"Paedophiles can
boldly and courageously affirm what they choose ... I am also a theologian and
as a theologian, I believe it is God's will that there be closeness and
intimacy, unity of flesh, between people ... paedophiles can make the assertion
that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness, they
can say, 'I believe this is in fact part of God's will.'"
Ralph Underwager,
'expert' witness for the defense in scores of child abuse cases and former vocal
member of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, in an interview in Paidika
(a pro-pedophilia publication), conducted in June 1991
To the vast majority of
Americans, the name Marc Dutroux doesn't mean much. Drop that name in Belgium
though and you're likely to elicit some very visceral reactions. Dutroux -
convicted along with his wife in 1989 for the rape and violent abuse of five
young girls, the youngest of whom was just eleven - now stands accused of being
a key player in an international child prostitution and pornography ring whose
practices included kidnapping, rape, sadistic torture, and murder.
Dutroux was sentenced in 1989 to
thirteen years for his crimes, but was freed after having served just three.
Shortly after his release, young girls began to disappear in the vicinity of
some of his homes. Though technically unemployed and drawing welfare from the
state, Dutroux nevertheless owned seven houses and lived quite lavishly.
His rather lucrative income appears
to have been derived from trading in child sex-slaves, child prostitution, and
child pornography. Many of his houses appeared to stand vacant, though at least
some of them were in fact used as torture and imprisonment centers where
kidnapped girls were taken and held in underground dungeons.
Some of Dutroux's homes were used in
this way for several years following his early release, with a growing body of
evidence to indicate that fact to the police. True to form though, authorities
failed to act on the information, or acted on it in a way that showed either
complete incompetence (according to most press reports), or police complicity in
the operation (according to any sort of logic).
Police seem to have routinely ignored
tips that later proved to be accurate, including a report from Dutroux's own
mother that her son was holding girls prisoner in one of his houses. In
addition, key facts were withheld from investigators working on the
disappearances and lines of communication were unaccountably broken, inexcusably
hindering the investigation.
Police did search one of Dutroux's
homes on no less than three separate occasions over the course of the
investigation. On at least two of those occasions, two of the missing girls were
being held in heinous conditions imprisoned in a custom-built dungeon in the
basement. Nevertheless, the police searches came up empty, despite the fact that
the investigating officers reported “hearing children's voices on one
occasion,” according to the Guardian.
It was not until August of 1996, four
years after the disappearances began, that authorities raided Dutroux's home and
discovered the sound-proof dungeon/torture center. An informant had told police
of its existence a year before, and before that had told them of being offered
cash payments to kidnap girls; the police, as is their custom in such cases,
ignored the leads.
Incredibly, it was later reported by
the Guardian that police actually had in their possession a videotape of
the dungeon being constructed: “Belgian police could have saved the lives of
two children allegedly murdered by the paedophile Marc Dutroux if they had
watched a video seized from his home which showed him building their hidden
cell.” The tape had been seized in one of the earlier searches.
At the time of the final raid, two
young girls were found imprisoned in the dungeon, chained and starving. They
described to police being used as child prostitutes and in the production of
child pornography videos. More than 300 such videos were taken into custody by
the police. Dutroux was arrested, along with his wife (an elementary school
teacher), a lodger, a policeman, and a man the Guardian described as
“an associate with political connections.”
Just days later, the story got
grimmer as police dug up the bodies of two eight-year-old girls at another of
Dutroux's homes. It would later be learned that the girls had been kept in one
of Dutroux's dungeons for nine months after their abductions, during which time
they were repeatedly tortured and sexually assaulted, all captured on videotape.
The girls were then left to slowly starve to death.
Alongside of their decimated corpses
was the body of Bernard Weinstein, a former accomplice of Dutroux who had
occupied one of the houses for several years. Weinstein had been buried alive. A
few weeks later, two more girls were found buried under concrete at yet another
of the Dutroux properties.
As the body count mounted, the
outrage of the Belgian people grew. They demanded to know why this man, dubbed
the 'Belgian Beast,' had been released after having served such an absurdly
short sentence. And to know why, as evidence had continued to mount and girls
had continued to disappear, the police had chosen to do nothing. How many girls,
they demanded to know, had been killed as a result of this inaction?
Adding further fuel to the fire, as a
Los Angeles Times report revealed, was that: “a highly regarded
children's activist, Marie-France Botte, claims that the Justice Ministry is
sitting on a politically sensitive list of customers of pedophile videotapes.”
The same report noted that: “The affair has become further clouded by the
discovery of a motorcycle that reportedly matches the description of one used in
the 1991 assassination of prominent Belgian businessman and politician Andre
Cools. Michel Bourlet, the head prosecutor on the pedophile case, meanwhile, has
publicly declared that the investigation can be thoroughly pursued only without
political interference. Several years ago, Bourlet was removed from the highly
charged Cools case, which remains unsolved.”
A report in Time magazine
alluded to murky links between the Dutroux operation and organized crime
figures. Much later, Marc Verwilghen - the chief investigating magistrate on the
case - would bluntly state: “For me, the Dutroux affair is a question of
organised crime.” Also mentioned in the Time article was the use of
secret “underground tunnels,” not unlike those described by children a
decade earlier at the infamous McMartin Preschool.
Outrage continued to grow as more
arrests were made and evidence of high-level government and police complicity
continued to emerge. One of Dutroux's accomplices, businessman Jean-Michel
Nihoul, confessed to organizing an ‘orgy’ at a Belgian chateau that had been
attended by government officials, a former European Commissioner, and a number
of law enforcement officers.
In September, nine police officers
and fourteen others were detained and questioned about their possible complicity
in the crimes and/or their negligence in investigating the case. As the Los
Angeles Times noted in a very brief, two-sentence report, the detainments
“were the latest indication that police in the southern city of Charleroi may
have helped cover up the alleged crimes of Marc Dutroux.”
On October 15 came the straw that
broke the camel's back: Jean-Marc Connerotte, who had been serving as the
investigating judge on the case, was dismissed by the Belgian Supreme Court.
Connerotte was viewed by the people as something of a rarity: a public
official/law enforcement officer who actually appeared to be pursuing a
prosecution, rather than a cover-up. As the New York Times reported,
Connerotte “became a national hero in August after saving two children from a
secret dungeon kept by a convicted child rapist and ordering the inquiry that
led to the discovery of the bodies of four girls kidnapped by a child
pornography network.”
His removal from the case fanned the
smoldering flames of public outrage; the Times report noted that:
“Hundreds of thousands of people had petitioned the high court to retain the
judge.” With the families of Dutroux's victims calling for a general strike,
men and women all across the country walked away from their jobs in protest as
train operators shut down public transportation, bringing some cities to a
virtual standstill.
On October 20, 350,000 citizens of
the tiny nation took to the streets of Brussels dressed all in white, demanding
the reform of a system so corrupt that it would protect the abusers, rapists,
torturers, and killers of children. The political fallout from the case would
ultimately bring about the resignation of Belgium's State Police Chief, Interior
Minister, and Justice Minister – likely sacrificial lambs tossed to the
outraged masses to avoid what could easily have exploded into a full-scale
insurrection by the people, particularly after police ‘incompetence’ allowed
Dutroux to escape and remain at large for a brief time in April of 1998.
There were in fact calls from the
people for the entire coalition government to step down. Months later, an
opinion survey by Brussels’ Le Soir newspaper found that only
one-in-five Belgians still had confidence in the federal government and the
nation's justice system. As the Los Angeles Times reported in January of
1998, “the conviction remains stubbornly widespread that members of the upper
crust - government ministers, the Roman Catholic Church, the court of King
Albert II - belonged to child sex rings, or protected them.”
The lingering distrust of the people
was not alleviated by the fact that a parliamentary inquiry had, in April of
1997, identified thirty officials who had, as the Times tactfully put it,
“failed to uncover Dutroux's misdeeds.” Nearly a year later, none of them
had yet suffered any repercussions. Additionally, at least ten missing children
suspected of having fallen prey to Dutroux's operation have never been found.
In April of 1999, the Guardian
reported that: “the highly respected chairman of a parliamentary inquiry into
the case claims that his commission's findings were muzzled by political and
judicial leaders to prevent details emerging of complicity in the crimes … Mr.
Verwilghen claims that senior political and legal figures refused to cooperate
with the inquiry. He says magistrates and police were officially told to refuse
to answer certain questions, in what he describes as ‘a characteristic
smothering operation.’”
If the Marc Dutroux case were some
kind of aberration, it would still be a disturbing story for the level of
unspeakable corruption and depravity of the Belgian political and law
enforcement establishment of which it speaks. Far more disturbing is the fact
that it doesn't appear to be an isolated case at all.
As 1999 drew to a close, the nation
of Latvia was rocked by a child prostitution/child pornography scandal that
reached to the very top of the political power structure. The case first broke
in August, when police uncovered a massive operation involving as many as 2,000
severely abused children. When media reports began linking top Latvian officials
to the case, a special parliamentary commission was formed to investigate.
In February 2000, the chairman of the
commission delivered a report to Parliament linking the country's Prime
Minister, Justice Minister, director of the State Revenue Service, and a number
of army and law enforcement officers to the case. Efforts were immediately begun
to discredit the commission chairman, including allegations that he is tied to
the former KGB – a classic case of red-baiting, enabling the allegations to be
dismissed as ‘Communist’ propaganda.
The BBC reported in June of
1999 that two unnamed German men had “gone on trial, accused of running a
child pornography ring in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.” The pair,
along with at least eleven identified but unindicted accomplices, “made video
recordings of the gang sexually abusing children between the ages of three and
14 since 1993.”
A large but unspecified quantity of
“videos, photography, magazines and CD-ROMs containing child pornography were
confiscated.” Also noted was a possible connection to the Dutroux case:
“There have been cases of Slovak children being taken to Vienna to make
pornographic films. The Belgian paedophile Marc Dutroux … was a regular
visitor to one Slovak town.”
The BBC also filed a brief
report on a 1996 case that went almost completely unreported in the English
language press: “Mexican police broke up an international child pornography
ring based in the resort of Acapulco which they said had at least four thousand
clients in the United States,” (emphasis added). A UN envoy investigating the
case said that the “child pornography sometimes involved babies of less than
one month old.”
On September 29 of 2000, The Irish
Times reported that: “Eight people were arrested in Italy and three in
Russia, and police said 1,700 people were being investigated in Italy,” as yet
another pedophile network surfaced. The images traded by this ring were
“divided into several categories … The most gruesome, police said, was coded
‘Necros Pedo,’ in which children were raped and tortured to death.”
And so it is that we first confront
that most disturbing of topics – snuff films, which we all know don’t really
exist. As recently as February of 1999, the New York Post assured readers
that: “Snuff films are the stuff of urban legend … how did this legend get
started? No one knows.” The unfortunate truth though is that they do, as it
turns out, actually exist, and they likely have existed for as long as film has
existed, though they weren't always known by that name.
According to the Post: “The
term ‘snuff’ was actually coined during the Charles Manson case, when press
reports repeated a rumor that the Manson ‘family’ had filmed home movies of
the brutal slayings.” Other reports hold that the term was coined in 1976 by a
writer for the New York Times who was in need of a phrase to describe
reports of murders following sexual activity being captured on film.
Not long after that, as Carl Raschke
wrote: “The Texas House Select Committee on Child Pornography disclosed in the
late 1970s that investigators probing leads to organized crime in Houston,
Dallas, and other major cities found that ‘slave’ auctions for sixteen- and
seventeen-year-old boys were routinely held in Mexico. Some of the boys were
featured in brutal snuff or ‘slasher’ movies.”
Raschke also quotes from a study by
U.S. mental health professionals that claimed that a child from Mexico “can be
packaged, delivered, and sold deep within this country in a short time,” and
that many are purchased solely “for the purpose of killing.” In Enslaved,
Gordon Thomas reported that: “At the start of the year [1991] Britain's
Scotland Yard was continuing to investigate reports that up to twenty children
in London had been murdered last year in [snuff films] and the video tapes sold
on the Continent.”
An account of the Italian case
carried by the Guardian affirmed the existence of snuff films: “police
have discovered a massive international paedophile network selling violent
child-pornography videos to clients in Italy, the US and Germany …
(authorities are) trying to identify 5,000 people who are suspected of
attempting to purchase the videos, some of which appear to contain images of
children being tortured and murdered.”
The UK’s Independent, in a
follow-up published in November of 2000, also confirmed that the seized
materials did in fact include child snuff films: “Horrified investigators
gathered images of more than 2,000 children who were filmed while being abused,
raped, and … killed.” By that time, close to 1,500 people had been charged
in the case, but not - as the Guardian noted - “those in high places
who are believed to form a ‘paedophile lobby.’”
As in the Belgian and Latvian cases,
there were clear indications of high-level complicity and a strong belief among
the Italian people that the facts of the case were being covered up. And as with
the other cases, the magistrate heading up the inquiry “provoked a furore by
denouncing a ‘paedophile lobby’ supported by politicians which he said
openly obstructed the investigators and worked to prevent tougher sanctions for
the consumers of child pornography,” according to the Independent.
The New York Times reported in
March of 1997 that there is “growing public indignation in France and
elsewhere about the recurrent reports of kidnapping, rape or incest involving
the very young.” The same Times report noted that: “police across
France have detained more than 250 people and confiscated some 5,000
videocassettes” in conjunction with an investigation into a massive child
pornography ring. Those detained by police were described as “mainly married
professionals.” A dozen of them would soon turn up dead, allegedly suicide
victims.
Three years later, the BBC
filed a very brief report noting that a verdict was due “in the trial of more
than sixty people accused of possessing child pornography. One of the judges
hearing the case said examining the video evidence made him feel physically
sick.” In a familiar refrain, it was reported that: “the French courts have
been accused of attacking the easy targets -- porn consumers -- rather than
producers and distributors. And one children's rights group has alleged that
senior public figures were among those investigated -- but their cases were
dropped before coming to court.”
In 1998, another large-scale
international ring was discovered operating out of the Netherlands and Berlin,
Germany. The New York Times reported that investigators called the case
“nauseating,” in that “images of abuse of even babies and infants were
peddled via the Internet and other media.” Police discovered “voluminous
records of what appear to be clients and suppliers from countries including
Israel, Ukraine, Britain, Russia and the United States.”
The ring was first uncovered when a
key member was found dead in Italy. According to The Irish Times, he was
murdered by another member of the ring. His apartment in the Dutch town of
Zandvoort was found to contain “thousands of digital images stored on computer
disks,” as well as “hundreds of addresses of suspected suppliers and
clients,” according to the New York Times. The images shocked even
veteran sex-crimes investigators, one of whom stated that the seized evidence
“left [him] speechless … It looks like the perpetrators are not dealing with
human beings but with objects.”
In September 1998, another ring was
raided – what the BBC described as “a larger and more sinister
paedophile network called Wonderland.” The network was so named in honor of
Lewis Carroll’s revered children's book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Carroll was widely known to have a predilection for underage girls and boys, and
is now something of a patron saint of pedophiles around the globe.
A concerted effort has been made over
the decades to cover up Carroll’s pedophilic tendencies, though the truth is
evident even in the heavily whitewashed profiles of him that can be found in
modern encyclopedias. Microsoft's Encarta notes that: “Always a friend
of children, particularly little girls, Carroll wrote thousands of letters to
them,” and also that he “gained an additional measure of fame as an amateur
photographer. Most of his camera portraits were of children in various costumes
and poses, including nude studies.”
The Encyclopaedia Britannica
reports that Carroll’s photographic ‘hobby’ was abandoned in 1880, while
dismissing suggestions that “this sudden decision was reached because of an
impurity of motive for his nude studies.” Britannica also notes that
Carroll - who was raised in an environment where there were “few friends
outside the family,” and who was ordained a deacon in the Church of England on
the winter solstice of 1861 (an occult holiday) - generally lost interest in his
child ‘friends’ when they reached the age of twelve. Wonderland is also the name of
the quarterly publication of the Lewis Carroll Collector's Guild, which bills
itself as a “voluntary association of persons who believe nudist materials are
a constitutionally protected expression and whose collective interests include
pre-teen nudes.” As Gordon Thomas has noted: “In Wonderland the
‘delights’ of ‘transgenerational sex’ pepper the pages.” Such is the
legacy of the men whose literary works are peddled to our children … but here
I digress.
The San Jose Mercury News
reported that: “Police in … 22 states and 13 foreign countries conducted
coordinated raids … aimed at breaking up an Internet child-pornography ring
… The ring involves as many as 200 people around the world, who exchanged over
the Internet thousands of sexually explicit images of children as young as 18
months.” The Independent later reported that the ring “shared
pictures of children being abused -- in some cases live via web-cam broadcasts
over the internet.”
The raids included homes in
“Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway,
Portugal and Sweden,” according to the New York Times, which added
that: “Several dozen people were arrested, but officials said they expected
more than 100 to be charged.” The Independent later reported that 107
suspects were ultimately arrested. The Mercury News implied that this may
be only the tip of the iceberg: “The ring actually extends into 47
countries.”
The case was described by a British
official as “stomach-churning.” The Times reported that “Wonderland
Club members are believed to have posed their own children for pictures … In
other cases … parents may have taken money to let their children be used.”
The Guardian reported that over 1,250 children were featured in the
photos and videos, “many of whom suffered appalling injuries and were seen
sobbing uncontrollably as they were being sexually violated.” The Independent
added that the victimized children were “mostly under [the age of] 10.”
A BBC report held that the
combined raids resulted in the seizure of more than “750,000 computer images
of children.” A Detective Superintendent with the British National Crime Squad
called these images “disgusting and the behavior that has been carried out is
absolutely appalling.” Though ignored by the American press, “Wonderland
originated in the United States.”
Among the scores of U.S. homes
raided, one yielded a “database of more than 100,000 sexual photographs of
naked boys and girls.” Interestingly enough, the Times also noted that
another raid, “in Missouri, turned up a cache of weapons as well as child
pornography in a heavily fortified trailer,” illustrating once again - as did
the Dutroux case - the close ties between organized pedophilia and other
terrorist assaults against society.
As with the earlier raids in Europe,
a rash of ‘suicides’ soon followed. By October 24, the Mercury News
was reporting that no fewer than four of the thirty-four American suspects had
killed themselves. These included a retired Air Force pilot, a microbiologist at
the University of Connecticut, and a computer consultant in Colorado.
In the UK, the Wonderland raids -
dubbed Operation Cathedral - resulted in the indictments of eight suspects. One
of the eight turned up dead four months later – another alleged suicide. The
other seven were given ridiculously light sentences in February of 2001 for
their complicity in inflicting unfathomable abuse on countless children.
Sentences ranged from 12 to 30 months.
Just a few weeks before the sentences
were handed down, the Guardian was reporting that: “Police today
arrested 13 suspected paedophiles in the largest ever UK operation against child
pornography.” Once again a massive amount of appalling evidence was seized,
with most of the material featuring “scenes of children being raped and
sexually abused.”
The Independent reported in
February of 2001 that: “Detectives working on the [Wonderland] case discovered
that many of the paedophiles were also members of other child pornography
groups.” One of the groups most closely tied to Wonderland was a ring known as
the Orchid Club, which had been exposed by a 1996 investigation in San Jose,
California. That investigation had led to the indictment of sixteen men on
charges of conspiring to produce and exchange child pornography. Members of the
club were identified in at least nine states and three foreign countries.
By the time of the Wonderland raids,
the Mercury News was able to report that the purported ringleader of the
Orchid Club and “twelve others either have pleaded guilty or have been
convicted in connection with that case.” Their crimes included recruiting
“young relatives and friends of their own children to be molested and
photographed.”
The club was also, like Wonderland,
involved in “real-time exploitation of children” on the internet. Club
members were able to send in requests and have them acted-out on live feeds. The
club also held a pedophile ‘summit,’ at which members “traded stories
about pre-teen girls they had molested and photographed in sexually explicit
poses.” The summit was held, appropriately enough, on April 20 – the birth
date of Adolf Hitler and a major satanic holiday.
