John Hein

I received the following message this morning.

‘Apologies for messaging you out of the blue. I was a friend of John Hein's for over 30 years. He wasn't a paedophile. He had no interest in children at all, sexually or otherwise. He was just 16 years old when he joined PIE, and to the best of my knowledge, it was because he was a young gay man trying to find others like himself.

If we can argue - rightfully - that a young person can't make good lifelong decisions at that age, then surely we can give them the benefit of the doubt when they do other foolish things. It's extremely upsetting to see this character assassination, when he hasn't even been dead for a week, can't defend himself, and his many friends are trying to deal with loss. He was a lovely, funny man who wouldn't hurt anyone.” —Dave

I think PIE has some relevance to what’s going on at the moment but given what Dave says here, I don’t think this is the right way to bring attention to it. So I’m deleting that section of yesterday’s update.