The Man They Called a Monster
<< Criminologist Professor Paul Wilson accused of sex abuse >>
Robyn Wuth
Gold Coast Bulletin
November 22, 2012
ONE of Australia's chief crime sleuths Professor Paul Wilson has been accused of sexually abusing two young girls 38 years ago.
The alleged victims claimed the renowned criminologist inappropriately touched them at his Brisbane home in 1974 when he was aged 33 and they were friends of his daughter, The Gold Coast Bulletin reports.
One of the girls, now aged in her 40s, reported the abuse last year and a subsequent police investigation uncovered the second alleged victim.
Both women have provided police with detailed statements.
Professor Wilson, 71, who has been living in Singapore, arrived back in Brisbane yesterday, declaring he would fight the allegations that threaten to destroy his career as one of the country's most respected criminology academics and revered authors.
During a police raid on Professor Wilson's Gold Coast home in October last year, a number of photographs belonging to the ex-head of Bond University school of criminology were seized by detectives.
Leading criminal lawyer Bill Potts said yesterday his client would "fight the allegations" which allege Professor Wilson was working at the University of Queensland when he allegedly assaulted the two girls at his home around the time of the 1974 Queensland floods.
Although detectives are yet to interview him, charges could be laid as early as next week.
Bond University vice-chancellor Tim Brailsford said Professor Wilson left the institution in June 2011.
"The university was unaware of the allegations and this is a matter for Professor Wilson and the authorities," Professor Brailsford said.
Professor Wilson is still featured on the Bond University website, although several of his key papers relating to abuse have been removed.
In 2003 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to education, particularly as a writer and lecturer in the field of criminology. In 2008, he was nominated for National Lecturer of the Year.
He has co-authored or authored 30 books and hundreds of articles or reports mainly in the areas of miscarriages of justice, violence and violence prevention and, most recently, mass crimes of atrocity.
As well as being one of Australia's foremost criminologists who has campaigned against the "fervour" surrounding child abuse, he has spent a lot of time during his career exploring the nature of evil - whether people can be inherently evil or whether they just commit evil acts.
"An evil act is where someone applies considerable violence to deliberately hurt another human being and enjoys doing that and he or she does that for ideological or personal or religious reasons," he says.
Many of his works touch on child sex abuse. In his book Life Of Crime, Professor Wilson said that in the "sizeable majority of incidents" adolescents were sexually provocative.
"My findings were remarkably similar to studies in California and Scandinavia which suggest child victims of adult sex offenders are generally willing or active participants, and that they not infrequently initiate the sexual relationship," he wrote.
The undeclared war on women
Margot Saville
10 Oct 2014
The entries for this year's Ernie awards for sexist remarks were the worst ever...
The judicial Silver Ernie went to criminologist Professor Paul Wilson who said that "my findings were remarkably similar to studies in California and Scandinavia which suggest child victims of adult sex offenders are generally willing or active participants, and that they not infrequently initiate the sexual relationship."
Queensland criminologist Paul Wilson appears in Brisbane court on indecent dealing charges
Andree Withey
24 Mar 2014
Queensland criminologist Paul Wilson has appeared in Brisbane's Magistrates Court today for a two-day committal hearing on indecent dealing charges.
Wilson is the former head of criminology at Bond University on the Gold Coast.
He faces six charges of indecent treatment of girls under 17 years over incidents that allegedly occurred 40 years ago.
Magistrate John Costello heard that four witnesses would give evidence during the committal hearing, which is expected to take two days.
There are 54 witness statements.
Wilson's lawyer, Bill Potts, told the court there was a change in the recollections of witnesses since the matter was first investigated three years ago.
The matter has been adjourned for the magistrate to read the statements.
A number of diaries have also been handed to the court.
Detective denies campaign against academic
AAP
1 May 2014
A LEAD investigator in the indecent dealing case against Queensland criminologist Paul Wilson has denied accusations he had a campaign against the academic.