In late March of 2001, yet another
interlinked global network was exposed. The Independent reported that:
“US authorities announced the arrest of four American citizens for involvement
in an international child-porn ring called Blue Orchid.” The Los Angeles
Times added further details the next day, reporting that “the United
States and Russia have shut down a Moscow-based international pornography ring
that used the Internet to sell videotapes of children engaged in sexual acts.”
These tapes were said to sell for
“between $200 and $300.” An Associated Press release held that:
“Police seized some 600 videotapes, 200 digital video disks and many boxes of
photographs.” Video duplication equipment and sales and shipping records were
also seized, leading to “criminal inquiries in 24 nations … Many of the
tapes were bought by people in the United States; others went to Germany,
Britain, France, Denmark, China, Kuwait, Mexico and scores of other
countries.”
The Times reported that nine
people had been arrested and fifteen search warrants issued. The AP
report noted that four of those arrested were in Russia, where two suspects had,
alas, “committed suicide.” The ring was also said by the Times to
offer what were cryptically referred to as “custom-made videos” for the
hefty price of $5,000 each. The contents of these videos were not revealed.
What was revealed though was that
“the prevalence of child pornography has increased dramatically with the
growth of the Internet. There are approximately 100,000 web sites worldwide
associated with child pornography.” This point was reinforced the very next
day when the UK press reported police raids on yet another pedophile ring.
The Guardian reported that:
“More than 30 people, including a … man working for a national youth
organization, were arrested yesterday in dawn raids on the homes of suspected
paedophiles.” Once again being sold and traded were images “which showed
children being abused.”
A report on the case in the Independent
quoted a law enforcement spokesman as revealing “that those arrested
included members of ‘some interesting professions,’” though demurring from
revealing what those professions might be. The official also said that they had
“a disturbing scenario of one or two juveniles who have been caught in this
way. One of them appears to be a 13-year-old boy.”
The police did acknowledge that the
arrested boy was “also a potential victim and would be treated in that
light,” which seems rather obvious. Nevertheless, a follow-up to the story
that the Independent ran in May reported that the boy had become “one
of the youngest people to be listed on the sex offenders’ register.”
The very next month, the Guardian
carried a report on Eric Franklin Rosser – accused child pornographer, one of
the FBI's ten most wanted criminals and a former keyboardist for John Cougar
Mellencamp’s band. According to the report: “Investigators believe
Rosser’s material is among pornography circulated by a British paedophile ring
… More than 1,800 members are thought to belong to a club called Teenboys. Its
website features boys aged around 12 … Teenboys is considered bigger than the
notorious Wonderland Club.”
Meanwhile, a pedophile ring in
Australia with high-level government connections was handled in a slightly
different way. As The Irish Times reported on July 17, 1998:
“Police suspect a series of
gruesome gay hate killings in the Sydney region could be the work of a serial
killer whose victims might be linked through a notorious paedophile ring. The
latest mutilation murder was that of Australia's longest serving mayor, Frank
Arkell, aged 68, who was bludgeoned to death in his flat and who had previously
faced 29 child sex charges.
“In the past few months two other
men, one a convicted child sex offender, were attacked in their homes in similar
circumstances and also suffered horrific injuries. Arkell, the former Lord Mayor
of Wollongong, 50 miles south of Sydney, was a key witness in a royal commission
into police corruption which uncovered a network of paedophiles.”
Those serial killers sure come in
handy sometimes.
Russ Kick: "There are a
lot of people -- mainly feminists and Christian conservatives (those odd
bedfellows) -- who still believe that there is a multi-billion dollar
child pornography 'industry' that spans the globe. Please explain how we know
that this is a myth and why it refuses to die."
Philip Jenkins: "In the late 1970s, there were claims about child porn
being a billion dollar industry, and estimates just swelled over the years. In
reality, the last real child porn entrepreneur was jailed in the early 1980s,
and she (it was a woman, incidentally) never made more than a million or
two."
Excerpted from the appropriately titled book You Are Being
Lied To
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February 25, 1999
29. Thomas, Gordon Enslaved, Pharos Books, 1991
30. Ward, David “Police Smash Child Porn Network,” Guardian UK,
March 28, 2001
31. Willan, Philip “Paedophile Videos Stun Italians,” Guardian UK,
September 29, 2000
32. Wilson, Jamie “Dismay at Paedophile Sentences,” Guardian UK,
February 14, 2001
33. “9 Police Detained in Child-Murder Case,” Los Angeles Times,
September 11, 1996
34. “Belgian Hero Dismissed,” New York Times, October 15, 1996
35. “Mexico Under Fire Over Child Abuse,” BBC News, November
14, 1997
36. “Dutch Investigate Child Pornography Ring Claim,” The Irish
Times, July 17, 1998
37. “Child Pornographer Found Dead in His Home,” New York Times,
September 9, 1998
38. “Child Porn ‘Ringleaders’ Go On Trial,” BBC News, June
23, 1999
39. “Verdicts Due in French Pornography Trial,” BBC News, May
10, 2000
40. “Porn Ring ‘Was Real Child Abuse,’” BBC News, January
10, 2001
41. “13 Arrested in Child Porn Raids,” Guardian UK, January 17,
2001
42. “International Child Porn Ring Smashed,” BBC News, March
26, 2001
43. Encyclopaedia Britannica, www.britannica.com
44. Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia
"Paul and Shirley
Eberle wrote The Politics of Child Abuse, a book that accuses mothers, mental
health professionals, and prosecutors of feeding children stories about sexual
abuse. Since the book was published by Lyle Stuart in l986, the Eberles have
been cited as experts in sexual abuse trials … What is startling about the
Eberles' reputation as ground-breaking experts in the field is that their
dubious credentials have not been widely challenged … Their publication,
Finger, depicted scenes of bondage, S & M, and sexual activities involving
urination and defecation. A young girl portrayed with a wide smile on her face
sits on top of a man whose penis is inside of her; a woman has oral sex with a
young boy in a drawing entitled `Memories of My Boyhood.'" Ms. Magazine,
December 1988
While the size and scope of
these operations have grown rapidly in recent years, America has - as it turns
out - always been a nation whose laws were friendly to purveyors of child
pornography. It was just over twenty years ago - in 1978 - that the very first
federal statute on child pornography was passed into law. While forbidding
production and sale, the statute placed no restrictions at all on the possession
or trade of such materials.
New laws enacted in 1984
forbid the trade of child pornography regardless of whether any money changed
hands, though possession still remained legal. In fact, as recently as 1990,
private possession of child pornography was legal in 44 of the 50 states,
despite the inescapable fact that all such materials were, by necessity,
illegally produced and/or illegally acquired.
Technology has for some time
now played a key role in greatly expanding the availability of child
pornography. The Polaroid camera, for example, eliminated the need for child
pornographers to have access to complicit photo labs. Home video cameras did
likewise for moving images. Personal computers, digital cameras, web cams,
scanners, and - especially - the Internet, have vastly expanded the reach of
child pornography networks.
In the age of the Internet,
child pornography is a booming business. The Los Angeles Times noted in December
of 1999 that: "the number of investigations for Internet-related child
pornography is soaring. The FBI launched 1,125 such inquiries this year, more
than twice as many as last year." In the wake of this rising tide, the U.S.
9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling on December 17, 1999 which struck a
serious blow to the prosecution of child pornography cases.
As the Times reported, the
decision stipulated that "the government cannot prohibit computer-generated
sexual images that only appear to be pictures of children." A later report
noted that appeals court judge Donald Molloy stated that the First Amendment
bars the government from criminalizing the generation of "images of
fictitious children engaged in imaginary but explicit sexual conduct."
On January 22, 2001, the
United States Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of the case. Should the
presidential appointers on the high court choose to affirm the decision of the
lower court, prosecution of child pornography cases will become all but
impossible in all fifty states. Until that time, prosecutors are "barred
from bringing virtual-child pornography cases in California and the eight other
Western states within the jurisdiction of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals."
As critics have noted,
graphics technology now available to the general public is so sophisticated that
it is virtually impossible to determine if an image has been digitally altered,
and if therefore any actual children were involved in the generation of the
image. Justice Department lawyers argued that very point, noting that the
"government may find it impossible in many cases to prove that a
pornographic image is of a real child."
Any good defense attorney
could, in other words, raise reasonable doubt as to the authenticity of an
image. It could in fact be argued that all such computer images "only
appear to be pictures of children." Computer images are not in fact photos,
but are digital computer files that display as a facsimile of the original
photo. A sound legal argument could be made that all digitally transferred and
displayed child pornography is therefore legal, as it doesn't represent 'real
children.'
That should come as great
news to the international child pornography networks, given that the United
States is their number- one market. According to investigative author Gordon
Thomas, the majority of child pornography produced worldwide is targeted at the
U.S., where by the early 1990s it was already a $3 billion a year business, and
growing.
Thomas claims that -
according to law enforcement figures - over 22 million copies of child
pornography videos were sold or rented in the U.S. in 1991. He also writes that
much of that pornographic material is produced here, where it is "part of
the largest segment of movie making in the United States." Jan
Hollingsworth concurs with that figure, describing child pornography as: "A
three-billion-dollar - per year - U.S. industry that grossed twice that
worldwide. It [is] bigger than Disney. Much bigger."
Speaking of Disney, Thomas
notes that child porn videos are frequently trafficked internationally by
deceptively packaging them as Disney videos. Strangely enough, the first man to
benefit from the circuit court decision was Patrick J. Naughton. You may
remember him as the executive with the Walt Disney Co. who ran one of the
company's kid-friendly web sites. Naughton was arrested and later tried on child
pornography charges.
He was convicted on December
16, just one day before the decision was handed down in the case before the
circuit court. Within hours of the appeals court ruling, Naughton was released
by federal prosecutors on $100,000 bail. Despite the fact that he was, as the
Times acknowledged, convicted of "possessing pictures of actual
children," the decision was made to release him "until the impact of
the court's ruling can be sorted out," illustrating the significant
undermining of existing law that the court ruling portends.
Closely associated with
child pornography is, of course, child abuse. It should go without saying that
all kids used in child pornography are abused children, their abuse recorded on
film and tape for the depraved enjoyment of other child abusers. Also closely
associated with child pornography is the always controversial issue of 'missing
children.'
There is considerable debate
as to whether there is a problem in this country with missing children. Some
claim that 200,000 or more children disappear without a trace every year. Others
steadfastly maintain that numbers such as those are grossly inflated, and that
abduction of children by strangers with bad intent is actually quite rare.
The problem is that nobody
really knows for sure, since the FBI - America's compiler of crime statistics -
doesn't bother to keep track. As Ted Gunderson, former FBI station chief for Los
Angeles, has stated: "The FBI has an accurate count on the number of
automobiles stolen every year. It knows the number of homicides, rapes and
robberies, but the FBI has no idea of the number of children that disappear
every year. They simply do not ask for the statistics."
Many believe that the
numbers aren't compiled because the FBI doesn't want to know – or more
accurately, the FBI doesn't want the American people to know. What is known
though is that reports of child abuse have skyrocketed. Between 1963 and 1988,
reported cases of child abuse rose from 150,000 to 2,000,000 per year, a 1300%
increase in just a quarter-century.
Child abuse may in fact be
the most prevalent - and possibly the most significant - crime in American
society, given that it provides the breeding ground for so much of the more
visible crime plaguing Western culture. As Thomas reports: "over 90 percent
of the teenage prison population are now victims of child abuse," and that
population is growing rapidly.
In the wake of this rising
tide, the Los Angeles Times reported in March 2001 that: "President [a
clearly inappropriate use of the word] Bush's budget will trim a program aimed
at preventing child abuse and cut some child care spending … A child abuse
prevention program will see an 18% cut." That money will apparently be much
better spent on handing out tax breaks for the wealthy and building missile
defense shields … but here I digress.
Author and e-zine editor
Robert Sterling has written of what he refers to as "a pattern of
trivialization of child molestation evidence" that seems to characterize
high-profile media stories. He points out, for instance, that in the highly
publicized Woody Allen and Mia Farrow divorce case, all the attention was
focused on Allen's illicit romance with Soon-yi Previn.
Almost entirely ignored in
the media coverage was the fact that Allen was also charged with molesting his
own seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan. While the press dismissed those
allegations as unfounded and unworthy of reporting, Sterling notes that
"Connecticut state authorities, based on the testimony of Dylan and others,
have stated that they do believe Woody did molest her, but decided not to
prosecute anyway," allegedly to spare the child any further trauma.
Sterling also takes note of
the "case of the Menendez brothers, who, after admitting to murdering their
parents, painfully revealed that they were ruthlessly abused and molested by
them over the years." Their claims were never investigated and the boys
were "viciously demonized for trying to escape the murder charges and
accused of making up their abuse," though there was in fact clear evidence
of that abuse, according to a private investigator who worked on the case.
Also noted is the kid-gloves
treatment afforded Michael Jackson when he was charged with molestation:
"even though the accusations against him are widely believed to be true,
[they] are merely passed off with a laugh among other smirking monologue jokes
on Jay Leno." And of course, though unmentioned by Sterling, sister LaToya
was ridiculed by the media when she came forward with stories about the sexual
abuse suffered by the Jackson kids at the hands of their father.
Sterling references other
cases as well, including the over- hyped au-pair trial in which evidence of
prior abuse of the child by his parents was consistently ignored, and the Susan
Smith case, in which the media refused to consider whether her own severe
childhood abuse could have been a factor in the murder of her children, despite
the fact that her father admitted to the chronic abuse.
Coupled with the fact that
the press have consistently downplayed the occurrence of child molestation is
the equally disturbing fact that that very same media have actively promoted the
sexualization of children – a trend that has been greatly accelerated in
recent years, and which serves to legitimize pedophilia.
Taking note of the
proliferation of young teen - and even pre- teen - sex symbols, Tom Junod wrote
in Esquire that: "the entire culture is besotted with the erotic promise of
teenage girls … The lure of jailbait now supplies the erotic energy to a
popular culture desperate for what's new, what's young, what's alive."
The Junod article is, by the
way, a profile of Greg Dark, one half of the former `Dark Brothers' –
notorious purveyors of dark- themed, occult-tinged porno films. Dark is rather
noteworthy for openly peddling child pornography, in that many of his films
featured a very young Traci Lords, who began working with the Dark Brothers at
the age of thirteen.
But Dark has put those days
long behind him. He is now working comfortably in the mainstream. And he is no
longer marketing teen sexuality. No, now he is creating music videos … for
Britney Spears, Mandy Moore and the pre-pubescent Leslie Carter (sister of Aaron
Carter and Back Street Boy Nick Carter). That is, according to Dark, a
completely different line of work.
Some interesting facts about
Dark emerge in the Esquire profile. It is revealed, for instance, that he was
raised by a satanist father. Dark's father "used to read to Gregory from
the works of Aleister Crowley, the noted satanist, when Gregory was very
young." His father's collection of `black magick' books is one of Dark's
most cherished possessions.
Also revealed is that Dark
is a master manipulator, as he candidly admits to his interviewer: "And the
thing is, I like manipulating people. I'm comfortable manipulating people. I'm
good at it." Junod adds that, during Dark's porno days, he "asked
people to do things … curious things … and they did them." Such is the
nature of the man crafting the images of America's teen sex symbols and
marketing them to millions of pre-teen fans ... but here again I digress.
Also closely associated with
child pornography is the issue of child prostitution, which - make no mistake
about it - is a booming business. A&E's "Investigative Reports"
has noted that law enforcement figures indicate that there are currently some
600,000 child prostitutes working in the United States and Canada and that $5
billion a year is generated worldwide by pimp organizations specializing in the
exploitation of children.
A&E also reported that,
throughout North America, there is a "growing use of children in the sex
trade," and that young boys make up 51% of that trade. The FBI has, of
course, turned a blind eye; for the last quarter-century, "federal
prosecutions of major pimp operations have been virtually nonexistent." As
Dr. Lois Lee has noted: "It's not a high priority with the FBI to go after
kids that are being transported across state lines. It's really a
disgrace."
Dr. Lee is the founder of
"Children of the Night," an organization devoted to helping repair the
shattered lives of child sex trade victims. Her facility, said to be the only
one of its kind in the world, has seen 10,000 kids pass through its doors. Fully
ninety percent of them have suffered a lifetime of abuse – first at home, and
later on the streets and alleys of America's big cities. Most of them suffered
their first abuse before the age of three.
Many of these victims are
runaways recruited from small towns across the country, then brought to prime
child prostitution markets such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Once there, they
have an average life span of just seven years; many of them never reach
adulthood. For as long as they survive though, they reap enormous financial
rewards for their pimps. The younger the child, the more popular they are with
the `Johns,' and therefore the more profitable for their exploiters.
All of this would tend to
indicate that America is in something of a state of denial about the
proliferation of child molestation, child prostitution, and child pornography
rings, which constitute a vast underground in this country. But does this
pedophilic underground extend into the halls of power? Is America's political,
corporate and military elite hiding a particularly dirty little secret from the
American people? A secret that, if exposed, could shatter America's cherished
political and economic institutions and bring the house of cards crashing down?
Consider the case of Craig
Spence, a behind-the-scenes Republican powerbroker in Washington. In June of
1989, the Washington Times published a story that sent shock waves across
Capitol Hill. It seems that Spence had been operating a call-boy ring that
supplied young boys, some of them very young boys, to the Washington elite of
both political parties.
It was rumored that a list
of influential clients ran to some 200 names, and some of them were publicly
identified. It was also alleged that the ring was part of a CIA sexual blackmail
operation, gathering compromising evidence on Washington politicos and foreign
dignitaries. Also connected to the case were prominent figures in the media; on
the guest lists for Spence's `parties' were names such as Ted Koppel and Eric
Severeid.
Spence's mansion was found
to be overflowing with surveillance equipment, including hidden cameras and
microphones and an abundance of two-way mirrors. Spence was also known to take
his show on the road, giving some of his boys late-night tours of the White
House, according to the Times. These tours were reportedly arranged by Donald
Gregg, the national security adviser to then-Vice President George Bush.
Though Gregg adamantly
denied the accusation, there were undeniable connections between the two men,
including the fact that Spence had once sponsored a dinner for Gregg. The story
quickly dropped off the media radar screen, and Washington and the press
proceeded to pretend as though it had never been aired at all. By the time
Spence turned up dead in a Boston hotel room just five months later, the story
was all but forgotten.
Elsewhere in the country, a
Republican operative named Larry King was embroiled in another high-level
pedophile ring. King, whose operation was based in Omaha, Nebraska, had
connections to Craig Spence as well as to Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Oliver
North, and various other major players in Washington.
The story first began to
emerge with the collapse of the Franklin Community Credit Union run by King, one
of many such entities that went belly-up in the 1980s Savings and Loan scandals.
A special senate 'Franklin Committee' was formed to look into allegations of
financial improprieties, but soon found itself instead investigating claims of
child prostitution, child pornography and ritual homicide.
The investigation soon led
to some of the most powerful men in the state of Nebraska, including newspaper
publisher Harold Andersen (a lunch partner of George Bush), a judge, the mayor
of Omaha, the city's Games and Parks Commissioner, a prominent attorney, the
former police chief of Omaha, and multi-billionaire Warren Buffet (for whose son
King sponsored a political fund-raiser).
Also identified as a patron
of the child prostitution ring was George Bush himself. Though ignored by the
U.S. media, the case attracted some attention from the European press. Pronto,
the largest circulation weekly in Spain, reported that the scandal "appears
to directly implicate politicos of the state of Nebraska and Washington, D.C.
who are very close to the White House and George Bush."
The report also noted that
"there is reason to believe that the CIA is directly implicated," and
that the "FBI refuses to help in the investigation and has sabotaged any
efforts" by others to do so. The operation appears to have been in business
for several years, with the knowledge of, and for the perverse pleasure of, a
variety of city, state and federal authorities.
Jerry Lowe, the first
investigator assigned to the case by the Franklin Committee, reported back that:
"The allegations regarding the exploitation of children are indeed
disturbing. What appears to be documented cases of child abuse and sexual abuse
dating back several years with no enforcement action being taken by the
appropriate agencies is on its face, mind-boggling."
