Oliver James

At the start of the final song (‘We are the world’ or ‘The world is us’ or somesuch) of a recent wembley concert, 40 or so prepubescent children came onto the stage and formed a circle around him. At the end he joined them. ‘It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘paedophile ring’’ I could not help saying to a friend, who snarled at me for being cynical.

On the one hand, it was surely only a matter of time before one of the parents of the boys with whom Jackson has (literally) surrounded himself realized the huge potential sums to be made - irregardless of truth - out of a sex case. On the other, anybody who has studied paedophiles would tell you that Jackson’s history and adult behaviour have the key elements in the profile of the ‘Preferential’, ‘Grooming’ type of paedophile.

Whichever it is, the case has implications close to home. It forces us to question the motives of men who actively seek the company of small children, recreationally or professionally. When we send little Timmy off to the cubs, is he safe with that nice Mr X, the scoutmaster? What about Timmy’s games master who arranges all those out of hours football teams? Are all such men potential molesters, even if only a few put their fantasies into practice? Or is it, by and large, within the spectrum of normality for a man to enjoy the beguiling presence of little boys?
Practicing paedophiles divide into two main types, the ‘Situational’ and the ‘Preferential’.

Jackson is not likely to be of the Situational variety. They do not fancy children more than adults as sexual objects and the abuse is often an impulsive one-off. They have developed proper adult genital relationships but perhaps their life caves in. A wife may leave or they get the sack, their self esteem collapses and they turn to an unthreatening alternative for sexual comfort. Other situational abusers are so morally or sexually indiscriminate that anything human will do if the mood takes them. Others still are socially ineffectual - mentally ill, of very low intelligence or slightly senile - withdrawn social misfits who only a child would be innocent enough to let near them and who see children as easy to coerce.

Michael Jackson corresponds to none of these. If he is a paedophile he is of the ‘Preferential’ variety.

They have never developed desire for adults, finding fully grown sexual organs repulsive and the need to satisfy a fellow adult threatening. Fixated on children, they were often abused in childhood themselves and are compelled to recreate that experience. It may have been the nearest they ever got to being loved; or they may be unconsciously seeking to relive a trauma but this time as the one who is not humiliated and powerless. Some get through huge numbers of children during their lifetimes - an average of 380 in one large study.

There are several different varieties of preferential abuser and if Michael Jackson is one, it is the most common, the ‘Groomer’. Courting adults groom each other for sex more or less consciously with blandishments and techniques that lower sexual inhibitions. The paedophile Groomer does the same but using attention, affection and presents as the ultimate reward rather than sexual gratification. The child reaches a point where he is willing to trade sex for attention, love or money without feeling too much that something ‘wrong’ is happening. Paedophile porn may be used to encourage this feeling, alongside the paedophile’s authority and status as an adult. Other children who have already been seduced may also be used to enhance the illusion of legitimacy, leading to sex rings of children from the same school class, scout troup or locality.

The Groomer is a master seducer because he is able to identify with the child, highly skilled in talking to them in their own language and in listening. Children who have been neglected, beaten up a lot or given a very weak sense of right and wrong are particularly vulnerable to such sympathetic listening and they are also most likely to be targetted. The abuser’s biggest problem is not how to find such children, it is how to get rid of them before they reach puberty without disclosing ‘the secret’. Disclosure is most likely to happen when the abuser is trying to terminate the relationship.

It is not hard to see how all this applies to Michael Jackson.

His siblings publicly claimed that there was sexual abuse in his family some years ago. It is not known whether he was abused.

He has shied away from adult sexual relationships and may well have never had sex with an adult. If the penetrating TV interviewer Oprah Winfrey could not get him to admit he has lost his virginity then probably noone can. His ‘friendships’ with the likes of (the notoriously virginal) Brooke Shields and Elizabeth Taylor (a woman old enough to be his grandmother) hardly suggest a wild lothario.

For more than a decade he has been very open in stating that he prefers the company of children to adults. He has enjoyed close friendships with several prepubescent boys.

He is said to be highly skilled in relating to children on their level.

The accusations of abuse are coming from boys who are now entering puberty - the very time when the groomer is most at risk of disclosure.

It is very possible that Jackson is merely being set up by unscrupulous chancers. He may also simply be an asexual whose need for genital sex has been totally repressed or successfully sublimated away in his extraordinairy dancing and passionate singing.

But just going on the bare facts given in 1 to 5 above, would you employ him as the games master at a boys’ preparatory school? I would not but the great majority of men who are attracted to work with young boys do not have such an obviously suspect profile and do not actually abuse. The love and devotion they display in cultivating the boys’ welfare and development is almost indistinguishable from the paedophile’s grooming but so long as it is not abused, it turns a potentially pathological drive into something highly constructive. We all have our reasons for our line of work - there would be very few shrinks left if all the ones who are screwed up were weeded out.

Smooth skin (‘Smooth as a baby’s bottom’ says the Camay soap advert, neatly linking a woman’s face with her offspring’s behind), innocence that empowers the observer, being easily impressed, easily made to laugh and a natural manner, these are all part of the child’s appeal. They are also what made Marilyn Monroe special. It is no accident that children are so hugely appealing to adults, they have to give us something back for all that altruism. Its just most unfortunate that that appeal also forms the core of the appeal of women to men in our culture. It makes it so easy for a man to transfer his instinctive sexual urges from women to children.