Wilson, the former head of criminology at the Gold Coast's Bond University, returned to court in Brisbane on Thursday for the third day of a committal hearing.
The 73-year-old faces six charges of indecently dealing with two girls under 17 in 1973 and 1976.
The former lead investigator on the case was cross examined by Wilson's lawyer Bill Potts on Thursday.
Detective Sergeant Charles Heron confirmed the first complaint against Wilson was made in April 2011.
A second woman later made a complaint after she was contacted by Det Sgt Heron.
Both women had modified their statements several times since first making them, the Brisbane Magistrates Court heard.
One changed a statement saying Wilson had touched her shoulder to say he'd touched her breast.
Defence counsel Bill Potts suggested the women made the changes after encouragement from the detective, whom Mr Potts accused of becoming personally involved.
The lawyer read from emails Det Sgt Heron sent to one woman calling both women "most excellent" witnesses who'd told their stories "very well".
In another email Det Sgt Heron said all police involved in the case had "not the slightest doubt" the women were abused by Wilson and there was a "good likelihood" he'd be found guilty.
"This had become some kind of campaign for you hadn't it?" Mr Potts asked the witness during heated cross examination.
Det Sgt Heron, who was removed from the investigation after 10 months, said he didn't see anything wrong with the emails and part of his job was to support witnesses.
Magistrate John Costello adjourned the court until May 16, when he's due to rule on whether there's enough evidence to commit Wilson to trial.
Criminologist Paul Wilson to face trial
Andree Withey
16 May 2014
Queensland criminologist Paul Wilson has been ordered to stand trial over allegations he indecently treated two girls in the 1970s.
The former head of criminology at the Gold Coast's Bond University was on Friday committed to stand trial on six charges of indecent treatment of girls under 17.
After three days of witness testimony Brisbane Magistrate John Costello ruled there was enough evidence to commit the 73-year-old to trial.
Wilson pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The trial is expected to take place in the District Court in Brisbane at a date to be set.
Queensland criminologist Paul Wilson found guilty on child sex charges
Andrew Kos
23 November 2016
High-profile Queensland criminologist Paul Wilson has been found guilty on four child sex charges dating back to the 1970s.
The 75-year-old was convicted on four counts of indecent treatment of a child under the age of 12.
He had been accused of playing sex games with a young girl at his Brisbane home.
Wilson had pleaded not guilty.
A Brisbane District Court jury deliberated for less than half a day before returning with the guilty verdict.
Wilson will be sentenced tomorrow.
Wilson 'played sex games'
During the eight-day trial, the court heard how on one occasion in the 1970s Wilson lured a girl into his bedroom and asked her to stroke a cat he was holding in front of his exposed genitals.
He also played a blindfolded game of hide and seek with the same girl, before sexually assaulting her, the court heard.
When questioned about this by prosecutor Philip McCarthy, Wilson responded: "I deny that utterly, utterly."
"I never played hide and seek with any children," Wilson also told the court, adding: "That is absolute fantasy, it never occurred."
Queensland criminologist Paul Wilson jailed over sex abuse
Rachael Burnett
24 November 2016
A Queensland criminologist has been jailed for brazen and persistent sexual abuse of a young girl in the 1970s.
Paul Wilson, 75, first assaulted the victim when she was aged eight at his Brisbane home in Indooroopilly and only stopped when she moved away from the area.
The now-retired former academic and high-profile criminologist played blindfolded games of hide-and-seek with her and forced her to take her clothes off when he caught her.
Some of the abuse was carried out while other children and an adult were in the house.
In one incident, he lay naked on his bed with a cat covering his genitals before removing it and forcing the girl to stroke his penis.
He also digitally penetrated her and assaulted her in his bedroom, telling her "Percy is coming to play", which was a nickname for his genitals.
She was repeatedly forced to dance naked for Wilson while he touched himself and he also made her touch another girl for his own sexual gratification.
