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Article: Sex-Crime Panic. (Bookmark: panic attacks: a chilling book unearths a real case of '50s antigay persecution).(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine)
- Article date:
- February 19, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Regent Media. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Sex-Crime Panic * Neil Miller * Alyson Books * $14.95
In 1954 and 1955 in Sioux City, Iowa, two children, an 8-year-old boy and a 22-month-old girl, were sexually assaulted and brutally murdered. As a result a new law was enacted, and 22 gay men were arrested in the heat of a sex-crime panic. As Neil Miller writes in his compelling and chilling account of the events, the law amounted to a warrant for preventive detention, the logic being "Take the pervert off the street before he can strike."
Some of these men were entrapped while cruising rest rooms; others, in true '50s witch-hunt style, informed on each other and were brought in. Twenty were tried and ...