It was co-founded by historian David Thorstad. There is strength in unity and openness." NAMBLA's founding was inspired by this organization. The "Boston-Boise Committee", a gay rights organization, was formed in response to these events (which they termed the "Boston witch-hunt"), allegedly in order to promote solidarity amongst gay men, saying in an official leaflet that: "The closet is weak. Commenting on this issue, Boston magazine described NAMBLA as "the most despised group of men in America", which was "founded mostly by eccentric, boy-loving leftists".
The men were members of a "sex ring" Byrne said the arrest was "the tip of the iceberg". Byrne found the men had used drugs and video games to lure the boys into a house, where they photographed them as they engaged in sexual activity. Suffolk County district attorney Garrett H. Twenty-four men were arrested and indicted on over 100 felony counts of the statutory rape of boys aged eight to fifteen. In December 1977, police raided a house in the Boston suburb Revere. Įvents such as Anita Bryant's 1977 " Save Our Children" campaign and a police raid of a Toronto-area newspaper, The Body Politic, for publishing "Men Loving Boys Loving Men" set the stage for the founding of NAMBLA. As of 2005, a newspaper report stated that NAMBLA was based in New York and San Francisco.
Since then, the organization has dwindled to only a handful of people, with many members joining online pedophile networks, according to Xavier Von Erck, director of operations at the anti-pedophile organization Perverted-Justice. NAMBLA was the largest group in IPCE, an international pro-pedophile activist organization. Around 1995, an undercover detective discovered there were 1,100 people on the organization's rolls. The group no longer holds regular national meetings, and as of the late 1990s-to avoid local police infiltration-the organization discouraged the formation of local chapters. It works to abolish age-of-consent laws criminalizing adult sexual involvement with minors and campaigns for the release of men who have been jailed for sexual contacts with minors that did not involve what it considers coercion. The North American Man/Boy Love Association ( NAMBLA) is a pedophilia and pederasty advocacy organization in the United States.