In another incident, he groped the girl while she was in the family's swimming pool, putting his hands under her bikini bottoms.
Judge Julie Dick sentenced Wilson to 18 months' imprisonment suspended after six months.
Judge Dick said the offending was persistent, brazen and involved the corruption of a child "of tender years".
"This was a child, somebody else's child in the neighbourhood who was visiting," she said.
"You being an older man had some authority and power over her.
"She has suffered this over a long number of years and the trial itself was traumatic for her."
Judge Dick accepted the defendant had led an "admirable life" but added: "No one knows what happens behind closed doors."
Wilson was convicted after a retrial at Brisbane District Court of four counts of indecent treatment of a child between 1973 and 1976.
Prosecutor Phil McCarthy described him as brazen and manipulative and said he had used his position of standing in the community to corrupt the young girl.
The abuse continues to have a significant effect on the victim, who was "very young and sexually naive" at the time, he said.
Defence barrister Peter Davis, QC, said Wilson, awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for his contribution to education, had lived a "full, successful, busy and conventional life" as a university professor.
He has suffered a "very public fall from grace", he added.
The descent into darkness for former top Gold Coast academic Paul Wilson
Paul Weston
25 November 2016
FORMER Gold Coast criminologist Paul Wilson had thoughts of killing himself after police charged him with the sexual abuse of a young girl and his life became a celebrity trial.
“He was very suicidal early in the process, about three years ago,” a close friend told the Gold Coast Bulletin.
But Wilson chose to fight, surviving two aborted trials, a hung jury and until late this week was confident of walking away from the Brisbane District Court.
The 75-year-old retired academic and author had been accused of sexually abusing two girls at his Indooroopilly home in 1974 around the time of the Brisbane floods.
At the time, Wilson was the University of Queensland’s most recognisable academic, not closeted liked many of his colleagues, building up strong outside connections with political powerbrokers like Police Commissioner Terry Lewis.
Smart and charismatic, always engaging in conversation, he was attractive to women.
Judge Julie Dick, in her sentencing remarks this week, reflected on “one part of his life” which was commendable. He had been awarded the Medal of Order of Australia for services for education.
But she said “nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors”, adding that it was likely after more than 40 years “you have rehabilitated” because he had not reoffended.
Paul Wilson maintains he is innocent. His close academic friends believe him.
Their past writings point to a flawed justice process involving “tainted memory” of adults bringing forward evidence of child abuse after several decades.
The troubles for Wilson took off after he left Bond University in June 2011. Police in a raid four months later at his Coast home seized photographs.
He returned from Singapore to Brisbane in November 2012 vowing to “fight the allegations” as speculation surfaced that police would charge him with sexual offences.
Wilson had spoken to Professor Ian Coyle, having contributed three years earlier to their journal article “Out of the mouths of babes” which argued why expert evidence could rebut false sexual abuse allegations.
In their journal article, the central argument was the ultimate issue of guilt or innocence in child abuse cases being reduced to a “credibility contest” between the accused and the victim.
Both Professor Coyle and Wilson highlighted the “sloppy investigative procedures” of officers investigating child sexual abuse which could result in a miscarriage of justice.
Jurors would not have sufficient background specialist knowledge to enable them to work out whether the victim was lying, had a confused memory or picked up information after the event, they argued.
Professor Coyle put his friendships with the Wilsons at a distance given he wanted to explain all of this at the trial. “This would have raised the issue of false contaminated memory to centre stage,” he said.
But he was not called to give evidence. Meanwhile, after the first court appearances, television news footage prompted another complainant to come forward.
This was an independent witness, who had not spoken to the first complainant, and the Crown and subsequently the jury viewed that much of her evidence substantially corroborated the original complaint.
The Crown told the jury that Wilson met his alleged victim while she played with his daughter before inviting her to his bedroom to play hide-and-seek games and encouraging her to take off her clothes.
