I know that there are people in our community who hate me because I've spent the past eight years advocating for a community that is "18+".
When my blog was new, community members offended by the 18+ used to hit me up fairly regularly to defend their own past practices of mixing minors with adults. I heard all of the arguments, from "it isn't porn unless there's nudity involved" to "if we don't take them under our wing, someone with bad intentions will."
I didn't budge on my position, and over time the community members I heard from at first became the community members I saw posting "18+" on their own content, as well.
Still, there were haters amongst the responsible community members.
I saw you, haters...
I once had a friend tell me that people were making fun of me on a chat on a popular AB/DL website. He didn't provide additional information, but I clicked into the chat, only to read a few "LOL"'s - but nothing more. I wrote back to tell him that nobody had said anything about me when I entered, and he reminded me that - duh - they wouldn't say it with me in the chatroom. He offered me his login information, and I took him up on it, entering as him a few minutes later. Sure enough, the conversation was all about "ABYSitter, the 18 and up Nazi". And it was people I'd thought were (online) friends - and standup members of the community - doing the shit talking.
Another time I met with a young man in his early 20s who, over lunch, confided that he'd been wearing diapers with community members/groups since he was in his early teens. I realized this kid was fucked up and having some regrets, and put him on a bus bound for the west coast, where his parents were. The trip cost me nearly $200, minus a Greyhound credit I'd had on hand. I've sponsored contests and bought tons of diapers, and even paid straight non-ABDLs to wear for me, but the money I spent that day was probably some of the best money I've ever spent related to diapers. I knew when I bought the ticket that drama would follow - and it did - but it was worth it to me. 18+
I've posted so many "Hall of Shame" posts over the years, each reminding people to "keep it 18+". These posts chronicle the many community members who have gotten into trouble for forgetting how important not involving minors is - or not getting consent from other adults. For every person who tells me that they think these posts are important, it seems like there is another person who lets me know that I should stop posting them... the age of consent is different in their state or Canada... nothing sexual is going on with these minors they're chatting with... there's nothing illegal about wearing diapers with people, no matter the age... the list of excuses goes on and on.
I've decided to keep on with the 18+ posts, regardless of who's with me or against me. No regrets, either. I believe that the culture of our community has changed over the past decade, and while I certainly don't give credit to the writings in my blog, enough people have let me know that they first saw it discussed on these pages to indicate that my blog has had a positive impact regarding it.
I've talked to a number of collegebabies who have thanked me for blogging, admitting that they read this blog in high school but never contacted me out of respect for the 18+ requirement. Some of them have stories about others in the community having no such rules. One was upset because pictures he took as a minor, sharing with his "daddy", were publicly posted and shared hundreds of times on Tumblr. He wasn't as upset by the breach of his privacy as he was about having introduced what amounts of child porn to our community. He contacted me to apologize for not following the 18+ rule himself, something that meant a lot to me.
I wish it meant as much to some of the others out in our community collecting young boys at every turn, not checking IDs, and even giving 'extra points' for those under 18 in some cases. I've been contacted by people under 18 many times, and my answer is always the same:
1. I don't F with people under 18.
2. That includes simply talking about diapers.
3. Regardless, you are a valued member of the community.
4. Lurking is OK until you're 18 - don't share, and beware those who ask you to.
5. I've been apart of this community a while, and look forward to welcoming you to it.
5b. Promise me you'll wait until you turn 18 to join.
I include that last bullet point because I know that there are people in our community one might call 'diaper snipers' - they're here to watch for signs of young life, and try to snatch it up for their collections. This might include being a boy's first diaper experience, or adding boys to the list of boys they control, or collecting photos, or - well, you name it, and people will do it.
This isn't meant to be a blog entry exposing our community's worst.
It is, however, an explanation of why I've been so staunch of the 18+ posts, and why - even though younger people are going to be a part of our community anyway, and the age of consent is lower in some states and countries, and [insert lame-ass excuse here], I stay nazi on that age ruling.
It's because I came up before the age of the internet.
