Quote:
Originally Posted by Zippy
Well you can make assumptions about the age of the boys he indulged in but truth is you have no idea how young the boys could possibly have been. Given that he was said to be picking up boys in London, North Africa and Italy(and God knows where else) I think its a bit naive to assume he imposed some strict age limit on the boys he would touch. Im pretty sure there would have been lots of very young homeless boys of all ages back then selling themselves to the likes of Wilde.
but, of course, fans of his are gonna want to put the best spin on it because otherwise they'd have to admit to idolising a paedo. God forbid.
Personally, I have no doubt whatsoever that he had a massive sexual desire for boys. All the literature about him and around him makes very strong references to it. You'd have to be very naive to think there's all that smoke without any fire.
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Yep I can appreciate that he may have had access to what we would class as underage males, he may have even dabbled in it. And no I dont hold up as a hero, I think the age difference between him and his lovers just a shade on the sick side.
However given that the age of maturity at the time was 21 anyone under it would be classed as "boy". The age of consent at the time (only really applied to females ) had ten years earlier been increased from 13 to 16.
Wouldnt the prosecution have found and produced evidence of sex with prepubescents in court during his sodomy trial or wouldnt Douglas (Marquess of Queensbury) have used the ages of the boys involved during the libel case that lead to the sodomy prosecution?
Douglas did in fact state at the libel trial that "Wilde had solicited 12 boys to commit sodomy between 1892 and 1894". Yet the witnesses he intended to produce including some of those "boys" and had entered into court rolls were all over 18.