He lay naked on his bed with a cat covering his genitalia before removing it and stroking his penis. He digitally penetrated her, telling her “Percy is coming to play”, a nickname for his penis.
Wilson also groped her in the family’s swimming pool, forced her to dance naked while he touched himself — some of this while other children and adults were at the home.
The criminologist’s own thoughts on paedophiles is documented in the 1981 book The Man They Called a Monster, about Clarence Osborne, a Brisbane court stenographer who committed suicide in 1979 and allegedly kept records of offences against some 2500 victims.
Wilson wrote that the common view that the child was traumatised and sexually seriously damaged was a myth.
“Most paedophiles are not into “(expletive) little kids”, and, as we have seen time and time again sexual relationships are rarely forced,” he wrote.
“Indeed a substantial number of relationships are initiated by the child, continued by the child, and often, ended by the child or adolescent.”
Rather than being “dirty old men”, many paedophiles were close relatives or friends of the parent of the child and “go to considerable lengths to look after and protect the child”.
Wilson has a rich understanding of the crime around him at the Brisbane Correctional Centre. After an evaluation he should be considered a low risk and open prisoner. His lawyer Bill Potts confirmed an appeal was being considered.
“We are closely considering the transcript, in particular the sentence and sentencing remarks compared to other cases,” he said. “A decision will be made in coming weeks.”
Friends remain divided on how the retired criminologist, who has several health problems, will survive in prison.
“He will be frankly suicidal,” Professor Coyle said. “This has been more than destructive for him and his wife. We’ve had two aborted trials, a hung jury, then the Crown has continued on. I think in Queensland legal history this is unheard of.”
Others contend that Wilson is in shock but still strongly maintaining his innocence. They see his resilience. He has told them “I will survive this”.
Defended a monster then became one
Criminologist Paul Wilson wrote controversial book on pedophile Howard-Osborne and ‘man-boy love’
Matt Condon
25 November 2016
ABOUT 10.30am on Thursday, on level eight of the Queen Elizabeth II Courts of Law building in George St in Brisbane’s CBD, two meetings were being simultaneously held.
At the empty far end of the floor, silhouetted against the large window panes of the courthouse, was Paul Richard Wilson, 75, former criminologist and academic, his wife Robyn Lincoln, and Wilson’s lawyer, Peter Davis QC.
The day before, Wilson had been found guilty of four charges of indecent treatment of a child under the age of 12 in the mid-1970s. The court had heard that the offences occurred in Wilson’s then home at Indooroopilly in the city’s west. Wilson had pleaded not guilty.
He was due to be sentenced by Judge Julie Dick, SC, at 11am.
Meanwhile, in Interview Room 8.1 opposite District Court 28, where Wilson’s trial had played out, the old academic’s victim met with detectives, family and friends, a four-decade ordeal almost at an end.
Wilson, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and tie, took a seat in the centre of the glass-screened dock at 10.57am. His thinning hair was raggedly cut and of a mustard hue. He had deep lines running across his neck.
He sat impassive, his hands held in his lap. Periodically he slowly dropped his head, looking to his feet before snapping upright. On occasion he appeared to grind his teeth.
How did it come to this? Here was a man known not just to Queenslanders but the nation as a respected academic and criminologist. Wilson, who had for decades been famous in a field that did not ordinarily lend itself to celebrity. Now he had added another line to his CV – convicted pedophile.
As defence counsel Davis and prosecutor Philip McCarthy made submissions in relation to Wilson’s anticipated punishment, and whether a custodial sentence was appropriate – Davis contended that the defence relied “heavily” on Wilson’s good character and his “runs on the board” – Wilson remained unmoved.
He now found himself entangled in a system that he had dissected, commented upon, criticised, applauded and written book-length treatises on – the Australian criminal justice system.
