nitro's final thoughts

## nitro's final thoughts

#### 15 April 2025
from in memoriam

### nitro

| I am a pedophile. I've made over 18,000 posts on the VirPed forum since 2015. I am dying. Nitro was a fixture of the VirPed forum from February 17, 2015, contributing nearly 5% of all the forum's posts and offering direct peer-support to hundreds of his fellow anti-contact pedophiles. He wrote these observations. They were posted with his participation and consent before his death on 21 April 2025. My childhood was a relatively average one. Back then, it was common to skip a grade in school. The problem was that it left me socially behind. I was a bit smaller, didn’t fight back and I got bullied a lot. I was active in two sports. In the summertime, I played tennis most every day. I was active in junior tennis and played the circuit. I liked hanging out with elite younger players. In the winter, I played road hockey all the time. I’d play in the street after school and on weekends. When I was about 14, in the late 1960s, we were doing family counselling. I asked to meet with the social worker. I could barely spit out the words, but I said that I was afraid that I had homosexual tendencies. He recommended me to a colleague of his that ran a discussion group for youth. The colleague said : "So what’s wrong with that? What would you like me to do about it"? I said: "Fix it. Isn’t that your job?" He said that he wasn’t sure he could help me. The social worker said that he still thought the group would help me. But I never showed up. There was no way I was going to open my mouth in front of a group of teens and admit to something horrific like that. I just tried not to think about it for several decades. Intercourse was a bit of a turn off but I never really thought about that either and it never really hit me until decades later. I had a spanking fetish, but that made no sense to me either. Hitting kids? Last thing in the world I’d ever want to happen. As I grew, I lost friends who met girls, and dumped me. I hung around with younger boys, generally top level tennis players. I coached a junior boys team of top talent. I enjoyed fielding a mega talented 10 year old who would beat up on a 15 year old. They put no pressure on me, I loved being with them and I had a car and could drive them to tournaments and practise with them. If I was working as an umpire or line umpire, I befriended the ball boys, most of whom I knew anyway. When I got out of high school, I really had no idea what I was interested in. I majored in economics but I kind of hated it as it was too theoretical. So I switched my major to Sociology. I struggled to find work. I taught tennis part time to adults and kids while looking for something full time. For a few years, I worked as an assistant store manager. I concluded that I liked detail work and did a degree business course for university graduates. I worked in the audit and tax group at a Canadian firm and eventually moved to a couple of hospitals as director of finance. For some reason that I’ve never quite understood, I had developed a rather extreme fear of children and put up a force field. I gradually lost that in my late 30s after I bought a holiday time share. I found that parents often looked to a vacation as a break from their kids. They could drink beer and socialize. I liked to bob in the ocean and commune with sea creatures that came close to shore. And so did their kids. So I played with the kids all week, and everyone was thrilled. I lost my fear. Each year, they were a year older, excited to see me and vice versa. I never considered that any of it had the slightest thing to do with sexuality. But it so clearly did. I fell in love with a musical featuring boys and it never dawned on me that the extent of my passion was driven by sexuality. I guess I didn’t exactly have a social life. I looked at employment and sports as a way to ignore focusing on my odd sexuality. The internet stunned me. People actually talked about this stuff. I started thinking back about my early life. What I considered so innocuous at the time started making sense in terms of my sexuality. I had a very strong attraction to talented boys, and it impacted who I hung out with so much of the time. I encountered M on a fetish website and I decided to visit her for a week. She was married and had a godson named C. He had a step father who emotionally abused him and he needed a break, so he spent a lot of time with M. She planned an entire day around C, doing things that he loved. She certainly knew I liked boys and that he would appreciate an adult male that was nice to him. I had fallen head over heels madly in love with that boy. I had no idea that could possibly happen and that I had such an emotional vulnerability. When we were apart, the coming year, I realized how attractive he was. But it had never been a factor at all. I hadn’t even noticed. He was just such a wonderful, caring child. Being so far apart, we just didn’t get to see each other much. I’ve seen him in his 20s a few times and told him how much I loved him and he echoed that. That kind of an emotional connection does not go away. After I'd been on internet forums a while, I had to choose a new username, so I chose nitro as I had exploded all over the internet. My early association with "spankophiles" led me to want more friends and I overlooked a lot. I wanted to believe that those who were parents could totally separate their fetish with disciplining their kids. Evidence was very much to the contrary. In other cases, I very much wanted to trust someone who was taking advantage of my naivete with technology and obviously making up stories. In still other cases, I learned to cut people more slack in circumstances where they messed up and knew it. There were only two teenage types in the old fetish forum and chat groups. One was J, 15 at the time, a needy kid who wanted to understand his sexuality. Most of us had qualms about chatting with J without permission from his mom (he was fatherless), but it was very clear that we would never get that as his mom was devoted to Scientology and little else mattered. We didn’t meet in person until he was 20, when we did a cruise in a boy lover friend’s narrowboat in the UK Midlands. A few days ago, I looked up some people I’d lost track of. I was gratified that J said this: "The time I spent chatting with the group on MSN messenger back when I was a teenager was one of the most formative and helpful periods of my life where I learned to accept myself as a I am. My wife is also aware to the full extent of my interests and she accepts me as I am too. I couldn't be happier." I wouldn’t have thought about him landing with a woman, but he has a baby daughter and another on the way. He is teaching in China and met her there. I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes in my 30s That can be quite devastating because you don’t feel it or sense it. But if you don’t control it through diet, it can very slowly cause one medical problem after another. In my case, I had a heart attack and stroke in my early 50s. I thought maybe it was stress related and decided to retire at 55. I gave a year’s notice and said I’d train my replacement.