Republican State Senator
John DeCamp, in his book The Franklin Cover-Up, presents a compelling body of
evidence to document the charges made by the child victims and various others
associated with the operation. Equally disturbing is the evidence of the massive
cover-up that was perpetrated by the FBI, local police, the grand jury assigned
to the case, and of course the ever-compliant media. (One report almost made it
through the media blackout. A documentary on the case entitled "Conspiracy
of Silence" was scheduled to air on the Discovery Channel on May 3, 1994.
Shortly before airtime, it was pulled without explanation and has been shelved
ever since. The conspiracy of silence continues.)
The cover-up involved,
according to DeCamp, the untimely deaths of at least fifteen key players in the
scandal, including Franklin Committee investigator Gary Caradori, whose private
plane was blown out of the sky on July 11, 1990 with Caradori and his eight-
year-old son on board. Equally appalling is the fact that the child victims,
rather than the perpetrators, were thrown in prison.
One of them, a young female
victim, achieved the rather dubious honor of spending more time in solitary
confinement than any woman in the history of the Nebraska penal system. It would
be a full decade before any of the victims received even a semblance of justice,
and that would ultimately come not from a criminal court, but from a civil
court.
In February of 1998, a
judgment was entered against defendant Larry King in favor of plaintiff Paul
Bonacci, one of the most seriously abused of the child victims, whose abuse at
the hands of King began when he was just six years old – and which included
his forced collaboration in the production of child snuff films. The memorandum
of the district court's decision, issued on February 22, 1999, reads as follows:
"Between December 1980
and 1988, the complaint alleges, the defendant King continually subjected the
plaintiff to repeated sexual assaults, false imprisonments, infliction of
extreme emotional distress, organized and directed satanic rituals, forced the
plaintiff to 'scavenge' for children to be a part of the defendant King's sexual
abuse and pornography ring, forced the plaintiff to engage in numerous sexual
contacts with the defendant King and others and participate in deviate sexual
games and masochistic orgies with other minor children. The defendant King's
default has made those allegations true as to him ...
"The now uncontradicted
evidence is that the plaintiff has suffered much. He has suffered burns, broken
fingers, beatings of the head and face and other indignities by the wrongful
actions of the defendant King. In addition to the misery of going through the
experiences just related over a period of eight years, the plaintiff has
suffered the lingering results to the present time. He is a victim of multiple
personality disorder, involving as many as fourteen distinct personalities aside
from his primary personality. He has given up a desired military career and
received threats on his life. He suffers from sleeplessness, has bad dreams, has
difficulty in holding a job, is fearful that others are following him, fears
getting killed, has depressing flashbacks, and is verbally violent on occasion,
all in connection with the multiple personality disorder and caused by the
wrongful activities of the defendant King."
For his years of unspeakable
abuse, physical and emotional suffering, and the complete shattering of his
life, Bonacci was awarded one million dollars. While a bittersweet victory at
best, it was considerably more than most other victims of such abuse have
gotten. The trial was significant for another reason as well; it revealed a
glimpse of the connections between the King case and various other multi-victim
abuse cases around the country.
REFERENCES:
1. Asseo, Laurie
"Justices Will Review Ban on Virtual Kiddie Porn," Associated Press,
January 22, 2001
2. DeCamp, John W. The
Franklin Cover-Up, AWT, Inc., 1992
3. Hollingsworth, Jan
Unspeakable Acts, Congdon & Weed, 1986
4. Junod, Tom "The
Devil in Greg Dark," Esquire, February 2001
5. Laurina, Maria "Paul
and Shirley Eberle: A Strange Pair of Experts," Ms. Magazine, December 1988
6. Li, David K. "Naughton
Free in Time for Christmas," New York Post, December 23, 1999
7. Li, David K. "Turn
Him Loose! Judge Voids Naughton's Porno Conviction," New York Post, January
22, 2000
8. Savage, David
"Justices to Tackle `Virtual' Child Porn," Los Angeles Times, January
23, 2001
9. Sterling, Robert
"Daddy's Little Princess," The Konformist, www.konformist.com
10. Tarpley, Webster G. and
Anton Chaitkin George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm
11. Thomas, Gordon Enslaved,
Pharos Books, 1991
12. Weinstein, Henry and
Greg Miller "'Virtual' Child Porn Is Legal, Court Says," Los Angeles
Times, December 18, 1999
13. "Bush Budget Seeks
Child Program Cuts," Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2001
14. Paul A. Bonacci v.
Lawrence E. King (4:CV91-3037), United States District Court for the District of
Nebraska, Memorandum of Decision, February 22, 1999
15. "The Child Sex
Trade," A&E Investigative Reports
If you are interested in a
free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit:
The
Pedophocracy, Part III:
Uncle Sam Wants Your
Children
By David McGowan
(McGowan is the author of Derailing
Democracy and Understanding the F-Word,and is also the administrator
of the website The Center for an
Informed America)
"It should come as
no surprise, then, that long-time CIA and ‘intelligence complex’ operatives
turn up on the FMSF Advisory Board. Perhaps the most public member has been Dr.
Louis Jolyon ‘Jolly’ West, a legendary figure in CIA mind control circles
operating out of UCLA. Another is Dr. Martin Orne, an authority on torture who
currently works at the University of Pennsylvania’s Experimental Psychiatry
Lab … Still another false memory luminary is Margaret Singer, professor
emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley."
Toward Freedom, May
1998
One of the names raised at
the Bonacci trial was that of Michael
Aquino. Aquino is
the ‘High Priest’ and chief executive of the Temple of Set, an overtly
satanic cult that split off from the Church of Satan in 1975. Besides tending to
those duties, Aquino
also has occupied his time serving as (according to an official biography once
circulated by the Temple) a “Lieutenant Colonel, Military Intelligence, U.S.
Army.”
Aquino
was accused in court by the mother of a victim as being a key player in a
nationwide pedophile ring. Paul Bonacci himself has also positively identified Aquino
as an associate of King, known to the children only as 'the Colonel.' King's
personal photographer has identified Aquino
as the man to whom he saw King hand over a suitcase full of cash and bonds.
The photographer, Rusty
Nelson, also has said that King told him that Aquino
was part of the Contra guns and cocaine trafficking operation run by George Bush
and another notorious Lt. Col., Oliver North. Aquino
has also been linked to Offutt Air Force Base, a Strategic Air Command post near
Omaha that was implicated in the investigation by the Franklin Committee. He was
also claimed to have ordered the abduction of a Des Moines, Iowa paperboy.
This was certainly not the
first time that Aquino
had been implicated as a key figure in large scale pedophile/child pornography
rings. In July of 1988, not long before the King and Spence cases broke, the San
Jose Mercury News ran a lengthy exposé on the Presidio Child Development
Center run by the U.S. Army in San Francisco.
Allegations of abuse being
perpetrated at the center first emerged in November of 1986. Alarmed by
accusations made by her child, a parent had sought a medical examination which
confirmed that the three-year-old boy had in fact been anally raped. The boy
identified his rapist as 'Mr. Gary,' a teacher at the center named Gary
Hambright.
Even with the conclusive
medical evidence, “it took the Army almost a month to notify the parents of
other children who had been in 'Mr. Gary's' class that the incident had taken
place.” Within a year, at least sixty victims had been identified, all between
the ages of three and seven, and further “allegations would be made by parents
that several more children were molested even after the investigation had
begun.”
Amazingly enough, the center
remained open for more than a year after the first case of abuse was reported,
though the Mercury News noted that “day care centers under state
jurisdiction are routinely closed when an abuse incident is confirmed.” And
this was considerably more than a simple abuse incident that was confirmed.
The stories told by the
children implicated many other perpetrators besides Hambright. They also told of
being taken away from the center to be abused in private homes; at least three
such houses were positively identified. They also told of being forced to play
“poopoo baseball” and the “googoo” game – 'games' that involved the
children being urinated and defecated upon, and being forced to ingest urine and
feces.
Many of them also spoke of
having guns pointed at them and of having been told that they and/or their
parents and siblings would be killed if they told anyone what had been done to
them. Despite the mounting number of victim/witnesses, and the numerous crimes
alleged by these children, it was only Gary Hambright who was arrested - on
January 5, 1987 - and he was charged with abusing just a single child. And even
then the charges were dismissed just three months later, in March of 1987.
There is little doubt that
literally dozens of children were in fact severely abused at the center. There
was irrefutable medical evidence to document that fact. Five of the children had
contracted chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease; many others showed clear
signs of anal and genital trauma consistent with violent penetration, which
authorities chose to ignore. One mother complained to the San Francisco
Chronicle that the FBI never interviewed her or her son, even after doctors
had confirmed the boy’s abuse.
There were unmistakable
psychological signs as well. As The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
noted in April of 1992: “The severity of the trauma for children at the
Presidio was immediately manifest in clear cut symptoms. Before the abuse was
exposed, parents had already noticed the following changes in their children:
vaginal discharge, genital soreness, rashes, fear of the dark, sleep
disturbances, nightmares, sexually provocative language, and sexually
inappropriate behavior. In addition, the children were exhibiting other radical
changes in behavior, including temper outbursts, sudden mood shifts, and poor
impulse control. All these behavioral symptoms are to be expected in preschool
children who have been molested.”
The journal article, written
by Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D., also noted that: “The Presidio case has confronted
both the public at large and the mental health community with an extraordinary
and abhorrent situation of grave psychological proportions: the willful
molestation of young boys and girls by representatives of the most patriarchal
and supposedly protective arm of the American government – the U.S. Army.”
The article further noted
the nearly homicidal rage provoked in the fathers of the children abused in this
way, as they saw the investigations of the crimes perpetrated against their
children stonewalled and covered up. One father is quoted as saying: “When
something about the Presidio comes on TV, I want to blow someone away.”
Another father echoed this sentiment: “I was ready to blow the army base
away.”
One of those who the fathers
would have liked to blow away was Michael
Aquino, along with his wife Lilith. One child positively identified the
pair, known to the kids as 'Mikey' and 'Shamby,' and was also able to positively
identify the Aquino's
home and to describe with uncanny accuracy the distinctively satanic interior of
the house. The young witness also claimed to have been photographed at the
Aquinos' home.
On August 14 of 1987, a
search warrant was served on the house. Confiscated in the raid were numerous
videotapes, photographs, photo albums, photographic negatives, cassette tapes,
and name and address books. Also observed was what appeared to be a soundproof
room. Neither Aquino nor his wife were charged with any crimes, nor have they
been to this day – a fact that Aquino claims proves his innocence.
The next month, a fire -
which the Army deemed to be accidental - destroyed the Army Community Services
Building adjacent to the Presidio's day care center. Strangely enough, “the
fire occurred on the autumnal equinox, a major event on the satanic calendar,”
as the Mercury News noted. The fire also destroyed some of the center's
records.
“Three weeks later, fire
struck again, this time at the day care center itself.” A building that housed
four classrooms, including that of Gary Hambright, was completely destroyed.
Investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms determined that
“both fires, contrary to the Army's finding, had been arson.”
In between the first and
second fires (with evidence indicating that a third arson attempt had been made
as well), Hambright was again indicted, this time charged with molesting ten
children. In February of 1988, all but one of the charges were dropped. Shortly
thereafter, the remaining count was dropped as well, and Hambright was a free
man once again. No further charges were brought against him.
In January of 1988, Aquino
filed suit against the Army to have it cleared from his record that he had been
investigated as a suspected pedophile. According to court records, he also had
the gall to charge “Captain Adams-Thompson [the father of a victim] with
conduct unbecoming an officer because the Captain reported the allegations of
child abuse to the San Francisco police.”
In denying Aquino's
motion, the court concluded that “there was probable cause to title Aquino
with offenses of indecent acts with a child, sodomy, conspiracy, kidnapping, and
false swearing,” despite the fact that “the San Francisco police department
(SFPD) closed its investigation and filed no charges against the plaintiff or
anyone else.”
Aquino
and various of his defenders have consistently claimed that no one was ever
prosecuted in the case due to a lack of evidence – proof that the entire
affair was no more than a ‘witch hunt.’ Of course, the failure to prosecute
the federal charges could also be due to the fact that, at the time, the U.S.
Attorney in San Francisco handling the case was Joseph Russoniello.
Russoniello would later be
identified by reporter Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News as a player
in the Contra cocaine smuggling operation led by Lt. Col. Oliver North and
company, just as witnesses would later identify Lt. Col. Michael
Aquino as an operative in the very same sordid affair. It always helps when
your legal ‘adversaries’ are actually on your side.
In May of 1989, Aquino
was again questioned in connection with child abuse investigations; this time at
least five children in three cities were making the accusations. The children
had seen Aquino in
newspaper and television coverage of the Presidio case and immediately
recognized him as one of their abusers.
Three of the children lived
in Ukiah - former home of the People’s Temple - where Police Chief Fred
Keplinger was overseeing the investigation of the allegations. The Mercury
News quoted the chief as saying that “the children are believable. I have
no doubt in my mind that something has occurred.” Aquino
was also identified by children in Santa Rosa and Fort Bragg.
In the Fort Bragg case,
“allegations of ritual abuse erupted ... in 1985 when several children at the
Jubilation Day Care Center said they were sexually abused by a number of people
at the day care center and at several locations away from the center, including
at least two churches.” Aquino
was identified as having been at one of those churches.
The Mercury News also
reported that there was clear evidence of satanic cult activity on the grounds
of the Presidio base, including an abundance of satanic graffiti, a satanic
altar, and numerous artifacts of satanic rituals. A former MP at the base is
quoted as saying: “We were sitting there, we've got a cult on the Presidio of
San Francisco and nobody cares about it ... We were told by the provost marshal
to just forget about it.”
On April 19, 1988 - the eve
of Adolf Hitler’s birthday, and seven years to the day before the Oklahoma
City Federal Building would explode, allegedly due to an act of ‘domestic
terrorism’- an open-house was held on the grounds of the Presidio heralding
the opening of the new day care facility built to replace the fire-damaged Child
Development Center.
As a final note on the
Presidio case, a report in the Marin Independent Journal revealed that Aquino
owned a building in Marin County - inherited from his mother, Betty Ford-Aquino
- that had been jointly leased to the Marin County Child Abuse Council and
Project Care for Children. The stated purpose of Project Care was, interestingly
enough, to assist parents in locating day care for their children.
As disturbing as the
Presidio case was, it was just one of many ritual abuse cases directly tied to
one or more branches of the United States armed forces. As the Mercury News
reported: “By November, 1987 the Army had received allegations of child abuse
at 15 of its day care centers and several elementary schools. There were also at
least two cases in Air Force day care centers,” and another in a center run by
the U.S. Navy.
In addition, “a special
team of experts was sent to Panama [in June of 1988] to help determine if as
many as 10 children at a Department of Defense elementary school had been
molested and possibly infected with AIDS.” Yet another case emerged in a
U.S.-run facility in West Germany.
These cases erupted at some
of the most esteemed military bases in the country, including Fort Dix, Fort
Leavenworth, Fort Jackson, and West Point. Many of those making the accusations
were career military officers who had devoted their lives to unquestioned
allegiance to the U.S. armed forces. Many would resign their posts in outraged
protest.
It would be redundant to
review all these cases, as most of them followed a remarkably similar pattern.
Given though that West Point is America's premier military academy, and given
also that the case - like many others - was linked by witnesses to the Presidio,
a brief review is warranted here.
As The Times Herald
Record reported in June of 1991: “The incidents [at the West Point Child
Development Center] unfolded against a backdrop of satanic acts, animal
sacrifices and cult-like behavior among the abusers, whose activities extended
beyond the U.S. Military Academy borders to Orange County and a military base in
San Francisco, parents charged.”
The case first broke in July
of 1984, when a three-year-old girl found herself in the emergency room of the
West Point Hospital with a lacerated vagina. She told the examining physician
that a teacher at the day care center had hurt her. The next month, the parents
of another child leveled accusations of abuse at the center.
As the Mercury News
reported: “By the end of the year, 50 children had been interviewed by
investigators. Children at West Point told stories that would become
horrifyingly familiar. They said they had been ritually abused. They said they
had had excrement smeared on their bodies and been forced to eat feces and drink
urine. They said they were taken away from the day care center and
photographed.”
Despite abundant medical and
psychological evidence, and literally dozens of child witnesses, and despite
“950 interviews by 60 FBI agents assigned to the investigation, an
investigation led by former U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani produced no federal
grand jury indictments,” according to the Herald Record.
The Herald also noted
that: “In 1987, Giuliani said his detailed investigation showed only one or
two children were abused.” This was, it should be noted, a bare-faced lie from
the fascistic future-mayor and would-be Senator, as the Herald report divulged:
“a still-secret, independent report - produced by one of the nation's top
experts on child sexual abuse - confirms the children's accusations of abuse.”
This was not the first time
that the prestigious academy had shown an appalling willingness to overlook
extreme levels of abuse directed at children by army personnel. A year before
the abuse case broke, a 22-month-old child was murdered by an Army staff
sergeant. The Mercury News reported that: “After a court martial
hearing, the sergeant was given an 18 month suspended sentence and dishonorable
discharge.”
In other words, he served no
time and was essentially given a free ride for murdering a child. With help from
Giuliani, the FBI, the U.S. Army, and the grand jury, the abusers of countless
children at the day care center (which was, appropriately enough, building
number 666 on the academy grounds) were likewise given a free ride.
As with the Franklin case,
the children and their parents were to find justice only through the civil
courts. The Herald Record reported that: “lawyers for both the government and
the 11 child plaintiffs agreed that some children were sexually abused at the
center two years ago” (again contradicting Giuliani's bogus conclusions). The
government, however, claimed that it could not be held responsible, due to the
“assault exemption in the Federal Tort Claim Act.”
As the New York Times
explained: “under federal law the government cannot be held liable for
assaults committed by its employees and thus cannot be sued for assault.” In
other words, the Army did not dispute the allegations, it just rather cavalierly
maintained that it was exempt from being sued. The court saw otherwise and
awarded $2.7 million to nine of the child victims – paltry compensation for
their suffering, but a victory of sorts nonetheless.
The Times opined that the
settlement amount “was large for a child-abuse case in which no criminal
charges were filed.” The article claimed that the failure to prosecute the
case was due to the fact that “the Federal Bureau of Investigation found
‘insufficient evidence to prosecute,’” when in fact the Bureau appears to
have deliberately ignored and/or covered-up that evidence.
And so ended the West Point
case, except that - as one mother noted - it was hardly over: “These people
stole our children. She's nothing like she used to be. She's a very angry little
girl. She doesn't trust anyone. She's nothing like she was before this happened.
It's never going to be over for them, or for us.”
The mother of a Presidio
victim had this to say: “People keep telling us we've got to let it go -- just
forget about it and go on ... Three weeks ago, our youngest daughter was having
nightmares and our other daughter was closing out the whole world, going to her
room and siting there, with no radio, no TV, no nothing. Tell me it's over.”
“I cannot accept promotion
in a system that at first refused to acknowledge and now refuses to deal with
the victims of extensive child abuse that occurred at the West Point Child
Development Center.”
Army Captain Walter R. Grote,
refusing a promotion to Major in June 1985. Grote referred to his protest as a
“fight for the human rights of all children.”
