I’ve never been that enamoured of Peter Tatchell, even though he was fighting for causes I believed in such as LBG equality. There was something uncomfortable and nasty about the man’s messianic arrogance, his unwillingness to compromise and his willingness to use ‘outing’ as a political tactic against his opponents in the Church or in political parties, with no cares about what damage to individuals and families such ‘outing’ might have caused.

Tatchell’s willingness to climb aboard whatever bandwagon which can plausibly be associated with LGBT, whether the cult of trans or allowing himself to become associated with the even more sinister ‘intergenerational love’ campaigns, without thinking of the implications of these causes, doesn’t exactly endear me to the man. Tatchell claims to have been inspired by the civil rights movement in the USA, but he has taken his inspiration into some pretty dark and questionable places.

The reason for writing this piece is that there’s a new documentary being put out about Peter Tatchell. It sounds like it is going to be a puff piece about Tatchell rather than any serious look back at his life and his triumphs and failures.

The writer Malcolm Clark in a piece on his Substack tells how he has watched this film and believes that there is something missing from it. Of course the issue of Tatchell’s apologias for paedophilia in print are, according to Mr Clark, not mentioned in the biopic about Tatchell. However the main area that Mr Clark claims is missing from the movie is one where it is plausible with regards to chronology for Tatchell to be in an area of the world where a paedophilic tribe dwelt. He’s not claiming that when Tatchell was in this area did anything untoward but he does raise the question: what was Tatchell doing during a period of time that has been glossed over and what do Tatchell’s travel destination choices say about Tatchell’s mindset and interests?

Mr Clark said:

There is a puzzle about this film though. It’s to do with a curious gap.

The movie plods methodically through Tatchell’s life almost year by year from his birth in 1952 in Melbourne to the present day. In 1971, it recounts, he came to London to avoid national service in Australia. We then hear about the Gay Liberation Front being founded in London later that year, the first UK Pride march in 1972, and his East German faux-heroism in 1973. Then there’s a screeching jump and we are in 1980 with Tatchell joining the Labour Party to begin his journey to become the openly gay candidate for the Bermondsey by-election. What happened between 1973 and 1980, I wondered. What could Tatchell have done in those missing years?

There lies a story.

I had decided to watch ‘Hating Peter Tatchell’ in the hope it might shed light on another mystery about Tatchell, a much bigger one than those few missing years. The mystery concerned Tatchell’s strangely intense interest in Papua New Guinea and his very specific interest in the sexual behaviour of some of its people. Let me explain.

Over the last couple of years I’ve written a lot about Tatchell and his various apologia for paedophilia, not least his notorious 1997 letter to the Guardian in which he cited the work of the anthropologist Gilbert Herdt.

You may remember it’s in this letter that Tatchell offers Herdt as an example of the “distinguished psychologists and anthropologists” he claims “document examples of societies where inter-generational sex is considered normal, beneficial and enjoyable by old and young alike.”

In his letter Tatchell said that Herdt “points to the Sambia tribe of Papua New Guinea where all boys have sex with older warriors”.

Mr Clark then went onto explain that other people, including feminist writer Julie Bindel, had looked into the ‘initiation practises’ of this Sambia tribe. They have uncovered that, far from being some sort of contextual consensual cultural practise within this tribe, with younger individuals bonding with older warriors of their own free will, what these tribes were doing were kidnapping children and youths and basically raping them. Mr Clark then went on to describe how the anthropologists who had observed this tribe classified the Sambians as ‘violently misogynistic’ and a culture whose members beat men and women for showing affection to one another.

The Sambians were not some hippy free love commune with a lack of an age of consent as Tatchell has painted them, the reality is that this group was as hateful towards women as the Taliban are, mixed in with a sense of entitlement towards the bodies of the young boys and youths of their tribe. The Sambians were a rape cult basically. Another tribe in Papua New Guinea, the Keraki were even worse than the Sambians with regards to ingrained culturally sustained sexual exploitation. Girls in this tribe were married off at ten and pubescent and prepubescent boys were taken off to be raped by older male members of the tribe and pimped out to other tribal members and visitors.

