GRED

The Research Group for a Different Childhood (GRED), or Le Groupe de recherche pour une enfance différente in French, was a "think tank [which] is aimed at all those who consider themselves friends/lovers of children and adolescents, in particular pedophiles, koréphiles, pederasts , heteropedophiles", created in July 1979 and disappearing at the end of the 1980s. The organization published a magazine entitled Le Petit Gredin, and was the 1st overtly MAP activist organization in France. It was the less prominent predecessor to The Center for Research and Information on Childhood and Sexuality (CRIES).

The GRED did not define itself strictly "as a group of pedophiles, but in a more offensive way, by enrolling in a radical policy for a Different Childhood," and also in a more global way, opening the debate "on the rights of minors, on the sexuality of children and adolescents, on the child/adult categories". According to the resolution of the International Gay Association (IGA), of which GRED was a member, they took a stand against the age of sexual majority (or age of consent), in order to leave children a "real choice".

History

Similar to NAMBLA in America, which emerged as a response to legal persecution, the first French-speaking pedophile organization was born in the context of the "Versailles Affair". In the case, three men were held in preventive detention for three years, tried for sexual contact without the use of force/violence on minors aged 15, and for photographing thirteen and fourteen-year-old teenagers at a nudist campsite. On November 8, 1976, in the newspaper Le Monde, writer Gabriel Matzneff published an open forum in support of the accused, titled “Is love a crime?". Two months later, the accused received a petition of support signed by prominent intellectuals. Pending the judgment, around thirty people, most of them interested in legal aid, met on April 2 at the University of Jussieu. An advertising insert in Liberation, dated May 7, 1977, was handed out by a relative of one of the three defendants, Jean-Louis Burckhardt, a 39-year-old worker, who announced the creation, with his address in the post office box, of a Front for the Liberation of Pedophiles (FLIP). FLIP held only one meeting, two years later, in 1979, and disappeared due to differences between those present.

In the summer of 1977, some of the most radical members founded the FRED (Front for action and research for a different childhood), which published a few texts in 1978. Again, the group disappeared due to lack of organization and disagreements between its members, in beginning of 1979.

The first meetings of GRED took place in February 1980. From March 1981, the movement is structured, acquiring an executive office (with Serge Duraz as general secretary), technical commissions and regional groups. It then had about fifty members. Since its creation, it had been part of the homosexual movement, being part of the CUARH (Comité d'urgence anti-répression homosexuelle (Emergency committee against homosexual repression) and the IGA (International Gay Association), and had the objective of persuading the lesbian movement and the circles of education of the merits of his fight. After the working group on Childhood of the second "homosexual summer" gathering at the University of Marseille, the GRED held its first congress on the 27th and 28 of November, 1981.

The group's activities are then organized mainly around the review Le Petit Gredin, broadcasts on Frequence Gaie and various debates and conferences. The report of the third homosexual summer at the University of Marseille (July 1983), in Le Petit Rascal no. 4 , mentions a certain "[embarrassment] of part of the gay movement which is gradually rejecting (...) its own minorities". In 1985, the GRED left the UEH after the first day following tensions with the organization. The group speaks ironically of "minority margins rejected by the marginal majority..." but the fact is that it is now on the margins of the French homosexual movement. Earlier in the year, the group had been sharply denounced by Louis Pauwels in the editorial of Le Figaro Magazine, January 19.

The GRED gave its last signs of life in the ninth volume of Petit Gredin, in the winter of 1987. The editorial deplored the growing difficulty in finding points of sale and collaborators, as well as financial worries.

Le Petit Gredin (The Little Rascal)

After an eight-page first issue published at the end of 1981 to announce the first congress of the movement, three members of GRED (Gilbert Villerot , Antoine Duverger and Alexis Kaplanov) launched in the spring of 1982 the first of the nine issues of Le Petit Gredin, a review devoted to study of children's sexuality, mainly from the point of view of pedophiles, to the publication of testimonies and to the news of pedophilia and pederasty (press reviews, artistic criticism, current events). The Little Rascal also contains short stories, poems or illustrations which take up more and more space as the issues are published. The articles are by members or sympathizers of GRED (who often sign with a pseudonym or their first name) and, occasionally, by personalities from the MAP movement (e.g. Edward Brongersma). Nicolas Malenfant becomes editor-in-chief from the sixth issue (spring 1985). The ninth issue, in the winter of 1987, is the last.