But he’d written about a lot more. His subject matter ranged from rape, mental disorder and madness, to child killers and street kids. And, of course, pedophiles, whose ranks he has now formally joined. With the submissions over, Dick instructed Wilson to stand. It was 11.54am.
Dick spoke of Wilson’s victim, who had suffered feelings of guilt and said: “I do accept that she has suffered this over a large number of years.”
The trial had been “traumatic” for the victim. Dick accepted that Wilson had led a successful and busy life and that he had been “obviously held in high regard”. But the luminaries that had provided him with character references – 16 in all – did not always know what went on behind closed doors in a person’s life.
Dick duly sentenced Wilson to 18 months’ imprisonment, to be suspended after six months.
The packed court then emptied out and Wilson was left standing in the dock – his legal team to the right of him, two Corrective Services officers to the left. He appeared confused as to what to do next.
Eventually stepping out of the dock, he was briefly hugged by his wife and taken away.
For decades in Australia, there wasn’t a crime, major or minor, social issue or national debate on topics as wideranging as drugs, murder statistics, police performance, pornography or divorce that didn’t, at some point, feature the opinions of Paul Wilson.
In the press, he was dubbed over time a “pop” criminologist, or “trendy”. One acerbic media critic once wrote that Wilson “always had so much to say with so little substance … sought out, unaccountably, whenever a journalist in any medium wanted something gibbered about crime”.
His academic trajectory was stellar. Born in New Zealand, he accumulated degrees both there and in Australia, securing a position as a lecturer in sociology at the University of Queensland in 1967.
It was there he first met the future (and later disgraced) Queensland police commissioner Terry Lewis, and a friendship was struck.
Wilson wasted no time in garnering attention in his adopted city. He and a fellow academic published the results of a survey into police forces in Australia and New Zealand. In the Queensland section, the survey found that 65 per cent of people interviewed believed the state force was corrupt. Almost half were convinced police “verballed” or concocted false statements and twisted facts against defendants.
Then police commissioner, the corrupt Frank Bischof, described the findings as “utter tripe” and said the reputation of the Queensland force was “on a very high plane”.
By the early 1970s, Wilson was an established commentator and civil libertarian, known too for his sandy hair and his red sports car. He was part of an academic experiment to test if transcendental meditation might have a favourable impact on crime rates. The experiments were to be conducted, of all places, in the tough mining town of Mount Isa in far northwestern Queensland.
It was in the mid-1970s – not long after the offences occurred at Indooroopilly – that Wilson claimed he had a peculiar encounter in his office at the University of Queensland. By his own account, he was paid a visit by a top government shorthand expert, Clarence Howard-Osborne.
Howard-Osborne, in his late 50s, had brought with him documents and a manuscript about his life and philosophies.
Wilson would learn that Howard-Osborne had had relationships with more than 2500 boys over a 20-year period and had carefully documented these encounters.
Howard-Osborne had a filing cabinet filled with index cards detailing the boys’ physical attributes, as well as thousands of photographs of naked children he’d taken himself, and more than 8km of secret recordings.
“(Howard-)Osborne said that he had come to see me because of my reputation as a civil libertarian and because he was sure I would respect his rights to privacy,” Wilson later wrote.
Howard-Osborne claimed he was afraid he was about to be arrested.
A pornographic film of men having sex that he had bought by mail order from Denmark had been seized by Australian Customs.
His primary worry, however, was that police might confiscate his “research” – the unprecedented and lurid documentation of his sexual activities with children that he had amassed over the years.
“The significance of all this material was not apparent to (Howard-)Osborne nor indeed to me,” Wilson later wrote.
“He was certainly close to his material and several times called it his ‘life work’ and continually worried about the Commonwealth Police taking it away from him and posterity.”
Wilson claimed he met Howard-Osborne over the next few months.
“I got the strong impression he felt the end was near and he didn’t want this hugely important information to be lost to posterity,” Wilson said. “I think in his own mind he didn’t think it was a crime even though it was clearly a crime.
