An Irish senator, who was forced to end his bid to become Ireland’s first homosexual president following controversial revelations, has said his “greatest desire as a child was to be molested”.
According to documents stored in Ireland’s National Library, Mr Norris made the comments whilst addressing 200 delegates at a conference of the Union for Sexual Freedom in Ireland in 1975.
The typewritten minutes showed that Mr Norris spoke at the conference on behalf of the Irish Gay Rights Movement.
Controversy
The minutes stated: “David said as a child it had been his greatest desire to be molested so he, more than most people, knows the rarity of the homosexual child molester.”
Earlier this month Mr Norris was forced to end his bid to become Ireland’s first homosexual president, over revelations that he pleaded for clemency for his former partner over the statutory rape of a 15-year-old boy.
It emerged that he had written to Israeli authorities in 1997 on Irish parliamentary notepaper asking for clemency for his former partner, Ezra Yitzhak Nawi, who had been convicted of the rape.
Disturbing
Mr Norris had already been at the centre of a storm in May after ‘disturbing’ comments he made about paedophilia and incest were republished.
During an interview with a current affairs magazine in 2002 Mr Norris said “in terms of classic paedophilia, as practised by the Greeks, for example, where it is an older man introducing a younger man to adult life, there can be something said for it”, though he stressed that this did not appeal to him.
However he said that when he was younger he would have “greatly relished the prospect of an older, attractive, mature man taking me under his wing, lovingly introducing me to sexual realities”.
The Senator, who does not support an age of consent, also suggested that people had become hysterical about paedophilia. And he said that “in some instances” child sex abuse victims are “more damaged by the condemnation than the experience”.