I started the campaign to rename the park after Oscar Wilde,  (which has thousands of members now) and it’s received a fair bit of media attention. The idea was not mine, it’s been suggested before, by Rory O’Neill and others, but Ryan’s fall from grace gives Dubliners a window of opportunity for it to happen. But the idea has met with fierce opposition from some Catholic quarters.

Colum Kenny wrote in the Sunday Independent about the proposal: “(it) seems strange… calling it after someone who frequented London rent boys and secured youngsters for sex in North Africa (whatever Wilde’s undoubted literary merits) is not the best option.”

“We can’t name city park after Wilde who ‘hunted young boys’ for sex” screamed the headline in the Evening Herald: “Writer’s activities no different to church abuse says professor”. The professor in question, Joseph S. O’Leary, a Maynooth graduate who now writes and blogs on literature and theology, and teaches in a university in Tokyo, was reportedly “amazed” at the suggestion to name the park after the writer. “Ryan is accused of lacking vigilance in preventing the very behaviour that Wilde and Gide indulged in without scruple”, he said. “How does this make Ryan a villain and Wilde a hero?”

I suggested online that, at the heart of the objections to honouring Wilde, there seems to be a reluctance to observe the crucial distinction between consensual and non-consensual sex, and that, however much sex one has, it does not make one an abuser. In response, O’Leary wrote to me saying that, according to my logic, my disapproval of Archbishop Ryan should lead to the removal of Wilde’s statue from the park as well. “In both cases the good that the men did is overshadowed by the evil of which they are accused.” After indicating to him that I would rather not engage in private discussions on the matter, that I’d favour open debate, he then sent me the most astonishing message:

“Busy archbishops may have trouble keeping track of deviants in their clergy and handling complaints from people like Andrew Madden (whose statements in the Irish Times today suggest that he must have been very difficult to satisfy) but dizzy queens obsessed with and addicted to the most louche and lawless forms of sexual behaviour (thinking that they were liberators in advance of their time) are sure to find themselves in a far deeper quagmire than any archbishop.” He also noted that Wilde and Bosie were never prepared to “justify” that phase of their existence, so “they cannot be held up as NAMBLA-style martyrs of free love either”. He ended his message with an entreaty to “take warning from the from the experience of the Dublin clergy; any appearance of collusion with “paedophile” offenses is now exposed to grimmest media and police scrutiny!”

The value judgments in this correspondence from Professor O’Leary need to be deconstructed and understood. Not because I’d lose sleep if the park was eventually named after someone else, but because these attitudes are still widely prevalent in Irish society and are judgmental and destructive. I’ll deal with each one in reverse order:

His final warning to me is redundant. I have already paid the price for an “appearance of collusion with ‘paedophile’ offenses’” when I heavily criticized the film “Fairytale of Kathmandu” and the way it portrayed Cathal Ó Searcaigh as a child abuser. The vitriol aimed at me personally was quite disturbing, so I cannot imagine what he has had to endure. I know the nature of the attacks, and I know also that they are misguided.

There is no necessity to put “paedophile” in quotation marks. Generally, paedophilia is understood to refer to sexual attraction to prepubescent children, and there are no quotation marks necessary to apply that label to the priests who abused the children in their care. It is a crime and should remain so; indeed I believe that a convicted paedophile who has received treatment in prison, and then goes on to re-offend on his release, should be permanently deprived of his freedom. It is that bad a crime. The damage done can be devastating and long-lasting. At the root of the trauma of child sex abuse is a deep sense of loss of trust and safety in the world, and a lingering sense of impotence, the result of someone in authority having taken advantage of them. There are also the complex and often nightmarish effects of early sexualization on an adult survivor. But a particularly odious element to clerical abuse is the way in which the child is pickled in a toxic shame, because of the way Judeo-Christian religion works using internalized guilt as a method of mind-control. It can take a long time for a survivor of child sex abuse to shake off the belief that they are wicked to the core. When a child’s faith in goodness and god is destroyed, and when the institutions and society that allowed this psychological and spiritual carnage to take place turn a blind eye, it is quite remarkable how some survivors grow up to be such wonderful rounded people. And quite understandable if they find themselves full of rage and continue to suffer for their whole lives.

