The disappearance of Etan Patz and, with him, another age

From Brongersma
Jump to navigation Jump to search
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

NAMBLA, a very young organization at the time, found itself thrust into the national spotlight several years after Etan's disappearance when a photograph from a calendar was seized by police and the F.B.I. from the home of one of its members. Although authorities said its subject bore a striking resemblance to Etan, his own parents flatly denied that it could be their son. Bizarrely, the police helpfully suggested that NAMBLA must have airbrushed a "cleft" into Etan's chin to make the calendar boy, somehow, more appealing. What they failed to mention was that the picture had been taken in 1968, the same year as the calendar's publication and some five years prior to Etan's birth. No matter. The press ran with the story and the myth of NAMBLA as evil child trafficking cabal was born. [...] It was, perhaps then, that the organization learned an essential, hard lesson about the press: the less popular a people or their ideas, the less likely they will be accurately represented by the media.

source: Article 'The Disappearance of Etan Patz and, With Him, Another Age' by Eric Tazelaar; www.nambla.org/etan_patz.html; Nambla.org; May or June 2012