And because my first-ever introduction to the fact that there even was a community of adult diaper lovers was an exposé in Penthouse Magazine on a group of pedophiles who called themselves DPF.
The year was 1991. I was a high school student. My best friend, Mark, had left a Penthouse magazine in my car, later telling me to read it - suggesting there was something in the magazine I would like.
I'd felt hurt, at the time - Mark and I had spent much of our junior high and high school careers 'wrastling' to see who could pants each other, skinny dipping, and even spooning each other as we slept at night. Now he'd presented me with a hetero porno mag - and told me that I'd like it? What was that all about?
It turned out that what Mark thought I would 'like' was an article on something called Diaper Pail Fraternity.
DPF, the article explained, was a group of men who communicated through a monthly newsletter - and by mail - about their love for diapers.
Somehow Mark had discovered my secret - and this, it seemed, was his way of letting me know he knew I loved diapers without having to speak the words.
The problem was, the story in the magazine he'd left in my car was an exposé on 'America's Most Disgusting Fraternity' - and it centered around an FBI investigation into a network of pedophiles who, in the 1980s and early 1990s, used DPF for the purpose of networking to share child pornography and even set up experiences with boys as young as toddler age.
Mark would later explain that he knew I wasn't interested in young boys.
He'd read the article through the lense of someone with a best friend who was interested in diapers.
But as I read it - still in my formative binge/purge stages - I couldn't help but immediately be ashamed of myself, and my diaper identity. Our 'community', it seemed, wanted nothing more than to meet up with little boys in the backs of vans, and make videos of them smashing their poop in their underwear.
Yes, it was that disgusting...
The article was written by an investigative reporter named Shaun Assael. He spent a lot of time talking to FBI agents, and looking through evidence. (Side note: Mr. Assael now heads up investigative reporting for ESPN, and writes stories on doping, FIFA, and other sporting-related topics.) His article, of course, was written from the perspective of someone who doesn't understand who we are, or why we like what we like. But it was primarily fact-based - and the facts did not make us look good, at all.
The article followed the story of one Donald Salata - a University of Wisconsin graduate student who specialized in children who have trouble moving their bowels, according to the article. Mr. Salata, it seems, ran something of a mobile potty training service out of the back of his van - and parents trusted him to take their difficult-to-train children and find the secrets to potty training.
In 1989 someone saw something that looked suspicious, and said something: they called the police and reported what might be child molestation occurring in the back of a Ford Econoline. A sheriff's deputy pulling up on scene found Salata, a young boy, and a tape recorder and video camera - Salata had just made recordings and video of the boy urinating and defecating in his diaper. In addition, the deputy would find numerous DPF newsletters, as well as letters from men who got Salata's contact information from the group.
Investigators would find child pornography being traded by group members - three people were arrested and convicted shortly after Salata's mobile potty training service was discovered, and at least ten other suspects were named. At one point the FBI investigation included more than thirty agents, and the investigation became so large and unwieldy that they had to meet as a group at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, MO to discuss the case, convention style.
(Note: not sure what the cartoon has to do with the article -
but it was included in the magazine,
and had a permanent imprint on my psyche, so I'm including it here...)
The article discusses DPF at length, including a bio on founder 'Tommy' - identified in the article as former IT specialist Thomas E. Siegel.
"The group, based in Sausalito, California, is run by former computer-systems analyst Thomas E. Siegel, known to followers only as Tommy" the article reads. "Siegel has created a mini-industry around infantilism - the retention of childish physical and emotional qualities in adult life. Siegel sells everything from plastic pants to hypnotic tapes that are billed as tools to induce incontinence. His bi-monthly newsletters tout the sensation of wearing diapers and sitting in excrement for long periods of time."