Wilde was not a paedophile. As to the ages of the young men he had sex with, it seems that most would have been over our current age of consent, while some were younger, and at least a few were fourteen. In a recent UK poll, nearly a quarter of all fourteen-year-olds have had a sexual experience, and one in three fifteen-year-olds is sexually active. I cannot imagine that it was any different in Victorian times, especially considering that the lads that Wilde found attractive tended to be working class, and independent, either holding down a job or in search of one. Wilde flattered, cajoled, persuaded, dazzled, bribed and paid his many young “panthers” for sex. But he did this in an era when all same-sex activity was condemned and criminal, and the notion of there being an age of consent for it was nonsensical. The power Wilde exercised was financial, social, sexual and charismatic. He held no other power over them; he was not charged with their care or pretending to be something he was not. However, as he found out to his cost, the young men he had sex with could turn the tables and blackmail him, and exploit the power they had over him.

Modern laws relating to the age of sexual majority are designed, naturally and sensibly enough, to protect children. I have written in this column, three years ago now, how, when an Irish 14-year-old went looking for sex on gaydar in 2006, I was disgusted with the older men who agreed to have sex with him, and praised the men who turned up to meet him and then sent him packing, when they could see for themselves how young he was. Despite media coverage at the time, there was no paedophile ring, because there is a big difference between men who seek pleasure in the company of sexually active young men, and those who seek to despoil bodies and souls that are not ready for such an experience. It is a fine line, I know, because each person matures at a different age. But here’s a question: should a quarter of all fourteen year olds face a criminal conviction, because they have had sex?

I would be very interested to know how the young Irishman in the gaydar scandal, now aged 18, is faring, and what he makes of his experiences. Around the time of the scandal, a number of young men told me of their own sexual experiences when they were younger. Some were delighted with the sex they had when fourteen or fifteen; some were sad that it had happened so young. Most were philosophical. But not one of them ever expressed anything remotely like the suffering that has now become all-too-familiar of those who were abused by paedophiles. It’s a very different phenomenon.

If Wilde and Bosie were alive today, they would, perhaps, be civil partners. They loved each other that much. But they would also be cruising together and having lots of sex, together or separately, with lots of men. They would, no doubt, attract the same tabloid attention that George Michael and his lover do. I imagine that two crucial things would be different, however, between the Victorian era and ours. (Homo)sexuality has changed so much in just a century. They probably wouldn’t have to pay their lovers, and they would probably stick to the law, because they wouldn’t need to break it.

If a modern Wilde had sex with a fourteen-year-old now, I’d be disgusted, because we now have the rights that he never had, to live a life without shame or self-hatred or the threat of the ruination that, sadly, he had to endure over a hundred years ago.

We have no way of truly knowing how Wilde treated his lovers in intimate circumstances, but rather than make them feel cheap or dirty, he seems to have put them on pedestals, and showered them with gifts. There is no evidence that Wilde ever brutalised any of his lovers, or went against their will, or shamed them, or abused their trust. We can never truly know whether the motivation for youths blackmailing him came from their hurt feelings, or if it was an inevitable result of Wilde being rich and having sex with people who needed to survive and pay the rent. But Wilde worshipped them – or, to be perhaps more accurately, Wilde worshipped cock. Bosie was a rakish “top” whose hunt for passive youths certainly led him to test the ethical boundaries of any caring human being. I suspect I’d have disliked him intensely. But Wilde was sexually versatile (in modern terms, we take that to read: “bottom”) and therefore his sexual pleasure derived not from subjugation or possession of a youth’s body, but of inviting young, virile and testosterone-charged men to subjugate or possess him.

The emotional repercussions of a promiscuous lifestyle are still as complex as they were then, but at least now it is out of the reach of a cruel and unjust law.

Mentioning NAMBLA in any discussion about Wilde muddies the waters disgracefully. The North American Man/Boy Love Association is a society that props up the wicked delusion held by recidivist paedophiles that children, when they seek affection from an adult, are “asking for it”. In my eyes, these views are on a par with those expressed in the pro-anorexia websites, where young anorexics are told how to get as thin as possible. Disinformation rules, horrifying destruction is revered or, at best, ignored, with a malevolent self-serving sophistry that is sick and disturbing.

