Customer Reviews

Sex-Crime Panic: A Journey to the Paranoid Heart of the 1950s

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Despite its rather sensational title, "Sex-Crime Panic" tells a cautionary story about paranoia gone wrong during the 1950's, surprisingly relevant today.

Neil Miller has discovered an amazing story of the deaths of two Sioux City children, and the mania that overtook the town to find their killers. Well written, documented, and told from multiple perspectives, you are placed right in the middle of the hysteria for duration of the book.Two children are brutally killed, and in response to the public outcry, Iowa state and local officials attempt to round up "the sexual deviants", which the majority of those being homosexuals.

Caught by sting operations and rattted out by friends, tried and convicted under false pretenses, these men were shipped across state to a "mental ward" to live as "prisoners". The lives of these men were forever altered by the experience, and many lived to shame themselves into forgetting everything.

Because of this secrecy, Neil Miller was forced to rely on whatever information he could muster from some of the men who were still living, and the people associated with the cases. Therefore, information related to the killing of the children, and the subsequent manhunt is extensive. Information relating to what happened to the men inside the mental ward was somewhat lacking. Understandly so, Miller goes on towards the end of the book stating that several men, still living, absolutely refused to talk about what occured. Their shame is something they've carried around with them for their lives; a shame, unjustly given to them.

For anyone today who believes our government is incapable of getting out of control, or anyone who wants to read about an event in gay history few people know about, I heartily recommend this book.

A Journey into the Paranoid Heart of the 1950s, by Neil Miller - This book is a historical account of two sex-related child murders that took place in Sioux City, Iowa, resulting in the passage of a "sexual psychopath law" which lumped homosexuals in with child molesters and murders, and resulted in 20 men (who had nothing to do with the crimes) being arrested and sentenced to a mental hospital deemed "cured." The men were all homosexuals. It's a rather chilling story when you consider the kind of power the state authorities had over these men. What's more curious is the seeming passivity of the men, who accepted their fate and perhaps on some level thought it was what they deserved. The author writes it off to just part of being gay in the 50s. It's a relevant story today, because it shows that when legislation is passed in an atmosphere of fear and hysteria, bad laws get put on the books, and the consequences are visited upon people who become scapegoats for that fear and paranoia.

In 1954 and 1955, two brutal child murders near Sioux City, Iowa, resulted in the arrest of a rootless drifter who nonetheless had an alibi, then morphed into a media campaign that resulted in two sweeps of over two dozen gay male Sioux Citians and the incarceration of about half of them in a decrepit mental hospital on the other side of the state.

It took a political and social climate that equated merely being homosexual with being a security threat and a pedophile to let this happen. How these atrocities came to be, where the motives lay, the climate of fear exploited by local newspapers and politicians who had something to prove, the political prosecution (or is it persecution?) made possible by broadly worded "scare" laws, and the experience of the men (many quite young) forced to live in an insane asylum, are well and entertainingly researched and recounted by author Neil Miller in his 2009 book, SEX-CRIME SCANDAL.

My only gripes are that the book, despite its healthy three-act structure, might have resonated better had it been a little more detailed. (To be fair, though, Miller seems to have dug about all that could be dug.) Also, an index or at least a names index would have been a big help. While I am grateful to Alyson publishers for making this book available to us, is it possible that the "screamer" pseudo-newspaper cover is driving away more thoughtful historians and GLBT advocates?

At the same time, a region and a half away, the city of Boise, Idaho, was roiled by an even deeper sex scandal centered on an atmosphere of paranoia and a "naming-names" frenzy involving the same scapegoats, the town's gay men and teens. People who enjoyed and appreciated SEX-CRIME PANIC may well enjoy THE BOYS OF BOISE, a 1966 book about the 1955 scandal by John Gerassi, a writer for TIME magazine.

This story has the potential to one of deep, dark despair. And yet somehow it manages to fill the reader with hope and inspiration.

The author has done a fantastic job of investigating and he tells the story dispassionately, layer on layer, letting the events speak for themselves.

It is not every day a person gets to read a great tale told well.

Miller has done his research painstakingly and presented a horrifying story of what can happen when a community unites against "the other." Sioux City, Iowa, a town with a wild and wooly past kept hidden under a conventional facade, reacts with vengeance when two children are abducted and murdered. A roundup of homosexual men and their incarceration in a mental hospital is the outcome of political ambition and general hysteria, a reflection of the mood of the entire country following the close of World War II. There was the atom bomb and then the Commies. Now it was people who were "different." This book is a valuable contribution to social history and an example of what good journalism should be.

Here's a part of the '50s that David Halberstam _didn't_ talk about: In several small cities across the U.S., communities conducted full-blown witch hunts against Gay men -- or men perceived to be Gay. The most famous of these "panics" occurred in Boise, but Neil Miller has uncovered an equally horrifying case in Sioux City, IA.

The Sioux City panic has an extra twist: An Iowa law mandated treatment in a mental hospital for these "deviants." Although at the time this approach was considered humane, Neil Miller's account reveals it as a bureaucratic, legalistic, and logistical nightmare. If the situation weren't so frightening, it would have been funny: Miller consistently points out absurdities, inconsistencies, and abuse in the men's treatment.

The book's major flaws are inevitable, given that Miller began his research into the Sioux City panic nearly forty years after the fact. Court transcripts and medical records are intact, but most of the people involved are either deceased or unwilling to speak. Understandably, the few who are willing and able to cooperate with Miller display fuzzy memories (and Miller seems a bit unfair when he takes a few of them to task for that). Consequently, the book lacks the compelling journalistic details that only eyewitnesses can provide. Compared to John Gerassi's _Boys of Boise_ (about the Boise panic, written only ten years afterward), Miller's book is much inferior.

Still, better late than never. This story should be told, and Miller tells it as well and as fully as possible. His epilogue, discussing the recent outcry over "Meghan's Law," raises the alarming possibility that witch hunts against Gay men may not necessarily be a thing of the past.

I found this to be an interesting story since the Mt. Pleasant facility is where I currently work and have been there for over 30 years. That is why I would like to correct the error on page 144, "opened in 1865, the second state facility of its kind west of the Mississippi", when introducing the facility. The first patient arrived in February, 1861 and this was the first facility of its kind west of the Mississippi. Just wanted to set the record straight. Miller does a good job for the reader in explaining the short-lived sexual psychopath law in Iowa. I even knew 3 people mentioned in the book.