Sunday September 11, 2005

Meditation in the park. Washed out colours in the infinite. Creepy things happening in the distance. Phillip Bell died aged 70 at 4.15am in the hospital at Long Bay jail, utterly unlamented. From the high old days of the past, glamorous apartments, spectacular views, you give as good as you get. It was all cruel, infinitely cruel, we gave as good as we got, we were used as scenary and we drank like fish. We should have known there would be better but there never was. We came ducking and weaving and hoping for change, and the music roared into action in clouds of alcohol and smoke. It was for us to be wanted, for them to do the chase. The Granny killer's also died, do we know that, I shouted across the office. Yes, came the response, as we searched desperately for at least one of Bell's victims to comment. All the names were suppressed. I remember going down to cover the trial, which dragged on for months and which covered many a Sydney personality. The boys, now in their 20s, with girl friends in tow, in tears in the foyer. What they could never understand was why they were left. You got too old honey. Sixteen and you're done. From someone who had been the centre of a social whirl, Liberace had visited, and time had stood still; beautiful faces, scandal dripped sofas, the lads back at the pub, the tortuous drives down back streets, the money when none of us had any money. All this was gone now. At 4.15 am in a prison hospital wing. When everything had turned to ashes and there were no more boys for the boy lovers of old. The harm that had been done. The laughter that had been caught, the times that seemed as if they would never end. Not just from the hunted to the hunter, but from social lynchpin to social pariah. In the days when everything was illegal and no boundaries were set. When Sydney was in bloom in the gusty warmth of spring. When the beaches were already crowded. When the old queens were all eyes and flapping wrists and handsome faces peered from everywhere. That was the cause, the lost cause; with Tessa running the pub and letting us in early, to attract the trade. As long as we behaved ourselves. We never did, not for long. She kept a stern eye and we ducked outside and the whole city whirled around us; small stories of scandal and blood soaked lechery; and in the end, how sad was that. I went back to school and my friends went back to jail. And all those millions that Phillip splashed around, that kept him safe; all those presents he showered on his "number one" boys, all came to nothing as the world turned on its axis. A moment in Sydney history; those beautiful houses on the northern beaches, those smart apartments, those cars we all loved; the laughter we shared in a scandal not beyond reproach, but well beyond the norm, it was all gone. He died alone. And there was no one left to remember or defend the moral ambiguities; the kindness of strangers.

The news:
WEALTHY paedophile Phillip Harold Bell died in Long Bay Jail's Hospital wing at 4.15am yesterday morning from cancer after suffering months of illness.He had been visited by family and friends in the final weeks of his life. But for some of his victims, Bell's death came as welcome news. Stuart Cooper, who was one of Bell's ``boys'' on Sydney's northern beaches in the 1970s, said he was glad Bell was dead. ``He lived by the bum and died by the bum, he can rot in hell. I am glad he is dead, I just wish he had rolled against the police before he went,'' Mr Cooper, now 46, said last night.
Bell, 70, who was born into wealth and who's family owned one of the countries largest wool-broking companies, became Australia's best known lover of young boys along with the notorious Robert ``Dolly'' Dunn after an international search forced him to return to Australia. He fled Australia in 1993 and was finally extradited from a luxury home in South Africa four years later.As a well-connected multi-millionaire with lavish homes in Sydneys eastern suburbs and northern beaches, Bell showered gifts on young men who came to his attention. With all the ingredients of money, sex and power, his case fascinated the country in the late 1990s. During extensive proceedings the NSW District Court heard that Bell did not classify himself as a paedophile, that is as someone attracted to pre-pubescent children, but rather as a ``hebephile'', someone who was exclusively attracted to males aged from 12 to late adolescence. Pschologist Christopher Lennings said: ``His arousal and fantasy life is based on sexual relationships with adolescents. He tells me he belongs to a culture or social nice which accepted and supported that behaviour.'' During his trial alleged victims testified they were called ``number one boy'' and would receive more gifts than other youths in his company.During his trial he denied that he abandoned the young men when they got too old for him. ``They lost interest in me,'' he said. ``I had my heart broken a dozen times by the moment in life when one of my heterosexual young friends have left me for his lady and abandoned me.'' Bell was jailed in 1997 and subsequently sentenced to 14 years in for 75 sex offences on 18 boys aged 12 to 15, between 1978 and 1991.The case was dutifully ignored by the gay press as an embarrassment but gripped the mainstream media. The only gay political commentator to weigh into the debate, well known activist Lex Watson, in an essay `Child Sexual Abuse' or `Consensual Teenage Sexual Activity'? wrote that ``the media glibly reported charges of `indecent assault' though most if not all were for consenting acts''. During court proceedings a number of his former ``boys'', many from broken or dysfunctional families and by this stage men in their 20s or older, became clearly distressed or cried openly. As a number of commentators observers noted, Bell seemed genuinely taken aback that he had caused any distress at all. Apart from a fortnight in Goulburn jail Bell had been at the Long Bay Jail's Hospital since May.Due to the nature of his crimes, he had been in protective custody throughout his sentence. A spokesman for NSW Corrective Services said he had presented no problems as a prisoner. Bell was two years shy of completing his non-parole period, and would have been eligible for release in November 2007.