The comment about Andrew Madden reveals O’Leary’s true colours. Only an apologist for the Church would say that. But, happily, a Church is only as powerful as the numbers of people who belong to it. And such remarks have no power over someone who has left it, in a secular society. The (Roman) Emperor has no clothes. The old and clever shame-inducing mechanisms do not work any more. The Church can never satisfy Madden, not because of any flaw of his, as O’Leary tries to impute, but because the Church has lost all credibility with rational people.

As for “dizzy queens” having lots of “louche sex” – it amazes me why people froth at the mouth at this phenomenon. Is it envy? Sex is simply mutual pleasure. Why it is demonized as evil is simply beyond me.  It may be lots of other things – distracting, crazy-making, risky, chaotic, anarchic, but shared physical pleasure between two people who freely engage in it is a beautiful thing.

It is the following particular statement by O’Leary that astounded me the most, however. “In both cases (Ryan and Wilde) the good that the men did is overshadowed by the evil of which they are accused.”

Ryan’s job was pastoral. It was to care for his flock. His responsibility was, indeed, first and foremost, not to be “too busy” to take the trouble to “keep track of deviants in his clergy and handling complaints from people like Andrew Madden”. The fact that he didn’t see how protecting children is the most important responsibility he had, is a disgrace. I don’t believe in the concept of evil but I hate hypocrisy, and I detest the mindset that prioritizes the  reputation and authority of an institution over the lives of suffering children. What could be more villainous?

Wilde was an artist. A magnificent artist. He was true to himself and to his values and his passions. He devoted himself to beauty, and he paid the price for it, a thousand times more cruel than any bishop or archbishop or Pope will ever have to endure. And yet, their crimes are far greater. Could you imagine Wilde, after a passionate and mutually enjoyable tryst with a young buck, ever committing the obscenity of making his lover say the rosary in penance? Leave that to the master mindfuckers, the priests.

It is the heightened sensibility and sensitivity that the fallen Wilde displayed in his last masterpiece, De Profundis, that reveals his breathtaking humanity. It is his tragic flaw that makes him, in my understanding of the word, heroic.

If we, as Irish people, allow his all-too-human flaws to overshadow his unparalleled gift to the world, his art, because we still can’t get over our hangups about sex, then we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Further reading: The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna

It starts with one of the most affecting young men in Fairytale speaking, Naryan Panta, the beautiful shy youth who talks about his first experience of sex with Ó Searcaigh, and says in halting, pained English, “he bought myself”. It is one of the most evocative moments in Neasa Ní Chianán’s film, the most apparently damning. However, here he is, aged 20, a cool bespectacled college student studying Physics, in jeans and baseball cap, (with his mobile phone going off and interrupting the interview), talking about his loving, continuous, physical relationship with Ó Searcaigh. He admits to feeling guilty for what he said at the time, and says he felt pressurized to say what he said in the film. The reason why he was angry with Ó Searcaigh that day was that he had come looking for him at the Buddha Hotel, and had just been told, by Ramesh Khadka, the man who organised the interview for Fairytale, that Ó Searcaigh had just left for Ireland, and that he wouldn’t be in touch with him again, because he never keeps in touch with the friends he makes in Nepal, that he was a bad man. Naryan was, understandably, devastated by that information, and in that hurt and confused space he told the film maker what she wanted to hear. Now, he’s come out fighting – against Ní Chianán. He says he felt pressurized, he felt pushed to say what he said. He had asked her to remove his interview from the documentary. She assured him that she had.

Naryan does not consider himself a victim, nor does he look or sound like one now. He was not offered counselling, nor, it appears, would he take it. He knows of no one else concerned with the film being offered counselling. “You are the greatest victim, in Neasa’s eyes, in Neasa’s thinking” jokes the interviewer to Naryan. He refutes it categorically. “No, never”.

