SENATOR DAVID Norris has said the re-emergence of a controversy surrounding a magazine interview almost a decade ago is a calculated smear designed to damage his presidential campaign.
Mr Norris said yesterday that comments he made about sexual activity between older and younger men and boys in Magillmagazine in January 2002 had been taken out of context by the interviewer, restaurant critic and columnist Helen Lucy Burke.
He said her decision to revive the controversy almost a decade later had angered and hurt him and would certainly damage his efforts to win enough support to allow him contest the presidential election later this year.
“This is calculated. This is quite specific. This story has been out there for the past 10 years. Why now? Why now at this minute?
"It was alright for me to continue teaching, to babysit my neighbour's children . . . I am angry but I am dignified. I am not making a personal attack on Helen Lucy Burke," he told The Irish Times.
Ms Burke said the quotes that appeared in the article were accurate. She also said she had read out all the quotes to Mr Norris in early January 2002 ahead of the article being published and he had okayed them all. She said she believed his “dangerous” and “shocking” views on sexuality made him an unsuitable person to be president of Ireland.
The three-page article appeared after the journalist had interviewed Mr Norris in Chapter One restaurant.
In it, he is quoted as saying: “In terms of classic paedophilia, as practised by the Greeks for example, where it is an older man introducing a younger man or boy to adult life, I think there can be something to be said for it. And in terms of the North African experience this is endemic.
“Now again, this is not something that appeals to me, although when I was younger it would most certainly have appealed to me in the sense that I would have greatly relished the prospect of an older, attractive, mature man taking me under his wing, lovingly introducing me to sexual realities, and treating me with affection and teaching me about life – yes, I think that would be lovely; I would have enjoyed that.”
Ms Burke wrote that she asked Mr Norris was he was in favour of “free-range sexuality” and where would he draw the line he replied: “I believe very strongly in people being allowed to make any choice they will, within very wide limits. But I also believe that once you make those choices, you should take responsibility for them.
“I wouldn’t draw the line for other people, I would hope that we could produce a society in which people would be inclined to draw lines for themselves. There’s a lot of nonsense about paedophilia. I can say this because I haven’t the slightest interest in children, or in people who are considerably younger than me.”
He was also quoted as saying there was a lot of confusion between homosexuality on the one hand and paedophilia and pederasty. He is also quoted as telling Ms Burke there was general confusion about words beginning with ped or paed. He cited two cases where a paediatrician and a pedicurist were beset by angry mobs.
Mr Norris yesterday said the quotes had been taken out of context. He also challenged Ms Burke to produce the recording of the interview. Ms Burke said she “thought she had a taped cassette of the interview but it turned out it was not the one”.
Last night she told The Irish Times: "I am absolutely confident of finding the tape. I possibly put it in the attic after a flood into my upstairs rooms." She also insisted she had contacted him ahead of publication and he had "okayed" all the quotes. "Indeed he congratulated me on my accuracy".
She also e-mailed a transcript of her diary entries at that time to back her assertion.
The first extract from January 1st stated: “David Norris rang and okayed everything I had written with a couple of minor adjustments. I asked him was he sure he did not want me to excise some passages and he said firmly ‘No’. Oh well. I have done what a friend could do.”
A second e-mailed extract, which she said was written on January 3rd, states: “Feeling a bit helpless I said tentatively, that he could excise anything he wanted to; no, it was very accurate and represented his thoughts . . . I have done all I can . . .”
Yesterday, Mr Norris challenged Ms Burke’s account. He said she had rung him in early January but had read only two paragraphs because he was packing his bags to prepare for a trip abroad. He suggested a correction, he said, which she had failed to apply.
Asked was he misquoted about his comments on sexual relations between older men and younger men and boys, he said: "We got into an academic discussion about Plato's Symposiumand the things that were discussed in that. It was ancient Greek classical literature.
“I made a distinction between paedophilia and pederasty, which is a totally different thing. To the average person it would not make any difference I suppose but to me it did because I knew what I was talking about. That got mixed up and stayed mixed up.
“I abhor with every fibre of my being the idea of interference with children, sexual abuse, physical abuse and emotional abuse. My record on that speaks for itself.”
Asked about the distinction between pederasty and paedophilia he said the former was referred to in Plato's Symposium.
“They discussed stuff and they talk about love between two men and the system in Greece where an older man at the gymnasium took a younger man, but a man, classified as over the age of consent in this country, under his wing and lovingly started a relationship with him. They were proud of it.
"The debate on the Symposiumis very interesting because at the end of it, Alchibiades, who is a beautiful young man, has offered himself to Socrates. Socrates refuses because he says wisdom is forever but the body perishes."
He said it was a mistake to have allowed himself get involved in what he said was an “academic and intellectual discussion” on pederasty. He maintained he was flabbergasted by the questions put to him by Ms Burke, and their graphical content, and should have got up and left the restaurant.
“I was foolish. I should not have let myself get into an academic discussion with somebody I knew only as a restaurant critic. I felt astonished at the questions. I said I did not want to talk about sex and she said that in the article.”
He said he was most hurt by Ms Burke's reference on RTÉ's Livelineshow to him departing for Thailand the next day.
“Several people rang in and said that was a real slur. Ms Burke knew perfectly well I was going at the request of the United Nations to investigate the HIV-Aids situation and trafficking of women and child sexual abuse,” he said.
Ms Burke said she had not been trying to make anything of him leaving for Thailand but had been merely stating the factual position.