With his novel Lord of the Rings, writer and philologist John Ronald Reuel Tolkien created one of the most important works of fantasy literature. His film biography "Tolkien" will soon be released in the cinemas - an opportunity for various British media to dedicate themselves to the dark side of the writer's family history.
For: Even 45 years after the death of the author, there are always new details on alleged acts of abuse, which should have occurred in the environment of the Tolkiens.
JRR Tolkien had four children. His first-born son, John Francis Reuel, a priest of the Catholic Church, repeatedly had to defend himself against allegations of sexual abuse of minors. The first reports were received in the early nineties with the British police.
Among other things, a former ministry official said he had been raped several times by John Tolkien at the age of eleven. The clergyman had always denied the allegations, in the subsequent investigation, the deeds could not be detected.
The Independent Child Misuse Commission (IICSA) in the UK has collected reports of alleged victims accusing Tolkien of sexually abusing her during his tenure in Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent.
As the British Guardian reports, it has now become known that the writer's son was allegedly abused as a child - allegedly by friends of his famous father. The attacks are said to have occurred in the 1920s when JRR Tolkien held a chair in Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford.
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Writer and philosopher Tolkien
In an audio recording of a conversation between Tolkien and one of his alleged victims, the Observer says: "As a boy, I was constantly surrounded by my father and colleagues, and his colleagues were almost without exception academics, and you know 'Some of you were pretty weird guys.'
Often the guests would have stayed in the house. "I often woke up in the morning and discovered someone who had shared the bed with me," said the voice on the tape. At night, things would have happened. "I knew that. If you wake up without pajamas, even though you had one at bedtime, you're wondering, right?"
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House of the Tolkien family on Northmoor Road in Oxford
A suspected abuse victim from Birmingham is said to have started the conversation with the priest in June 1994, last year it was handed over to the independent investigative commission IICSA. According to the data, John Tolkien allegedly abused the then minor in 1956 twice. The alleged victim had made in 2001 with the police information, but then decided against an ad, writes the "Guardian".
John Tolkien died in 2003 at the age of 85 years, his alleged victim in 2018. The recording was then in the possession of the bereaved.
Despite the unexplained allegations in the room, the interest in the father's literary heritage remains unbroken. Amazon Prime plans to launch a series based on Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" in 2021. A record budget of allegedly a billion dollars is to be made available for it, only the rights to the books are said to have cost more than 220 million euros.
While the "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and the "Hobbit" films by director Peter Jackson were filmed in New Zealand, Amazon in Scotland has identified suitable locations. Not much is known about the content and the characters in the center of the series, nor has the number of planned seasons been mentioned.
The successful author JRR Tolkien died on 2 September 1973 at the age of 81 years after a short illness. His eldest son John read the mass for the funeral.