Naryan’s amateur interviewer on this DVD, Janak Sapkota, who also appears in Fairytale, introduces himself. He is 21, with model looks, doing a Bachelor’s degree in Physics, and he’s also a writer and film maker, who has published two books with Cathal. He has known him for a long time, and they write haikus together. He says “After talking with a lot of Cathal’s friends, I have come to know that what Neasa is doing is all fake.” He says that none of the guys gave written permission to be interviewed. He says that Ní Chianán claims that she is representing their voice – but he says they can speak on their own, they have their own voice. If she is sure that the documentary is their voice, he says, he’d like to invite Neasa to come to Nepal and listen to them. Why can’t she be there with them? Why can’t they see the documentary together, why doesn’t she sit down with them side by side and they watch it together?

In the early part of Fairytale, in Ní Chianán’s narrative, she first wondered aloud about what Ó Searcaigh was up to when they went trekking, and a village boy who could speak no English, Ram, spent the night with Ó Searcaigh. The lad concerned, now a thickset vociferous twenty-year-old man, speaks on this DVD, and is furious that she filmed him without permission. In a passionate diatribe in rapidfire English, he condemns her, is outraged that she inferred what was happening between them, without justification, without proof, without even talking to him. He gives an account why he stayed with him, as it was too late to go home, after a night of dancing and laughter, that they all enjoyed very much. Why did Ní Chianán not interview him, or even introduce herself to him? “She has totally diminished us, our culture, our society, the Nepalese people” he says, and he challenges her to re-edit the documentary, to get “justification” from them.

The DVD then switches to a room full of his friends, drinking tea, recorded on a different day, or days. Naryan is there, as well as a few others, and all are lining up to speak with love and affection for their friend, their best friend, their god.

A 26 year old unnamed man speaks, not seen in Fairytale, talking about Ó Searcaigh, saying that he was very kind, that he loves Nepalese people. He encouraged him to study as well as doing his job. In response to the news that somebody is making a documentary about Ó Searcaigh claiming that he “abused with sex”, he says simply “I did not find that he had that kind of nature.”

Anwang Xu, a trekking guide, met him eleven years ago. “Cathal is not like that, people. I know him very well. I am doing a course and I had to ask my teacher to let me come here to speak for Cathal. I am happy to come here and speak for him. For the last eleven years he has always been with me, and I never saw anything like what they say about him. This is not true. He is not a wrong person. He is not like this. He’s a very true person. I am very worried about Cathal.”

Prakash Nepali, (21), the young man in Fairytale who was most lovingly effusive when talking about Cathal, then speaks. “I gave my interview, and said that Cathal was very good for me, I love him very much. I am always saying that Cathal is my god. I am very angry. He is my very very best friend. I am so upset hearing this bad news. He is not like that. She took my interview but I didn’t agree to show the documentary – I didn’t sign anything.”

A handsome young dude with pop star looks named Ozum speaks, who didn’t appear in the documentary. “In September 2005 I met Cathal, I found nothing against him in character. He is always very good. We have to understand that European culture and Nepalese culture are very different; most people are Hindu. He helped to expose the intelligence of Nepalese youth. When the news broke in Kathmandu, I was really very shocked and mournful. I do not believe he was like that. In our society, when men go with women, they are looked at with Devil’s eyes. Neasa is only making money, by damaging somebody’s life. I do not believe Neasa’s documentary.”

Janak Sapkota speaks again: “I was so shocked. I have been with Cathal for the last five years. I have been with him almost all the time when he used to be in Nepal. I have not even sensed a single evidence of what Neasa wants to show in that documentary. I found that Cathal is a beautiful writer. Alongside that he is such a wonderful man, who has helped lots of Nepali people. He loves Nepal a lot. But some… maybe that cultural difference between Ireland and Nepal… the main subject that Neasa picked and described it in a negative sense, that makes Cathal like …” and he trails off, in despair. “I have known Cathal as a guardian, a teacher, a guru, he has been a help to everyone. What Neasa wants to show, that’s totally unbelievable. I do not agree with what I was reading, with what Neasa wants to show in her documentary. Cathal is a beautiful man, a beautiful poet, and he has helped a lot of Nepalese people. That’s not fear of Cathal (speaking) but it is coming to you in this media right now. ”

Yuyutsu RD Sharma, a writer and translator of Ó Searcaigh’s, concludes the DVD. Suave, cultured and in his forties, he speaks of his shock at the news. “The first time we met, Ó Searcaigh said, like Walt Whitman, ‘I want to build bridges across the river Bagmati. I want to make friendships as strong as tree trunks.’ I think this film has shattered those bridges. This film, and the scandal is so negative, and I am shocked and stunned. I have very little idea of what happened, but I am slowly trying to get into things.”

