and Germany, who, to their complete surprise, turned out to be collectors and producers of child pornography. All three were arrested last year.
The key figure was a lawyer, Edward de Sear, 64, an old friend of the boy's father, who was arrested in New Jersey and charged with distributing child pornography on the internet.
To their complete surprise!

What is a complete surprise is that Marr ia prepared to accept that they found it a complete surprise. In an omission that would have drawn his scorn during the Media Watch days, Marr neglects to mention that Edward de Sear’s home in Saddle River, New Jersey, was raided by American authorities on July 14 last year. The child was not taken into protective custody until October, which is the better part of three full months. Had Marr provided a chronology, his readers might have been inclined to wonder how the Australian couple could have remained entirely ignorant of the “old friend’s” travails, especially as two other members of their circle were being visited by police during that same period.

Marr’s softly-softly tone also overlooks some other, quite interesting angles. While he mentions that the Australian couple’s associates are being busted and probed, he makes no mention that de Sear is – or was -- a partner in the globe-girdling law firm Allen & Overy, which recently launched an Australian outpost by poaching a posse of top-shelf legal talent from Clayton Utz, Big Tobacco’s chief Australian defender. That information has no direct relevance to the abuse story, but it would still have been interesting to know.

As to de Sear’s alleged offences, Marr does summarise them, and while his precise is deeply disturbing, it is as nothing in comparison with the complaint filed against de Sear in New Jersey. That document can be found here. Be warned, it is stomach-turning. Perhaps that is why the Silly neglected to provide a link.

All the same, with the Australian couple claiming “to be victims of prejudice in Australia and the US against gay fathers”, as Marr states very early in his report,   and “canvassing support for their cause in Cairns and the gay press”, the indictment’s grim details will be worth bearing in mind over the strident clamour for gay justice we are certain to hear in months to come.

(*apologies to author Edmund White)

30 comments:

  1. David Marr truly is the Eusebius of the homosexual religion.

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  2. We can but hope this will set back the cause of homosexual 'marriage' indefinitely. After this any same sex couple with an adopted child will be looked as suspect. Good.

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    1. This was just a matter of time. You only had to read the Boy-Love web sites over the past 10 years to see that sooner or later two of them would get together as "dads" to "express their love". Geez, even Humbert Humbert pondered the idea of having a baby by Lolita so he could enjoy himself after Lolita became an adult.

      Pedro of Adelaide

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  3. So the SMH allows an outspoken gay journalist to retail a de facto defence of two men arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing their "son", exploiting the child through child pornography "and and obtaining [the child] for the sole purpose of exploitation".
    People still pay money for this rag on the expectation that is reporting "news" according to journalism's code of ethics, not spinning political campaigns on behalf of minorities. I hope this story causes hundreds or thousands more people to abandon this abomination of journalism. Like the Left establishment it represents, the SMH obviously believes people are too stupid to understand what it is actually doing.

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    1. The poor little children. This generation will be cursed for their depravity which is only exceeded by their stupidity. As if two men or two women can 'marry'.

      Antonia

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  4. Lordy that's appallingly cobbled together by the SMH - either Marr's done a lousy job or his subs have totally let him down. The 6 year old is the natural son of one of the gay couple, was adopted by in the US, presumably by the gay male couple but maybe just by the biological dad, and the adoption is governed by US law. Is the biological dad American? What's the US connection? .... Talk about only getting the barest gist of the story.

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  5. Life is SO unfair! Honestly, join just one paedophilia ring and suddenly it's like a big crime or something.

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  6. Perhaps all the man involved are 'Artists' like Donald Friend then everything would be ok after all in art (and sport) anything is permitted.

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  7. I do not in any way endorse the excuses these men make. I report them.

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    1. Using report in its rare meaning of “ineptly describe whilst glossing over more unpleasant details”.

      “One of the men had the boy with a surrogate Russian mother in 2005.”

      In the context, “begot the boy” would have been a better choice than “had the boy”.

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    2. As pointed out, you're doing a lousy job of it - but then I've given up expecting any better from you or fairfax.