REFERENCES:
1. Al-Kurdi, Husayn
“Messing With Our Minds,” Toward Freedom, May 1998
2. Arce, Rose Marie
“Liability in Point Abuse Case Debated,” The Times Herald Record
(Middletown, New York), December 23, 1986
3. Blood, Linda The New
Satanists, Warner Books, 1994
4. Cunningham, Douglas and
Alan Snel “A Legacy of Pain: Settlement Doesn't Ease Abused Children's
Fears,” The Times Herald Record (Middletown, New York), June 11, 1991
5. DeCamp, John W. The
Franklin Cover-Up, AWT, Inc., 1992
6. Ehrensaft, Diane
“Preschool Child Sex Abuse: The Aftermath of the Presidio Case,” The
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, April 1992
7. Goldston, Linda “Army
of the Night,” San Jose Mercury News, July 24, 1988
8. Goldston, Linda
“Satanic Priest Questioned in New Sex Case,” San Jose Mercury News,
May 13, 1989
9. Hays, Constance L.
“$2.7 Million Settles Army Child-Abuse Case,” New York Times, May 23,
1991
10. Sawyer, Kathy “Army
Doctor Turns Down Promotion; Lax Response to Case of Child Abuse Cited,” Washington
Post, June 25, 1985
11. Steinberg, Jeffrey
“Satanic Subversion of the U.S. Military,” EIR, July 2, 1999
12. “Army Doctor Refuses
Promotion in Protest,” San Diego Union Tribune, June 25, 1985
13. “The Keys to Hell and
Death – Part II,” SFLR News (the newsletter of San Francisco
Liberation Radio), May 21, 2001
14. Michael Aquino v. The
Honorable Michael Stone, Secretary of the Army (Civ. A. No. 90-1547-A), United
States District Court, Alexandria Division, July 1, 1991
The Pedophocracy, Part
IV:
McMolestation
By David McGowan
(McGowan is the author of Derailing
Democracy and Understanding the F-Word, and is also the administrator
of the website The Center for an
Informed America)
"Rarely has such a
strange and little-understood organization had such a profound effect on media
coverage of such a controversial matter. The [False Memory Syndrome] foundation
is an aggressive, well-financed PR machine adept at manipulating the press,
harassing its critics, and mobilizing a diverse army of psychiatrists, outspoken
academics, expert defense witnesses, litigious lawyers, Freud bashers, critics
of psychotherapy, and devastated parents.”
Columbia Journalism
Review, July/August 1997
If there's anyone who can
relate to the sentiments expressed by the Presidio and West Point parents, it is
the mothers and fathers of the children from the McMartin Preschool – and
there are literally hundreds of them. The McMartin case was, of course, the
largest and most well-publicized of the multi-victim, multi-perpetrator ritual
abuse cases that sprang forth in the 1980s.
It was also a case that was
grotesquely misrepresented by the media, both mainstream and 'alternative' –
perhaps nowhere more so than in the appalling writings of Alexander Cockburn,
the allegedly ‘progressive’ Warren Committee apologist. Cockburn went so far
as to write an op-ed piece entitled “The McMartin Case: Indict the Children,
Jail the Parents,” which ran in The Wall Street Journal on February 8,
1990.
Virtually everyone agrees
that the children of McMartin were victimized, the only debate being whether
that victimization was by abusive caretakers or by overzealous therapists and
prosecutors. Either way, Cockburn’s stance on the case was unconscionable, and
should have sent a clear signal to the progressive community that there was
considerably more to the McMartin allegations than met the eye.
The harsh reality is that
the McMartin Preschool, in conjunction with at least two other Manhattan Beach
preschools and one babysitting service, was the center of a massive child
prostitution and child pornography ring whose operations were protected and
covered up by any number of local, state and federal officials – or so it
would appear.
A glimpse of the true nature
and scale of the McMartin case is given by an official correspondence from
Sergeant Beth Dickerson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to Agent
Ken Lanning at the FBI Academy Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico, Virginia,
dated February 10, 1985, and reproduced in Larry Kahaner's Cults That Kill:
“In August 1983, the
Manhattan Beach Police Department began an investigation regarding allegations
of sexual abuse occurring at the McMartin Preschool ... Altogether,
approximately 400 children were evaluated by therapists at Children's Institute
International. All interviews were videotaped and 350 children disclosed sexual
behavior ...
“In all, the victims named
seven teachers (six women and one male) at the preschool as having molested
them. These individuals are currently charged with 209 counts of child
molestation. Also named are about 30 other individuals still uncharged, as well
as numerous unidentified 'strangers.'
“McMartin victims allege
sexual abuse occurred on school grounds as well as at a local market, churches,
a mortuary, various homes, a farm, a doctor's office, other preschools and other
unknown locations ...
“Most children state they
were photographed in the nude ... They mention drinking a red or pink liquid
that made them sleepy ... Children disclose animal sacrificing (bunnies, ponies,
turtles, etc.) and some of this occurred in churches. Victims describe sticks
put in their vaginas and rectums and also being 'pooped' and 'peed' on. Children
say that the adults sometimes dressed in black robes, formed a circle around
them and chanted.
“In May 1984, another
preschool investigation began in the same policing jurisdiction stemming from a
McMartin victim who identified the Manhattan Ranch Preschool as a place where he
was taken and molested ... additional children have begun disclosing sexual
abuse (approximately 60) and they have named six or more additional suspects ...
These children talk of strangers coming to the school and molesting them, being
taken off campus and molested, being photographed nude and some talk of animals
being abused. The children talk of being hit with sticks and of being 'peed' and
'pooped' on ...
“[T]he resources of the
police department and the District Attorney's office were not sufficient in
order to follow up on the multitude of uncharged suspects in both preschools ...
The Task Force became operational on November 5, 1984. It should be noted that
the Task Force has two other preschools under investigation for alleged sexual
abuse in addition to McMartin and Manhattan Ranch. One, the Learning Game
Preschool, is clearly linked to McMartin.”
An astounding total of 460
children reported being sexually abused at the three closely-linked Manhattan
Beach schools. Even more astounding, investigative author Michael Newton (among
others) has noted that Children’s Institute International determined that:
“a full eighty percent displayed physical symptoms, including vaginal or
rectal scarring, anal bleeding, painful bowel movements, and the 'anal wick
reflex' associated with violent penetration.”
The stories told by the
victim/witnesses were remarkably similar as to the nature of the abuse, the
locations where the abuse took place, and the perpetrators of the abuse. And
these were not, as is commonly believed, all preschool children telling these
stories; some of the witnesses were former students in their teens and twenties,
and their stories corroborated those of the children.
The older witnesses were not
allowed to testify at the McMartin trials, however, as the statute of
limitations for the crimes committed against them had expired. Many of the
younger witnesses were unable to offer testimony as well, for various reasons
– most notably because they were too severely traumatized. Even so, as author
Jan Hollingsworth has pointed out, prosecutors had at their disposal “more
than a hundred child witnesses as old as eleven and a truckload of medical
reports bearing documentation of scarred genitals and anuses.”
The stories told by these
children, it should be noted, were not fed to them by some diabolical team of
therapists and headline-seeking journalists. Many of them were offered
spontaneously to hundreds of parents and scores of childcare specialists. And
the victims of the McMartin Preschool, all adults now, still tell the same
stories today.
While anyone suggesting that
the allegations in the McMartin case were true - and that a massive cover-up
concealed the true nature and scope of the case - is likely to be labeled a
'conspiracy theorist,' the most preposterous conspiracy theory surrounding
McMartin has always been the notion that some cabal of overzealous therapists
was able to implant 'false memories' of heinous abuse in the minds of nearly 500
individuals, and have them persist to this day.
Despite the vast number of
eyewitnesses - most of them bearing physical evidence of abuse - and despite the
fact that the judge who presided over more than a year of pre-trial testimony
ruled that the state had more than enough evidence to proceed to trial, District
Attorney Ira Reiner inexplicably dropped all charges against five of the seven
defendants in the case on January 17 of 1986. Six days before that, he had
summarily dismissed two prosecutors on the case.
At least three dozen other
suspects who had been independently identified by numerous witnesses were never
indicted at all. One of these was a man named Robert Winkler, arrested in
neighboring Torrance, California for running a baby-sitting service out of the
Coco Palms Motel that authorities described as a front for a sexual abuse ring.
Children in the McMartin case recognized Winkler in news footage as the man they
had known as the 'Wolfman.'
The kids described Winkler
as being a frequent visitor to the school, delivering drugs for use in abusive
rituals, which were sometimes conducted in churches, a cemetery, or a
crematorium. The Wolfman, conveniently enough, turned up dead on the eve of his
trial, allegedly of a drug overdose.
Winkler wasn't the only one
to miss his day in court in conjunction with the McMartin case. Judy Johnson,
the first McMartin parent to lodge a complaint, turned up dead before her
scheduled testimony as well. When her body was found sprawled naked on the floor
of her home, her death was said to be due to complications from her chronic
alcoholism. She was also derided by defense attorneys and their media allies as
a mentally unfit crank.
In truth, Johnson was not
known to have any mental problems - or a drinking problem - prior to learning of
the unthinkable abuse her child had suffered. Considered a key prosecution
witness, Johnson received frequent threats prior to her death and was followed
when she ventured out in public. Many of the other McMartin parents were openly
skeptical of Johnson’s stated cause of death.
A former Hermosa Beach
police officer named Paul Bynum, who had been hired by the parents of victims as
a private investigator, turned up dead on the eve of his scheduled testimony as
well. His death by gunshot was ruled a suicide, though those close to Bynum
dispute that finding to this day.
Among other things, Bynum
may have testified about his examination of the tunnel excavation project
conducted at the school site. This was, of course, the object of much derision
by the media. The fact that the children repeatedly told stories of tunnels
under the property by which they could be secretly transported to and from the
school, and in which they were subjected to unspeakable abuse in a secret room,
was frequently cited as ‘proof’ that the children's stories were
fabrications.
It was universally accepted
that the tunnels did not actually exist, that being the consensus view of the
media and law enforcement authorities. But while it is true that the
investigation commissioned by the District Attorney's office found no evidence
of tunnels, one of the dirty little secrets of the McMartin case is that the
tunnels did, in fact, exist.
Many of the parents were not
satisfied with the ridiculously superficial examination by the DA’s office,
and commissioned another investigation of the site when the property was sold in
April of 1990. To lead the project, they hired E. Gary Stickel, Ph.D., a highly
regarded archeologist recommended to them by the Chair of the Interdisciplinary
Program of the Archeology Department at UCLA. Stickel had served as a consultant
to Lucasfilms on the Indiana Jones movies.
Also brought on board were
several other technical specialists. As Stickel wrote in his report on the
excavation: “By engaging a highly recommended professional archeological team,
[the parents] hoped to bring scientific authority to whatever might be found or
a definitive resolution for whatever was not to be found.” And what the team
found was precisely what the children had been telling them they would find for
the previous seven years:
“The project unearthed not
one but two tunnel complexes as well as previously unrecognized structural
features which defied logical explanation. Both tunnel complexes conformed to
locations and functional descriptions established by children's reports. One had
been described as providing undetected access to an adjacent building on the
east. The other provided outside access under the west wall of the building and
contained within it an enlarged, cavernous artifact corresponding to children's
descriptions of a ‘secret room.’
“Both the contour
signature of the walls and the nature of recovered artifacts indicated that the
tunnels had been dug by hand under the concrete slab floor after the
construction of the building ... Not only did the discovered features fulfill
the research prequalifications as tunnels designed for human traffic, there was
also no alternative or natural explanation for the presence of such features ...
“If the stories of the
children were bogus fantasies, there is no excuse for the tunnels discovered
under the school. If there really were tunnels, there is no excuse for the glib
dismissal of any and all of the complaints of the children and their parents.”
This investigation was
completed before the McMartin trials had concluded, yet this devastating
evidence was never presented in court by the prosecution. The existence of this
report, complete with photos and maps of the tunnel complexes, was known to the
local and national press, but it was never reported. To this day, it is denied
that any tunnels ever existed under the McMartin Preschool.
The denial of the tunnels is
necessary to maintain the illusion that the children were not credible
witnesses, that illusion being essential to the cover-up. For if the children
were credible, the implications run far deeper than the tunnels under the
school. There is, for example, the stories told by the children of being pimped
out as child prostitutes in private homes and businesses all over the community.
They also spoke frequently
of being photographed and videotaped while being abused. District Attorney
Robert Philibosian publicly declared the McMartin Preschool to be an elaborate
front for a massive child pornography operation. Twenty-three parents filed a
civil lawsuit making the very same claim, one that appears to be strongly
supported by the facts of the case.
Other stories told
repeatedly by the children are even more disturbing. They told of being forced
to witness and participate in the ritual torture, killing and mutilation of
animals and, on occasion, of human babies and children as well. They spoke of
being forced to drink the blood and eat the flesh of the slaughtered corpses, of
witnessing the beheading of infants, and of being forced to stab infants
themselves.
They told as well of being
sealed in coffins with the mutilated corpses. And they spoke of being subjected
to every sort of depraved sexual activity imaginable, including necrophilia,
copraphilia and bestiality. The abuse was of such stunning brutality that it is
almost beyond human comprehension that anyone could inflict such physical and
psychological torture on children.
And yet these stories were
soon being told by thousands of other kids across the country as preschool abuse
cases spread like wildfire. Young children from all walks of life, and from all
parts of the country, all telling remarkably similar stories of horrific ritual
abuse – how was this possible? If they were all victims of 'false memories,'
how vast a conspiracy would be required for therapists all across the country to
implant the very same memories in all of these children?
Experts have noted that the
victimized children show a level of knowledge that defies rational explanation
if the kids have not experienced what they claim to have experienced. For
instance, these child victims can accurately describe the look, smell, texture
and colors of human viscera. This is an ability, it has been argued, that very
few adults possess, other than those who have been trained as surgeons or
coroners.
These children also display
a remarkable level of knowledge of a wide variety of human sexual practices,
including many bizarre acts that, again, most adults do not have knowledge or
awareness of. If these children did not experience these things firsthand, then
how did they gain such knowledge?
In February of 1985, Officer
Sandi Gallant of the San Francisco Police Department submitted a report to her
superiors noting the similarities in numerous ritual abuse cases. She had
gathered evidence from fellow officers and police departments across the country
and summarized the evidence referenced in the police reports submitted to her.
An excerpt from her report reads as follows:
“The information contained
herein is distasteful and bizarre, to such a degree that one would choose to
discredit it. However, research that I have done in this area has revealed that
numerous cases of this type are surfacing around the country and in Canada. The
similarities in the stories of each child victim used in these crimes tend to
give credibility to the information revealed by others. Additionally, the
psychiatrists and therapists who have been treating the victims state that the
consistency of the stories and the explicit details revealed cause them to
believe that these children are telling the truth. It is also the belief of each
law enforcement officer who submitted information for this report that the
victims are being truthful and that, in fact, children would be unable to make
such stories up.
“During my research,
similarities began surfacing which indicate the strong probability that there
exists a network of people in this country involved in the sexual abuse and
possible homicides of young children. These cases appear to differ from isolated
cases of abuse towards children in that the crimes mentioned here have been
committed with one common goal in mind – that of mutilating and murdering
children for ritualistic or sacrificial purposes. Many of the cases reported
also reveal the possibility of child pornography beyond the normal type of
‘kiddie porn’ in that these children are photographed during rituals with
some members in robes or other garb and candles, snakes, swords, altars and
other types of ritualistic material being used.”
Gallant had requested that
the report be sent on to the chief of police for him to review and forward to
the FBI. Following his review, however, the chief declined to submit the report.
Gallant also tried to get the U.S. Department of Justice to review the
paperwork, but she was - not surprisingly - rebuffed there as well.
As for the McMartin case,
there has never been any question that the children there were horrifically
abused. Though rarely noted in press reports, the jurors were clearly of the
opinion that that was, in fact, the case. The hung juries and acquittals were
the result of the jury members’ inability to identify the perpetrators of that
abuse, which they attributed to the inept presentation of the prosecution’s
case.
Another notable fact about
the McMartin trials is that the defense was allowed to subject the child
witnesses to the longest pretrial hearing in the nation’s history. Facing a
battery of as many as seven rabid defense attorneys, the already severely
traumatized children were verbally assaulted for weeks on end in a deliberate
attempt to break them. The state made little effort to protect these young
victims.
Also rarely noted in the
reporting on the trials is that the matriarch of the family - Virginia McMartin
- admitted on the stand that one of her own granddaughters believed that her
children had been molested at the school. McMartin, by the way, had achieved
semi-celebrity status in the childcare field. In the mid-1960s, she had traveled
to New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and England to visit
preschools as a consultant.
In the final analysis, the
logical conclusion to be drawn from the McMartin case is that 460 kids did not
conspire to all lie about the abuse they suffered. They also did not likely lie
about their involvement in child prostitution and child pornography. They
certainly did not lie about the tunnels under the school.
They also did not lie about
their forced involvement in satanic rituals, in which adults sheathed in black
ceremonial robes uttered chants. In fact, at least one such robe was seized from
the home of a defendant. And, perhaps most tragically, there is good reason to
believe that they did not lie about the blood sacrifices either.
REFERENCES:
1. Constantine, Alex Virtual
Government, Feral House, 1997
2. Hollingsworth, Jan Unspeakable
Acts, Congdon & Weed, 1986
3. Kahaner, Larry Cults
That Kill, Warner Books, 1989
4. Newton, Michael Raising
Hell, Avon Books, 1993
5. Raschke, Carl Painted
Black, Harper and Row, 1990
6. Ryder, Daniel Cover-Up
of the Century, Ryder Publishing, 1996
7. Stanton, Mike “U-Turn
on Memory Lane,” Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 1997
8. Stickel, E. Gary, Ph.D.
“Archaeological Investigations of the McMartin Preschool Site, Manhattan
Beach, California” (unpublished report of investigation)
9. Summit, Dr. Roland C.
“The Dark Tunnels of McMartin,” Journal of Psychohistory, Spring 1994
(McGowan is the author of
Derailing Democracy and Understanding the F- Word,and is also the administrator
of the website The Center for an Informed America)
Prosecutor Dan Casey:
"Did you exercise any kind of mind control over your wife in order to get
her to have sexual contact?"
Frank Fuster: "If I had
that power, you think I would use it against … ?
You know ... I don't ... I
have never. I'm a normal human being."
On August 8, 1984, Bobby
Dean stood on the front lawn of the Fuster home in the Country Walk housing
development - a picture-perfect, planned community of relatively upscale
suburban homes in Dade County, Florida. By all appearances, this was a small
slice of paradise – an oasis untouched by the grim realities of American
society.
On this day though, Dean had
a loaded gun in his waistband and he fully intended to use it. He was there to
finish the job that someone else had failed to complete on December 18 of 1980.
On that day, an unidentified assailant had confronted Francisco Fuster Escalona
(aka Frank Fuster) at his place of business and shot him once in the side of the
head.
Fuster survived the attack,
which he explained to the police as a botched robbery, though the officers
thought it looked more like an attempted execution. Dean didn't get the chance
to make another attempt; police were on the scene in short order to arrest him.
Fuster himself surrendered
to police two days later in response to the issuance of an arrest warrant. He
had been under investigation following accusations by neighborhood parents that
he and his wife, Iliana, had been brutally abusing their children while in the
trusted care of the Fuster's babysitting service – run out of their Country
Walk home.
Fuster had, shall we say,
rather questionable qualifications to run a day care center. On January 16,
1969, Fuster pumped two shots into the heart of a fellow motorist in New York
City, killing him instantly. An off-duty police officer was, curiously enough,
an eyewitness to the summary execution.
Even more curiously, Fuster
chambered another round and pointed his gun directly at the armed officer –
and yet wasn't shot. He was arrested though, and tried and convicted before the
year was out. On Halloween day (needless to say, yet another occult holiday), he
was sentenced to a ten year prison term. He was back on the streets in less than
four, after which he received `psychiatric care.'
In November of 1982, he was
convicted again – this time of a lewd assault on a nine-year-old girl. Despite
being his second felony conviction, Fuster was sentenced to just two years
probation. It was while on probation for the child molestation conviction that
Fuster and his underage wife started up the babysitting service.
His probation officer
apparently had no problem with this business venture, although it brought Fuster
into unsupervised contact with at least fifty kids. At least thirty of them were
horrifically abused. Fuster's probation officer also had no problem with the
fact that Frank had self-terminated his court-ordered psychiatric treatment in
August of 1983.
No one really seems to have
been too concerned about Fuster's babysitting service, which - in addition to
being run by a convicted child molester - was operating without proper licensing
and in violation of local zoning laws. Commercial enterprises were expressly
forbidden in the residential community.
