Note: this is an open letter to Andrew Gold, a journalist who recently published a very sensationalist seven-minute video about pedophilia. We talked to him in 2019 when he was searching for people to interview for a vaguely described book project. His book, which contains a chapter about our meeting, was published last year.

Andrew,

it has been some years since we met on the train platform of that rural German town. Back then, nobody knew your name, you were just some guy claiming to want to do research on the topic of pedophilia for something. What that something was frequently changed, sometimes it was a book, at other times an article or a podcast, or maybe all the above. It was not the only red flag indicating a lack of professionalism. Still, we decided on a leap of faith and to tell you our story, face to face, with all the inherent risks that entailed.

You seemed friendly enough during our meeting, joking and making easy conversation without any noticeable reservations on your part once the initial awkwardness had passed. Imagine the surprise when we finally got around to reading your book (which, as it turns out, was not about pedophilia at all but about secrets) and learned that this was apparently the "most disturbing day of your life" where you had to constantly hide your revulsion. Although that happened only shortly after your meeting with Zidane, a self-confessed offender (despite writing later in your book that you would never want to meet an actual offender), which you also labelled as "one of the strangest afternoons of your life." I guess you really live your life in superlatives.

Our surprise only grew as we kept reading your retelling of our meeting, of which you cleverly only showed us the few paragraphs beforehand that don't contain extreme overexaggerations or plain fabrications. We were nervous, sure, but Ruby did not break down crying on the train platform like you claim, nor did we run to the closest bathroom to vomit. Ruby was never "horrified by her own attractions", and her mother was exceedingly okay with her coming-out. You were not the first person we confided in, you were not even the first journalist we talked to as you proudly claim in your book.

Some of these lies were downright bizarre. While we do enjoy the occasional role-play, we do not "take turns being the baby" or "require" role-play during sex. Why would we talk that candidly about our sex life when we were supposedly vomiting and crying out of shame and nervousness? Your imagination truly must have run wild. And why lie about Ruby's mother being a "devout Lutheran"? You would be hard-pressed to find a more unreligious family than ours.

At the time, we considered these fabrications to be irritating but mostly harmless. We thought that they were not necessarily born out of malice, but out of desperation and incompetence. Considering how chaotic and disorganized you seemed when we met, we believed that you simply lost your notes and filled in the gaps with whatever you thought sounded good. While this was disappointing for sure and highly unprofessional, we just kind of laughed it off. Calling us the "dark duo" even has a certain ring to it, although it gets somewhat tiring after the fourteenth mention of how "dark" this topic is, and of course does nothing to humanize us.

But now it has come to our attention that you are returning to the topic of pedophilia to kickstart your new YouTube channel. Looking at what you do today, you seem to have found some success catering to the kind of people who think that calling someone mentally unstable is the pinnacle of clever argumentation.  Listening to you sardonically sneering about how trans people are "mentally ill" has been one of the most disturbing experiences of our life, if you don't mind us borrowing one of your favorite rhetorical devices. Not to mention the article you wrote about how pedophiles hide as transsexuals so they can continue abusing children, which is offensive both against transsexuals and pedophiles.

Given all the above, it should not surprise us that your latest video about pedophilia is filled with lies and misrepresentations as well. Even the title is completely false. Germany is not the only country where mental health professionals are not required to report pedophiles, the same is true even in your home country of Britain. On the other hand, clear announcements to harm someone have to be reported by professionals in Germany as well.

Then there is the gross misrepresentation of your own work, which prompted us to write this letter in the first place. You paint yourself as some kind of investigative journalist doing extremely dangerous undercover work, even going so far as to say that your life was in danger (but not as far as to specify how and why). Let me remind you how things really were. You went to public forums run by pedophiles and introduced yourself as a journalist researching the topic, and asked people for interviews. Many were skeptical, but you managed to find a couple of fools like us who were naive enough to still give you a chance.

You went to public internet forums and asked people to talk to you. That was the extent of your "investigation".

Back then nobody knew your name, you barely had any meaningful prior work to show and could not even provide proper credentials. You were desperately struggling to find some story to come out big. The people you portray in your work, that you lie about, misrepresent, dehumanize and casually insult, are the ones that tried to help you when you were down. They trusted you when they had little reason to and made themselves extremely vulnerable, as did we. And in turn all you have to say is how "troubling", "disturbing", "distorted" and, of course, "dark" we all are. You turned us into nothing more than exhibits for your own personal freak show.

We hope that you realize that you squandered a once in a lifetime experience. You were only able to get as much insight as you did because nobody did yet know who you truly were. We would have never talked to you, had your podcast existed at that time. For journalists, especially those who proud themselves on being "investigative", trust is a valuable currency that once spent can never be redeemed. You spent all your trust on this one story. We will use what connections we have to make sure that nobody in the MAP community will ever consider talking to you again. You will have to reuse your old material over and over again whenever you want to cover this topic, feeding off the little instances of human generosity people showed you years ago. With your track record, you have closed yourself off from ever becoming a serious journalist. There is nothing left for you but an existence as a grifter.

Was it worth it?

Sincerely
The Dark Duo