In Salata's van sheriff's deputies would find more than 100 letters from fellow DPF members, some of whom addressed their correspondence to "Dirty Don" or "Poopy Pants." These responses - at least one thanking Salata for sending photos of the little boy in the van - appeared to clinch the case: Salata would be arrested on federal and local charges. Astonishingly, the parent of one of the children Salata cared for would contribute to his bail, after he wrote her a letter that included the following information:
"I was enuretic [subject to involuntary urinary discharge] nightly until age eight and ... sporadically for years afterward. What's more, I had a real jealousy of my twin brother and a real attachment to my night diapers. I had this emotional or psychological need for quite some time on into adolescence. I began to collect everything I could find that catered to this group - stories, products, etc. ... I tried to work with children and adolescents."
The truth is, Salata's story closely mirrors mine, and many others in our community.
Right up until the "trying to work with children and adolescents" part.
DPF seems to have been a free-for-all at one point, with ABies and DLs and pedophiles all thrown into the same mixture, and one man - Tommy - left to do his best to sort it all out.
The Penthouse article shows that membership in DPF was a magnet for pedophiles.
And that our community at one point had very little ground rules when it came to the inclusion of minors - both children and teenagers - in our activities.
The article goes on to describe the arrest of a noted abortion doctor, Dr. Milan Chepko, a frequent target of abortion activists who reportedly turned to age regression to cope with the stress.
He also made and distributed videos, including one he sent to Salada in trade: it started with a close-up of an infant's anus, and cutting away to Chepko defecating, spreading the feces across his body, and then masturbating.
According to Chepko's attorney:
"They frightened him. He felt at risk physically and couldn't cope with the fear until it reached paralysis. When you're at the bottom, when your image is totally destroyed, what's the most degrading thing you can do? It's what he's charged with..."
I remember being a high school student, reading this article, and feeling my face burn with shame and humiliation at hearing those words.
I'd play them over and over in my head for a long time afterward.
"What's the most degrading thing you can do? It's what he's charged with..."
In my young and sheltered mind, the idea that these two men - and likely some of the others - were both pedophiles and infantilists ... well, that never really registered.
These two men were me, I told myself.
I liked what they liked.
Certainly, you'd think, even a high school student struggling with his identity as both gay and a diaper enthusiast could discern the difference between pedophilia and a love for diapers.
But you'd have to remember that there was no internet then.
There was no 'community' - save for the DPF world I'd just been introduced to.
I still had no fucking idea why I liked to wear diapers.
And this article, in the form of a Penthouse expose on DPF, was the first real evidence that I wasn't alone.
The trouble was, it linked infantilism with infants.
And I didn't understand enough to know that the two aren't actually linked together.
It was my best friend's offer to wear a diaper with me a few weeks after I read this that ended what would be my only real 'purge'.
I'd been quietly throwing away the adult diapers I'd only recently discovered and purchased, and anything else that had to do with this 'diaper fetish' - including my thoughts - was being deeply hidden or discarded.
I was ashamed of my love for diapers for the first time. And it sucked.
Mark, though, had no belief whatsoever that my interest in wearing diapers had anything to do with children, and told me so.
He also explained how he came to learn that I liked diapers - something he'd found out at just about the time this magazine had been published, coincidentally - and he told me that he understood why - even though he'd later admit that he didn't.
"I'll let you put one on me," Mark had offered. "I just turned 17 last week... so I'm legal hehe... let's explore this thing together."
In the end Mark would decline to wear an actual diaper, instead presenting me with a pair of his father's tighty whiteys he'd cut to fit like a cloth diaper. It still made for one of the hottest moments ever in little Chris's sexual awakening, and was a memory I'd treasure forever. (Click the links above to read more of the story).
Still, as I lay next to my best friend, wearing a diaper - with him in his makeshift cloth diaper with diaper pins - we discussed diapers and why I might like them so much.
Today I present myself as an expert, of sorts, on the subject.
But as a teen I had no idea.
I'll never forget, though, the importance of feeling like I needed to stress that it didn't have to do with actual children.
I remember my face burning with rage at the people profiled in the Penthouse article, and their actions - actions that had lead to all of us being painted with the same brush by anyone who read it.
