The Full Story About the Pedophile I Met in the Park

I Just Released the Video - Here's the long-form interviews

“But children can’t consent,” I told the pedophile in the park.

“Yes, they can,” he replied in a moment that shocked me like no other in my journalistic career. He quickly corrected himself. “Oh no, I mean a child can sense what he likes and doesn’t like.”

The correction wasn’t much better.

Watch: I released this 7-minute documentary about the topic on my new Andrew Gold Investigates channel. If you like these kinds of investigations, please subscribe and watch the other two videos I have uploaded so far (campus free speech and exorcism).

My meeting in the park with a chemically-castrated man who wore a wig and hung around with an obese cowboy was one of the strangest afternoons of my life. It was part of a two-year investigation in Germany into the Project Dark Field program that never reports pedophiles to police.

My investigation - which included learning German to be able to carry out interviews - took me to places I never imagined I’d be - and to which I hope never to return. This includes an afternoon in a tiny village with a 25-year-old pedophile woman (who insists she has never and would never offend). I recount our meeting in my book, The Psychology of Secrets: My Adventures with Murderers, Cults & Influencers (Pan Macmillan, 2024).

Then, there is the time I spent at a swimming pool with a strange man called Max, which left me tearful in a field afterwards. I’ll tell that story in my next book. There was also a horrible day spent interviewing a former police officer who advocates for adult-child relationships. The less said about that…

Truly abhorrent.

And then, there’s my new video featuring Zidane in the park, and Silas, the 18-year-old head boy (class president) who harbors desires for children but believes he has them under control. I include the long-form interviews below but first let me explain:

The reason the project interested me is that Project Dark Field is unique. In the UK, US, Australia and most other countries, therapists are legally or at least professionally obliged to report pedophiles to authorities. However, Project Dark Field and its “Don’t Offend” clinic believe it best to anonymise their patients so that they are incentivised to come in, get help and - ideally - be disabused of their cognitive biases.

Opinion is split. The tricky part is that - since they don’t take their patients’ information - it’s impossible to know if they are helping. Still, even if one pedophile is convinced by the therapy not to abuse a child, that is a win.

There are also personal and professional reasons I took on this investigation.

Professional

This was in 2020, just after the success of my exorcism film on the BBC, but before I launched my podcast. Professionally, almost nobody knew who I was. I was working minimum wage jobs to fund myself while learning German and trying to sell my ideas to TV production companies who were explicit about not hiring me because I was a white man.

At the time, I knew this topic was untouchable to most journalists. Since I was desperately struggling to find work in the field, I took a risk on a horrifying theme. It gave me nightmares for months because I ended up in scary situations with no security and no production company on call to help.

Personal

Due to Visa stipulations too boring to explain, Germany was also the only country that my now-wife - from Argentina - could live in Europe while we tried to sort her entry to the UK. We spent three years living in Berlin and learning German. She is a lawyer, but took a job in a hotel reception, while I worked nights doing online copywriting, freeing my days for these kinds of investigations, eventually leading to the podcast, initially named On the Edge with Andrew Gold.

I started by interviewing a former Westboro Baptist Church member by Zoom in our Neukölln flat with bits of sellotape, shoeboxes a lamp. I was so nervous, I could hardly speak! Audio-only, the podcast got four listens in the first month. Today, 4.5 years later, my four channels, Heretics, Heretics Clips, Andrew Gold & Kinsey Schofield Live (the brilliant Kinsey now hosts this, since it became a Royals channel) & Andrew Gold Investigates get close to 10 million views and listens.

I’m delighted to finally be able to put the Germany video out now, and the reaction to this video and the new channel itself has been incredible. It seems there is a genuine appetite for investigative journalism on YouTube. The costs of this kind of time-consuming journalism mean that I am never likely to earn from it. But Heretics foots the bill, meaning I can keep both of these passion projects alive. I feel very lucky.

Many who watched the video about Germany wanted more - which is always a good sign. The full audio interview with the school head boy Silas is here. It was one of my first audio podcasts, so forgive my being a little rusty and nervous.

As for Zidane, I found a longer cut with some old voice overs from my initial filming. It’s very rough - so you can see how different a final edit is! But it goes into much more detail about his daughter, his rights to see his grandchildren and more.

I hope you enjoy these extras.

Please do consider signing up and contributing on this page if you want to make this kind of journalism possible, and I’ll endeavour to upload little extras here.