Nevertheless, the service
operated with the full knowledge of the entity managing the complex. In fact,
Fuster's service used the name Country Walk Babysitting Service, implying that
his was an officially sanctioned service provided for the community.
The management company,
Arvida, denied there were ever any official links to the Fuster operation after
Frank's past and present activities were revealed. This, of course, was to be
expected. Given that Arvida was a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, it
wouldn't really do to be perceived as having connections to a child molestation
operation.
The fact remains though that
the company took no actions against Fuster for the illegal expropriation of the
`Country Walk' name or for violating zoning regulations. Dade County also took a
hands-off approach to the Fuster business enterprise. Despite the fact that
Frank lacked other required licenses, the convicted murderer was issued an
occupational license to run the babysitting service.
Detective Donna Meznarich
was the first police investigator sent to look into the allegations being made
by the Country Walk parents. She was openly skeptical of the charges before she
even knew what they actually were. The parents felt that she came calling with
an unmistakable attitude of disbelief.
Nevertheless, enough
evidence quickly emerged to issue an arrest warrant for Frank Fuster for
probation violations. Considerably more evidence could have been gathered had
police conducted a timely search of the Fuster home. Facing imminent arrest,
Fuster was observed by his Country Walk neighbors hastily packing boxes into a
white van.
Fearing the loss of valuable
physical evidence, parents contacted the police – who failed to respond. The
detective that disregarded the parents' concerns that day was Donna Meznarich.
She also executed the search warrant the next day, on a home largely - though
not entirely - cleansed of incriminating evidence.
With Fuster safely in
custody, the stories told by the child victims grew increasingly disturbing.
They told of being forced to play "pee- pee" and "ca-ca"
games. A photo would be produced at trial showing Fuster's young son Jaime - one
of the most severely abused of the victims - sitting in a bathroom smeared
thickly with excrement.
The children also told of
being forced to drink "magic punch," later revealed by Fuster's wife
to be a mixture of Gatorade, urine, and various drugs. It would be revealed at
trial that a close friend of the Fuster family owned a pharmacy, providing a
reliable source for drugs. This friend was particularly close to Fuster's mother
and uncle.
The children also told of
having their lives threatened repeatedly, and of having their parents' lives
threatened as well. They had been compelled to play a game, they said, called
"who's gonna lose their head?" This game frequently ended with the
ritual decapitation of an animal, typically a bird.
Finally, perhaps inevitably,
the children claimed that they were frequently photographed and videotaped –
while being sexually abused and during occult rituals. Fuster claimed to have
never owned any video equipment, and none was found in the belated search of the
Fuster home. Jaime Fuster though recalled seeing video equipment - as well as
guns - being packed into the boxes being loaded into the van just before
Fuster's arrest.
Some investigators have
speculated that Fuster was in the business of producing custom, made-to-order
child pornography videos. He certainly lived quite well for a self-employed
mini-blind installer. He had no problem coming up with the down payment for his
Country Walk home, and had no fewer than six bank accounts. He was in the habit
of making lump sum deposits of as much as $20,000.
Fuster apparently liked to
screen home videos for the kids as well, one of which was said to be a snuff
film that the children described as depicting two men butchering a woman in a
bathtub and then eating her. Some of the kids also, strangely enough, spoke of
being hypnotized by Iliana Fuster, who they said wore a `hypnotizer' on a chain
around her neck.
The trial of Frank Fuster
had notable parallels to the McMartin prosecutions, though it differed in
significant ways as well. The Country Walk parents who actively and vocally
worked to see Fuster brought to justice were subjected to death threats by
phone, obscene messages in the mail, and dead chickens left on their doorsteps
– similar to the harassment suffered by their counterparts in Manhattan Beach.
Also like McMartin, the
primary defense strategy was to bring in a hired-gun `expert' of questionable
qualifications to attempt to discredit the children's testimony. The children
had been brainwashed by the overzealous therapists, it was claimed, as these
villainous therapists were crucified as being the true guilty parties in what
was clearly a `witch hunt.'
The man originally scheduled
to play this starring role for the defense was Ralph Underwager, at the time a
prominent mouthpiece for a group calling itself VOCAL - Victims of Child Abuse
Laws. As the name implies, this group was largely composed of indicted and/or
convicted pedophiles. Underwager had been present at the birth of the
organization.
The defense suffered a bit
of a setback though when Underwager's credentials as an `expert' in the field of
child development were revealed as being nonexistent at a pretrial deposition.
He was quietly dropped by the defense and replaced with Lee Stewart Coleman, who
also had close ties to VOCAL. Coleman had played a key role in the unsuccessful
prosecution of the defendants in one of the McMartin- linked preschools.
Coleman did not succeed in
his mission in the Country Walk case, however. Fuster was found guilty on all
fourteen counts. One reason for this is that the children were protected from
the abusive pretrial treatment afforded the McMartin kids. Additionally, the
police and prosecutors - with some notable exceptions - seem to have actually
made an effort to win the case.
Why was this prosecution not
subverted as so many others were? That is difficult to say, though the answer
may lie in the make-up of the parents seeking justice for their children; among
them were a police sergeant, a police lieutenant, two former state prosecutors,
a former chief assistant state attorney, and a gun-toting vigilante named Bobby
Dean.
In the end, Frank Fuster -
the man who appeared at his pretrial hearing in what was described as a
"catatonic trance" - was sentenced to be imprisoned until the year
2150. Not even the Santeria priest who attended the trial with Fuster's mother
and uncle had the power to save him. And Arvida - which is to say, the Walt
Disney Co. - paid $6 million to seven of his victims.
Even so, justice was not
necessarily served. According to the victims, at least two other adults were
involved in the abuse. The state knew the identity of at least one of them, but
he was never charged with any crimes. Had he been, there's no telling where the
investigation might have led; his wife had once run a babysitting service.
With the heightened
awareness of child abuse engendered by the high- profile Fuster case, a number
of other cases emerged in the Miami area. In one, police inadvertently stumbled
upon a collection of hundreds of photos of a convicted child pornographer
engaged in sexual acts with young boys, and promptly arrested the man.
Two days after his release
on bond, he was found in a Miami hotel room with a bullet hole in his head. His
death was, naturally, ruled a suicide. This timely suicide preempted an
investigation that could have, it seems reasonable to conclude, led to the
elementary school that was directly across from his home/studio.
Another case that broke in
the wake of Country Walk was that of Harold "Grant" Snowden, whose
wife also had run a babysitting service. Dozens of kids had passed through her
care over the course of a decade. It took two trials, but Snowden was ultimately
convicted. In 1983, he had been named the South Miami Police Department's
"Officer of the Year." Stepping up to handle the appeal of his
conviction was F. Lee Bailey, who in the late 1960s had represented a U.S. Air
Force Captain in South Carolina accused of child molestation involving multiple
victims.
REFERENCES: 1.
Hollingsworth, Jan Unspeakable Acts, Congdon & Weed, 1986
The
Pedophocracy,
Part VI: Finders Keepers
By David
McGowan
(McGowan is
the author of Derailing Democracy and Understanding the F- Word, and is also the
administrator of the website The Center for an Informed America)
"Little girls have to
learn that their fathers are off limits when it comes to gratification of sexual
feelings" Dr. Richard Gardner, another vocal member of the False Memory
Syndrome Foundation, explaining how children are to blame for their molestation
(in The Toronto Star, February 4, 1996)
Just a few years later, yet
another case broke in the state of Florida. On February 7 of 1987, not long
before the Franklin and the Spence cases broke, the Washington Post ran an
interesting story that did not at the time seem to have any particular national
significance. The article concerned a case of possible kidnapping and child
abuse, and read in part as follows:
"Authorities
investigating the alleged abuse of six children found with two men in a
Tallahassee, Fla., park discovered material yesterday in the Washington area
that they say points to a 1960's style commune called the Finders, described in
a court document as a 'cult' that allegedly conducted 'brainwashing' and used
children 'in rituals.'
"D.C. police, who
searched a Northeast Washington warehouse linked to the group removed large
plastic bags filled with color slides, photographs and photographic contact
sheets. Some photos visible through a bag carried from the warehouse at 1307
Fourth St. NE were wallet-sized pictures of children, similar to school photos,
and some were of naked children.
"D.C. police sources
said some of the items seized yesterday showed pictures of children engaged in
what appeared to be 'cult rituals.' Officials of the U.S. Customs Service,
called in to aid in the investigation, said that the material seized yesterday
includes photos showing children involved in bloodletting ceremonies of animals
and one photograph of a child in chains.
"Customs officials said
they were looking into whether a child pornography operation was being conducted
... Their links to the D.C. area have led authorities into a far-reaching
investigation that includes the Finders - a group of about 40 people that court
documents allege is led by a man named Marion Pettie - and their various homes,
including the duplex apartment building in Glover Park, the Northeast Washington
warehouse and a 90 acre farm in rural Madison County, Va. ...
"The children,
identified in a court document only by the first names of Honeybee, John,
Franklin, Bee Bee, Max and Mary, were described as 'dirty, unkempt, hungry,
disturbed and agitated.' They had been living in the rear of the van for some
time, the document said. Yesterday, police spokesman Hunt said one of the
children, a 6 yr. old girl, 'showed signs of sexual abuse' ...
"Five of the children
were uncommunicative, according to police, and none seemed to recognize objects
such as typewriters and staplers. However, the oldest was able to give
investigators some information. She said that the two men 'were their teachers,'
according to Hunt ...
"Before their arrests
in the park, [the two adult caretakers] had told police that they were teachers
from Washington 'transporting these children to Mexico and a school for
brilliant children,' according to Hunt. When police asked the men where the
children's mothers were they said they were being weaned from their
mothers."
This was just one of many
such stories that emerged across the country in the late 1980s, a phenomenon
that would quickly be denounced as a `witch hunt' and as a `satanic panic.' It
would be nearly seven years before the press would revisit this particular
manifestation of what would come to be regarded as a modern-day case of mass
hysteria.
It was the U.S. News and
World Report that would ultimately provide the follow-up to the Finders story,
but this was certainly not in the interest of shining any light on the earlier
allegations. Most likely, the strange saga of the Finders would have disappeared
forever if not for the rumors surrounding the case that just wouldn't seem to go
away.
These rumors were addressed
in the U.S. News report as follows: "One of the unresolved questions
involves allegations that the Finders are somehow linked to the Central
Intelligence Agency. Customs Service documents reveal that in 1987, when Customs
agents sought to examine the evidence gathered by Washington, D.C. police, they
were told that the Finders investigation 'had become an internal matter.'
"The police report on
the case had been classified secret. Even now, Tallahassee police complain about
the handling of the Finders investigation by D.C. police. 'They dropped this
case,' one Tallahassee investigator says, 'like a hot rock.' D.C. police will
not comment on the matter. As for the CIA, ranking officials describe
allegations about links between the intelligence agency and the Finders as
'hogwash,' perhaps the result of a simple mix up with D.C. police. The only
connection, according to the CIA: A firm that provided computer training to CIA
officers also employed several members of the Finders."
It should probably be noted
here that the firm that supplied the training didn't just employ several members
of the Finders but appears to have in fact been a wholly owned subsidiary of the
Finders organization. It should also be noted that the CIA does not, as a
general rule-of-thumb, assign the training of its officers to outside
contractors. If a 'private' firm is utilized in such a capacity, it is in all
such cases a front group of the CIA itself.
In the last paragraph of the
U.S. News report, yet more intriguing connections to Langley are revealed.
Speaking of group leader Marion Pettie, it is noted that "the CIA's
interest in the Finders may stem from the fact that his late wife once worked
for the agency and that his son worked for a CIA proprietary firm, Air
America." Aside from acknowledging these by then widely known (in
Washington, at least) CIA connections, the U.S. News reporters did their very
best to bury this story once and for all, denigrating the sordid allegations
leveled against the group seven years earlier. The article reads as follows:
"The case is almost
seven years old now, but matters surrounding a mysterious group known as the
Finders keep growing curiouser and curiouser.
"In early February
1987, an anonymous tipster in Tallahassee, Fla, made a phone call to police. Two
'well dressed men' seemed to be 'supervising' six disheveled and hungry children
in a local park, the caller said. The cops went after the case like bloodhounds,
at least at first. The two men were identified as members of the Finders. They
were charged with child abuse in Florida. In Washington, D.C. police and U.S.
Customs Service agents raided a duplex apartment building and a warehouse
connected to the group.
"Among the evidence
seized – detailed instructions on obtaining children for unknown purposes and
several photographs of nude children.
"According to a Customs
Service memorandum obtained by U.S. News, one photo appeared 'to accent the
child's genitals.' The more the police learned about the Finders, the more
bizarre they seemed: There were suggestions of child abuse, Satanism, dealing in
pornography and ritualistic animal slaughter.
"None of the
allegations was ever proved, however. The child abuse charges against the two
men in Tallahassee were dropped; all six of the children were eventually
returned to their mothers, though in the case of two, conditions were attached
by a court. In Washington, D.C. police began backing away from the Finders
investigation. The group's practices, the police said, were eccentric - not
illegal."
The article closed by noting
that "some of the rumors can last an awfully long time." Indeed they
can, though the rumors would have to circulate outside of the media, which has
never again mentioned the case. This does not mean though that there is no
additional information available on the subject. As the U.S. News noted in their
report, there is a certain Customs Service memorandum that was written at the
time of the original investigation.
As this document was in the
hands of the News reporters at the time the story was written, as is readily
acknowledged, it should logically follow that any pertinent information
contained therein would have been faithfully reported. And as we know, the News
concluded that "none of the allegations was ever proved."
Still, it might be
interesting to review the document to see what kind of "eccentric - not
illegal" practices it was that the group was involved in. The memo is
actually a series of memos written by Special Agent Ramon J. Martinez, United
States Customs Service. In Martinez's own words, this is what he observed during
his participation in the investigation:
"On Thursday, February
5, 1987, this office was contacted via telephone by Sergeant JoAnn VanMeter of
the Tallahassee Police Department, Juvenile Division. Sgt. VanMeter requested
assistance in identifying two adult males and six minor children ages 7 years to
2 years.
"The adult males were
tentatively identified by TPD as Michael Houlihan and Douglas Ammerman, both of
Washington, D.C. who were arrested the previous day on charges of child abuse.
"The police had
received an anonymous telephone call relative two well-dressed white men wearing
suits and ties in Myers Park, (Tallahassee), apparently watching six dirty and
unkempt children in the playground area. Houlihan and Ammerman were near a 1980
Blue Dodge van bearing Virginia license number XHW-557, the inside of which was
later described as foul-smelling, filled with maps, books, letters, with a
mattress situated to the rear of the van which appeared as if it were used as a
bed, and the overall appearance of the van gave the impression that all eight
persons were living in it.
"The children were
covered with insect bites, were very dirty, most of the children were not
wearing underwear and all of the children had not been bathed in many days.
"The men were arrested
and charged with multiple counts of child abuse and lodged in the Leon County
Jail. Once in custody the men were somewhat evasive in their answers to the
police regarding the children and stated only that they both were the children's
teachers and that all were enroute to Mexico to establish a school for brilliant
children ...
"U.S. Customs was
contacted because the police officers involved suspected the adults of being
involved in child pornography and knew the Customs Service to have a network of
child pornography investigators, and of the existence of the Child Pornography
and Protection Unit. SS/A Krietlow stated the two adults were well dressed white
males. They had custody of six white children (boys and girls), ages three to
six years. The children were observed to be poorly dressed, bruised, dirty, and
behaving like wild animals in a public park in Tallahassee ... SS/A Krietlow was
further advised the children were unaware of the function and purpose of
telephones, televisions and toilets, and that the children had stated they were
not allowed to live indoors and were only given food as a reward ...
"Upon contacting
Detective Bradley, I learned that he had initiated an investigation on the two
addresses provided by the Tallahassee Police Dept. during December of 1986. An
informant had given him information regarding a cult, known as the `Finders'
operating various businesses out of a warehouse located at 1307 4th St., N.E.,
and were supposed to be housing children at 3918/3920 W St., N.W. The
information was specific in describing 'blood rituals' and sexual orgies
involving children, and an as yet unsolved murder in which the Finders may be
involved. With the information provided by the informant, Detective Bradley was
able to match some of the children in Tallahassee with names of children known
or alleged to be in the custody of the Finders. Furthermore, Bradley was able to
match the tentative ID of the adults with known members of the Finders. I stood
by while Bradley consulted with AUSA Harry Benner and obtained search warrants
for the two premises. I advised acting RAC SS/A Tim Halloran of my intention to
accompany MPD on the execution of the warrants, received his permission, and was
joined by SS/A Harrold. SS/A Harrold accompanied the team which went to 1307 4th
St., and I went to 3918/20 W St.
"During the execution
of the warrant at 3918/20 W St., I was able to observe and access the entire
building ... There were several subjects on the premises. Only one was deemed to
be connected with the Finders. [He] was located in a room equipped with several
computers, printers, and numerous documents. Cursory examination of the
documents revealed detailed instructions for obtaining children for unspecified
purposes. The instructions included the impregnation of female members of the
community known as the Finders, purchasing children, trading, and kidnapping.
There were telex messages using MCI account numbers between a computer terminal
believed to be located in the same room, and others located across the country
and in foreign locations. One such telex specifically ordered the purchase of
two children in Hong Kong to be arranged through a contact in the Chinese
Embassy there. Another telex expressed interest in 'bank secrecy' situations.
Other documents identified interests in high-tech transfers to the United
Kingdom, numerous properties under the control of the Finders, a keen interest
in terrorism, explosives, and the evasion of law enforcement. Also found in the
'computer room' was a detailed summary of the events surrounding the arrest and
taking into custody of the two adults and six children in Tallahassee the
previous night. There were also a set of instructions which appeared to be
broadcast via a computer network which advised the participants to move 'the
children' and keep them moving through different jurisdictions, and instructions
on how to avoid police attention ...
"On Friday, 2/6/87, I
met Detective Bradley at the warehouse on 4th Street, N.E. I duly advised my
acting group supervisor, SS/A Don Bludworth. I was again granted unlimited
access to the premises. I was able to observe numerous documents which described
explicit sexual conduct between the members of the community known as Finders. I
also saw a large collection of photographs of unidentified persons. Some of the
photographs were nudes, believed to be of members of the Finders. There were
numerous photos of children, some nude, at least one of which was a photo of a
child 'on display' and appearing to accent the child's genitals. I was only able
to examine a very small amount of the photos at this time. However, one of the
officers presented me with a photo album for my review. The album contained a
series of photos of adults and children dressed in white sheets participating in
a 'blood ritual.' The ritual centered around the execution of at least two
goats. The photos portrayed the execution, disembowelment, skinning and
dismemberment of the goats at the hands of the children. This included the
removal of the testes of a male goat, the discovery of a female goat's `womb'
and the `baby goats' inside the womb, and the presentation of a goat's head to
one of the children.
"Further inspection of
the premises disclosed numerous files relating to activities of the organization
in different parts of the world. Locations I observed are as follows: London,
Germany, the Bahamas, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Africa, Costa Rica, and
'Europe.' There was also a file identified as 'Palestinian.' Other files were
identified by member name or 'project' name. The projects appearing to be
operated for commercial purposes under front names for the Finders. There was
one file entitled 'Pentagon Break-In,' and others referring to members operating
in foreign countries. Not observed by me but related by an MPD officer were
intelligence files on private families not related to the Finders. The process
undertaken appears to be have been a systematic response to local newspaper
advertisements for babysitters, tutors, etc. A member of the Finders would
respond and gather as much information as possible about the habits, identity,
occupation, etc., of the family. The use to which this information was to be put
is still unknown. There was also a large amount of data collected on various
child care organizations.
"The warehouse
contained a large library, two kitchens, a sauna, hot- tub, and a 'video room.'
The video room seemed to be set up as an indoctrination center. It also appeared
that the organization had the capability to produce its own videos. There were
what appeared to be training areas for children and what appeared to be an altar
set up in a residential area of the warehouse. Many jars of urine and feces were
located in this area."
