Wolf in charge of the lambs
by Kate Dunlop, TCW:
I HOPE you will all join with me in sending Allyn Walker PhD best wishes as she starts an important new job this week. No, I am being ironic.
Walker has been hired by Johns Hopkins University’s Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). She will join the team as a postdoctoral fellow despite more than 15,000 people having signed a petition demanding she be removed from her previous post at Virginia’s Old Dominion University (ODU) in November on grounds of child protection. It is hard not to sympathise with their concerns.
Walker, who is female to male trans gender, had just published Long Dark Shadow: Minor Attracted People, a book which defends paedophiles and urges readers not to be so harsh in their judgment of them. It’s not their fault; their urges are innate and immutable – they cannot help themselves. In the future we should refer to paedophiles as ‘Minor Attracted Persons’ (MAPs) – because ‘it’s less stigmatising’.
Walker, 34, specialises in ‘mental health, court systems, queer criminology, and resilience to offending’. She advocates that paedophiles be given ‘help’ rather than condemnation and suggests that most MAPs ‘aren’t destined to act on their physical urges’. Child-like sex dolls should be made available to satisfy their urges.
While promoting the book, Walker also said: ‘A lot of people when they hear the word paedophile, they automatically assume that means sex offender. That isn’t true. And it leads to a lot of misconceptions about attractions toward minors . . . paedophiles don’t “choose” who to be attracted to. So it (paedophilia) shouldn’t be considered “immoral”.’
Suffice to say, Walker’s is not a widely accepted opinion and her publication caused outrage on Old Dominion’s campus with students accusing her of seeking to excuse paedophilia and of being an apologist for criminals. The university’s Trans Advisory Board called Walker’s argument ‘reprehensible’, damaging to the victims of paedophilia, and not reflective of the views of the wider trans community.
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