The Trustee and the Pen Name: Edward Brongersma, “Frank Torey,” and Francis Shelden in Amsterdam

In April 1978, Francis Shelden put his fortune in the hands of a former Dutch senator who had been convicted of sexual offenses against minors. Eight years later, that senator’s book was published by an imprint tied to a man named Frank Torey, whose biography reads like Shelden’s own.

Content note: this series concerns the sexual abuse of children on North Fox Island and the advocacy of adult sexual contact with children. Details are kept to what the record requires, and no material promoting that advocacy is linked.

Part I of this series ended with a word Gerald Richards wrote in 1977. On the network map he drew for investigators, beside Francis Shelden’s initials, Richards wrote “Author.” This installment follows that word, and the man Shelden trusted with his fortune, to Amsterdam.

The Man He Chose

Edward Brongersma was born in Haarlem in 1911 and trained as a lawyer, earning a doctorate in law. He was elected to the Dutch Senate for the Labor Party in 1946. In 1950 he was arrested and convicted under the Dutch law against sexual acts with minors, served eleven months in prison, and gave up his seat, according to the Dutch Parliamentary Documentation Center. He returned to the Senate in 1963, became chair of its justice committee in 1969, and held both posts until September 20, 1977.

In his 1982 deposition, Shelden described Brongersma to American lawyers as a senator, the Dutch equivalent, the chair of the justice committee, a lawyer, and a doctor of law. He did not explain how they met, and nothing in the three federal court opinions does either.

September 1977: London

In the first days of September 1977, Brongersma came to Britain to speak. He had accepted an invitation to address the first public meeting of the Paedophile Information Exchange, a group that, according to a contemporaneous British report by Iain Murray, claimed about 300 members and listed among its aims the abolition of the age of consent. The meeting was cancelled when staff at the London hotel chosen for it refused to host it, and protests had already stopped him from speaking at a conference in Nottingham. Murray reported that Brongersma left shocked and dismayed by what he called

The same report said Brongersma and the group’s chairman were to attend a British Psychological Society conference in Swansea, where university staff had said they would refuse them service. Brongersma left the Dutch Senate on September 20, 1977. On April 13, 1978, Shelden made him trustee.

Eighteen Months as Trustee

As Part I documented, Shelden signed the instrument removing Adam Starchild’s Virgin Islands trust company and appointing Brongersma in Amsterdam on April 13, 1978. Brongersma, of Tetterodeweg 1 in Overveen, signed his acceptance the same day, and a U.S. consul authenticated the Amsterdam notary who witnessed it. Starchild never turned the money over. Brongersma later swore that he never received any trust asset or any accounting from Starchild or anyone else.

On October 16, 1979, Shelden’s Michigan lawyer, L. Bennett Young, used his power as the trust’s protector to remove Brongersma and appoint himself and Detroit Bank and Trust. In November 1979, Shelden and Brongersma signed acknowledgments in Amsterdam before the same notary, and a second American consular officer verified the notary’s seal. Brongersma’s role in the money ended there. His role in Shelden’s life, if the publishing record is read the way it appears, did not.

The Publisher

Brongersma wrote about sexual relationships between men and boys for decades. In 1986 the first volume of his book Loving Boys appeared in English, published by Global Academic Publishers of Elmhurst, New York, with an introduction by the historian Vern L. Bullough, according to its library catalog record. A column in the Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland by Diny Schouten, published when that first volume came out, explained how it happened. Brongersma’s German publisher had asked him to update an earlier book, then ran into financial trouble, and because Global Academic Publishers, which the column described as based in Amsterdam and New York, showed interest, Brongersma wrote the book in English.

An imprint with an Amsterdam base and a New York address would have generated records in both countries: a U.S. ISBN prefix registration, U.S. copyright filings, New York business records, and Dutch business registrations. Those records have been requested.

The Pen Name

Published accounts from within the advocacy community that grew up around this literature credit an American expatriate in the Netherlands named Frank Torey with editing Pan, an Amsterdam magazine, and with founding the imprints that published Brongersma and others. A contributor note in a contemporaneous Amsterdam journal identifies Frank Torey as the former editor of Pan. None of those accounts mention Francis Shelden. When their biography of Torey is placed beside Shelden’s sworn biography, it matches.

The death date used to be the weak point in that comparison. Reference sources long gave Shelden’s death as July 9, 1996, more than a week after Torey’s reported death at the end of June. The Traverse City Record-Eagle’s 1996 report, compiled by Catherine Broad, says Shelden was found dead in his Amsterdam apartment on July 1 of natural causes. That brings the two deaths within days of each other. The remaining discrepancy is the arrival year, which published accounts of Torey give as 1979 and the federal courts place at 1977 or earlier.

What Richards Wrote in 1977

The newest piece of evidence is the oldest. In 1977, before Pan, before Brongersma’s appointment, and before anyone had written the name Frank Torey, Gerald Richards drew his network map for investigators. At its center sits “B.L.M.,” the contact network around a pedophile newsletter called Better Life Monthly, mailed from a Beverly Hills forwarding address. An arrow labeled “contributing writer” runs from it to a node marked “F.D.S.,” described as “Author” and “Investor,” with branches to Shelden’s homes, his geology, his Wayne State teaching, his Big Brothers work in Ann Arbor, and his seat on the Cranbrook Institute board. Another branch runs to a California publisher.

The Traverse City Record-Eagle reported the same thing that April: Richards had named Shelden to state police as a staff writer of the publication. Richards also described an organization called Better Life in his May 1977 testimony to a U.S. Senate subcommittee. In 1977 the man who knew the network best was already describing Shelden as a writer for its publications.

The Records I Am Requesting

Part III follows the money: roughly two million dollars in stock, the man who moved it through Hong Kong and New York, and what became of North Fox Island.