I'm going to go out on a
limb here and guess that most people, upon reading this, will conclude that the
practices of the Finders were not in fact merely "eccentric." The last
time I checked into it, running an international terrorist organization
specializing in the trafficking of children was definitely illegal. Unless, that
is, the organization doing the trafficking is run by the Central Intelligence
Agency.
Group leader Marion Pettie
shed additional light on his non- connections to the agency in an interview with
Steamshovel Press in 1998. Recounting the history of his group, Pettie notes
that: "Going back to World War II, I kept open house mainly to intelligence
people in Washington. OSS people passing through, things like that."
He wasn't, mind you, an
intelligence asset himself. In fact, according to Pettie, he has spent his
entire life trying - as a private citizen - to spy on the spies. As for his
wife, he claims he sent her "in as a spy, to spy on the CIA for me. She was
very happy about it, happy to tell me everything she found out. She was in a key
place, you know with the records, and she could find out things for me." I
guess Langley has been a little lax on the security lately.
Pettie also acknowledges
that his "son worked for Air America, which was a proprietary of the CIA.
There are some connections, but not to me personally." Of course not. In
fact, Pettie is something of a CIA watch-dog, proclaiming that he has "been
studying them since before they were born."
"I was studying them
back in the 30's. It was ONI back then [Office of Naval Intelligence], and then
the Coordinator of Information comes on, and after that it turns into the OSS
and OSS turns into the CIAU and the CIAU turns into the CIA. So I've been
studying that all of my life. But I wasn't personally working for them."
Of course he wasn't. I have
no idea where anyone would get a crazy notion like that. Interestingly enough
though, this group which claimed no direct connection to the intelligence
community quite obviously had very powerful people within that community
protecting it. As the final Customs Service memo notes:
"On Thursday, February
5, 1987, Senior Special Agent Harrold and I assisted the Washington D.C.
Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) with two search warrants involving the
possible sexual exploitation of children. During the course of the search
warrants, numerous documents were discovered which appeared to be concerned with
international trafficking in children, high tech transfer to the United Kingdom,
and international transfer of currency.
"On March 31, 1987, I
contacted Detective Jim Bradley of the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police
Department (MPD). I was to meet with Detective Bradley to review the documents
seized pursuant to two search warrants executed in January, 1987. The meeting
was to take place on April 2 or 3, 1987.
"On April 2, 1987, I
arrived at MPD at approximately 9:00 a.m. Detective Bradley was not available. I
spoke to a third party who was willing to discuss the case with me on a strictly
'off the record' basis.
"I was advised that all
the passport data had been turned over to the State Department for their
investigation. The State Department in turn advised the MPD that all travel and
use of the passports by the holders of the passports was within the law and no
action would be taken. This included travel to Moscow, North Korea, and North
Vietnam from the late 1950s to mid 1970s.
"The individual further
advised me of circumstances which indicated that the investigation into the
activity of the Finders had become a CIA internal matter. The MPD report has
been classified SECRET and was not available for review. I was advised that the
FBI had withdrawn from the investigation several weeks prior and that the FBI
Foreign Counter Intelligence Division had directed MPD not to advise the FBI
Washington Field Office of anything that had transpired."
The initial arrest of the
Finders in Tallahassee, Florida went almost completely unnoticed by the media.
So too did another arrest in that same state in August of 2000, just before
Florida gained newfound fame as the land of the 'hanging chads.' The arrested
man was Wayne Camolli, and the charge was operating an on-line child pornography
site.
The Los Angeles Times
reported that the West Palm Beach home in which Camolli was arrested, not unlike
the Finder's van, "was filled with so much rotting garbage, trash and cat
feces that the agents had to borrow oxygen masks and hazardous materials suits
from the county fire department to carry out the search." Seized in the
raid were numerous videotapes and a computer.
The most significant aspect
of the arrest is that it was initiated by police "investigating Belgium's
most notorious pedophile murder case." It seems that Camolli had close
connections to "Felix DeConinck, a suspect in the kidnapping and
molestation of a 14-year- old girl ... [and] DeConinck in turn had links to Marc
Dutroux." And so we end up right back where we began, with the case of the
`Belgian Beast.'
The brief Times report
closed by stating that: "U.S. officials couldn't elaborate on the
connection between DeConinck and Dutroux, but said they were part of the same
`child pornography, molestation and murder investigation.'" It is unlikely
that the press will ever revisit the case of Wayne Camolli (tellingly, the L.A.
Times article has disappeared from the newspaper's on-line archives).
As with so many other cases,
the final words of the Customs memorandum on the Finders investigation will
likely provide the epitaph for this case as well: "No further information
will be available. No further action will be taken."
As a final note, it appears
that there may be a hidden agenda behind the recent appearance of a crackdown on
internet-based child pornography rings. The Guardian reported in January of 2001
that Interpol "has agreed to set up an electronic library of child sex
victims at its headquarters in Lyon, France." The first images to be
processed into that database are 750,000 photos seized by British authorities in
the Wonderland raids.
While this could represent a
sincere effort by law enforcement personnel to gather evidence against the
rings, there could also be a much more sinister goal. As the 2001 Super Bowl
made clear, we are now living in an age when electronic `facial recognition
systems' are being put to widespread use, meaning that the images of the
children stored in Interpol's computers can soon be positively identified.
Could it be that the
database being compiled will be utilized as something of a recruitment list to
identify those persons who have been `preconditioned' - so to speak - for future
mind control operations? It's certainly not beyond the realm of possibility.
Interpol has, after all, been exposed as an illegal organization with
distinctively Nazi roots.
Researcher Arlene Tyner has
spent a considerable amount of time interviewing and corresponding with victims
of mind control operations. In Probe magazine, she wrote that some of them
"were turned over to military/CIA doctors by pedophile fathers or other
sexually abusive relatives. CIA officials also blackmailed family members known
to produce `kiddie porn' in order to gain control of their already abused and
psychologically fragmented children."
One thing is for certain
though. Some day, many of the thousands of victims of the child pornography
rings will come forward to tell harrowing stories of their early childhood
abuse. They will tell of acts of depravity committed against children that are
almost beyond human comprehension – and yet their stories will be documented
by the images on Interpol's computers.
But how many of them will be
believed?
REFERENCES: 1. Bouchard,
Joseph E., Ed Bruske, Mary Thorton, John Harris and Linda Wheeler
"Officials Describe 'Cult Rituals' in Child Abuse Case," Washington
Post, February 7, 1987
2. Davies, Nick and Jeevan
Vasager "Global Porn Ring Broken," Guardian UK, January 11, 2001
3. Landsberg, Michelle
"Incest: Stop the Nonsense and Get to the Difficult Truth," The
Toronto Star, February 4, 1996
4. Martinez, Ramon J.
"Report of Investigation," United States Customs Service Documents,
February 7, 1987; February 12, 1987; April 13, 1987
5. Thomas, Kenn and Len
Bracken "The Finders' Keeper," Steamshovel Press, Issue #16, 1998
6. Tyner, Arlene "Mind
Control Part 3: The Blowback Effect of Brain Tampering," Probe Magazine,
July-August, 2000
7. Witkin, Gordon, Peter
Cary and Ancel Martinez "Through a Glass, Very Darkly," U.S. News and
World Report, December 27, 1993 - January 3, 1994
8. Young, Vaughn and Trevor
Meldal-Johnsen The Interpol Connection, Dial Press, 1979
9. "Belgian Porn
Scandal Leads to Florida Raid," Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2000
On August 29, 2001, this
journalist received an e-mail correspondence from a certain Lt. Col. Michael
Aquino,informing me that he was none too pleased with the Pedophocracy series of
articles. Go figure. The following is the complete text of the message that I
received, interspersed with my responses (in red) to the points that Aquino
attempts to make. This posting will serve as an open response, so to speak, to
Aquino's correspondence. None of Aquino's comments have been edited and are
presented here exactly as received, including the typos and misspellings.
Subject: "Pedophocracy
Part 3"
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001
19:20:03 EDT
From: Xeper@aol.com
[Aquino's e-mail address, for anyone wishing to send him their own response]
I have just been alerted to
your "Pedophocracy" series by Mr. Robert Sterling of The Konformist.
If the purpose of your
writings and website is, as you suggest, to expose the truth and not to
perpetuate lies, then your continuing to promote "Satanic Ritual
Abuse" falsehoods concerning my wife and myself is irresponsible and
hypocritical.
DM: To the contrary, what is
irresponsible is for the media - largely owned and controlled by the
intelligence apparatus to which you have dedicated your life - to consistently
ignore and deny the evidence of widespread and absolutely loathsome abuse of
children. As Part I of my series abundantly documents, there is in fact a
massive body of photographic evidence verifying that children all across this
country, and around the world, are being sexually abused, tortured, and even
killed for the depraved enjoyment and financial gain of persons probably not
unlike yourself.
MA: We have never harmed any
children, anywhere, anytime, and have abundantly and aggressively exploded
scam-artists' fabrications to the contrary for years.
DM: If you are insinuating
that I am a "scam artist" (as you appear to be), I invite you to
present any evidence to support that charge. I would point out that that term
generally refers to someone who is peddling knowingly false information for
personal gain. These articles have been posted and distributed as a public
service. I have been paid nothing to make this information available. Indeed,
unlike yourself, I have nothing to gain by becoming involved in this issue and a
considerable amount to lose.
MA: Certainly the least you
could have done was to *contact and ask* me about any questions in your mind on
the subject, which I regret you didn't have the integrity to do.
DM: You have absolutely no
moral ground to stand on whatsoever to be passing judgment on my integrity.
MA: Appended below is the
*truth* concerning the Presidio scam
DM: I find it very telling
that you would choose to insert asterisks on either side of the word
"truth." A Freudian slip, perhaps?
MA: - which as an avowed
opponent of government illegalities and coverups you should find as disgraceful
as I did. Everything I say here is a matter of public record, and I have sworn
to it under oath as necessary.
DM: Every day, in courtrooms
all across America, thousands of people swear under oath to tell the truth and
then proceed to lie when it serves their self-interest to do so.
MA: Please consider whether
it is accordingly not indeed thr decent thing for you to do to remove mention of
my wife's and my name from your "Pedophocracy" piece, both on your
site, Sterling's, and wherever else you have circulated it.
DM: I find it rather amazing
that you feel yourself qualified to offer an opinion on what the "decent
thing to do" is? Your shamelessness apparently knows no bounds.
MA: Sincerely,
Michael A. Aquino
DM: You will forgive me if I
doubt your sincerity.
MA: THE 1986-7 PRESIDIO
"SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE" EVENTS
Following the publication of
the "recovered memories of Satanic ritual abuse" book Michelle
Remembers in 1980, the United States and other Anglo-American countries went
through a decade of "SRA" scares and witch-hunts. After the 1984
McMartin Preschool became internationally publicized in one such scare, day-care
facilities generally became targets of "SRA" witch- hunt instigators.
DM: You haven't even gotten
through the first paragraph of your rebuttal and already you are peddling
deliberate disinformation. Here you have identified the McMartin Preschool case
as a "witch hunt." How then do you explain the existence of the
tunnels beneath the school that were uncovered and documented by a highly
reputable archaeological team? How do you explain the untimely deaths of three
individuals connected to the case just before they were to have their day in
court? How do you explain the fact that nearly 500 kids, of all different ages,
all reported being abused at the school? How do you account for the fact that
the jury hearing the case overwhelmingly believed that the kiwere in fact
severely abused, but were unable to affix the blame for that abuse? How do you
account for the fact that Virginia McMartin's own granddaughter believed that
her kids were abused at the school? You do not account for these things because,
quite simply, you cannot. You merely label it a witch hunt without offering a
shred of evidence to support that point of view. I happened to grow up in a city
just adjacent to Manhattan Beach where my parents were both public school
teachers. As such, they had numerous friends and associates who were fellow
teachers and other childcare professionals (school nurses, counselors,
psychologists, etc.). These people, and thousands more like them around the
country, had to deal with the fallout from the McMartin and Presidio operations
(and countless others). They had to help rebuild the shattered lives. They had
to try, as best they could, to repair the damage and clean up the fucking mess
that your people left behind. The McMartin case a 'witch hunt'? I hardly think
so.
MA: The epidemic extended to
U.S. military services as well, including 15 U.S. Army day-care centers and
elementary schools by 1987. In late 1986 it was the turn of the Presidio of San
Francisco.
On 9/28/86 the _San
Francisco Examiner_ began a series of 8 front- page stories sensationalizing the
witch-hunts. Approximately a month later one set of Presidio parents claimed
that their son might have been anally raped by one of the day-care teachers,
Gary Hambright, and the scare was off and running, with scores of children being
"abuse-diagnosed" by a "play-therapist" despite not a single
published confirmation of actual physical harm to any child. Hambright denied
any "abusing" whatever, and all of the other teachers and staff
supported him.
DM: I will assume that when
you say "play therapist," you mean therapist that was not fully
co-opted by the people that you work for. As for there being no published
confirmation of abuse, I would note that, as my article references, the case was
written up in a highly respected medical journal that was subject to peer
review.
As in other witch-hunts it
made no difference: Over the next year Hambright was suspended, indicted,
charges dropped reindicted, charges redropped amidst a massive media frenzy.
Parents rushed to file over $84 million in claims, as was also routine in such
witch- hunts. [The previous year a similar, highly-publicized witch-hunt at West
Point had resulted in $110 million claims.]
DM: The truth is, as my
article also points out, that the state acknowledged in open court that kids had
in fact been abused at the West Point Child Development Center. How exactly does
that qualify as a "witch hunt"?
MA: Left out of the Presidio
claims bonanza were Christian chaplain Larry Adams-Thompson and his wife
Michele, who had never reported their daughter Kinsey Almond for any physical or
psychological symptoms during the entire time she had been under Hambright's
supervision at the day-care center (9/1-10/31/86). In their original 1/87 FBI
interviews both A-Ts were specific about that date- window, because Almond
turned 3 on 9/1/86 and, as confirmed by the Presidio Director of Personnel &
Community Affairs, Hambright supervised only children age 3 and older.
Despite Almond's untouched
state [on 3/12/87 Presidio doctors examined her and pronounced her a virgin free
from any physical signs of abuse], the A-Ts placed her in an intensive 8-month
program of "play-therapy". The same "therapist" who
pronounced the scores of other children "abused" soon pronounced
Almond "abused" as well.
DM: There is little doubt
that some of the Presidio doctors were complicit in the operation and the
cover-up, and are therefore no more credible than you.
MA: The A-Ts, however, were
not content with just accusing Hambright. In 6/87 Michele introduced
"SRA" themes and insinuations about me - who had been a topic of
curiosity and gossip as a famous Satanist officer throughout my 1981-86
assignment to the Presidio Headquarters - to the "therapist".
Then on 8/13/87 the A-Ts saw
my wife Lilith and myself at the Presidio post exchange and went running to the
witch-hunt investigators alleging that Almond had accused us of kidnapping and
raping her while she was under Hambright's supervision. [They then climbed on
board the financial bandwagon with a $3 million claim of their own based on
their faked story.] This quickly resulted in an even more sensationalistic
international media storm.
DM: The truth is that the
media in this case, as in virtually every other case of this nature, spent most
of its time and energy attempting to downplay the charges and discredit the
child victims/witnesses and their parents.
MA: The San Francisco Police
investigated, verified that Lilith and I had been 3,000 miles away in
Washington, D.C. - where I was on duty every single day Almond was at the
daycare center 9/1-10/31/86 - and closed the case with no charges accordingly.
DM: I think we are all
adults here, and as such we are well aware that the federal government has it
within its power to alter documents to protect one of its own. In fact, it
happens all the time.
MA: In October 1988,
however, I appeared as a panelist on a Geraldo Rivera Halloween special. Rivera
was trying to aggravate and escalate the "SRA" witchhunt mania, and I
was speaking out against it.
DM: Well, if you said it on
the Geraldo show then it certainly must be true.
MA: The broadcast came to
the attention of Senator Jesse Helms, who became enraged that a Lt. Colonel in
the Army should dare to hold a "Satanic" religion. As Freedom of
Information Act filings later revealed, Helms then secretly contacted his close
personal friend, Secretary of the Army John Marsh, and insisted that Marsh
devise some way to destroy my career.
DM: The notion that Helms,
who himself has deep and long-standing ties to the intelligence community, would
take offense to you is a fundamentally preposterous notion. Helms has been
around the block a time or two, and is well aware that the intelligence services
are brimming with all manner of human refuse -- including expatriate Nazis,
organized crime figures, assassins, Latin American death squad leaders, torture
aficionados, and more than a few satanists.
MA: As my 20-year military
record was without blemish [In 1987 I was the sole USAR officer in the nation
selected to attend the prestigious National Defense University/ICAF], the only
way to act on Helms' demand was to try to revive the chaplain's scheme to
threaten Lilith and myself, apparently expecting that with sufficient
intimidation by the Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) I would resign
and "disappear". [It didn't work.]
The CID first (Jan 89)
illegally forced a fulltime active duty board to deny me a new fulltime contract
on expiration of my current one in 9/90. Six months later, after a sham
"reinvestigation", it issued a report "titling" Lilith and
myself for the chaplain's allegations. ["Titling" is a statement by
the CID that it thinks a crime occurred.] Nevertheless the report itself
contained not a single item of "evidence" other than the A-Ts'
allegations that any crime whatever had occurred - and either suppressed or
ignored abundant evidence of our innocence and the A-Ts' violations.
[For example, the CID tried
to get around our 3,000-miles-away proof of innocence by finding out when we
*had* previously been in San Francisco - several months before the 9-10/86
"window" - and then (in 1989) simply revising the allegation to *that*
date! When the CID then learned that that this manufactured redate made the
A-Ts' alleged location physically impossible, it then (in 1991) proceeded to
invent a *new* location, once again on no grounds except its 1991 predicament.
Both the manufactured "redating" and "relocating"
necessarily made numerous additional elements of the chaplain's original
fabrication impossible as well - inconvenient complications that the CID
addressed by simply ignoring them.]
What this bizarre exercise
in "manufactured evidence" *did* demonstrate was the strength of the
political agenda predetermining the CID's "reinvestigation" from the
outset. [For instance, the CID's illegal fixing of the fulltime- duty board took
place at the *beginning* of its "reinvestigation" - half a year before
it was supposedly able to perform the evaluation of that investigation.] Clearly
an expose' that we had in fact been the innocent victims of a cold-blooded,
calculated scheme to defraud the government - by a *Christian chaplain* - was
politically out of the question from the beginning.
My repeated demands that
those responsible for the CID action, as well as the chaplain, be
court-martialed for false official statements, manufacture of evidence,
obstruction of justice, misprision of serious offense, attempted $3 million
defrauding of the government, and several other UCMJ and federal law violations,
were similarly - and equally illegally - suppressed. The CID's response was to
say that I was "swearing falsely" to these facts. Nevertheless it
could not - and did not - produce even a single example of *any* such
"factual falsehood" in the documents I filed and swore to under
penalty of perjury. [Nor, of course, was I ever charged with making even a
single "false statement".]
By administrative complaint
process in 1990 we were able to have the "SRA titling" of Lilith
removed. The CID refused to remove mine - although the A-Ts had always alleged
we "did the SRA together" - because to do so would have exploded the
entire CID operation and opened a trail of serious law violations leading to
Helms and Secretary of the Army Marsh.
I next filed suit in federal
court in 1990 to have the rest of the CID report exposed and retracted. The U.S.
Privacy Act would have forced a comparison of every CID statement in the report
with the actual facts (a _de novo_ judicial review).
For this reason the CID
argued intensely that its reports should be immune from _de novo_ review.
The case was filed as a
Motion for Summary Judgment. There was no jury or in-court testimony. We assumed
that the CID's legal violations were so flagrant, obvious, and numerous that a
simple ruling by the judge would suffice.
To our surprise the judge
ruled that all CID reports were indeed exempt from _de novo_ judicial review,
and that the CID could conclude whatever it wished from its report *as written*.
