The leftist Virginia college professor who campaigned for ending the stigma against pedophilia is out.
On Wednesday, Old Dominion University and Allyn Walker, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, issued a joint announcement that Walker would step down from his post when his contract runs out in May.
Walker, as The Free Press reported last week, was put on leave after his views became widely known. He now will remain on leave until the expiration of his contract, ODU said.
“We have concluded that this outcome is the best way to move forward,” ODU President Brian Hemphill said in a statement.
“We hope today’s action helps bring closure for our Monarch family. As we move forward, I encourage all members of the Monarch family to continue our efforts toward healing and civil discourse.”
The campus president added, “The safety and security of individual Monarchs and our collective campus are of the utmost importance. For ODU, these will always remain top priorities as we pursue our mission in a caring, inclusive, and supportive community, one that respects academic freedom and remains willing to discuss controversial ideas in an atmosphere free of intimidation or violence.”
In other words, don’t blame the pedophile-excusing professor on the payroll, but instead, the people who objected loudly and vigorously that a public university would retain someone willing to explain away such a crime.
In the ODU press release, Walker attempted to defend his ideas.
“My scholarship aims to prevent child sexual abuse,” he said.
Waker, after the controversy erupted, called such abuse intolerable and said his aim was to help “non-offending” adults who feel sexually attracted to children, as The Free Press had posted earlier.
But his way of helping them was to reduce the revulsion others may feel toward those who desire sex with minors. That was because, as he said in an interview after the initial video, “From my perspective, there is no morality or immorality attached to attraction to anyone because no one can control who they’re attracted to at all.”
In his latest statement, Walker noted that his research “was mischaracterized by some in the media and online, partly on the basis of my trans identity. As a result, multiple threats were made against me and the campus community generally.”
“I want to thank Old Dominion University for giving me the opportunity to teach and to conduct my research, and the ODU Department of Public Safety for monitoring the threats against me and the community,” he added.
Continuing, he said, “I am particularly grateful for the outpouring of support from many among the ODU community, as well as others in my research fields who have publicly affirmed the value of my work in advancing child safety.”
Walker became a controversy for ODU a couple of weeks ago after a video surfaced in which he explained why he uses the term “minor-attracted persons,” or MAPs, to refer to pedophiles. He did so in the video and in his book on the subject.
Walker, in the video, which was circulated by the Twitter account Libs of Tik Tok, said he touted the term MAPs for a couple of reasons.
One was because pedophiles wanted that term used instead of the one they are better known by.
He also suggested he wanted to reduce the problematic “stigma” presumed pedophiles face.
“It makes MAPs think that they’re monsters,” he said in the video. “It’s really hard to cope when you think you’re a terrible person” – again for being sexually attracted to children.
The ensuing controversy was such that Hemphill had to issue a statement saying ODU condemned the sexual abuse of children “in the strongest terms possible” and that the crime “has no place in our society.”
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