“The passionate intensity of Cathal Ó Searcaigh, his generosity, his legendary fame, has come to his disadvantage. The gusto and exuberance that he had, the passion that he had for Nepal. … This film maker tries to make the whole mess out of it. In the sense that Cathal said, the first time that they met, he said he was openly gay. In Nepal when a man and woman meets, without marriage, it’s called monstrous. Nepalese are in no way able to understand what gay is, although gay literature is being taught at the university. The way that this film maker has tried to tinker with the idea of Cathal Ó Searcaigh’s gay openness is very shocking, very damaging. She has done great disservice to Nepalese literature, Nepalese culture, Nepalese art, Nepalese friendship. All I see is… these innocent boys are with me (in the room), I just met them today … we just came here, there is no pre-planned programme, I’ve been phoning Cathal but with no answer … I am trying to tell people that this is like trying to demonize a gay writer. He is so innocent. He can’t hurt anyone. This is all I know. Did Cathal do violence to anyone? I can’t believe it.”

“If this film-maker had gone to any of the restaurants, she would find loads of teenage girls being used by the Western tourists. You don’t have to go more than one minute from the Buddha Hotel. I wonder why she is not worried about these innocent girls? How she is worried about Cathal’s friends, being “exploited” by Cathal? You’ll see so many teenage girls being everyday being used by these tourists, no investigation required to see this see this sort of thing. She says she’s so sensitive, she’s so worried about her son, about the children.. if she’s so worried, why doesn’t she make a story about Nepal, about these Nepalese children? Why just Cathal? Why just Cathal’s friends? I invite her to come to Nepal, go to all these dance restaurants, she’ll make a wonderful story about child exploitation. But just concentrating on this one person, and then seeing whole world of inhumanity and suffering in this? This is atrocious, this is so biased. This is demonizing Cathal, this is demonizing a gay writer. Like women here demonize men, a transexual man, or a man seen talking to five, six young men, young women, would be seen as a monster. Nepalese society is so sensitive to these things, in its makeup, in its intrinsic relationships, in its large families. At the moment Nepal is passing through a very critical phase. This poet, this prophet, this saint, from Ireland came and tried to help these young people. He translated lots of Nepalese poets in Irish pages. This man was a bridge between Nepal and Ireland, between Nepal and Europe. This man is being demonized. I invite this film maker to come to these restaurants, and find the very visual, very simmering evidences of all that she’s trying to prove with Cathal. And she’ll find none with Cathal. She just has to come. This is absolutely outrageous. I can’t understand all this. I want to say one message. Cathal is openly gay, and I’m telling all my friends that Cathal is going to be one of the greatest writers of the century in the years to come. I am telling my friends, the whole enigma of Cathal. His generosity, his openness, has come to his own disadvantage. And that’s what happens with good people.”

Ní Chianán had assured Naryan that she would remove his interview from the film, but didn’t. The others protest that they did not sign any release forms. Ní Chianán did not even bother introducing herself to Ram, and yet what she implies about his actions is central to her narrative. If this is a film about consent, in all its manifestations, then surely informed consent to take part in a damaging documentary is pertinent? Everyone who took part in her film did so only because they trusted Ó Searcaigh. Why didn’t she have her interviewees sign release forms? Do different film-making rules apply outside of Ireland? Despite their reaction to the film, this DVD is full of invitations to Ní Chianán to come back to Nepal. To meet them, to hear their story, to see the real exploitation for herself, to sit with them and watch the documentary together. There is, understandably, a lot of animosity towards her, they feel she has betrayed their trust, and attacked their friend. They are also outraged at the damage done to their culture, to their country, and to their lives.