Dr. Chepko's advertisement in the DPF newsletter had sought out "Fantasies of young boys who wet the best with diapers or underpants. Home videos to loan or trade."
And while Tommy did his best to explain that the "young boys" part so often thrown around was supposed to be a fantasy many infantilists would use to imagine themselves in the 'young boy' role, the truth seemed to be that the network was as much a clearinghouse for child pornography as it was for anything else.
I remember discovering DPF.com when I was in college, years later.
It was an obvious extension of the 1980s era DPF, except now, instead of the 'Diaper Pail Fraternity', it had become 'Diaper Pail Friends.'
I'll write more about my experiences with this, our community's first official 'place to play' on the web, in a future blog entry. Let's just say that the importance of remaining vigilant about 18+ never went away; some of my first contacts on the website were from people who were looking to trade in child porn. It was a far different world than the community we've become today. But it gradually morphed into a fairly safe space for ABDLs to meet, and it's really the precursor to the community we are today. By its end, when other community spaces eclipsed it, it bore little resemblance to the organization profiled in the Penthouse piece.
I wrote this blog entry because I recently met a college student who expressed that, while he loved my blog and respected me for "putting yourself out there like that," he also had "a bone to pick" with me - because my blog had made it impossible for him to find a daddy while he was underage.
He told me that he'd tried, and failed, to locate a daddy for several years. Two or more of the people he'd reached out to, he said, sarcastically told him that they'd love to do it, but that they didn't want to get on "Abysitter's Hall of Shame" - or words to that effect.
Why, he wanted to know, was I forever going on and on about 18+.
Didn't I realize that marginalized young ABDL's just coming up into our community?
Didn't I think that my "exclusion" of them might make them feel like "pariahs" - like they are evil, dirty, and etc.?
Who was I to think that I should have "control over" what people do and don't do?
I realized, while we were talking, that I've done a shit ton of 18+ posts, but not very many that explain it in detail. Part of me, probably, thought that it needed no explanation. But I see, now, that it does.
I should have realized this when the debate on the Race Car diapers was raging back in 2011 - the idea of a company using minor children in its diaper catalogs smacked of pedophilia to many in our community, but was defended by far more than I ever would have thought. I was occupied with some pretty heady shit then, and didn't post anything on it, but I did read a number of discussion on the subject, and backed up Todaler's position on it on RUPadded.com. That's when I received a batch of responses telling me I was wrong and our community should be inclusive of all ages lol - I should have blogged about this then, but didn't.
I'll blog more about it in the future, but let this entry be my introduction to it.
I'm passionate about 18+ because, in 1991, when I was still underage myself, my first realization that there was anyone besides me into diapers came in the form of a Penthouse Magazine article that linked our community with the pedophilia once rampant in it.
I don't ever want my face to burn like that again.
If we want to be able to say with certainty that we are a community that does not involve children in our fantasies, we need to keep it all 18+, all the time: photos, meetups, stories, and events.
I am proud to call myself a member of this community, and prouder still that, over the years, incidences of inappropriateness appear to be on the decline.
Anyone who is under 18 and waiting to join us has my profound respect if they do just that: wait.
Everyone who works to convince them of that has my profound respect, as well.
Our community, in its many forms and variations, has existed since at least 1980, according to this article.
That's 35+ years of diapering.
We're not going anywhere.
There is no reason anyone under 18 can't wait to join in on the action, and the fun, until they turn 18.
For the little dude who took me to task for ruining things for him - I suspect by the end of our conversation he understood that what I'd been trying to do was help him.
Just in case, here's my entry on the article that I referenced, as promise.
PLEASE SHARE THIS
WITH ANY COMMUNITY MEMBERS
(18+ LOL)
WHO ARE UNCLEAR ON WHY
IT'S SO FUCKING IMPORTANT
THAT WE KEEP IT ALL
(ALL ALL ALL!)
18+
CWIS
I'm interested in hearing from anyone else who saw this old article, either when it was first released or later over the years. Did anyone else have this ugliness as their first real introduction to our community? Email me: abysitter@gmail.com.