Mr Clark has found evidence that some of the anthropologists on whom Tatchell bases his admiration for the Sambians and the Keraki, were themselves apologists for paedophilia and who were connected to paedophile publications. Tatchell also, as Mr Clark found out, had travelled widely in the Papua region in the late 1970’s but pointed out that Tatchell visiting a place that was associated with tribes that sexually abused its youngsters was a ‘coincidence’.

Now of course I’m not accusing Peter Tatchell of being a paedophile, there’s no evidence of that whatsoever m’lud. But he has been rather too closely associated with paedophilia apologists for my liking. Despite his position as being the liberal left Establishment’s ‘national treasure’ I have never wanted this man on my side, even if he did say he was on my side, his support is not the support I ever wanted. He gave me and still gives me the ‘ick’ which was something I felt long before I became aware of his strange and questionable letter to the Guardian of 1997 which is mentioned in Mr Clark’s piece. I didn’t like Tatchell’s activism style; in the end the ‘Mattachine’ route to gain equality via a political route worked better than rioting or performative activism of the Tatchell kind, nor did I like his attitude and personality, but I disliked him even more after I became aware of the ‘97 letter.

I’d like to conclude this piece by quoting Mr Clark on the ‘coincidences’ that might have led to the erasure of the years 1974 to 1980 in the Tatchell biopic. I would strongly advise and counsel people to go and read the entirety of Mr Clark’s article as it appears to be very well researched and has tried to be both careful about not throwing around unjustified allegations and also fair to Tatchell where required. There is, as Mr Clark said, no evidence of malfeasance on Tatchell’s part but the more I read this article the more troubled I become, because of Tatchell’s obsession with a couple of child abusing Papuan tribes. Maybe those with such obsessions about the practises of such tribes should not be in any position to influence public policy?

Mr Clark added:

This account of a visit to Papua New Guinea suddenly clarified everything about Tatchell for me. All residual doubt vanished. Tatchell’s obsession with the country was no longer some abstract fancy, no theoretical illusion. It was concrete. He had cared enough about the country to travel there. His interest in its tribes was so passionately keen he was willing to trek hundreds of miles deep into a malarious and dangerously remote region of the country to witness for himself how the locals …..lived their lives.

There is, of course, absolutely no proof that Tatchell was drawn to Papua New Guinea by anything other than youthful curiosity. There is no evidence of malevolent intent on his part either. Like so many things about Tatchell’s biography this latest twist could….of course….. be yet another startling coincidence.

However, let me dwell for a moment on just how extraordinary a coincidence this really is.

• Peter Tatchell has since 1997 publicly celebrated the Sambia tribe of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea as a model of human sexual behaviour.
• The research into this tribe was conducted by the paedophile-defender Gilbert Herdt between 1974 and 1980. He described a culture of violent child abuse.
• Tatchell so admired the Sambia of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea that when Gilbert Herdt was exposed as a defender of paedophilia, he claimed other anthropologists had described their behaviour, when they hadn’t. He then continued to cite this child-abusing tribe as a moral example.
• The only other tribe Peter Tatchell has cited as an example of human sexual behaviour was another tribe from Papua New Guinea: the Keraki who rape boys anally to the point that some are physically injured.
• Tatchell cites this tribe despite the fact his favourite anthropologists …who described this tribe…. also described another 48 tribes who equally accepted homosexual behaviour but didn’t rape children.
• As with the Sambia, Tatchell describes the rape of young boys by the Keraki as consensual when it’s the very opposite.
• By an almost miraculous coincidence….one for the ages….Peter Tatchell was so fascinated by the Eastern Highlands where the child-abusing Sambia live…he went hiking there in 1977.