What is your interpretation of this Richard Dawkins paragraph?

[alterego]

In chapter 9, on page 316 of “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, titled “Childhood, Abuse and the Escape from Religion,” we have the following:

@Richard Dawkins

Nevertheless, it is clearly unjust to visit upon all pedophiles a vengeance appropriate to the tiny minority who are also murderers. All three of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affection for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety. That was indeed reprehensible. Nevertheless if, fifty years on, they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defense, even as the victim of one of them (an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience).

Is he saying that he attended 3 boarding schools which employed pedophiles, and he would have come to their defense 50 years later if they had sexually abused him, or that they did sexually abuse him, and he would still come to their defense? What exactly is the “embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience?” Certainly not being molested…?

[Gus_Gusterson]

One of the teachers at one of the three boarding schools he attended molested him in some fashion. He finds molestation to be less heinous than molestation plus murder. He doesn’t think all molesters should be treated like they are murderers, only the actual murderers should be treated that way. The rest should get some lesser, unspecified level of punishment.

[Sarahfeena]

@alterego

In chapter 9, on page 316 of “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, titled “Childhood, Abuse and the Escape from Religion,” we have the following:

Is he saying that he attended 3 boarding schools which employed pedophiles, and he would have come to their defense 50 years later if they had sexually abused him, or that they did sexually abuse him, and he would still come to their defense? What exactly is the “embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience?” Certainly not being molested…?

I read that without reading what you had written underneath it, and I would agree with your conclusions:

1. He attended 3 boarding schools, all of which employed pedophiles

2. He would come to their defense now

3. He was molested in some way by one of them

4. His opinion is that the experience was embarrassing but not harmful

[Sarahfeena]

Darn…hit submit too soon. I would also conclude from this that he does not consider child molestation by itself to be as bad as child molesters who murder their victims. I would have to agree that two crimes are worse than one, and that molestation is not on par with murder. However, I do think that there is a such thing as letting a molester off too lightly, as well.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

I pretty much concur with all the above. He doesn’t think child molestation alone is as bad as child murder. He attended three boarding schools which all employed pedophiles. He would feel compelled to defend them if they were being treated as equivalent to child murderers. He was molested in some way by one of them but found the incident minor and embarrassing rather than traumatic.

[jjimm]

There may be some British context required to explain some of this statement:

1. Pedophilia in British public schools (“public” means high-class private school - usually boarding - in this context) was taken as a given for many years. QV Alan Bennet’s Forty Years On and one line from Four Weddings and a Funeral.

2. There was an anti-pedophilia vigilante movement in the UK relatively recently, resulting in attacks on ex-con pedophiles, as well as innocent people - which culminated in the torching of the home of a pediatrician.

[alterego]

I appreciate the replies!

[Richard_Pearse]

@jjimm

2. There was an anti-pedophilia vigilante movement in the UK relatively recently, resulting in attacks on ex-con pedophiles, as well as innocent people - which culminated in the torching of the home of a pediatrician.

Please tell me this wasn’t because someone got confused between pediatrician and pedophile!

[Pushkin]

@alterego

Is he saying that he attended 3 boarding schools which employed pedophiles, and he would have come to their defense 50 years later if they had sexually abused him, or that they did sexually abuse him, and he would still come to their defense? What exactly is the “embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience?” Certainly not being molested…?

It seems he was saying that in all the boarding schools he attended, he encountered behaviour that came close to, but was not, molestation (what he means by that I’m not sure). If the teachers who did this to him were treated as if they were child murderers, he would step in to defend them.

[Staggerlee]

@1920s Style "Death Ray"

Please tell me this wasn’t because someone got confused between pediatrician and pedophile!

Sadly, you’re spot on… Doctor driven out of home by vigilantes | UK news | The Guardian

[According_to_Pliny]

I suspect the activity was on the surface benign, but on reflection spooky.
Like knowing how much Dodson doted on the Liddell girls.
Kept his distance but obviously was obsessed.

In school I was always put off by gym teachers that had to wrestle a lot or pat behinds a lot, or make us swim nude a lot.

But does that make them criminals? No. There are lines that haven’t been crossed.

[jjimm]

@According to Pliny

I suspect the activity was on the surface benign, but on reflection spooky.

From everything I’ve heard, it was not benign. The line from Four Weddings… was “[the character from the school] buggered me senseless… never did me any harm.”

From memory, the Alan Bennett play has a schoolmaster talking to a pupil, alone in his study, saying stuff like:

“Those parts are called your private parts, and that is because they are yours and yours alone.”

The punchline of the scene is:

“Doesn’t apply to me, boy, doesn’t apply to me.”

This scene is meant to be humorous; furthermore, the implication is that the schoolmaster was indeed touching the boy in a sexual manner. Less than 20 years ago I performed that scene in several different contexts and got laughs every time - today, however, I doubt that scene would be left in the play, and certainly wouldn’t be performed as a standalone piece.