Hadrian's Lover (36 page)

The court case involving Hadrian versus Hunter is all anyone in Hadrian can talk about. Heated debates are being held in every office, classroom, even on the street. Everyone in the HNN newsroom also comments on how the evening dinner table is focused on discussions regarding the innocence or guilt of young Frank Hunter. Seventeen years old and a confessed murderer, yet his lawyer, Ms. Faial Raboud, refuses to enter his guilty plea. Being her client is under age, Ms. Raboud is only entering the plea the boy’s fathers agree to: not guilty. The two fathers and Ms. Raboud stand by the plea that Frank Hunter did not murder his friend; rather, he participated in an act of assisted suicide. Today’s testimonies by Jason Warith, the boy’s guardian at the Northeast Reeducation Camp, and the boy’s papa, Mr. Mike Fulton, lend credence to Raboud and the Hunters’ assertion.

Mr. Fulton admitted to having abandoned his son to the system when he learned the boy had been exposed as straight. Just knowing one’s loving parent no longer desires any contact with you is enough to cause any young man or woman to lose his or her senses. As we know from a previous
Salve!
with Gideon Weller, many of our young men and women who have been exposed find themselves suddenly cast aside by their families. As numerous youth survive the reeducation system and go on to lead productive lives, this evidence alone is not enough to prove that Todd Middleton’s depression was extreme enough to allow for euthanasia. It was Mr. Jason Warith’s testimony that proved the most damning.

When on the stand, Jason Warith spoke of brutal beatings occurring on a daily basis at the Northeast Camp. The paddle, shown to the right on our wall screen, is said to have been wielded against Todd and nearly every other young man’s bare backside while in the custody of our nation. As well as beating the young men, public displays of this abusive treatment
also occurred as a warning to others. According to Mr. Warith, Mr. Weller beat one boy to the point where blood dripped off the paddle. Jason Warith goes on to say, “Mr. Weller then pointed the bloody instrument at us, yelling out, ‘There will be no dissension in my camp!’” This incident, according to Mr. Warith, wasn’t the worst of it. “The man brutally raped my ward.” Although Mr. Warith admits he did not witness the actual attack, he claims to have heard the young man crying out for help. “Being locked out of the room,” Mr. Warith claims, “made it impossible for me to intervene.”

Mr. Weller has yet to take the stand. Tomorrow, prosecuting attorney Graham Sabine intends to examine him and prove beyond a doubt that although Todd Middleton came to the Northeast Camp recalcitrant, he was beginning to soften under Gideon Weller’s tutelage and was readying himself for reentry into Hadrian society.

Vale!

Today’s testimony by Mr. Gideon Weller has stunned many of Hadrian’s citizens. Although Mr. Weller cannot be accused of rape, what he admitted as being a common practice at the Northeast Camp is most shocking. Mr. Weller admitted under oath having had sexual intercourse with Todd Middleton. And, although Todd Middleton, at age seventeen, was of the age of consent, the age difference between the Warden and the young man is far too extreme for comfort. That the act was not rape was confirmed by one of
Salve!
’s investigating reporters, Michael Swahazey. Michael interviewed Mr. Weller’s personal assistant who assured us that intercourse occurred between the two men at young Middleton’s request. Mr. Weller referred to the act as “medicinal intercourse” and acknowledged it to be a common act between ward and guardian.

HNN has responded to this method of rehabilitating our youth with outrage. We do not believe that any educational institution should have its adult mentors engaging in any form of sexual contact with our youth. The guardian of a ward at a reeducation camp is akin to a teacher in a school. This is a relationship based on trust and, though the focus of these educators is to help our children find their latent homosexuality, it should not be their place to participate in any sexual activity with youth sent to reeducation.

Investigating reporter Michael Swahazey has delved deep into this story and contacted all other reeducation camps throughout Hadrian. Only at the Northeast Reeducation Camp is “medicinal intercourse” used. When a ward tries to seduce a guardian, according to Adrian Adams, camp Warden for the Southwest Reeducation Camp, the guardian is instructed to refuse but speak to the ward positively about such a request. The fact that a ward expresses sexual interest in someone of the same sex is a sign
that he (or she as in the case of our female youth) is coming to accept Hadrian’s chosen lifestyle as his (or her) own. “Never,” Adrian Adams states emphatically, “should a guardian cross the line and participate with his ward in sexual activity.”

We, at HNN, agreed with Adrian Adams. I, for one, am not so anxious now to throw all of my support behind Mr. Gideon Weller. He may not have raped Todd Middleton, but he definitely crossed the line when he engaged in sexual activity with the boy. What is your opinion Hadrian? Voc us your views @HNN#GW-RE/MI.

Vale!