12 comments:
I have actually heard of the infamous "Penthouse Article" but had never seen it. Thanks for sharing this.
Yikes! I clicked on the picks to make them big and read the first page, that's disturbing. Not sure if I want to keep reading.
I tend to think anyone who balks at the idea of pedophiles in our community simply wasn't there in the early days of the Internet.
Being ABDL has nothing to do with it but it obviously provided some cover for despicable people and their actions for a while.
As down on myself as I was growing up liking diapers and baby stuff, pedophilia wasn't on my mind as part of the problem. I knew what that was and I knew that wasn't me. It wasn't until I found the online community that I became aware this was an ongoing concern and also saw that some of us were either masquerading as ABDLs or were both.
Even as an adult, that sense that predators were present was a major disincentive to be active in the community. Maybe they weren't interested in exploiting me as an adult but that didn't mean that I wanted to make any contact with someone who might well be doing it to minors. It took time for that element to slink back to the shadows before I could consider engagement to be a reasonable proposition.
I have told three people in my life that I wear diapers. With all three of them, the number one thing I said after I dropped the bombshell was that it has NOTHING to do with children. It's disgusting to think people would actually enjoy that and I wanted to squash that thought in their heads immediately. I would never want anyone to think of me being associated with anyone like that for a single second.
I've read at least a dozen posts on your blog about taking responsibiity for the AB/DL community since I started reading. This is why I love reading this blog .Thank you.
I would imagine that there are pedophiles/predators in every online community. Plenty of vanilla scumbags out there too (especially in the early days when predators had free reign). Not really linked to ABDL IMO.
This article is kinda bullshit as the Penthouse article is pretty sensationalist. Only 4 people charged and 10 suspects named, not to mention that DPF technically had the same 18+ rule as this blogger. Also "Boy" is pretty common slang in the Gay community for a submissive (usually young yet over 18). Not sure I would call it rampant pedophilia in the community.
I for the most part agree with the 18+ rule, but find it does kinda leave young people to fend for themselves isolated from the people who have gone through what they are going through now. I think it might be possible for some kind of responsible platonic mentor relationship to exist (daddy-child obviously not being that), but having said that I don't have any interest in interacting with any underage people.
^^^ their is a diffrence between young people being allowed to view, and people taking advantage of young people.
and i was thinking 4 people charged and 10 suspects was a lot. and 30 fbi agents. that is probably a small fraction of the number of pepole in the community, but it's still far too many, and shows how one person alone can make a whole community look like fucking garbage.
Bravo! Stick to your principles! DPF was my inroduction to this world, too,but I was definitely of age when I found it.
I remember seeing an excerpt of this article somewhere, I thought it was here, back in like 2009 or 2010. Thanks for sharing the whole thing.
Its weird to me that people were opponents to 18+ spaces, that's just mind boggling to me, especially since I came into this community and it seemed everything was 18+ save some forums.
Looking back at some of my experiences of the internet and abdl there definitely was one or two people I talked to that had pedo inclinations... Crazy thinking about it now as an adult the kinds of people I talked to as a teen.
Thanks for all of the comments, everyone! Some very good points!!
Cwiss, thanks for the detailed information on the contents of the Playboy article. I was an adult member of DPF back in the mid-80s and -- being drawn far more to Playgirl than Playboy :) -- had no idea of the FBI investigation or findings. Learning of it now, I feel disturbed and fortunate not to have been dragged into any of it. I do think the vast majority of members, some of whom I of course exchanged correspondence with -- and a tiny few of whom I was fortunate enough to meet -- in the pre-internet "snail mail" days, were decent "regular guys" into the same adult play we all are, and that fortunately those seeking real children were a small minority exploiting the relative anonymity DPF offered in the days when infantilism was (or seemed to be) an extremely marginal "am I the only one" sort of interest. Thankfully, the internet has opened things up exponentially. I think your advice to underage guys to wait, and your caution in interacting with them online (which I share) is logical and prudent. Keep up the good blog!
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