Famous D.C. child sex offender profiting on book for new generation of kids

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of  the “Puff, the Magic Dragon” song, Barnes & Noble and Sterling Publishing are pushing the book to new generations of children. (Photo Scott McCabe)

By Scott McCabe

Prominently displayed in the children’s section of the largest bookstore in downtown Washington is a book co-written by a famous singer once convicted of molesting a young girl just a few blocks away.

The book is Puff, the Magic Dragon, and the lead author is Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary, the legendary folk group whose 1963 recording of “Puff, the Magic Dragon” has become a pop music classic. Part of the song’s allure, Yarrow has said, is that it’s “about the innocence of childhood loss.”

To help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the song, Barnes & Noble and Sterling Publishing are pushing the 6-year-old book to a new generation of children.

Peter Yarrow

The man who committed the felony sex crime? Yarrow, who pleaded guilty in 1970 to felony charge of taking “immoral liberties” with a 14-year-old in Washington. He had just recently won a Grammy for Best Recording for Children with the album “Peter Paul and Mommy.”

At his plea hearing, Yarrow, admitted to being nude as he let two sisters, ages 17 and 14, into his room at the Shoreham Hotel in Woodley Park. He was 31 at the time.

“Put your books on the shelf,” he told his guests, documents said.

Yarrow then made sexual advances on the younger teen, which she at first resisted, court records said. Yarrow kept persisting until the 14-year-old masturbated him while her sister looked on.

Yarrow, who married a niece of then-Sen. Eugene McCarthy, (D-Minn.), in the year between his arrest and conviction, was sentenced to three years in prison, of which he served three months at the D.C. jail.

After his arrest, the Washington family filed a lawsuit against Yarrow, accusing the singer of “seduction, assault and battery, and enticing and harboring” the girls over a three year period, from 1966 to 1969. The suit alleges that Yarrow had been with the older girl, the president of his fan club, several times, and with the 14-year-old once before. The results of the decades old lawsuit were immediately unclear.

Yarrow was pardoned by President Carter on his closing days of office in 1981. He has since rarely spoken publicly about the conviction, but in a 2006 interview with a Baltimore publication, Yarrow seemed to blame it on the 1960s and the girls.

“Puff, the Magic Dragon,” sits with classics like “Where the Wild Things Are.”

“In that time, it was common practice, unfortunately –– the whole groupie thing,” Yarrow is quoted as saying.

In 2007, Yarrow, Lenny Lipton, who co-wrote the lyrics to the song, and illustrator Eric Puybarett turned “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” into a colorful book for children. It contains a CD with more diddies aimed at young children.

The book has become a success, and Yarrow has profited handsomely, selling more than 1 million copies.

At the downtown Barnes & Nobe, “Puff,” has prime placement among classics Where the Wild Things Are, Fancy Nancy and Knuffle Bunny.

Reading the book, it differs slightly from the song’s sad ending in which Puff ‘slips into his cave’ while little Jackie Paper grows up and puts his childhood behind him. But the book promises a happier ending. In the last illustration, a young girl is introduced to Puff by an older Jackie Paper.