THE Australian Press Council has dismissed a complaint by Dale Mills against a column published in the Herald on May 26. The council's ruling stated:
In the course of analysing general claims about pedophilia, columnist Paul Sheehan made unsubstantiated claims about a "subculture of pedophilia" in the gay community.
The article was a comment piece that dealt with the controversy over nude photographs of a 13-year-old girl posed by photographer Bill Henson.
Mr Sheehan's reference to gays was in the context of his argument that "pederasts and child sexploiters have had a dream run in our society. A subculture of pedophilia among gays, an epidemic of child sexual abuse in the Aboriginal community, and a multimillion-dollar porn industry on the internet have all been protected variously by privacy laws, artistic licence, freedom of expression, and Aboriginal rights. What these rights have done is mask, exacerbate or even rationalise a significant and growing problem."
The Herald published several letters that took Mr Sheehan to task for his linking of gays (and not heterosexuals) and pedophiles.
On June 2 the newspaper published a second Sheehan column in which he sought to address the matters raised in these letters. He did so by responding to an email from a judge, whose name and jurisdiction were withheld. The judge had asserted that Mr Sheehan's reference to a subculture of pedophilia among gays was undoubtedly intended to be a slur on the entire gay community. "I demand Sheehan and the Herald apologise and withdraw this remark and its implication …" the judge added.
Mr Sheehan responded in his article that neither he nor the Herald would apologise or withdraw. He said the judge and other correspondents had inferred from the original article that pedophilia and homosexuality were synonymous. "It is not what I wrote. It is not what I believe. It is not reflected in the crime data. Clearly I made an error in failing to make this explicit."
He continued that he had assumed readers would take it as a given that the preponderance of pedophiles are heterosexual, but had not included this for reasons of compression in a 930-word column. He said he accepted he should have made this point about heterosexuals and admitted the article lacked clarity in this instance. He further stated his reference to "a gay subculture", rather than to "a gay culture" showed he had not intended to smear the entire gay community.
At this point, Mr Mills entered the debate, complaining in an email to the Herald on June 2 that Mr Sheehan's second article failed to retract or apologise in a satisfactory manner. He lodged a complaint with the council after the newspaper said Mr Sheehan's printed response had been sufficient. Mr Mills further accused Mr Sheehan of failing to check the accuracy of the claim that a subculture of pedophilia existed among homosexuals.
The newspaper published further readers' letters critical of Mr Sheehan's June 2 response.
In view of Mr Sheehan's prompt admission that he was in error, and the Herald's publication of a significant number of letters challenging the negative stereotyping of homosexuals, the council believes that the Herald dealt with the complaints appropriately.