Central to this whole story, however, as far as I am concerned, is the dynamic that seems to be the most problematic for a lot of people, the sexual relationship between an older Western man and a younger Asian one. Anyone who sees Fairytale of Kathmandu has to see the this DVD, and, in particular, the segments in which the supposedly victimised and exploited Naryan, now flourishing and confident, speaks bravely and without shame about his relationship with Ó Searcaigh.

Aristotle

In Oscar Wilde’s case, his downfall came about when, at the peak of his career, he sued the Marquess of Queensberry for libel. Defence council Edward Carson discovered a long line of rent boys willing to testify, and so the case collapsed, and criminal charges quickly followed. Wilde knew the dangerous power those mostly working class youths posed to him; he described being with them as “feasting with panthers”. When Wilde heard that it was Carson, an old Trinity rival, who was to oppose him, he remarked “No doubt he will pursue his case with all the added bitterness of an old friend”.

Twenty one years later, Roger Casement was hanged for treason. His own diaries were found and circulated by British officials in order to discredit him; scribblings salaciously listing his many sexual exploits with men, especially youths he met out cruising at night in Europe and abroad. Appeals by his many supporters for clemency were, as a result, ignored.

A hero’s tragic flaw is one which is self-inflicted. The poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh, with the same taste for post-pubescent youths as Casement and Wilde, (which makes them pederasts, not paedophiles) welcomes a film crew into his life in Nepal, and the resulting damning documentary, Fairytale of Kathmandu, has become defamatory evidence that, at the time of writing, may or may not be used in a court of law against him.

You will have to wait till March 11th to see the documentary itself, when RTÉ broadcasts it. It’s a honey trap of a film; it starts off lyrical and soft, elegiac for the most part, a lilting portrayal of a popular charismatic figure and the obvious heartfelt love that surrounds him in Kathmandu. In the months that she is there with him, however, the director, his friend and neighbour Neasa Ní Chianán, also records the frequent visits to his hotel by young men, who often stay the night, and become his friend for a few days or a few weeks, and sometimes longer. We hear some boys talking and joking about the many, many young friends he has, laughing about the numbers. Unaccountably, the director doesn’t ask Ó Searcaigh about them at the time, nor talk directly to the youths herself. It wasn’t until the cynical, jaded hotel manager talked about Western exploitation that her “eyes were opened”. (One has to remember that this same hotelier had been happy to have Ó Searcaigh as a regular guest for years.) Then, and only after Ó Searcaigh had left Kathmandu, she puts the word out, decides to interview some of the youths (all 16 or over) with a counsellor. They tell tales of confusion, hurt feelings, shame about feeling that they had been “bought”, and anger. Which is, after all, exactly what she was looking for – the Nepalese are obliging to Westerners, whom they see as gods. Most of all, what comes across from them are stories of lost innocence.

Innocence is the theme of the film, a collective Fall from Eden. Although Ní Chianán portrays herself as having been innocent, only realising, with shame, that the subject of her biography had been busy having a sex life throughout her stay in Nepal, right in front of her eyes, it is not mentioned that she had already spent a winter filming him for a previous documentary, The Poet, The Shopkeeper and the Babu (2006). If I am to believe that her statements in the film are authentic, and not disingenuous, then she is guilty of letting her own freely-admitted hero-worship of Ó Searcaigh get in the way of what this documentary should have been: a piercing and fearless exploration of the man’s voracious sexual appetites, and how he squares it with his exquisitely sensitive nature. However, perhaps because she was nursing her second child during the shoot, and feeling very maternal and protective, which she freely admits, she avoided grasping the thorny issue of his sexual exploits until he had left the country. So, crucially, he is not present to hear his accusers, to respond, to account for himself.