We appealed, and the appeals
court upheld the district judge's decision to exempt CID reports from the
Privacy Act. Again in its decision, the appeals court recited as
"facts" excerpts from the very CID document whose falsehoods were the
*issue* of the entire lawsuit.
Following the lawsuit I
detailed and documented the CID lawyer's extensive lies in briefs & oral
argument to the Army Inspector General, Judge Advocate General, and finally the
Army Chief of Staff.
None of my facts or
documents was disputed or refuted, but neither was any action taken to
courtmartial those responsible. This effectively exhausted my options.
The bottom line was that on
one hand the politically- driven "black bag job" to intimidate me out
of the Army had failed, and indeed could not withstand many other decent and
honorable offices and officials in the same Army who, as they learned about the
scheme, refused to aid, abet, or tolerate it. [This included every single
superior officer in my own chain of command throughout all the years of the
initial attack against us and the subsequent investigations.]
On the other hand we came to
realize that it was politically out of the question that a Christian chaplain be
courtmartialed for crimes committed against a "Satanist" and his wife,
or that trails of illegal actions leading to powerful national political figures
would be followed. And we also learned that the courts were also not about to
force exposure such a widespread and potentially politically- explosive cover-up
as this one.
DM: And to think that people
label me a 'conspiracy theorist.' If I am reading this correctly (which is not
an easy thing to do, considering the severely convoluted logic), then you are
claiming to be the victim of a 'vast right-wing conspiracy' involving one of the
most powerful Senators in the country, the Secretary of the Army, the Army's
CID, a district court judge, an appeals court, the Army Inspector General, the
Judge Advocate General, the Army Chief of Staff, and numerous other lower-level
players all working together for no larger purpose than to destroy you
personally. And here I was thinking that what was really going on was a
concerted effort to protect you so as not to expose a government-sanctioned
operation to torture and abuse children. Of course, only some crazed conspiracy
theorist would believe that sort of a scenario. Your version is obviously so
much more credible.
MA: On the expiration of my
fulltime active duty contract in 1990, I continued as a parttime active USAR
officer for the next four years, assigned to Headquarters US Space Command with
an above-Top Secret clearance. I decided to retire in 1994, and at that time
received the Meritorious Service Medal from the [new] Secretary of the Army,
covering 1984-1994. I remain today in the Army as a Lt.Colonel, USAR- Retired.
Most people will find it
sufficient, I think, that Lilith and I were never charged with anything after
two long investigations (SFPD/FBI, CID), that I retained my TS+ clearance, and
that I retired honorably in 1994. My Officer Efficiency Reports from the time of
the attack on us to my 1994 retirement also continued to give me the highest
possible evaluations in all categories.
DM: You seem to want it both
ways. First you spin some long-winded and ludicrous tale of your persecution by
the powers that be, and then almost in the same breath trumpet the numerous
honors bestowed upon you by those very same powers, while attempting to
vindicate yourself by noting that no charges were ever filed against you. So
which is it? Quite frankly, I fail to see how you can seriously contend that you
were persecuted when, as is in fact the case, no charges were ever filed against
you -- despite the testimony of numerous witnesses not only from the Presidio,
but from elsewhere around the country as well.
MA: My military service and
present Army-Retired status are public record and can be independently verified
by anyone wishing to take the trouble.
DM: As far as I know, no one
has disputed that you have a military service record -- a record that includes
time spent in Vietnam as a psychological warfare operative, which quite likely
means that you were a part of the Phoenix Program. For the uninitiated, Phoenix
was a program concerned with the illegal torture and assassination of as many as
40,000 Vietnamese men, women, and children.
MA: Nor is the 1990 lawsuit
in any sense a "skeleton in my closet". A review of my attorney's
district & appeals briefs & orals will glaringly expose what was
actually taking place: a court coverup of blatant Senatorial/SecArmy/CID
misconduct - and simultaneous brushing- aside of numerous illegal actions
against an Army officer and his wife of a "politically incorrect"
religion.
MA: An easy allegation to
make, though there is nothing beyond your word to indicate that there is any
substance to this charge.
Michael A. Aquino, Ph.D.
Lt.Colonel, USAR-Ret.
[Here follows an additional
comment of mine concerning the original "abuse" allegations at the
Presidio of S.F. concerning the daycare teacher there, Gary Hambright:]
Hambright was originally
indicted 12/86 on the basis of allegations made by the Tobin parents (which
kicked off the Presidio witchhunt). This indictment was dismissed 3/87 on the
grounds of hearsay.
DM: It's rather interesting
that in your earlier accounting of the case you made no mention of the name
Tobin and strongly implied that the entire "witch hunt" was instigated
by Chaplain Larry Adams-Thompson, thereby allowing you to cast the entire
investigation as some kind of religious persecution. The truth is that it isn't
about religion. It's about pedophilia.
MA: After more
parent/therapist input to investigators, Hambright was reindicted 9/87 on
"two counts of oral copulation and 10 counts of lewd & lascivious
conduct" (SF Chronicle 1/4/88).
All of these charges were
dropped by 2/17/88. On 2/18/88 the Chronicle said:
"The final count of
oral copulation against the former Southern Baptist minister was dismissed by
U.S. District Judge William Schwarzer after the parents of the alleged victim
said their child could not withstand the rigors of the trial."
[The Tobins originally
alleged "anal rape" of their son by Hambright. When a pediatrician
refuted any evidence of this on S.F. television, the allegation was switched to
"oral copulation".]
No news article that I have
ever read indicated that there was a shred of *physical* evidence showing that
*any* child at the Presidio had been sexually abused in connection with that
scam. I say "news article" because I was not privy to investigators'
records on the Hambright allegations, and can verify only what I read in the
media.
Partway through the
investigation a stir was created when the media announced that several of the
children had been diagnosed with Chlamydia. However (a) the Army later announced
the tests were unreliable, (b) no retesting of the children was ever conducted,
(c) Chlamydia can be transmitted by direct contact with any mucuous membrane
[such as mouth or eyes], (d) no testing of the children's parents for this
disease was conducted, and (e) reportedly Hambright did not have this disease.
[For that matter, as verified by our own medical records, neither Lilith nor I
have ever had it either.]
The *only*
"evidence" against Hambright thus consisted of parental hearsay
allegations and the allegations of "therapist" Debbie Hickey, the Army
psychiatrist who conducted the "play therapy" indoctrination sessions
for the children once the scam got underway.
DM: If you don't count the
testimony of the sixty child witnesses.
Though it is inevitably
denied in such cases, children on average are at least as credible, if not more
so, than adult witnesses. And then of course there is the medical evidence and
the psychological symptoms of abuse, which you also choose to deny. Parents of
some of the children have stated that investigators didn't bother talking to
them after their children's abuse was medically confirmed, as my article also
makes note of.
MA: Later on, after Lilith
and I had been attacked by Chaplain Adams- Thompson, I met with Hambright's
public defenders in their S.F. office to see what documents they might provide
which would help us. During that meeting (which occurred after the second
dropping of all charges against Hambright), I bluntly asked the two lawyers if
there were *any* actual evidence - not just accusations - that Hambright had
committed any abuse crime whatever. They both said, "None at all."
[They didn't say "no comment" or "we can't discuss that".]
DM: The fact that his
defense attorneys protested his innocence proves absolutely nothing. They
wouldn't be doing their job were they to do otherwise. Among all the hollow
arguments you have presented thus far, this is perhaps the most specious of them
all.
MA: To me the ultimate proof
that no Hambright abuse was committed is the *timeline*. According to the
Chronicle story quoted above, Hambright was ultimately accused of sexual attacks
of up to 60 children during the period May 85-November 86 (when the Tobins made
their allegations and started the witchhunt against him). Is it possible that 60
children 3-6 years old (the only age group in Hambright's daycare classes) could
have been raped and sodomized for *a year and a half* before the Tobins made
their allegations *and not a single parent noticed anything wrong with any child
either physically or behaviorally during that year-and-a-half*?
DM: Not only is it possible,
it actually happens all the time. As any reputable therapist working in the
field can attest (that is, one who isn't co-opted by your people, such as the
liars at FMSF and VOCAL), children who have been subjected to the type of
unfathomable abuse that these kids reported need to be removed from that
environment for a considerable period of time before they feel comfortable
revealing the depravities that have been inflicted on them. As I'm sure you
know, children who have been repeatedly threatened with death, and who have been
told repeatedly that their parents and other loved ones will be killed, and who
have had those warnings reinforced by being forced to witness and participate in
the killing of others, become quite adept at hiding their abuse from their
parents and other family members.
We assume that none of the
parents ever took any child to the Presidio hospital for any such problem during
that time otherwise symptoms of sexual abuse would have started an investigation
*right then*. No one noticed *anything* the slightest bit wrong with *any* child
until *after* the Tobins had started the whole accusation/"therapy"
show on the road.
These are the basic facts I
know about the Hambright allegations. On 1/6/90 the _Chronicle_ stated that
Hambright had died 11/8/89 of AIDS:
"'This seems to be the
sad, final chapter in the story,' said Nanci Clarence, one of two federal public
defenders who represented Hambright in the child molestation case. 'Gary died
with a clear conscience. It's just too bad that he had to spend the final two
years of his life battling these baseless charges.'"
DM: You will forgive me if I
fail to shed a tear for the dearly departed Hambright (whose death was kind of
timely, don't you think?). We all know that under our system of jurisprudence,
one is assumed to be innocent until proven guilty. The unfortunate truth though
is that we live in a world where people like you are protected, so there is
virtually no chance that the numerous charges made against you will ever be
given a fair and just hearing. When faced with such a situation, 'we the people'
have no choice but to render our own verdict, after taking into account the full
weight of the evidence on both sides. Having undertaken such a review, I have
come to the inescapable conclusion that you are guilty as charged, beyond what I
would consider to be a reasonable doubt. There is nothing in your rebuttal
argument that would lead me to reconsider that verdict.
Untouchable?
Millions
of people worship Sai Baba as God incarnate. More and more say the Indian guru
is also a pedophile.
By Michelle Goldberg
July 25, 2001 | PUTTAPARTHI,
India -- One of the most powerful holy men in India presides over the world's
biggest ashram, Prasanthi Nilayam, or Abode of Peace, in a remote town located
in a barren corner of Andhra Pradesh, a desperately poor state in a desperately
poor country. The town boasts a shiny planetarium, two hospitals that treat
patients for free, a college, a music school and immaculate, colorful
playgrounds. Luxury apartment buildings are springing up on land that just a few
decades ago was covered with ramshackle mud huts. And there's a brand-new
airport to serve the wealthier devotees of Sathya Sai Baba, a 75-year-old south
Indian man with a big bushy Afro and a warm smile.
Somewhere between 10 million
and 50 million people worship Sai Baba as God incarnate, and they stream into
Puttaparthi from six continents, sleeping in one of the ashram's 10,000 beds or
at one of the town's many guesthouses. Meanwhile, the growing number of ex-
devotees who decry their former master as a sexual harasser, a fraud and even a
pedophile has hardly put a dent in his following, though their voices are
getting louder.
"Sai Baba was my God --
who dares to refuse God? He was free to do whatever he wanted to do with me; he
had my trust, my faith, my love and my friendship; he had me in totality,"
says Iranian-American former follower Said Khorramshahgol. What Sai Baba chose
to do with him, Khorramshahgol says, was to repeatedly call him into private
interviews and order him to drop his pants and massage his penis. Other former
devotees contend Sai Baba did even more. No matter -- in this part of the world,
faith is absolute. Believers don't refuse God, and they don't question him.
On Puttaparthi's outskirts,
a Hindu temple has a statue of Sai Baba among its pantheon of deities, standing
right next to Krishna. In the town, every conceivable surface is adorned with
pictures of Sai Baba wearing an orange robe and a benign smile. There's a photo
of him garlanded with fake pink flowers in my hotel room and a giant portrait
behind the reception desk. Each afternoon, a speaker across from my bed pipes in
music praising the guru. When I buy a pen to take notes, it has Sai Baba's
smiling face on it.
Days at the ashram revolve
around an event known as "darshan," when Sai Baba walks through an
open-air, pastel-colored hall (called a mandir) and shows his precious self to
the assembled multitudes. It takes place once in the morning and once in the
afternoon, and people line up for hours beforehand. Everyone is desperate to get
in first, because sitting near the front means that Sai Baba might say a few
words to you, accept a letter or even invite you into his special chamber for a
private interview. Private interviews are the raison d'être of life in
Puttaparthi. They're where Sai Baba does most of his famous materializations --
ostensibly conjuring up objects like rings, watches and necklaces from the air
as gifts for the faithful.
The afternoon I went to
darshan, I spent 45 minutes waiting in a line outside and 45 more minutes
sitting cross-legged amid thousands of other worshipers on the marble floor of
the mandir. There were almost as many foreigners in the hall, which can seat
about 15,000 people, as there were Indians. Dozens of chandeliers hung from the
ceiling, which was decorated with gold leaf. At the foot of the mandir was a
stage, with a door leading into the guru's private interview room.
Just when the boredom was
growing interminable, recorded music started up and a charge went through the
crowd as necks craned for a glimpse of Sai Baba, a slightly frail figure wearing
his customary floor-length robe and fluffy nimbus of black hair. He gave a
little Princess Di wave as he walked from the women's side to the men's side
(everything at the ashram is strictly segregated by sex) and then back again,
taking some of the letters that were fervently offered to him as he passed. All
around me women's eyes were shining, and some of the women rocked back and forth
ecstatically. Sai Baba then exited the way he'd entered, and it was over -- in
less than 10 minutes. An angelic-looking retired woman from Denmark told me
she'd been doing this every day, twice a day, for three months.
Darshan is just about the
only event that occurs at the ashram. There are no indoctrination or even
meditation sessions. Aside from strict vegetarianism, Sai Baba prescribes no
particular practices. His teachings are flowery and vague, combining colorful
Hindu mythology, a Buddhist focus on transcending worldly desire, the Christian
idea of service and an evangelical emphasis on direct experience of the divine.
According to "Ocean of Love," a book published last year by the Sri
Sathya Sai Central Trust, "there is no new path that He is preaching, no
new order that He has created. There is no new religion that He has come to add
or a particular philosophy that He recommends ... His mission is unique and
simple. His mission is that of love and compassion."
This pleasant vagueness
allows believers to project anything they like onto Sai Baba. People see his
hand everywhere, and in Puttaparthi's spiritual hothouse nearly every occurrence
is viewed as fresh proof of his power. Apart from letters and the coveted
interviews, the accepted way to communicate with Sai Baba is via dreams and
visions, and thus the town teems with people interpreting their subconscious
hiccups as gospel. An American named George Leland said that Sai has come to him
in the guise of a Tijuana, Mexico, traffic cop and a Japanese airline passenger.
A 32-year-old Argentine woman told me she gave up her Buenos Aires apartment and
her medical studies after Baba summoned her while she slept.
Stories of sacred
synchronicity abound. A wheelchair-bound cancer patient from Holland, abandoned
by her husband and living with friends who were Sai devotees, had a series of
dreams in which the guru beckoned to her. She insisted that she told no one
about the dreams, yet one day her friends surprised her with a ticket to India.
The ring he materialized for her looks cheap to me -- one of the stones had even
fallen out -- but to her it's a talisman that has helped fight her grinding
pain.
To some, Sai Baba radiates
love and whimsy, while to others he's stern and tricky, destroying their
relationships or afflicting their bodies in the service of their spiritual
advancement. Leland, a big, stately 61-year-old who looks like Hollywood's
version of a powerful senator, told me, "Swami's job isn't to make you
happy, it's to liberate you." In his case, that meant giving up his career
as a motivational speaker and then his marriage. "Sai Baba is the most
powerful being that ever came to the planet," he said over breakfast at a
popular Tibetan restaurant in town. Leland, who has lived in Puttaparthi for
four years, feels he must follow him, but that doesn't mean he enjoys it. He
said sadly, "Even at this moment, my mind doesn't want to believe that God
doesn't want me to be happy, to have a relationship, to be prosperous, to enjoy
life."
"Sometimes I think the
ashram is a madhouse and Swami is the director," said Rico Mario Haus, a
recent 24-year-old convert. I'd met Haus, a Swiss man whose square black glasses
lent a bit of quirkiness to his wholesome good looks, two months before in the
seaside state of Kerala. We'd both been extras in an Indian musical, and we'd
both learned of Puttaparthi from a Sai Baba follower on the set. Ironically (or,
as it now seemed to Haus, portentously), we'd played Western devotees of a
towering guru who saved the soul of the errant hero. At the time, Haus was a
cocky kid planning to ride his motorcycle to Kashmir. Now, wearing white
pajamas, he said, "Baba was calling me. When you believe in God, there are
no coincidences." Nevertheless, he'd kept his sense of humor and found a
certain subversive delight in telling us about the lunatics he lived with.
"When you don't have problems, you don't go to the ashram," he said.
Most of the time,
Puttaparthi's ambient spiritual hysteria is fairly faint. With its good
restaurants and relatively clean streets, the town can be quite pleasant. But
there are occasional bursts of madness. One afternoon, a young Malaysian woman
had a psychotic breakdown, attacked ashram workers and was dragged away by
police. I later found her at the police station, half-catatonic, mumbling "darshan,
darshan, darshan" over and over again. At dinner another evening, Haus
pointed out a wan Austrian woman tugging around a listless little boy. She was
frenzied because she'd had a dream in which Sai Baba instructed her to abandon
her 7-year-old son and live on the streets as a beggar, and she didn't know
whether she had the "strength" to do it.
Of course, outsiders expect
insanity in fringe religions. But Sai Baba isn't just any cult leader. Because
he isn't well known in America, it's hard to convey the awesome power he has in
India. In addition to the droves of foreigners who flock to see him, Sai Baba's
acolytes include the cream of India's elite. Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee is a
devotee, as is former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. A 1993 article in the
Times of India counts among the guru's followers "governors, chief
ministers, assorted politicians, business tycoons, newspaper magnates, jurists,
sportsmen, academics and, yes, even scientists."
Even if you don't believe in
the miracles he's credited with -- resurrections, faith healings,
materializations -- his phenomenal popularity in India is easy to understand.
Just outside Puttaparthi is an enormous hospital he helped build that provides
free cardiology, optometry and nephrology care to all comers. It was funded in
part by a $20 million donation from Isaac Tigrett, co- founder of the Hard Rock
Café. The pink façade looks like a cross between a Mogul palace and a wedding
cake. One enters into a domed hall with marble floors resplendent with images of
Sai Baba and other deities -- Jesus on the cross, the Buddha, the
elephant-headed god Ganesh. Yet for all the architecture's Las Vegas excess,
especially in a country where many can't afford even rudimentary medical care,
the hospital claims impressive figures: 10,594 free cardiac surgeries, 9,090
kidney operations, 382,328 outpatient consultations.
A host of other charity
projects has also won Sai Baba favor with the masses. One of his projects
installed 2,500-liter cisterns in several villages in Andhra Pradesh. Indian
children who might otherwise never have access to higher education covet spots
in his free colleges. Though rumors of chicanery and worse swirl around all
these ventures, even Sai Baba's critics admit that he has eased some of the
region's suffering. "God or a fraud, no one doubts the good work done by
the Sai organization," wrote the Illustrated Weekly of India.
All this helps explain why
there has never been any official action against Sai Baba in India, despite the
dozens of ex-believers who insist that his claims to divinity mask a wholly
human craving for the bodies of the ashram's young men and boys. The evidence is
strong that Sai Baba uses his power to get in his followers' pants. It's also
strong that life is slightly less brutal for lots of poor Indians because he
exists. Some call him a saint and some call him a lecher. Possibly he's
something of both.
The stories about Sai Baba's
sexual misconduct are all remarkably similar. "During my 'private
audiences' with Sai Baba, Sai Baba used to touch my private parts and regularly
massage my private parts, indicating that this was for spiritual purposes,"
wrote Dutchman Hans de Kraker in a letter sent to French journalist Virginie
Saurel. In December 1996, when de Kraker was 24, Sai Baba allegedly asked him to
perform oral sex: "He grabbed my head and pushed it into his groin area. He
made moaning sounds," de Kraker wrote. "As soon as he took the
pressure off my head and I lifted my head, Sai Baba lifted his dress and
presented me a semi-erect member, telling me that this was my good luck chance,
and jousted his hips towards my face." When de Kraker reported to others
what had happened, he was thrown out of the ashram.
