The 1977 testimony of Ken Wooden at the House hearings on the sexual exploitation of children is as heartbreaking and enraging today as it was 49 years ago. Wooden was an author, investigative reporter for 60 Minutes and Director of the National Coalition of Children’s Justice.
Mr. Wooden called out the FBI for its inaction and lack of responsibility in addressing child exploitation. Times and federal laws have since changed in this regard. He did not mince words about FBI and societal failures back in the day.
He told lawmakers: “I am afraid we are recycling a scandal and until we really get tough and until we go after those exploiting children and until the Congress makes children the priority, I am positive we will have another hearing on this 10 or 20 years hence.” Or 49 years hence, right Pam Bondi/Todd Blanche?
The May 15, 1977 segment “Kiddie Porn” from 60 Minutes:
****TRIGGER WARNING
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Yes, Ken Wooden deserves credit for a lifetime of advocacy on behalf of children.
I was very interested to see, in an earlier article of yours, that someone told you Ken Wooden had “done a lot of research on Shelden and Grossman” and that his family might have materials of his, related to that. This validated a longstanding suspicion of mean, about very early “behind the scenes” involvement by Wooden.
It is an unfortunate fact, that Wooden had a habit of telling people things about the historic CSA cases, which were provably false. He claimed that; “when you work for 60 minutes, people just open all the files for you”.(refer “Missing and murdered children by Kenneth Wooden” lecture on youtube) If that was true, it would be a very serious violation of police investigator’s ethics, so people should think hard as to the plausibility of that. An example; Wooden claimed that Dallas police let him look through all their evidence related to John Norman, and that he saw evidence of Norman trafficking boys AND GIRLS. That is absolutely not true. Norman never sex trafficked girls, he would not have, because the basis of Norman’s prostitution scams was exploiting the loophole in the Mann Act, the fact that it specified “transporting female persons” across state lines for the purpose of prostitution. Therefore transporting boys was not a crime under Mann and Norman couldn’t be prosecuted for doing that.
Someone told author Clifford Linedecker, that police seized “armfulls of pornography” from Gerald Richards office, but Gorzen’s arrest report only states that he found “several photos of boys with their genitals exposed”. That’s it, that’s all he says about pornographic materials. If any significant quantity of materials had been seized from Richards, there would be Property Reports describing them, in Gorzen’s reports. There are such reports listing the 18 pornographic movies and 12 color magazines which Gordon Lindsay voluntarily turned over to MSP (and which he had bought from xxx stores and had nothing to do with Richards or Shelden), but there are none for “armfulls of pornography” supposedly seized from Richards.