Built on Sand: Alfred Kinsey got ‘research’ from Nazi molester, whitewashed crimes against children

This article is part three in a Live Action News series about Alfred Kinsey and the impact of his claims on our culture. Read Part One, Part Two, and Part Four.

WARNING: Content may be inappropriate for younger readers.

In his book Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, the so-called “Father of the Sexual Revolution,” Alfred Kinsey, claimed: 

There are, of course, instances of adults who have done physical damage to children with whom they have attempted sexual contacts … But these cases are in the minority and the public should learn to distinguish such serious contacts from other adult contacts which are not likely to do the child any appreciable harm if the child’s parents do not become disturbed.[1]

Kinsey’s sexual obsessions and bizarre personal habits were explored in part one of this series, and part two examined the ways in which his research project and books on human sexuality were methodologically flawed. 

But the most troubling aspects of the two Kinsey reports – “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” and “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female” – concern the ways in which they have affected children… both directly, by means of the abuse they sanctioned and encouraged, and indirectly, by means of their effects on modern sex education.

Kinsey used so-called ‘data’ collected by predatory pedophiles to support his predetermined conclusion that humans are sexual from birth. In the Yorkshire Television documentary “Kinsey’s Paedophiles,” both authorized Kinsey biographer Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy and Kinsey co-author Paul Gebhard told interviewers that the point of Kinsey’s books was to convince the public that human beings are sexual from birth. 

Predatory pedophiles – with Kinsey’s blessings and encouragement – kept detailed diaries of their crimes, timed their molestations of children as young as infancy with stopwatches (in sessions lasting as long as 24 hours in some cases), and turned over all of their “observations” to Kinsey, who in turn presented this information as science in his “Male” and “Female” volumes.[2]

VIOLENCE AS “SCIENCE”

Chapter 5 of “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” presented a detailed discussion of male childhood sexuality, and, according to Kinsey biographer James H. Jones, “much of this chapter was based on materials [pedophiles] presented.”[3]  Jones continues, “[T]he text and charts suggested that infants less than a year old had been stimulated [read: ‘molested’] and observed for as long as an hour at a stretch; four-year-olds for as many as twenty-four hours.”[4] 

In “Kinsey’s Paedophiles,” Jones states: “Kinsey … gives pretty graphic descriptions of [children’s] response[s] to what he calls sexual stimulation. If you read those words, what he’s talking about is kids who are screaming, kids who are protesting in every way they can the fact that their bodies … are being violated.” 

But Kinsey defined children’s expressions of pain and struggle as “orgasms.” Specifically, he defined “violent convulsion,” “violent arm and leg movements,” “weeping,” “sobbing, or more violent cries, sometimes with an abundance of tears (especially among younger children),” “fight[ing],” “extreme trembling, collapse, loss of color, and sometimes fainting” as evidence of orgasm.[5] “[S]ome … suffer excruciating pain and may scream” during so-called orgasm, according to Kinsey.[6]

“Children gasping for breath, sobbing, screaming in pain, fainting, and desperately struggling to fight off the assailants Kinsey dignified as ‘partners’ – these were descriptions of hapless victims,” writes Jones.[7] But Kinsey insisted that “adult males who have had sexual contacts with younger boys … are able to recognize and interpret the boys’ experiences.”[8] 

One critic, however, noted what should have been obvious: “Looking to sexual molesters for information on childhood sexuality is like drawing conclusions on the sexuality of adult females from the testimony of rapists.”[9]

Kinsey Institute associate John Gagnon stated that “A less neutral observer than Kinsey would have described these events as sex crimes[.]”[10]

“TRAINED OBSERVERS”

It is worth discussing the identities and actions of the predatory pedophiles characterized by Kinsey as “trained observers.” Two have become known to the public.

The first, Rex King, “molested at least 800 boys and girls, recording the details in explicit handwritten diaries” over the course of at least 20 years; the so-called data in the infamous tables 31 and 33 in the “Male” volume came from these diaries, according to Yorkshire Television documentarians. According to Jones, King also had sex with 17 of the 33 relatives with whom he had contact, including his father and grandmother.[11] 

“Kinsey treated [King] like a colleague, a fellow seeker of truth who had compiled valuable scientific data,” writes Jones.[12] Kinsey viewed King as “a hero,” according to Kinsey associate Vincent Nowlis, because “the guy ha[d] the courage and the ingenuity and the sexual energy and the curiosity to have this fantastic multi-year odyssey through the Southwest and never get caught.”[13]

Kinsey’s letters to King expressed both flattery and explicit approval; in one, Kinsey told King that “Everything that you have accumulated must find its way into scientific channels,” an outcome Kinsey personally ensured.[14]

