I’ve had this post in my draft folder for days because I couldn’t bring myself to finish it as the subject is so repugnant and evil.
Last week in San Francisco, a “Progressive” college professor pleaded guilty to charges of having sexually abused raped a 13-month-old baby — with the mother’s consent and facilitation — and was sentenced to federal prison for a term of at least 30 years.
- Convicted pedophile, former California assistant professor Kenneth Kyle
As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle’s ace crime reporter Henry K. Lee, May 26, 2011:
“Kenneth Kyle, 47, of San Francisco, who had been an assistant professor of public affairs and administration at Cal State East Bay in Hayward for four years, admitted in U.S. District Court that he crossed state lines in August 2009 to have sexual contact with a minor.
The federal grand jury indictment did not identify the minor. But another indictment in St. Louis accuses Kyle and Tessa VanVlerah, 21, of Ballwin, Mo., of molesting VanVlerah’s 13-month-old daughter, with the mother’s consent.
Kyle resigned from the university last year. VanVlerah is also facing state and federal child molestation and child pornography charges in California and Missouri.
Kyle’s plea agreement with prosecutors calls for a 30-year sentence, the minimum set by law, said defense lawyer David Bigeleisen. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White will decide whether to accept that agreement at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Aug. 11.”
Metapedia, the alternative encyclopedia, provides more details:
Kenneth Kyle and Tessa Van Vlerah, 20, from Missouri were arrested for allegedly raping and sodomizing a 13-month-old girl and taking pictures of the acts. He is facing multiple felony charges; statutory rape in the first degree, first degree statutory sodomy and promoting child pornography in the first degree. Kyle was arrested Monday the 23 of March 2010 at San Francisco International Airport, after returning from Europe. Kyle made several trips to St. Louis over the past year to visit Van Vlerah. They would allegedly go to near by motels and engage in sex acts with the baby. This started when the baby was just five months old.
Then Metapedia gives an account of Kyle’s academic employment history.
I had thought it odd that a 47-year-old man could have an academic rank of ”assistant professor,” which is a junior rank typical of young, fresh-out-of-grad-school Ph.D.s. (The more senior titles are “associate professor” and “full professor”.) Metapedia’s account, however, fills in the missing years.
Before Kyle came to his junior professorship at Cal State East Bay, he had held these positions:
- Program coordinator for Arizona State University’s International Student Office.
- Tenured Associate Professor of Sociology at Penn State University, Harrisburg.
- Coordinator of the International Cultural Center and Acting Assistant Director of the International Student Office, Louisiana State University.
For Kyle to leave a tenured Associate Professorship at Penn State U. to step down to a non-tenured Assistant Professorship at Cal State East Bay suggests he was fired from Penn State. Tenured faculty get fired only for reasons that are extremely compelling — and those reasons, sadly, have little or nothing to do with their teaching competence or research productivity. Universities get rid of a tenured faculty member only for reasons of grave moral misconduct, such as being falling down drunk or sexual misconduct that makes the university legally liable.
In Kyle’s case, whatever the misconduct that got him dismissed from his tenured associate professorship at Penn State evidently was hushed up, because he then was hired by Cal State East Bay. Even if his records were sealed at Penn State, Cal State should not have hired him. I’ve sat on countless search committees in my academic career, and someone who left a tenured post for a non-tenured junior professorship would ring so many alarm bells, my head would still be ringing.
Now, to Kenneth Kyle’s Marxist political/ideological orientation.
Metapedia tells us that Kyle got his Ph.D. in Justice Studies (interdisciplinary program in law and the social sciences) and an M.A. in Political Science from Arizona State University, and that his specialty is “the application of critical theories such as Critical Literary Theory, Feminism, Frankfurt School, Critical Theory, and Marxism to specific social problems and public policy.”
“Critical theory,” “Feminism,” “Frankfurt School” and, of course, “Marxism” are all academic code-words pointing to a decided left-wing orientation. To be certain that I’m not falsely characterizing him, I undertook some digging around on the net.
In 2005, when he was still an Associate Professor at Penn State, Kyle was the editor of Social Problems Forum, the official newsletter of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP). In the Fall 2005 issue of Social Problems Forum, Kyle described himself as follows (p. 18):
“My research and teaching interests revolve around the application of critical social theory to address social injustices.”
“Social justice” is another of those code words that directly points to a Marxist leftwing orientation. If you need more confirmation, here is an excerpt from his “A Note From the Editor”:
“This issue of Social Problems Forum: The SSSP Newsletter marks a number of important changes for the SSSP and for society generally…. And at a more personal level, it marks the passing of New Orleans, my hometown, from a city rich in cultural heritage but racial and class-based inequality, and ambiguous sexual and gender relations, to something yet to be determined.”
Kyle’s rape and sodomy of a baby, beginning when the infant was only 5 months old, is so horrific that it defies any sane person’s comprehension.
- Tessa Van Vlerah, the sodomized baby’s mother
How can an adult man find a 5-month-old baby the object of his lust? How can this be about sex? And to make matters even more horrifying, how can the mother, 20-year-old Tessa Van Vlerah, consent to and facilitate the rape of her own baby by this monster?
This is the kind of incomprehensible evil that makes accounts and claims of Satanic ritual abuse of children entirely credible….
Alas, Kenneth Kyle is but the overt symptom of a new perversity in academe. In his 2002 article for the Newhouse News Service, “Controversial Studies Push Change in Society’s View of Pedophilia,” Mark O’Keefe sounded this warning:
Sex between adults and children has been a societal taboo so strong that it’s considered one of our few unquestioned moral principles. But arguments have emerged in academic journals, books and online that at least some such sex should be acceptable, especially when children consent to it.
Those making the case aren’t just fringe groups, such as the North American Man-Boy Love Association, but a handful of academics at mainstream universities.
Members of this school of thought stress that they don’t condone coercing children into sex, and that they are not pro-pedophilia, as the term is commonly understood. But several contend that minors are capable of agreeing to and even initiating sex with adults.
These academics seek to change the language, moving away from “pedophilia,” which often evokes a charged negative response…. In its place would be more neutral terms such as “intergenerational sex” or “adult-child sex.”
With more research, some scholars say, it may be only a matter of time before modern society accepts adult-child sex, just as it has learned to accept premarital sex and homosexual sex.
“Children are the last bastion of the old sexual morality,” wrote one of the trailblazers for this view, Harris Mirkin, an associate professor of political science at the University of Missouri-Kansas City….
Mirkin, whose academic specialty is the politics of sex, wrote in a 1999 article published in The Journal of Homosexuality that society perceives youths as seduced, abused victims and not “partners or initiators or willing participants” in sex with adults, “even if they are hustlers.”
In an interview, Mirkin said the outrage surrounding the Roman Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandal illustrates how the public views acts of intergenerational contact as “one big blur” of child abuse when it’s likely “very, very mild stuff.”
“We say if someone touches or molests or diddles or whatever a kid it will ruin the rest of their life. I don’t believe it. I think kids are more likely to laugh at it more than anything else — unless the whole culture says this is the most horrible thing that can happen to you.”
Can America sink any lower? Sadly, the answer is yes.
God help us, please….
~Eowyn