This is not to say that it is right that he should leave so many ex-lovers unhappy, nor that he apparently bedded some of them under false pretences; but I am not convinced that an adolescent’s loss of innocence (over the age of consent) is necessarily the sin that Ní Chianán makes it out to be. It is a mother’s desire that children are protected for as long as possible from hurt and pain – it is only natural. But it is also important to recognise that, at some stage, that one’s children will make mistakes, will have sex, which is often disturbing and confusing. They will grow up. Boys become men. To interpret the experience of a teenager having sex with an older man for the first time as de facto abuse, and to see him only as a victim, is potentially disempowering, shaming, and even castrating. Seeing herself as a rescuer, setting up a trust fund for Ó Searcaigh’s“victims” so they can receive psychosexual counselling is, in my professional opinion, as a working psychotherapist, inappropriate and potentially unhelpful. The hurt that Ní Chianán discovered in the boys she interviewed was relational, in that they didn’t like their experiences with Ó Searcaigh. Their complaints should have been brought directly to the man himself, then and there, so we, the audience, could understand for ourselves the interpersonal dynamics, could judge for ourselves what had happened between them. There is no evidence to suggest that he would have refused this exploration; indeed, perhaps, unconsciously, it is what he was inviting, for we men can insulate ourselves from women’s perspectives on sexuality and relationships, often to our detriment. Instead, his erstwhile friend returns to Ireland and ambushes him with her accusations, and his shocked, defensive, blustering response is what ends the film. This lack of natural justice is why I am so angry with the film makers.

It took them two winters in Nepal to finally address the elephant in the room: the man who put cruising into the Irish language (ag crúsáil) was cruising, all the time. It’s there in the documentary, you can see him strutting through the streets of Kathmandu, late at night, his boys following behind him, cock of the walk. Some of the youths in his life are timid and shy – although it is impossible to know whether the pained awkwardness we see in one youth in particular, being treated to ice cream, is the result of being with Ó Searcaigh or having a Western film crew focussed on his every facial expression. Lest anyone think that we Westerners are bringing our evil ways to the innocent East, there are cruising areas in Kathmandu, and one, a small cruising park in the centre of the city, has between 100-200 guys visiting every night. There are trained outreach workers to spread the safe sex message, and a drop-in centre for gay people – with a staff of 23. There is even an annual gay pride march.

Desire makes fools of us all, and when it expresses itself outside of a relationship of equal status and common interests, which is what many people like to think sex should be about, especially women, then it brings its own contradictions, pleasures and pains. Ní Chianán really doesn’t understand this kind of sex, but, most unprofessionally, didn’t seem to want to understand. The first lad in the documentary who spends the night with Ó Searcaigh, a seventeen-year-old called Ram, seems at ease with him the next day and Ní Chianán’s voice-over seems mystified as to why this might be: “they were worlds apart”. Her curiosity should have been expressed to the poet, then and there. But then, we’d have had a very different kind of film, adult, intelligent and non-exploitative, instead of a pained but nevertheless vindictive response to her own disappointment, that her hero has feet of clay. In Fairytale of Kathmandu, we have a man innocent enough to believe that his friend would not become his nemesis, threaten him with criminal proceedings using the film as evidence, and refuse to supply him with a copy of the film so he could defend himself properly once it had begun being shown and marketed, when his very openness about matters sexual would have meant that he could have explained himself to his accusers on film, long before it had got to that stage. Ó Searcaigh’s hamartia, or tragic flaw, is that he was too trusting.

Apparently, Ní Chianán had an unfilmed conversation with the poet after she had completed the film, and she asked him to consider therapy, to reform himself. According to her, they parted on good terms, with a hug. His subsequent refusal to reform was interpreted by her as evidence that he was an unapologetic recidivist child abuser, to judge by the way she writes and speaks about him now. The answer may be far more complex and uncomfortable: this man, like many men and indeed some women, has a form of sexuality that is transgressive, and seeks to push the limits of desire as far as he can. At its root may indeed be a broken heart, as Ní Chianán alludes to in the film, and a desire to avoid the painful feelings of being dependent, of being possessive and obsessive. But it may also be driven by delight in pleasure, a love of beauty and gentleness, and a lack of shame about sex. He certainly needs to address the issues raised in the film about exploitation, and come to terms with the implications of being a rich Westerner in a poor country, and how that is a perilous path. He most definitely needs to face his accusers. But it occurred to me, as I was watching a few of the lads later on in the film, who were laughing genially and expressively at his every word, but not really getting his literary references, that they were humouring the old codger. Exploitation can be a two-way street, especially when it comes to sex.