“He didn’t seem so much afraid of the police. He seemed more afraid about losing what he thought was really important research. I didn’t see many photos. He showed me some photos when he was in my office but that was the only time I saw any photos.”
By the time of their meetings, some senior police and members of the legal fraternity were fully aware of Howard-Osborne’s behaviour. Some had known for years.
In late 1979, Howard-Osborne had by chance come to the attention of police.
Detectives confiscated some of his paperwork from his home in Eyre St, Mount Gravatt, and brought him into headquarters for an interview.
That night, Howard-Osborne was permitted to return home – police were in a quandary over what to actually charge him with – and he gassed himself in his car.
In the end, Wilson wrote The Man They Called a Monster, a controversial book on Howard-Osborne and man-boy love, published in 1981, two years after Howard-Osborne’s death. The book was both a look at Howard-Osborne’s life and a discussion of his more than two-decade career as a pedophile.
Wilson wrote that however one might view Howard-Osborne, he decided to look at the issue of man-boy love with a dispassionate eye, with the rigours of an academic.
“Many people, after reading the extracts from (Howard-) Osborne’s manuscript given in this book, will consider that this man was nothing more or less than a sexual pervert obsessed with the physical attributes of young males,” Wilson wrote in Monster.
“To the young males, however, he was seen quite differently, being at various times a social support, a source for finding one’s identity, and a person who offered affection in an affectionless world.”
Wilson attacked the media reports of Howard-Osborne’s activities after his death, dubbing the diminutive former stenographer a “monster” who preyed on children. Wilson would have none of it.
“Clarence (Howard-) Osborne and his fellow pedophiles are just part of a long tradition of folk devils created by a vengeful society and a sensationalist press,” he concluded.
Wilson pointed out that it was “unjustifiable” to label all relationships between adults and children of a sexual nature as exploitative. “Indeed, the evidence strongly suggests that the majority of pedophiles go to considerable lengths to look after and protect the child,” the book said.
Wilson’s thesis went even further. He promoted a bill of rights for children.
He proposed a number of rights dealing with justice, freedom from physical punishment and the right to receive an equitable education.
The seventh and final right addressed sexual freedom.
“If one agrees with the other six rights that I have stated then it is only logical that children should have the right to conduct their sexual lives with no more restrictions than adults do,” declared Wilson in the book. “A prior condition to this right though is that children must be provided with all information about sex and related matters so that they are in a position to make reasonable choices concerning their present and future sexual behaviour.”
He also had a firm idea in relation to the age of consent.
“I would abolish any age of consent in sexual relations on the basis that in my opinion it is both unjust and unworkable, and I would also repeal all legislation relating to the age of consent in the field of sexuality specifically,” wrote Wilson. “Instead, offences would be considered on the basis of the use of violence, force, fraud or pressure rather than an arbitrary age limitation.”
Wilson also wrote about a British pedophile outfit called the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). At the time of writing his book, several members of PIE were being prosecuted for various crimes throughout Britain and Europe. Wilson speculated that the charges against PIE were not because crimes had been committed, but because “the very existence of such an organisation … offended both the government’s and the police’s sense of morality”.
Clarence Howard-Osborne
As for Howard-Osborne, he implied that this insignificant public servant, full of “pathos”, was misunderstood.
“The picture of Clarence Osborne that emerges is of a middle-aged man devoting his life to his card index containing, as it did, random observations of young boys’ physiques, filling his house with over 8km of taped conversations and spending a lot of time rationalising out his activities by saying that he was engaging in a ‘science’,” Wilson declared in Monster.
“These activities are hallmarks of high tragedy rather than high drama. If monsters are made out of these ingredients, then we as a society have little to fear.”
Wilson described Howard-Osborne’s pedophilic activities as a “hobby”.
In the mid to late 1980s, years after the publication of The Man They Called a Monster, PIE was exposed in the world press as part of a massive international pedophile ring, its tentacles reaching into Westminster.
