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Originally posted by TheBorg
Just goes to show ya that famous people are people too. They do stupid things, just like we do. They just get more press for it.
I have done plenty of "stupid things", but being a sexual predator is not one of them. This is so far beyond the realm of "stupid things" that we all do in our lives. Describing it as a "stupid thing" is like saying "Oh, I just fell over naked and that naked boy broke my fall, stupid thing to do really." This is a man who decided to move to a third world nation and prey upon young boys for years. A man who found a nation with a legal loop-hole that allowed him to pursue his perverted lusts, and he did so with no moral qualms.
I don't think he got as much press as, say, Michael Jackson. In fact, outside of The Sunday Mirror article and a couple of sites on the net, it was a pretty quiet affair. Of course, Clarke's legal machine stomped the allegations out pretty quickly. Sri Lanka is a country where a well placed bribe or two can get you out of nearly any legal wrangle. If Jackson could do it in the States, how easy would it have been for Clarke to do in Colombo? What can the distraught peasant parents of the abused children do against the might of a "great white sahib", who has friends in high places?
It's interesting to note that another thread in the news concerning an Australian police officer and his 8000 odd child porn images has garnered a good few pages of vitriol. Yet Clarke, because he is considered some kind of science fiction "Demi-God", is beyond reproach.
originally posted by: The Wizard
reply to post by Fighter.
You appear to base all your 'facts' on the premise he was charged and found guilty, which he was not.
[edit on 21-3-2008 by The Wizard]
.........
The Mirror claimed that Clarke had paid young boys for sex. It produced affidavits from the boys in question. Sri Lankan police later disproved them, he says. The story ran two weeks before Prince Charles flew to Sri Lanka to confer a knighthood on the grand old man of science fiction. The saga was the lowest point in his career. At a banquet in his honour Clarke, who has post polio syndrome, found himself hobbling away from the press, pursued by an unctuous reporter from the Daily Telegraph. The episode still upsets him. "I take an extremely dim view of people mucking about with boys," Clarke says. "The whole thing was distressing to me. It was vindictive and very unpleasant. I can only assume it was a plot to embarrass Prince Charles." The novelist finally got his gong this May, at a low-key ceremony at the British high commission in Colombo.
Clarke's private life remains a mystery. He was married briefly to an American, Marilyn Mayfield, now dead, whom he met while diving in Florida in the 50s. Asked whether he is gay, Clarke always gives the same puckish pro forma answer: "No, merely cheerful." The answer, presumably, lies in the "Clarkives" - a vast collection of his manuscripts and private writings, to be published 50 years after his death.
...........