Sex-Crime Panic
Subtitle: A Journey to the Paranoid Heart of the 1950s
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: Alyson Books
Published: January 2002
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 313
ISBN-13: 9781555836597
Subjects: Crime & criminology; Gay studies (Gay men); c 1945 to c 1960; History: World; Social History; General; History; History - U.S.; Murder; Iowa; USA; Investigation; Murder - General; United States - 20th Century/50s; History / General; Sioux City; Gays; Gay Studies; Multicultural Education; Case studies
First sentence: When Jimmy Bremmers disappeared the year before, on the last day in August 1954, Doug Thorson was far away.
Description: "In 1955, following the sexual assault and brutal murder of two children in Sioux City, Iowa, police, in an attempt to quell public hysteria, arrested 20 men who authorities never claimed had anything to do with the crimes.

Labeled as sexual psychopaths under a state law that lumped homosexuals with child molesters and murderers, the men were sentenced to a mental hospital until deemed "cured." Neil Miller's carefully researched account shows how the paranoia of the McCarthy era destroyed the lives of gay men in the American heartland. A gripping story of murder and antigay hysteria, Sex-Crime Panic presents a dark and strange chapter in the history of postwar America."--BOOK JACKET.