A
PEDOPHILE
DESTINATION
Montreal
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in
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all
the
wrong
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Macleans.ca staff | Aug 01, 2007 | 4:40 pm EST
Montreal has emerged yet again as a pedophile's destination of choice - this time on a website suggesting a children's festival there is a place where pedophiles can watch "little girls," the Montreal Gazette reports.
The site, called "Puellula," appears to be based in the Netherlands. It provides a link to a City of Montreal webpage on the Fête des enfants de Montréal, an event scheduled for August that attracted over 200,000 people last year. Besides Montreal, the site also suggestd pedophiles check events in California. (Note: no links in this article lead to Puellula.)
Just two months ago, Maclean's explored Montreal's reputation for hosting one of the most active pedophile communities in North America. The article, entitled "A paradise for pedophiles," noted that the Ganymede Collective (a loose organization of pedophiles), Epifora (an Internet service that hosts some of the continent's most prominent pedophilia-related sites) and Free Spirits (an online pedophile resource) are all based there.
"I have never felt persecuted in Montreal," convicted pedophile Ian Hodgson, a founder of the Ganymede Collective, told Maclean's in an e-mail.
Université de Montréal criminologist Pierre Tremblay said police have left the city's pedophiles relatively at peace and noted that at least three members of the Ganymede Collective had prior sexual assault records against children. "What I find incredible is that it worked for 10 years without any trouble," Tremblay said. "That surprises me. It's public information. I asked the cops why [Ganymede] was working, but I never got a response."
(As for Puellula, Sgt. Ian Lafrenière said Montreal police are taking the matter "very seriously.")
Puellula's stated inspiration is self-described pedophile Jack McClellan, who is infamous for blogging about young girls and posting pictures of fully clothed children on his own site. His borderline-legal activities have led some parents in the U.S. to track him on a website of their own.
McClellan, who has no criminal record, is also no stranger to Montrealers. After his site was shut down by a U.S. service provider in May, he moved it to Epifora, which states on its website that it "accept[s] controversial speech" and has "respect for client privacy." Epifora's president John White is an admitted pedophile who claims to have taken a vow of celibacy.
When it was revealed McClellan's site has been moved to a Montreal-based host, Quebec provincial police told reporters that websites like his push the law's limits but don't violate the Criminal Code. "There's not much we can do about the sites because they go around the law - they never go across the line," Sgt. Jason Gauthier said.
In response to the latest news, Montrealers are sounding off on some of the city's more prominent blogs.