Nitro, aged around 9, at a beach in Maine, giving his Bar Mitzvah speech aged 13, aged around 8-10 during Pesach, and at his Bar Mitzvah.

| Azov Films was the creator and distributor of a series of films featuring pre teen and young teen boys with substantial nudity. They were sold openly on the clearnet and every film sold contained a trailer. The site included statements from lawyers certifying legality in Canada and the US. There were no adults in the films and they focused on sporting activity and such. They were never overtly sexual. That said, they were rather clearly marketed toward those with a child attraction. Were children exploited in the making of these films? With hindsight, they may well have been. But they do signify the tightening of the definition of CP, CSAM or CSEM or one’s preferred term. The customer list got seized in Canada and was shared with police departments around the world. Many were charged in Canada and the US and elsewhere. I received a six month sentence. US sentences were much longer. In mainland Europe, they were generally considered to have broken no laws. Was this a traumatizing experience in my life? Absolutely. Were children protected by going after the customer list worldwide? I’ll let people make their own conclusion. I’ll just say that no child has ever needed protection from me. I had a quintuple bypass while I was out on bail. Many years later my kidneys started to fail. That is irreversible. I’ve been on dialysis for 2.5 years and had to stop travelling. The two boys I sponsored in Guatemala City were then 10 and 12. I was on two years' probation at the time. I was talking to a friend about why we weren’t doing vacations together any more. She said that she had been visiting kids that she sponsored through a charity, primarily in Central America, along with her mom who was also a close friend. I had never heard of such a thing. So I asked her, well If I sponsored a couple of kids, could I join in on your visits? She said yes. So, I bounced it off my probation officer. There would always be a parent there and charity staff. Sponsors were never allowed to be alone with the kids. I was cool with that. So was the probation officer. We visited kids in four different Guatemalan communities. I’ll never forget the first day. We visited a small rural Mayan community a couple of hours drive from Guatemala City. The family lived on a farm. I was completely overcome by the level of emotion we encountered. The charity’s community centre was plastered with painted signs from the kids welcoming my friends, including me. The kids were crying when we got there, because we were late and they were afraid we weren’t coming. Simply put, I remember that as the best day of my life and the next few days just got better. I was basking in emotions that I just wasn’t used to. I quickly fell in love with A's family and also with D and his aunt. He was born with one arm. His mom met a man and dumped her kid. His aunt took him in. He was an amazing artist and drew dozens of pictures for me. I promised them I’d put him through art school. I've made over 18,000 posts on the VirPed forum since 2015. My whole world just made more sense and I focused quite a bit on helping others understand themselves as I worked to understand myself better. I’ve talked about self acceptance more than anything. We support each other, often because no one else will. People can be overwhelmed with so much negativity and criticism by society. It’s something that must be overcome because beating oneself up does very little to keep kids safe. By all means, maintain a concept of morality, don’t lose touch with the concept of informed consent, but don’t chase after perfection to the extent where you’ve lost your essence. There are a lot worse things than caring about children. VirPed has a reputation on many other pedophile forums as a place where self-loathing pedophiles gather and share their anger and bitterness, mostly at themselves for being inadequate and potentially dangerous. The reputation is only accurate to the point that we do attract a lot of people who are self loathing. They are often driven by the fear that society is right and they represent a danger to kids, who they love. Sometimes they’re looking for the cause of their attraction, sometimes they’re seeking a cure, and sometimes they just want to understand how others cope with it all. I tell VirPed users: "never let 'them' win". Society 'wins' if people just accept the image presented to them. Ideally, VirPed members share their experiences and those who have learned to hate aspects of themselves start to be comfortable in their own skin. At that point, they can give back to others. Child pornography laws are blurring so much that it can be near impossible to distinguish legal from illegal. It can put so pressure on MAPs. One might say, just avoid images but sometimes it’s all someone has and others may be somewhat addicted. Pedophiles need to understand themselves. They need to understand the difference between a fantasy and an action. Self acceptance is vital. They might never understand how they got this way or be able to change their basic orientation, but they should be able to understand what they are or are not capable of and whether they are really a threat to children. It’s difficult to quote a reliably supported statistic, but I believe the vast majority are not. Over the years, I’ve rebuilt my life completely around pedophiles that I’ve met online. That has formed my entire social life. Virtually every vacation for years has been with fellow pedophiles. I must have met 100 by now. I have learned. Some times it’s been learning to trust less and some times to trust more. I sponsored many more kids