Kaj, 27 years old:

"I spend so much time with children that people ask me if it's because I'm a paedophile."

It is now 5 years ago. I was 22 and she was 12. I lived in a very small flat and she lived next door.
    Each flat had a post-box on the landing. We would go out to look for mail at the same time. My little cat would run up to her and sniff her. She asked if she could come and play with it. I happily agreed. So, she came in to play with it several times a week.
    She proved to be very sweet and affectionate. She liked to snuggle up against me and I couldn't resist the temptation of pressing my body against hers and giving her little kisses.
    We started kissing each other every time she had to go home to sleep. She was happy to have a place where she could stay. She lived in a flat as small as mine with her father who slept there during the day because he worked in a pub at night. She didn't like to bring her friends home because it would disturb her fathers' sleep.

She lived alone with her father?

Yes. They kept their address secret because his wife wasn't supposed to know it. She had the parental authority, but she really didn't care at all for her daughter. The girl preferred staying with her father. So they had, so to speak, fled together.
    I thought it was wonderful having such a nice little girl living next door. I had company every day. Nobody ever objected to her visiting me. People thought she was a happy, friendly child.
    She had learned to deal with all those things you normally only learn to deal with when you are an adult - to be thrifty, to go shopping, to prepare food, to clean up - she did them all herself.

Did her father do anything?

He helped her a bit, but he needed to sleep because he was tired after his nightly drudgery at the pub. He was glad to have a neighbour who took care of his daughter and with whom she could visit. He said that she could visit me but I must not hurt her.

What did he mean?

I don't know.

He realised you were turned on by her?

Yes, he knew that. He couldn't help noticing. Other people noticed it too. More than one person shouted jokingly at me in the street, "When are you two going to get married?"
    Well, they stopped shouting this, eventually, and so we didn't get a visit from the police. They would have been welcome: we hadn't done anything unlawful.
    People admired her because she was incredibly clever. She was just like a little mother. She would ask me, "Shall I clean up your room?" "Should I cook some food so we can eat together?" She did most of the offering, but sometimes I offered to clean up her flat.
    We realised later that we could just as well leave the doors to our flats open so that we could come and go without having to knock. And so the two flats were sort of joined together and it was as though we were husband and wife. We took turns preparing the meals for each other; we took turns with the dish washing and the cleaning.
    We didn't go any further than a goodnight kiss. We talked a lot about sex. She was curious about the women I'd known. And she asked straight out, "Did you have other women before me?" I answered, "Well, do we sleep together?" I told her about a woman I had lived with. "What was she like?" she asked. That's how we started to talk about sex. It seemed that she wanted to try it and so did I, but neither of us dared. We both knew it would be illegal.

Was this the only reason you didn't dare?

Perhaps you're always a bit nervous the first time. It would have been the first time for her. She spoke about a boy she had met at school. His name was Ole. I said, "Why don't you bring him home with you?" "No, he must never know about our relationship. That could destroy it!"
    But she did invite some of her girl friends. This was also very nice. We exchanged records and books.
    She was brave and bright and full of humour. One day she put a notice up on her door that amused me a lot. It was a heart with the inscription, "Guests are kindly asked to dry their feet before entering, and if they have sweaty toes they are asked to keep their shoes on. Greetings from Jane and Kaj."

Her father - wasn't he jealous?

No, he wasn't. One morning she came in to my room in her night-dress. She couldn't understand why her father hadn't come home and woken her up. She decided to wait up for him. She was worried that something might have happened to him because he hadn't returned home from work on time. This showed her anxiety and her love for her father. When he finally got back in the afternoon he was limping. He had been involved in a traffic accident and had been to the casualty department at the hospital. He said, "I bet you didn't go to school. There's no point in sending you there now - just for the last hour. So we might just as well sit down and relax and enjoy ourselves."
    He taught her that all people were equal, children as well as adults - and treated her as an equal. This is good. So I wanted to do it too. It is the same way I behave in my flat when a lot of youngsters come.

Why do they come to visit you? Because of your sexual interest in them?

I have sexual feelings for many of the youngsters that come and see me; I won't deny it. Many of these youngsters know it. And they still keep coming.

They want to do something with you?

No. But something like that was suggested with a girl of 13 who came with a boy-friend of 19. To tease me he asked me if I wanted to go to bed with her. I said yes, making it sound like a joke, but I really would have liked to do it. And he understood that I meant it. Her mother had given her daughter the pill so she wouldn't have to tell at home when she slept with somebody.

Had her parents arranged this?

Her mother, really. She said she didn't want to risk becoming a grandmother at the age of 32. I could see that the girl and her mother were really fond of each other. They embrace each other whenever they meet.

How would you prefer to live yourself?

That's hard to say. In any case, I'm fighting for a world where all people will be equal, without discrimination of sex, skin colour or age. But such a world is very difficult to achieve. I can imagine, for instance, that it would be wrong to allow a 12-year-old girl to drive a car.

Are you a child-seducer?

I can't say I am. I prefer to call myself paedophile, because I don't seduce anyone. But I'm not exclusively paedophile; I'm also attracted to adults.

What is your preference?

I have fantasies about all age groups. If people were responsible, they would make sure that a child's first sexual relations were good ones so that the child wouldn't grow up with a fear of sex. Then you wouldn't have all these problems with women who had bad childhood experiences. That's what I think, anyhow. But I really don't know which age group I prefer.

How did you discover that you liked little girls so much?

I'm not sure. But I know I have always been against an age of consent. When I was 15 I began to have sex with a girl of 10. Everybody said, "You can see that she's too young for you." I could only reply that age wasn't important. I was in love with her and she was in love with me, and her mother was happy that she had found a sweet boy. We kissed and hugged each other. There was a bit of sex, but it was only petting.
    It was also at 15 that I began to have little secret affairs with girls of my own age as well as some that were a little older and some that were younger.
    In my neighbourhood there were actually two other girls - one ten and one nine. The other kids in the neighbourhood knew what was happening. I was very surprised when they asked me if I was a paedophile. I could only laugh. A paedophile at the age of 15?

Do you tell people you are a paedophile?

Yes, I admit it openly and frankly.

To everybody?

I don't say I am a paedophile, for I really like just about everything. If somebody asks me whether I like little children, I say that I like them in both ways. When asked what I mean by that, I'm quite willing to explain.

You're often in the company of children?

I spend so much time with children that people ask me if it's because I'm a paedophile. I tell them that's not all there is to it. I don't think about sex all the time. I explain that under no circumstance would I ever do anything against the will of the child.
    People can usually accept that. They are reassured that nothing is going to happen. If only they knew what could have happened - with Jane, my neighbour girl, for instance. I tell them about her. Strangely enough, I have never met with any kind of anger about it, even though much more could have happened, and people understand what could have happened. Most of them just think it's a rather nice, sweet story.

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