“Betraying a huge moral blind spot,” Jones writes, “Kinsey took the records of [King’s] criminal acts and transformed them into scientific data.”[15]

Another of Kinsey’s “trained observer” molesters was Dr. Fritz von Balluseck. According to Yorkshire Television documentarians, von Balluseck was the Nazi commandant of the small Polish town of Jedrzejow from 1942-44. There, he targeted children for sexual assault, making them “choose between [him] and the gas oven,” according to the German newspaper “Der Morgenpost.”[16] 

Von Balluseck was tried in Berlin in 1957 for a child sex murder. His diaries, which documented in chilling detail his violations of countless children and which were shared with Kinsey, were found during the trial. The presiding judge, Heinrich Berger, commenting on the content of these volumes, at one point exclaimed, “This is no longer human! What was this all for? To tell Kinsey about?”[17]

Von Balluseck indeed “named the so-called sexual psychologist Kinsey” as a “role model for his perverse actions,” and said that “Kinsey himself” asked him to collect “data” and report back, according to the German press.[18] 

Judge Berger noted that “Instead of answering his sordid letters, the strange American scholar should rather have made sure that Mr. von Balluseck was put behind bars.”[19] But Kinsey refused to cooperate with the investigation and prosecution of von Balluseck,[20] and even warned von Balluseck to “be careful” in one of his letters.[21]

WHITEWASHING CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN

Kinsey described pedophiles as the “partners” of their child victims, and described molestation and rape as “contacts” and “play.” These terms imply consent and whitewash the trauma incurred by sexual abuse. 

Jones writes:

Hoping to counter the public’s image of pedophiles as predatory monsters, [Kinsey] attempted to put child molesters in a benign light. Blaming the victims, Kinsey reported that in many incest situations children often initiated additional contacts after the first incident, and he noted that sexual contacts between children and adults who were not family members ‘often involved considerable affection.’ … 

And while he admitted that ‘some 80 percent of the children had been emotionally upset or frightened by their contacts with adults,’ he likened the level of their fright to how youngsters typically reacted to ‘insects, spiders, or other objects against which they have been adversely conditioned.’ 

‘If a child were not culturally conditioned,’ he observed, ‘it is doubtful if it would be disturbed by sexual approaches[.]’ … His definition of harm in young girls … exclude[d] ‘a very few cases of vaginal bleeding,’ which, he insisted, ‘did not appear to do any appreciable damage.’ [22]

Jones notes that it was Kinsey’s hatred of traditional morality that led him to “take a benign view of child molestation and incest.”[23] Kinsey was indeed “blind to the coercion inherent in any sexual contact between an adult and a child.”[24]

AN INSIDIOUS LEGACY

Kinsey’s ideas about children’s alleged sexuality have, tragically, infected our contemporary culture, particularly in the area of sex education. This was part of Kinsey’s plan. According to Jones, “Kinsey sensed an opportunity to use sex education to advance his private war against traditional morality. … He was eager to transform his hidden war against Victorian morality into a socially acceptable public crusade.”[25] 

By all appearances, Kinsey succeeded in that goal, as will be discussed in the next installment of this series. 

1 – Alfred C. Kinsey et al, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, W.B Saunders Company, Philadelphia, 1953, pp. 121-2.

2 – James H. Jones, Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1997, p. 510.

3 – Ibid, p. 511.

4 – Ibid, p. 511.

5 – Alfred C. Kinsey et al, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, W.B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia, 1948, pp. 160-1, 177.

6 – Ibid, p. 161.

7 – Jones, p. 512.

8 – Kinsey et al, Male, p. 177.

9 –  Jones, p. 512.

10 – John Gagnon, Human Sexualities, Scott Foreman & Co., Glenview, Illinois, 1977, p. 84.

11 – Jones, p. 507.

12 – Ibid, pp. 507-8.

13 – Ibid, p. 513.

14 – Ibid, p. 508.

15 – Ibid, p. 510.

16 – “Samthandschuhe für Kinderschänder Balluseck,” Der Morgenpost, May 19, 1957.

17 – “Balluseck gab Anleitungen zur Verführung,” Der Morgenpost, May 15, 1957.

18 – “Kinderschänder machte Karriere,” Neuss Deutschland, May 17, 1957.

19 – “Kinsey hatte Balluseck anzeigen sollen,” Der Morgenpost, May 16, 1957.

20 – Masters et al, Ethical Issues in Sex Therapy and Research, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1977, p. 13.

21 – “‘Balluseck-Report’ an Kinsey,” Der Tagesspiegel, May 16, 1957.

22 – Jones, pp. 688-9.

23 – Ibid, p. 620.

24 – Ibid, p. 753.

25 – Ibid, p. 322.