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    3. People probably assume you do defend them, since you wrote extensively in defense of that creepy photographer.

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    4. Eusebius himself descends to defend what some men may call his "pious fraud".

      Aggressive clearly wrong acts require aggressive clearly ethical reporting.

      And you an alumni of the unimpeachable Media Watch, 'n all.

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  8. Oh dear, could be looking at a new stolen generation.

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  9. Allen Ginsberg, beloved beat poet of all leftist hipsters, started the rot with his public defence of NAMBLA.

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  10. You see, the point is that the left now comprises folk-marxists who see everything in terms of oppression. Whenever a member of one the'oppressed' groups commits or is suspected of committing a crime, the lefty bien pensants have to jump in and minimise the damage because they think that the rest of us are so thick that we can't understand the difference between an individual and the group of which he is a member. Marr and his skivvy wearing mates have to act in this clod-hoppng way because we 'ordinary Australians' may believe that all gay parents are child molesters.

    Rococ Liberal

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  11. See: Duke University Professor abuses and pimps his adopted child.

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2281373/posts

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  12. Who could possibly expect Marr to report 'straight' facts?

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  13. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.February 9, 2012 at 8:10 PM

    David Marr, you do not condone this, you say. You say you only 'report' this. The good professor Bunyip, rightly in my opinion, suggests you need to tell a lot more of the tale in order to be considered a 'reporter' rather than something else. I know gay men who love and care for children as parents, and while it is not what I would choose for a child, unless a mother is involved for the child (and many are), I think these men need their decency to be protected. They are good men, and good parents. Your lack of complete reporting, which amounts to excuse-making, does these decent gay men no favours.

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  14. When the media "tread softly" around outrageous, despicable stories like this you can't help but get the feeling that prominent Australians may have links and associations with the perpetrators involved.
    Not to suggest complicity in any way, but moving within the same social circles perhaps.
    mr.simmon

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  15. Anon @6.13 One of the gay men is obviously American, hence the US connection.

    David Marr (if it is you, no offense intended), you may not endorse their excuses or behaviour, but your report left out an awful lot of interesting detail.

    I read the initial report with no real surprise, but the Professor has provided more background which paints a rather more detailed picture.

    As a parent to a prepubescent child, and having friends who were molested as children, this is a subject I take very seriously, and very personally. A lot of your readers do, too.

    In the interests of the public, could you perhaps fill in a few more of the gaps before the Professor does?

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  16. " I do not in any way endorse the excuses these men make. I report them."
    This couldn't be Marr's words, for they were direct and to the point. Nor do I see the tortured soul proclaiming the prejudice evident in the commentary over his reporting. Nope, it must be the TrollBot 9000, with installed Stupido Programme v2.

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  17. I guess it would be homophobic to suggest charging these "fathers" with endangering their child, and child abuse.
    That poor kid.
    Future sociopath ?

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  18. David Marr's "to their complete surprise" says it all. (About his uncritical acceptance of the two villians' alibi.) That would look really good on "Media Watch."
    David Black

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  19. "and while his precise is deeply disturbing"
    Come on Professor, "precise"? One means "precis" I think?

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  20. Needless to say that when you look at Allen & Overy's website,they no longer know Mr de Sear!

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    1. I'm surprised, no, sorry completely surprised by that !

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  21. Edmund White's 'A Boy's Own Story'?! You are sooo naughty! As apposite a heading as I have seen. JakartaJaap

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  22. I read David Marr's "to their complete surprise" (noting the word 'complete') remark as coming with a touch of cynicism. It was the sub-heading that was most misleading, together with the omission of more detail. I also think that de Sear's prior employment at a law firm to have very little, if any, indirect relevance to the story - other than this: powerful Australian men, including some who attained very high positions in the law and in foreign affairs, and in particular those who had an interest in South-East Asia, were accorded protection against prosecution. (It has long been thus of course, and even Oscar Wilde was given time to skip over to France had he wished to do so). Time has caught up with de Sear, but these Australians will go to their graves with unblemished reputations.

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