And Clarence Howard-Osborne, the kindly father figure to affection-starved Brisbane boys, was part of that network.
According to a retired Queensland police officer who viewed Howard-Osborne’s files in the early 1980s, there was evidence that Howard-Osborne was a contact point for senior PIE figures and a leading pedophile called John Stamford in Amsterdam.
Also in the files were innumerable references to a pedophiles involved in local rings.
“Within those boxes were all these index cards … I recognised names … it was quite obvious there were members of the judiciary, the legal fraternity, there were politicians, it was the top end … there were no bloody truck drivers and brick layers amongst them,” the officer, who chose to remain anonymous, told The Courier-Mail.
“I remember making an off-the-cuff comment to one bloke there that if this ever became public the whole of George Street would just slide into the river, you know.
“It would just bring the whole government undone. It was all there.”
Howard-Osbourne’s records have never been made public and their whereabouts today is unknown.
A Fulbright Scholar, Wilson would go on to hold distinguished academic posts – in the early 2000s he was Dean of Humanities at Bond University on the Gold Coast, as well as that institution’s Chair of Criminology – and he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2003.
Wilson, in his own memoir, A Life of Crime, published in 1990, recalled the curious case of Charles Howard-Osborne, arguably one of the world’s most notorious pedophiles, and The Man They Called a Monster.
He wrote: “I have absolutely no regrets about writing the book – even if it has created and will probably continue to create some uncomfortable moments for me.”
Paedophile criminologist still holds an Order of Australia medal - despite being convicted of multiple attacks on a young girl
Stephen Johnson
13 December 2016
The child protection advocate who brought down a governor-general now wants a high-profile criminologist stripped of his Order of Australia medal for playing sick games with young girls.
Retired Queensland criminology professor Paul Wilson was found guilty in November of molesting a girl during the 1970s.
Child protection advocate Hetty Johnston says that guilty verdict from a Brisbane District Court jury should see him stripped of his Order of Australia medal.
'You need to be a proper character to have it and he's clearly not,' she told Daily Mail Australia on Wednesday.
'It's really, really important for the integrity of the whole award system.
'They do take them away from recipients if they find them to be unworthy so I'm hoping that happens sooner rather than later.'
A jury took three hours in November to reach a guilty verdict on four counts of indecently dealing with a child, between 1973 and 1976, leading him to be jailed for 18 months suspended after serving six months behind bars.
During his trial, a victim told jurors how he tapped his penis against her and played a blindfolded game of hide and seek with her and another girl.
His victim was just eight years old when the offending began in Brisbane.
Professor Wilson, the former chair of criminology at Bond University on Queensland's Gold Coast, was awarded his Australia Day honour in 2003.
That was also the year Ms Johnston, the founder of Bravehearts, successfully campaigned for then governor-general Peter Hollingworth to resign over his handling of child sexual abuse complaints when he was Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane.
Now, she wants incumbent Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove to terminate Professor Wilson's honour, pointing out how child molesters often had high profiles.
'People who harm children are very, very good as putting themselves forward as an upstanding community member,' Ms Johnston said.
'Quite often, they do lots of volunteer work. Often that is a mask.
'They need to have that credibility, they need to have that esteem and they need all of those things to get access to children to win the trust of the adults who would otherwise protect those children.'
Ms Johnston was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in 2014 for her work in child welfare and protection.
'It's the thing I'm most proud of,' she said.
The governor-general can cancel an honour if a recipient has been convicted of a criminal offence.
The Governor-General's office said it would consider any request for Professor Wilson's honour to be revoked.
'The council considers all matters brought to their attention by the Honours Secretariat,' a spokesman told the ABC.
'The secretariat monitors the media and other resources, and may also receive information from members of the public.'
Forty-three awards have been cancelled or terminated since the start of the honours system in 1975, the ABC said.
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