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What could possibly go wrong?

A transgender professor, who faced a lot of backlash last year for defending and calling pedophiles “Minor Attracted Persons,” has now secured employment with the Johns Hopkins University center working toward preventing child sexual abuse.

Back in November 2021, a non-binary author who defended pedophiles, Allyn Walker, was forced to resign from Old Dominion after an interview with Prostasia, a group that advocates to destigmatize pedophiles.

Now, the Johns Hopkins University Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse announced Thursday on Twitter that it is hiring Walker.

Here’s what the Moore Center for Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse tweeted:

”We are excited to share that Allyn Walker, PhD, will be joining the Moore Center as a postdoctoral fellow on May 25.”

But what could possibly go wrong?

Back in November 2021, the Post Millennial reported this:

In an interview with Prostasia’s Noah Berlatsky, Old Dominion professor Allyn Walker justified feelings of pedophilia and the people who have them. Walker wants to destigmatize feelings of pedophilia, digs into the idea that pedophilia is simply a sexual orientation that a person should not act upon, and claims that trying to get pedophiles to not be pedophiles would be akin to “conversion therapy,” which they say is “not at all effective.”

Walker claims that there’s a difference between sexual offenders and pedophiles, or as she terms them, “minor attracted persons.” So-called MAPs, Walker said, can be attracted to minors regardless of whether or not they have gone through puberty. Their attraction to minors, Walker claims, is not immoral if they haven’t acted on it.

Walker, who uses they/them pronouns, was speaking about the research in their new book, A Long Dark Shadow: Minor Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity, a book justifying the feelings of pedophiles. Walker is an assistant professor in the sociology and criminal justice department at Old Dominion University.

During the interview with Berlatsky, Walker spoke about why they use the term “minor attracted person” to describe pedophiles.

“I use the term minor attracted person or map in the title and throughout the book for multiple reasons,” said Walker, who “is a white, queer, nonbinary trans person.”

Walker, who uses they/them pronouns, was forced out of Old Dominion University last November after more than 15,000 outraged onlookers signed a petition to have them removed for the remarks.

More details from the Daily Mail report:

The remarks quickly inspired outrage among students, who said the professor was using a ‘blanket’ term for pedophilia and was an apologist for criminals.

The university’s own Trans Advisory Board released a statement to call Walker’s remarks ‘reprehensible’, damaging to the victims of pedophilia and not reflective of the views of the trans community at large.

The backlash spurred school brass to place Walker on leave, saying it was for their own safety.

A petition was then drafted by students calling for Walker’s nixing, which – along with fierce protests on the Virginia school’s campus – saw the professor forced out late last year.

In a joint statement with Old Dominion announcing their resignation – which only took effect this month, at the end of the school year – Walker claimed that she was a victim of a smear campaign by the media and online observers because they were transgender.

Walker also asserted that the research in their book that attempted to destigmatize pedophilia had been ‘mischaracterized’, adding claims that threats had been made against them and ‘the campus community generally’.

‘My scholarship aims to prevent child sexual abuse,’ Walker said. ‘That 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.’

Walker’s hiring has been criticized by a lot of people including Michael Salter, the Scientia Associate Professor of Criminology at the School of Social Sciences at UNSW and an expert in child sexual exploitation and gendered violence. Salter tweeted: “To retain its ethical foundation, child sexual abuse prevention work has to be victim-centred. What is victim-centric about the claim that there is nothing wrong with being sexually attracted to children?”

Sources: WLT, Daily Mail, The Post Millennial

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