An unsettling case of celebration (and cover-up) of pedophilia on ABC News, the Australian national broadcaster, has resurfaced. The same broadcaster that violently accused Card. George Pell, even after the acquittal.

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In 1975 the Australian television broadcaster ABC News aired a program in which pedophiles boasted about abuses of minors.

A well-known case in Australia has resurfaced in recent days as one of the darkest moments of the national broadcaster.

An episode that has had recent developments because the ABC, after defending the program, lied to the Australian Parliament claiming not to possess a copy (which was later found). It is known that the same broadcaster openly accused Cardinal George Pell on the subject of abuse, continuing to do so even after the acquittal.

 

When ABC News normalized pedophilia

On 14 July 1975, within the radio program Lateline, in the episode titled “Pederasty”, for almost an hour three men (homosexuals) were interviewed and spoke about their sexual relationships with children and youths.

Also present on the program was a teenager who stated that he had been involved in such relationships since the age of 12.

The atmosphere was relaxed and jovial and the three pedophiles laughed while explaining the habit of waiting outside playgrounds to «seduce boys». The men described the practice of targeting children from broken families, luring them with gifts. One participant even admitted to having abused a 3-year-old child, an admission met not with outrage but with hilarity.

Another boasted of having sexual relations with up to twelve boys at the same time, while there was agreement about the children’s ability to give rational consent to these practices.

Instead of condemning the broadcast, the ABC aired it calmly and the then chairman, Richard Downing, defended himself explaining that «in general, men sleep with boys and this is the kind of thing the community should know about».

 

ABC covered up the case, lying to Parliament

It was not an isolated act: the ABC never condemned the broadcast and even tried to cover it up, lying.

In October 2018, former senator Eric Abetz directly asked the ABC for information about the 1975 broadcast, receiving a written response: «ABC has no recording of the interview».

But that was false; in 2023 journalist John Adams managed to retrieve the recording from the ABC archives on the condition of signing a contract that prevented him from sharing it: «In other words», he writes, «although the ABC still retains the tape in its archives, it has ensured that ordinary Australian citizens cannot listen to it».

Adams then accused the taxpayer-funded national broadcaster of having deceived and lied to the Australian Parliament.

 

ABC’s attack on Cardinal George Pell

Some might dismiss all this as ancient history — after all, half a century has passed since 1975. Yet it is an emblematic episode from various points of view.

The first is media hypocrisy, already emerged when we recalled how the German weekly Die Zeit waged a merciless campaign on the pedophilia issue against Benedict XVI but actively promoted it until the 1980s.

And the Australian ABC is no different. The same broadcaster that aired the interview with pedophiles and in recent years lied to the Australian Parliament to protect its reputation is the same broadcaster that most fiercely attacked Card. George Pell.

When in 2020 the cardinal was unanimously acquitted by the High Court after more than a year in prison, a protest arose in Australia precisely against ABC News, so much so that journalist Andrew Bolt claimed that the ABC had «played a starring role in the defamation, destruction and imprisonment of an innocent man».

On The Guardian it was also noted that despite Cardinal Pell’s acquittal, the ABC not only kept all its defamatory content against the prelate but re-aired the documentary Revelation in which Pell was attacked head-on.

 

1968 and the normalization of pedophilia

A second aspect emerging from this story is a confirmation of what we have always repeated: in the post-1968 years, pedophilia was completely normalized in the name of sexual liberation (including of children).

Just to get an idea of what was happening in Europe, limiting ourselves to the year 1975 alone.

While in Australia the ABC jocosely interviewed pedophiles, France celebrated the best-seller of the pedophile Daniel Cohn-Bendit (a May ’68 activist and already a left-wing political terrorist), titled The Great Bazaar (Trikont Verlag 1975). In it he described his erotic relationships with children aged 1–6 when he was a teacher in an “alternative” kindergarten in Frankfurt, with the aim of theorizing the awakening of sexuality at that age.

The book received critical praise and his television appearances were frequent.

If we move to Germany, also in 1975 Uli Reschke, an active member of the Green party, founded the Heidelberg commune Indianerkommune, in which adult pedophiles lived together with children.

In the Netherlands, in 1975 the queen knighted lawyer Edward Brongersma, a member of the Dutch Labour Party (social-democratic), known for defending the rights of pedophiles and for lowering the age of sexual consent (he himself was a gay pedophile).

In the United Kingdom, however, in October 1974 the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was founded, a group of pedophiles in favor of lowering the age of sexual consent. A group born within the homosexual world, particularly inside the South London Gay Liberation Front and from 1975 became part of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) of Sheffield, which defended it.

 

Cases of pedophilia in the Church date back to that period

The final corollary we draw attention to has also been addressed by UCCR in recent years.

The vast majority of sexual abuse cases that occurred in the Catholic Church date precisely to the two decades 1960–1980, a historical era deeply corrupted by the sexual revolution of 1968.

Several investigations have demonstrated this and we have spoken about it in detail

In the United States, for example, Georgetown University found that 92% of abuse allegations in the Church refer to events that occurred before 1990, among them 72% before 1979. Meanwhile 5% occurred or began between 1990 and 2000 and 3% occurred after 2000. The chart shows a peak of cases precisely between 1960 and 1979.

What happened precisely in that period? Benedict XVI explained denouncing the «collapse» of morals that exploded with 1968, a «process of dissolution of the Christian concept of morality», which triggered the crisis of sexual abuse of minors also in the Church and affected «the formation of priests and the lives of priests».

A form of social permissiveness toward pedophilia also entered the Church, so much so that even in seminaries, the Pope Emeritus explained, «groups that acted more or less openly» were established.