Foul: Trans Uni Professor claims pedophilia isn't immoral

A Virginia university has placed a trans professor on administrative leave after they sparked outrage for claiming it is not immoral for adults to be sexually attracted to children. 

'Old Dominion University has placed Dr. Allyn Walker on administrative leave, effective immediately, from their position as assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice,' the university's spokesperson, Amber Kennedy, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Walker, a tenure-track assistant professor at Old Dominion, had penned a controversial book attempting to destigmatize pedophilia titled A Long Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity, published by the University of California Press. 

Walker, who uses the pronouns they/them, said in a recent online interview with the Prostasia Foundation, a child advocacy group that promotes child sex doll usage for pedophiles, that pedophiles did not ask to be sexually attracted to children.  

Kennedy said that the online backlash had led to concerns for Walker's safety and that of the campus, and placing them on leave was the best course of action.  

'Furthermore, the controversy over Dr. Walker's research has disrupted the campus and community environment and is interfering with the institution's mission of teaching and learning, she said.  

Old Dominion's president also issued a statement clarifying that the university did not condone any type of sexual abuse against children.

'I want to state in the strongest terms possible that child sexual abuse is morally wrong and has no place in our society,' President Brian Hemphill said. 'This is a challenging time for our University, but I am confident that we will come together and move forward as a Monarch family.' 

Old Dominion had initially rejected the clamor to remove Walker, only distancing itself from the comments and saying it 'does not endorse or promote crimes against children.' 

During the interview with Prostasia, Walker said: 'A lot of people when they hear the term 'pedophile,' they automatically assume that it means a sex offender, and that isn't true.

'And it leads to a lot of misconceptions about attractions toward minors.' 

'From my perspective, there is no morality or immorality attached to attraction to anyone because no one can control who they're attracted to at all,' Walker said during the November 7 interview.

'In other words, it's not who we're attracted to that's either OK or not OK. It's our behaviors in responding to that attraction that are either OK or not OK.'  

They said the term 'minor-attracted persons' will help destigmatize people who do not act upon their urges.

They continued: 'We have a tendency to want to categorize people with these attractions as evil or morally corrupt.

'But when we're talking about non-offending MAPs, these are people who have an attraction they didn't ask for.

'So, their behaviors are moral. But they're still being subjected to this same idea that they're bad people and they've often internalized that for themselves.' 

Walker's book, published in June, gives voice to 'non-offending MAPs' and consists primarily of interviews with self-identified pedophiles and vignettes from their lives, according to the book's description online. 

Walker's PhD thesis, titled 'Understanding Resilience Strategies among Minor-Attracted Individuals' takes another shocking stance on the treatment of pedophilia, arguing that pedophiles should be permitted to view child pornography as a 'harm reduction technique' or 'form of therapy' to help pedophiles 'maintain abstinence from sexual contact with children.'

'Among some groups of predisposed individuals, easy access to a wide variety of engrossing and high-quality child pornography could serve as a substitute for involvement with actual victims,' Walker wrote.

Keep up to date!

Optional email code

Sign up to our newsletter today!

Send me email updates