and there were lots more trips. The families didn’t have much but they were proud of what they had and wanted to show us. The child visits were always combined with vacation trips. We had a couple of trips planned with my friends and my brother. One to Guadalajara with a week in a resort in Puerto Vallarta and another to Guayaquil, Ecuador with a week in the Galapagos Islands. A few days before leaving, I got a call from my contact with the charity, who said they received an anonymous call saying that I was a registered sex offender. It was clear that the call was from Canada Customs, because no one else had that information. I’d been searched coming back home before. The child visits took place without me and the kids were told I was sick and wasn’t allowed to fly. Shortly after, all my sponsored kids were told that I wasn’t their sponsor any more. The only family I was able to stay in contact with was A’s. They had looked me up on social media. I tried to explain why I wasn’t their sponsor, but said I’d still be able to help them. We have become very close. A’s mom calls me dad. A had a baby when he was 18. I’m his honorary great grandfather and he was named after me. We have met several times. I detest registries and feel they serve no purpose. If someone is deemed dangerous there are ample ways to monitor them. Registries are full of minors and seem to exist primarily to create a class of citizens to be looked down on and discriminated against. I’m on a registry for life. It’s silly, annoying and inconvenient. But for those on a public registry, it can be devastating. In December 2024 I had a colonoscopy. They found a mass that appeared to be colon cancer. The doctor said it would have to be removed, and scheduled a CT scan. There had been massive spread to the stomach lining, liver and possibly bones and it was inoperable. Chemotherapy was ruled out as a possible effective therapy as was immunotherapy. I was referred to the Palliative Care team. I’m working with them on opioid pain meds and trying to be comfortable as much as possible. They are not giving me much hope of living past 2025, which is unfortunate because dying in 2025 is extremely tax inefficient. Once an accountant, always an accountant. I’ve talked about my medical condition on VirPed and have been near overwhelmed by the level of support. It helps me cope. I consider myself a child of the holocaust. My parents survived the war in Europe and I lost three of four grandparents. The family moved to Canada right after I was born. I’ve learned to understand scapegoats. Have I felt discriminated in my life over Jewishness? I really haven’t. Have I felt discriminated against due to pedophilia? I have. I feel so much for young MAPs getting an onslaught of hate from social media. I wasn’t an unhappy teenager. But there was no internet. I can’t even imagine getting exposed to that as a kid. I understand society’s desire to protect kids from exploitation that clearly occurs on sites like Instagram, but the internet is a great resource that can be used to inform and not frighten. It’s difficult enough to scapegoat adults. But at age 50, accessing the internet for the first time, I could handle it. For the longest time, I didn’t let myself feel emotions. I didn’t feel much of anything, so I didn’t hurt. Simon and Garfunkel’s I Am a Rock comes to mind. But when I started feeling emotion, I felt so much more human. It's very difficult not to learn from experience. My judgment is much better than it was. I’ve condoned too much and too little. Am I bitter as to how minor attraction has affected my life? I guess the simple answer is that minor attraction is my life. I didn’t ask for it, but it’s a key part of who I am. I don’t think that bitterness is productive. It can just make coping more difficult. So largely, I’ve moved on. I am empathetic with both those whose lives have been damaged through childhood abuse as well as those hurt by the constant redefinition of what constitutes an illegal image and increasingly draconian penalties for possession. Can self loathing become a self fulfilling prophecy? It can. VirPed members tend to believe in self acceptance and that while attractions probably can’t be altered, actions can be controlled. If self-acceptance for pedophiles leads to better self-awarenes and control, who wins? Ultimately, I think everyone does. About the author: Nitro has been a fixture of the VirPed forum since February 17, 2015, contributing nearly 5% of all the forum's posts and offering direct peer-support to hundreds of his fellow anti-contact pedophiles. He is terminally ill and expects to die soon. |

tags for this item

tags for this item

classics8
ethics of attraction32
ethics of images50
experiences66
offending28
pedophile communities15

other relevant items

other relevant items

nitro: a community says goodbye |  | nitro in person |  | a note on the costs of self-hatred
virped members Nitro, who has died aged 73, is remembered by members of the VirPed community. |  | py He dropped me off at the airport one last time, and he hugged me again. He wasn't crying this time. Instead, he mentioned that it may not be the last time he'd see me. But it was. |  | leonard johnston Empathy is important, especially for those who are most hated - even by me.

nitro: a community says goodbye virped members Nitro, who has died aged 73, is remembered by members of the VirPed community.
nitro in person py He dropped me off at the airport one last time, and he hugged me again. He wasn't crying this time. Instead, he mentioned that it may not be the last time he'd see me. But it was.
a note on the costs of self-hatred leonard johnston Empathy is important, especially for those who are most hated - even by me.