Green Party leader Natalie Bennett faces fresh embarrassment after it emerged her boyfriend ran a blog in which he defended “rape fantasies”, described paedophiles as “complex human beings” and said he was “ambivalent” about whether it is wrong for teachers to have sex with students.
The Sunday Mirror revealed that Jim Jepps, who has been dating Bennett for five years, blogged on the Daily Maybe site until 2011, writing a number of controversial articles on topics such as sex, rape and paedophilia.
In one post from 2006, he wrote about Natascha Kampusch, an Austrian girl who was abducted aged 10 and kept as a sex slave for eight years, saying that “even in the horrors of Natascha Kampusch’s imprisonment mundanity, kindness and laughter were still present.”
Comparing her ordeal to the Holocaust, he added: “even in the depths of the Holocaust there was no absolutes of evil or suffering [sic].
“Camp guards could show kindness, dying inmates still cracked jokes or wrote poetry about girls they had loved and mothers of children condemned to die tomorrow still washed their clothes and fed them today.”
In a 2007 post about calls for music books written by a convicted paedophile to be withdrawn, Jepps said: “We can burn these books as a public statement against the author (who is in jail for his crimes) or try to understand that whatever monstrous acts individuals commit they are still complex human beings for all that. Good, evil, interesting and banal by turns – not devils who can taint everything they touch with evil.”
In 2008, he wrote in defence of a blogger who was charged with obscenity after writing a post imaging the kidnap, torture and murder of pop group Girls Aloud.
“Personally I didn’t find it that shocking… Either I’m hopelessly jaded or getting depraved and corrupted is a lot duller than I remember,” he said.
He also created a poll asking readers whether it should be a criminal offence for teachers to have sex with sixth form students. “Personally I’m ambivalent and would appreciate any guidance on this. It seems to me that the sex offenders register is a sledgehammer to crack a nut sometimes.”
In a post for another site, he also tackled the topic of rape fantasies: “Some people have rape fantasies, they do, it’s a fact. It does not mean they actually want to rape or be raped they are simply drawing from the deep, dark well of sexuality and if you are one of them it does not make you a bad person and you shouldn’t spend even one second feeling guilty about those fantasies.”
A Green Party spokesman said: “The Daily Maybe was a personal blog written by Mr Jepps until 2011.
“The party does not endorse the views expressed and would not want to be associated with them. Jim Jepps has not been a member of the party since 2012.”
Natalie Bennett added: “Jim is a private individual not involved in party politics. I will not be commenting on words he’s said or written.”
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