“It is the Hera archetype that makes us see Priapus as distorted as we do” says the writer James Hillman. What he’s saying is that the more we look at relationships and sex from a matronly, family-orientated perspective, the more grotesque, threatening and repellent the male sex drive seems. This film is so biassed. Indeed, it is worse, it is prejudicial and punitive. Cathal Ó Searcaigh’s side of the story, in all its uncomfortable complexity, has yet to be told.

This article was originally published in Hot Press. See also the young men’s own story here. I discussed the documentary on The Kiosk with Nadine O’Regan on Phantom FM on Saturday 15th March. An edited version of this article was reproduced in Village magazine, April 2008.

It is with a heavy heart that I have read and listened to the media comment about the documentary “ Fairytale of Kathmandu”. I opened my life and work in Nepal to someone I considered a friend. Someone who had made a film of me and my adopted son and family in Nepal less than a year earlier and who never raised any concerns to me at that time.

I believe the film makers never had any intentions of showing the work I have being doing in Nepal for some 13 years now. I have undertaken projects to provide water, housing, education and business opportunities for the people of Nepal. I have made many friends, both male and female, and I have taken great pleasure in seeing my small efforts change their lives for the better. The well-being of the Nepalese people is of primary concern to me.

If my gay lifestyle and relationships in Nepal has offended anyone, I am sorry. But to suggest that I in any way coerced or preyed upon these young men is untrue and distasteful. My relationships in Nepal have allways been open and loving and above board.

I have considered deeply the opinions put forward by my critics and I can see how my actions could have been misinterpreted. It hurts me to think that I would be seen in this light. However, as my efforts to support and nuture the people of Nepal are more important to me than the privacy of my relationships, I have decided to establish a trust to administer whatever funds I am capable of providing in the future.

The trust will consist of Prem, my adopted son, Sunita his wife and my daughter- in -law, and a Nepalese solicitor and accountant. I will distance myself completely from the distribution of funding for chosen projects. This will allow the work I have started in Nepal to continue, and afford me the privilege of regaining some semblance of a private life.

I would finally like to say that the vast bulk of the money I used to help my friends in Nepal was my own income. Allthough I live there for three months of the year, I support the educational and other projects all year round.

Is teann an taca an trocaire.

Statement of Cathal Ó Searcaigh, 20/02/08.

Update, February 2009: I finally get to meet and interview him for Hot Press, in his first extended English-language interview. It was published  Thursday, 12th February, 2009. More here.

“In what is an otherwise ‘gender neutral’ Bill, one section makes clear that if an underage boy and girl have sexual intercourse with each other, the boy commits an offence but the girl does not.

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell told reporters last night that the Government had decided on this so as not to ’stigmatise single motherhood’. He said that without this provision, every 16- year-old who had a baby or was pregnant would be either a victim of a rape or would have committed an offence.”

What a blind, idiotic, senseless, infuriating position to take. What’s the point of criminalizing a 16-year-old-boy? How is that going to encourage him to take an active role in the fathering of his child, if the sex he has results in a child? We can’t stigmatize our sainted teenage mothers but the dirty letches that are our boys – just lock them up and throw away the key?

Has anyone seen teenagers recently? Compared the girls with the boys? Boys of fifteen or sixteen are so much less emotionally and sexually mature than girls. It’s a confusing time for everyone, adolescence, but how can this law bring clarity? I’m all for protecting children from older people abusing positions of trust and power, that’s common sense. But if it’s ok for girls to have sex with each other at any age, and they don’t get threatened with jail, what on Earth is the point of criminalizing 16-year-old boys, having sex with each other or with girls? Could someone please explain to me the benefits? This is Queen Victoria all over again – let’s ignore the lesbians, because we don’t believe the sex they have is important enough to legislate against. The prick is evil, so throw the book at anyone with a prick lucky enough to get any action under seventeen. This is Marian culture at its worst.

And all this is being decided in a day? ]]> http://bonhom.ie/2006/06/legislating-folly-sexually-active-16.html/feed 1