WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE THIS SEEM LIKE A GOOD IDEA? A generous helping of leftist politics. The German Experiment That Placed Foster Children with Pedophiles.
Marco was assigned to live with Henkel, a forty-seven-year-old single man who supplemented his income as a foster father by repairing jukeboxes and other electronics. Marco was Henkel’s eighth foster son in sixteen years. When Henkel began fostering children, in 1973, a teacher noticed that he was “always looking for contact with boys.” Six years later, a caseworker observed that Henkel appeared to be in a “homosexual relationship” with one of his foster sons. When a public prosecutor launched an investigation, Helmut Kentler, who called himself Henkel’s “permanent adviser,” intervened on Henkel’s behalf—a pattern that repeats throughout more than eight hundred pages of case files about Henkel’s home. Kentler was a well-known scholar, the author of several books on sex education and parenting, and he was often quoted in Germany’s leading newspapers and on its TV programs. The newspaper Die Zeit had described him as the “nation’s chief authority on questions of sexual education.” On university letterhead, Kentler issued what he called an “expert opinion,” explaining that he had come to know Henkel through a “research project.” He commended Henkel on his parenting skills and disparaged a psychologist who invaded the privacy of his home, making “wild interpretations.”
Plus: “Kentler’s career was framed by his belief in the damage wrought by dominant fathers.”
