Joop Wilhelmus

Johannes Cornelis Christiaan "Joop" Wilhelmus (7 January 1943 – 9 September 1994 ) was a Dutch pornographer and entrepreneur, known for co-founding and publishing pornographic magazine Chick, founding and publishing child pornography magazine Lolita.

Personal life Wilhelmus received an upbringing based on radical left principles. He was a teacher and started his career by publishing Provo-like journals. Together with Peter Johannes Muller (of Candy magazine), Wilhelmus broke the taboo of sexuality in the Netherlands. Wilhelmus also aggressively attacked women's shelters for abused women, and published the confidential addresses of these shelters. Wilhelmus started sex shops and a 'stimulus society' in a cellar in Utrecht that allowed couples to engage in partner swapping. Wilhelmus' wife shared his philosophy regarding adult and child sexuality. was an explicit sex journal that started in 1968. Chick was founded by Wilhelmus, its editor-in-chief, and Jan Wenderhold, its sales manager. In 1970, the publication of Chick resulted in the Dutch "Chick-arrest" by the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, which in turn led to the new Dutch moral law of 1971 that no longer criminally sanctioned pornography. After a conflict between founders Wilhelmus and Wenderhold, two versions of Chick co-existed, Chick/Dordrecht and Chick/Amsterdam, Lolita was first published circa 1970. Besides pornography it also featured a contact service for its readers through classified ads. and Lex van Naerssen of Utrecht University invited Wilhelmus as a visiting scholar, which led to parliamentary questions in the Dutch House of Representatives. In June 1975, Wilhelmus partook in a TV broadcast of the NCRV-program Hier en Nu, where he explained how normal sex with children was to him. The magazine reached issue 55 in 1984, and was eventually closed down by Dutch authorities in 1987, Lolita became an almost universal brand name for child pornography.

Later years and death Wilhelmus became a millionaire, but as "one of the most successful" and "one of the most notorious" In 1992, Wilhelmus was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for having sex with his then twelve-year-old daughter. Wilhelmus claimed to be innocent, and his oldest daughter started a petition to free her father and asked a doctor to examine the daughter who was supposedly abused. This doctor issued a medical certificate that stated the daughter could not have had sexual intercourse and that her hymen was intact. Two years later, Wilhelmus was released early because of good behavior. The night after his release, Wilhelmus drowned in the water of the Voorstraathaven in downtown Dordrecht. According to the police, his death was neither suicide nor murder, but Wilhelmus was drunk and his death an accident.