For the Love of Kids

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

The principle behind a legal defense based on civil liberty is often illustrated by the famous lament of a Dachau prisoner: "They came first for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew." And so on, through the trade unionists and the Catholics, until, "Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."

The question in the case of New York City teacher Peter Melzer is, Is it possible, in all sincerity, to begin that recitation, "They came for the pedophiles . . .?"

Melzer, 53, until recently taught physics at New York City's prestigious Bronx High School of Science. In his 25 years at the school, Melzer's students knew him as a solid if unspectacular tutor. They were unaware, however, that for close to a decade he has also been a leader of the North American Man/Boy Love Association, a 1,000-member group whose goal is the legalization of what it considers "consensual" sex between men and preteen and adolescent boys, but what most people consider child molestation. He appears on the masthead of its newsletter, the Bulletin.

Melzer's private life became public in stages. In 1984 an anonymous phone call and letter caused the New York City board of education to investigate his NAMBLA connection; no charges were brought, apparently because of insufficient evidence. The independent special commissioner of investigations, Edward Stancik, quietly reopened the case in May 1992. But it was only after the airing of a local TV report on NAMBLA featuring an unrepentant Melzer that Stancik recommended Melzer be fired. If that happens, says the teacher, he will sue. And he may have a case that courts will entertain. In an administrative hearing, a board of education panel will examine Melzer's conduct. Until then he works a nonteaching job reviewing the science curriculums for technical schools.

The problem facing the panel is the absence of evidence that Melzer abused any of his students or, for that matter, any other boy in the U.S. Its 47-page report on him offers less than 20 lines under the heading "Melzer's Sexual Contact with Children," mostly about a liaison in the Philippines allegedly described to an undercover policeman. Melzer says the policeman's statements cannot be trusted.

Melzer is a dumpy, artless man with thick, black-rimmed glasses. "I've never broken the law anywhere," he insists, "and I've never, never, in any way, shape or form done anything improper" at Bronx Science. Answering what he thought was an inquiry from a British pedophile society (in reality, it was a postal-service sting), he wrote in 1979 that he was "attracted to boys up to the age of about 16" but added that he was "not willing to engage in unlawful acts."

Without proof of illegal conduct, the board will have to consider whether his involvement with NAMBLA and the Bulletin was offense enough. With Melzer in its editorial leadership, the Bulletin, according to the Stancik report, ran such narrative letters as "In Praise of the Penises," which compared pre- and postpubescent male organs, and a graphically descriptive piece on "how to make that special boy feel good." The teacher claims that he opposed such explicit articles and that "I did not have the ((editorial)) control Stancik thinks I did."

Given the free-speech issues it raises, Melzer's seems like exactly the kind of case that the American Civil Liberties Union was created to defend. "In terms of people saying it's repugnant and disgusting, this is right up there," says Norman Siegel, the executive director of the New York affiliate. "But if it's NAMBLA today, who is it tomorrow?"

For many people, however, NAMBLA today is more than enough. The organization's claims to be merely an advocacy group are suspect: in the late 1980s and early '90s, more than a dozen men connected with its San Francisco chapter were convicted of sexual offenses. Anne Cohn Donnelly, executive director of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, points out that Melzer's is not just any kind of free speech: "I think someone who promotes the violation of the very people he is educating is an inappropriate person to be in the classroom."

Special commissioner Stancik suggests that if Melzer stays, the classroom might quickly empty. The question he'd ask Melzer's defenders, he says, is "how they would feel about their child being in that person's care." Not pleased, comes the reply from some vocal Bronx Science parents and students. Says 10th-grader Sammy Kim: "It doesn't matter if he does it or not, it's just that he advocates having sex with little boys. It's . . . it's his mind." A Bronx Science student's mother, who wishes to be identified only as Kate, is more direct: "He's a pervert. It's like putting a pyromaniac to work in a gas station. I think at some point, with certain things, a line has to be drawn."

As a reporter talked with Kate on a conference call last week, the third party disagreed. Says her son Jake, a Bronx Science junior: "To anyone who's read The Crucible or knows about the Salem witch trials, it's somewhat frightening. The end result is a fear of people who are just members of organizations." Whether or not Melzer would consider introducing the practices of adulthood to his students at Bronx Science, he has already plunged them into the adult world's moral debates.

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi/New York