American Jed Geyerhahn, who
was 16 when Sai Baba started coming on to him, echoes de Kraker's account:
"Each time I saw Baba, his hand would gradually make more prominent
connections to my groin." The stories are endless, and endlessly alike,
concerning mostly boys and men from their midteens to their mid-20s.
They're not new, either. In
1970, Tal Brooke published a book called "Lord of the Air," later
renamed "Avatar of Night," a vivid, detailed account of his
mind-blowing days as a questing young acolyte and his total disillusionment on
learning of his guru's sexual rapacity. Yet it's only recently, thanks in large
part to the Internet, that various victims, their parents and defecting
officials from within the Sai Organization have banded together to direct the
energy they once poured into worshiping their master toward bringing the man
down.
It all started with a
document called "The Findings," published in late 2000 by long-term
devotees David and Faye Bailey, whose marriage was arranged by Sai Baba. Part of
the nearly 20,000-word piece is given over to evidence that Sai Baba fakes his
materializations and doesn't magically heal the sick -- revelations that seem
self-evident to nonbelievers but provoke fierce debate in devotee circles and
blazing headlines in the Indian press.
Most of "The
Findings" consists of testimony of sexual harassment and sexual abuse.
"Whilst still at the ashram, the worst thing for me -- as a mother of sons
-- occurred when a young man, a college student, came to our room, to plead with
David, 'Please Sir, do something to stop him sexually abusing us,'" Faye
writes. "These sons of devotees, unable to bear their untenable position of
being unwilling participants in a paedophile situation any longer, yet unable to
share this with their parents because they would be disbelieved, placed their
trust in David; a trust which had built over his five years as a visiting
professor of music to the Sai college." These pleas eroded the Baileys'
faith and finally made them go public.
Since then, the movement
against Sai Baba has been snowballing. In the past few months, ex-devotees have
contacted the FBI, Interpol, the Indian Supreme Court and a host of other
agencies, hoping for help in their battle against the guru. A California man
named Glen Meloy, who spent 26 years as a Sai devotee, is trying to organize a
class-action lawsuit against Sai Organization leaders in America, modeled on the
one recently launched against the Hare Krishnas.
His faith was shattered when
he was shown excerpts from the diary of his close friend's 15-year-old son,
detailing several incidents of molestation. The child of devotees, the boy had
been raised to worship Sai Baba as God, and obliged when the master reportedly
ordered his disciple to suck his penis. "You've got all these kids who are
scared to death to do anything that will do disrespect to their parents, in a
room with someone they believe to be the creator of the whole universe,"
said Meloy, his voice choked with fury. "This isn't just any child abuse;
this is God himself claiming to do this."
Hari Sampath, an Indian
software professional now living in Chicago and a former volunteer in the
ashram's security service, is petitioning India's Supreme Court to order the
central government to investigate Sai Baba. His greatest concern is for Sai
Baba's Indian victims, who generally have a much more difficult time speaking
out than Westerners do. During his time at Prasanthi Nilayam, he said, many
students at the ashram's college told him they were pressured to have sex with
the guru. "I've spoken to 20 or 30 boys who have been abused, and that's
just the tip of the iceberg. There are 14-year-old kids made to live in his room
and made to think it's a blessing. In most cases, their parents have been
followers for 20 years and are not going to believe them," Sampath said by
phone from Chicago. "Westerners have little to lose by coming forward. The
Indians have to go on living among Sai Baba devotees."
Sampath also wants the
American government to intervene, on the grounds that "American citizens
have been knowing about this abuse and taking American boys to Puttaparthi and
feeding them to him."
So far, the anti-Sai Baba
forces have scored a few victories. Many senior devotees have defected. Last
September, UNESCO yanked its cosponsorship of an education conference in
Puttaparthi, explaining that it was "deeply concerned about widely reported
allegations of sexual abuse involving youths and children that have been leveled
at the leader of the movement in question, Sathya Sai Baba."
Late last year, after Conny
Larsson, a Swedish film star who once traveled the world speaking of Sai Baba's
miracles, went public about his coerced sexual relations with the guru, the Sai
Organization in Sweden was shut down, along with a Sai-affiliated school. A
cover story in the weekly magazine India Today reports that following a story in
England's Daily Telegraph, "Labour MP Tony Colman raised the issue in
Parliament. A former home office minister, Tom Sackville, also took up the
matter, saying, 'The authorities have done little so far and that is
regrettable.' There is a movement now to urge the British Government to issue
warnings to people wanting to visit Baba's ashram."
Given all this, one might
suspect that Sai Baba's following would be in decline. Yet when one looks around
Puttaparthi, there seem to be enough bright-eyed converts to replace every
defector, enough denial to obscure even the most well documented allegations
and, perhaps most of all, enough fierce belief to trump ordinary moral
judgments.
July 5 was a festival day at
the ashram, a day when Sai Baba addresses his devotees. The faithful started
queuing before 4 a.m. to get into the mandir. Arriving at Prasanthi Nilayam at
around 5:15 a.m., I had to walk for 20 minutes to get near the end of the ladies
line. Women were running and jostling from every direction to join the queue,
and I'd have been pushed back about 150 feet if a pretty Indian girl in white
hadn't yanked me in front of her. In the end, after waiting for more than an
hour, I didn't get in, and ended up sitting outside the mandir in a crowd of
hundreds who kept shoving to be closer to the gate, nearer to their lord's
sacred energy.
Many of these people believe
the official line that the charges are all lies. They're "completely
false," said the director of the Sai Organization, a tiny, ancient man who,
like every other Indian official I spoke with in the organization, asked me not
to use his name because "nobody here works on an individual basis. There is
no spokesman besides Sai Baba." He speculated that the accusers are driven
by "jealousy or frustration. Maybe they are very ill and not being cured,
or they have desires that are not being fulfilled."
Sai Baba, who hardly ever
grants media interviews, alluded to the allegations himself at an address last
year, saying, "Some devotees seem to be disturbed over these false
statements. They are not true devotees at all. Having known the mighty power of
Sai, why should you be afraid of the 'cawing of crows'? All that is written on
walls [or] said in political meetings, or the vulgar tales carried by the print
media, should not carry one away."
But the guru's alleged
interest in his followers' phalli is pretty much an open secret among old hands
at the ashram. The eerie thing about this story isn't just the evidence of
widespread sexual abuse in one of the world's biggest cults -- after all,
between the Roman Catholic Church and the Hare Krishnas, one is seldom surprised
to find perversity in the shadow of piety these days. What's also strange is
that many of Sai's followers seem to accept that their chastity-preaching guru
takes young men, including minors, into a private chamber, asks them to drop
their pants, masturbates them and occasionally demands blow jobs. They believe
the stories, and they believe that he's God.
In an online essay called
"Sai Baba and Sex: A Clear View," an American devotee named Ram Das
Awle says, "First of all, I believe that Sathya Sai Baba is an Avatar, a
full incarnation of God ... AND, from what I've read and heard, I'm inclined to
think some of the allegations about Baba are probably true: It appears likely to
me that He has occasionally had sexually intimate interactions with
devotees." After several rambling paragraphs, the essay concludes that Sai
Baba touches men to awaken their "kundalini" energy or to remove
previous bad sexual karma, and that "any sexual contact Baba has had with
devotees -- of whatever kind -- has actually been only a potent blessing, given
to awaken the spiritual power within those souls. Who can call that 'wrong'?
Surely to call such contact 'molestation' is perversity itself."
According to Leland (the
American ex-motivational speaker), "when he does it, he has a
purpose." Leland says he knows a boy of 15 or 16 who was asked to touch
Baba's "genital area" during an interview. "Then Baba beckoned
him to touch his feet. When the boy looked up, Baba had his robe lifted and a
big boner -- a Shiva lingam. Not much else happened." Leland suspects such
incidents are part of Sai Baba's plan to spread his word. "Probably more
people are going to know about you if there are allegations that you're a
pedophile than if you say God is incarnated on earth."
Sai Baba has also been
called a second-rate magician. Even some of his believers say they've seen him
faking materializations, though to them it's part of his playfulness and
ineffability. Yet there's nothing amateurish about his genius for suspending
disbelief. Haus, the Swiss follower, seemed to have an open mind and didn't mind
discussing the charges against Sai Baba, but he didn't believe them. "I
think this is a projection of his devotees' problems," he said. "You
hear a lot of rumors here, but for me it's not important. When you're happy, why
doubt it?"
He's probably lined up
outside the mandir gates right now, one of thousands of men hoping for a talk
with God.
About the writer Michelle
Goldberg is a frequent contributor to Salon.
If you are interested in a
free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit:
Japan
Hosts World Congress
to Battle Child Sex Trade
By Tim Large
YOKOHAMA, Japan (Reuters) -
More than 3,000 delegates from 137 countries gathered near Tokyo Sunday for a
congress to combat the child sex trade, a multibillion dollar racket spanning
the globe.
The four-day congress, the
second of its kind, comes five years after governments, U.N. agencies and
grass-roots groups first met in Stockholm to map out a battle plan against
commercial child sex abuse.
Organizers say the fight is
far from won.
``More needs to be done than
has been done,'' Carol Bellamy, executive director of the U.N. Children's Fund,
UNICEF (news
- web
sites), told Reuters in an interview.
``It hasn't been a failure,
but the issue of commercial sexual exploitation of children is still with us.''
Bellamy painted a grim
picture of ``a modern form of slavery'' in which a million or more children
worldwide are bought and sold into prostitution, trafficked across borders and
forced into child pornography.
``It is, unfortunately, a
thriving activity that is going on in virtually every region of the world,'' she
said.
``It's not limited to a few
tourists who are visiting a country in south Asia. This really exists in the
richest countries and the poorest countries.''
UNICEF released a report
last week on the global child sex trade, highlighting the enormity of the
problem through a barrage of sad statistics and testimonials from victims.
In Lithuania, up to half of
all prostitutes are believed to be minors, the report said. In Pakistan, based
on reported cases alone, a woman or child is raped on average every three hours.
``From the brothels of
Bangkok to the sidewalks of Manila, the train stations of Moscow to the truck
routes of Tanzania, the suburbs of New York to the beaches of Mexico, the
outrageous is commonplace,'' the report said.
Initiatives by some
governments and better policing methods have notched up victories, but most
experts say commercial sexual exploitation is only getting worse.
``Instability, poverty,
child labor, war -- these are all contributing factors and they are creating
expansion,'' Bellamy said.
TIP OF THE
ICEBERG
The Second World Congress
Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children is set to pick up where
governments and rights groups left off in 1996, exploring lessons learned since
Stockholm and asking what comes next.
Organizers say one of the
biggest challenges is getting a grip on an industry that by its nature dwells in
the shadows, making the most accurate statistics ``guestimates'' at best.
``This is one of the most
difficult issues to quantify, because it's a criminal activity,'' said June
Kane, communications adviser for the congress.
The most conservative
figures available put the number of children involved in the sex trade at about
a million, she said. ``But it's more likely to be five million.''
Police say organized crime
is increasingly muscling into the industry, driving it yet deeper underground.
``It's a lot more lucrative
to smuggle people and children than arms or drugs, because there's less risk of
losing money,'' Kane said.
``In crude terms, if you
want to smuggle dope, you have to grow the stuff, you have to buy the seeds and
cultivate it. Children don't cost anything to produce, and once you've used
them, you can just get another one.''
NEW
TECHNOLOGY
The role of new technology
both in facilitating and policing the child sex trade will be among the topics
addressed this week at the congress in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo.
Police and children's rights
groups say the rise of the Internet over the last half-decade has helped turn
child pornography from a vile cottage industry into a booming criminal activity.
It has also proved a boon
for would-be pedophiles who prowl Internet chat rooms in search of children,
they say.
But new technology also
gives police better tools to trace both victims and offenders.
``Let us hope that we can
turn the scales shortly so the technology for good use will overwhelm the
technology for bad use,'' Bellamy said.
Jewish Gangsters Raped, Killed Children
As Young As 2 On Film
According to the Talmudic
En-cyclopedia: 'He who has carnal knowledge of the wife of a Gentile is not
liable to the death penalty, for it is written: "thy fellow's wife"
rather than the alien's wife; and even the precept that a man "shall cleave
unto his wife" which is addressed to the Gentiles does not apply to a Jew,
just there is no matrimony for a heathen; and al-though a married Gentile woman
is forbidden to the Gentiles, in any case a Jew is exemp-ted.' This does not
imply that sexual inter-course between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman is
permitted - quite the contrary. But the main punishment is inflicted on the
Gentile woman; she must be executed, even if she was raped by the Jew: 'If a Jew
has coitus with a Gentile woman, whether she be a child of three or an adult,
whether married or unmar-ried, and even if he is a minor aged only nine years
and one day - because he had willful coitus with her, she must be killed, as is
the case with a beast, because through her a Jew got into trouble. The Jew,
however, must be flogged, and if he is a Kohen (member of the priestly tribe) he
must receive double the number of lashes, because he has committed a double
offense: a Kohen must not have inter-course with a prostitute, and all Gentile
wo-men are presumed to be prostitutes. Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish
Religion, Pluto Press, London 1994, page 87
Jewish
Gangsters Raped, Killed Children As Young As 2 On Film JEWISH CHILD PORN / SNUFF
FILM RING DISCOVERED Subject:
Jew Kiddie Snuff Porn Date: Fri, Oct 13, 2000,
12:24 am
Italian and
Russian Police Brake Up Child Snuff Porn Ring Mon Oct 9 17:39:53 2000 LSN Staff
Rome, Italy -- Italian and
Russian police, working together, broke up a ring of Jewish gangsters who had
been involved in the manufacture of child rape and snuff pornography.
Three Russian Jews and eight
Italian Jews were arrested after police discovered they had been kidnapping
non-Jewish children between the ages of two and five years old from Russian
orphanges, raping the children, and then murdering them on film. Mostly
non-Jewish customers, including 1700 nationwide, 600 in Italy, and and unknown
number in the United States, paid as much as $20,000 per film to watch little
children being raped and murdered.
Jewish officials in a major
Italian news agency tried to cover the story up, but were circumvented by
Italisn news reporters, who broadcasts scenes from the films live at prime time
on Italisn television to more than 11 million Italian viewers. Jewish officials
then fired the executives responsible, claiming they were spreading "blood
libel."
Throughout history, various
groups have accused sects of Jews of ritually murdering small children. One such
account, that of Hugh of Lincoln, led to the expulsion of all Jews from Britain
in the 13th Century. Such accounts have generally been discounted, but are so
wide spread that Jewish organizations have developed a name for them --
"blood libel".
The American group the ADL
was founded to defend a Jew, Leo Frank, accused of raping and murdering a five
year old girl, Mary Fagan, in his Atlanta pencil factory in 1913. The ADL claims
he was innocent. A mob lynched him after the governor commuted his death
sentence to life in prison.
Though AP and Reuters both
ran stories on the episode, US media conglomerates refused to carry the story on
television news, again saying the story would prejudice Americans against Jews.
Jewish gangsters in Russia
have become increasingly linked to traffic in "white slaves" and
prostitutes through Israel, according to a recent report in the Jerusalem Post.
Israel turns an official blind eye to forced prostitution, and does not punish
Israeli citizens who choose to own "sex slaves", as long as the slaves
are foreign and non-Jews.
Special Investigation
British link to 'snuff' videos Jason Burke in London, Amelia Gentleman in
Moscow, Philip Willan in Rome Observer - Sunday October 1, 2000 Britain is a key
link in the biggest ever international investigation into the production and
supply of paedophile 'snuff' movies - in which children are murdered on film -
an Observer investigation can reveal.
The key suspect in the
inquiry, a Russian who was arrested last week in Moscow for distribution of
thousands of sadistic child porn videos and pictures, was traced following the
seizure of his products from British paedophiles.
Dmitri Vladimirovich
Kuznetsov, a 30-year-old former car mechanic in Moscow, was identified after
British Customs and police traced the origin of violent child porn videos found
in the UK back to Russia.
Last week Italian police
seized 3,000 of Kuznetsov's videos on their way to clients in Italy, sparking an
international hunt for paedophiles who have bought his products. The Italian
investigators say the material includes footage of children dying during abuse.
Prosecutors in Naples are
considering charging those who have bought the videos with complicity in murder.
They say some may have specifically requested films of killings.
British authorities
yesterday confirmed that scores of Kuznetsov's videos, produced in his small
flat in Moscow's rundown Vykhino district, have been found in the UK. They are
concerned that 'snuff' movies in which children are killed may have also been
imported. Around a dozen British men have already been arrested and charged with
offences alleged to be connected to the Russian tapes. A second Russian child
porn ring, which allegedly had a British distributor, was broken up earlier this
year. The investigation into the importing of violent Russian child porn which
led to the identification and subsequent imprisonment of Kuznetsov started about
15 months ago after Customs seized material coming into the country. Since then
there have been dozens of other finds.
'We have seen some very,
very nasty stuff involving sadistic abuse of very young children, but actual
deaths on film takes it a whole step further. That is very worrying,' said one
senior customs officer this weekend.
British paedophiles were
paying between £50 and £100 for Kuznetsov's tapes, the officer said. Further
fees were paid for access to a website that features pictures of extremely
violent abuse.
Though two men arrested with
Kuznetsov have also been imprisoned by Moscow authorities, only one of the three
remains behind bars. Dmitri Ivanov was sentenced to 11 years for actually
participating in the abuse that was being filmed. The others were released under
an amnesty aimed at clearing Russia's overcrowded prisons.
When officers from the
Moscow Criminal Investigation Department raided Kuznetsov's flat they found two
boys in a makeshift studio. They seized a huge quantity of films and other
pornographic material as well as lists of clients in Italy, Germany, America and
Britain. Last week Italian detectives moved in, following months of inquiries,
and arrested eight people. The police searched more than 600 homes and say they
now have evidence against about 500 people. Among the suspects were businessmen,
public employees and a university student. Several of them were married, with
children of their own. Hundreds of people are also under investigation in
Germany.
The Russian videos, which
had been ordered over the internet, were intercepted when they came into Italy
by post, repackaged and then delivered by undercover police officers. They cost
between £300 and £4,000, depending on what type of film was ordered.
Covert film of young
children naked or undressing was known as a 'SNIPE' video. The most appalling
category was code-named 'Necros Pedo' in which children were raped and tortured
until they died.
Police in Russia and the UK
believe that Kuznetsov and his associates have been in business for more than
two years in which time they are believed to have recruited around 100 boys -
aged between nine and 15 - to be filmed.
'Most of the children were
rounded up from railway stations. A lot of them came from the suburbs, or
surrounding regions and were from deprived, problem families,' said Kiril
Mazurin, a police spokesman. 'Usually when children like this arrive in the
capital, they've got no idea where to go and hang around in the station. It's
very easy to entice this kind of teenager - with a promise of a warm bed or a
trip to the cinema.'
Many were lured away from
orphanages. 'Children are not locked in,' said Mazurin. 'Anyone can come along
and promise them a meal at McDonalds. It doesn't take any more than that."
Some children were paid a
commission to find other boys willing to be filmed, according to reports in the
Russian press, for a fee of between 100 and 300 roubles (£2.50 - £7).
Kuznetsov had given up his
job in 1998 to devote himself to the lucrative pornography industry. A
self-taught computer expert, he was in the process of upgrading his equipment to
allow him to e-mail videos directly to clients when police raided him.
Many customers repeatedly
ordered videos from him. The Naples newspaper Il Mattino published a transcript
of an alleged email exchange between a prospective client and the Russian
vendors. 'Promise me you're not ripping me off,' says the Italian. 'Relax, I can
assure you this one really dies,' the Russian responds. 'The last time I paid
and I didn't get what I wanted.' 'What do you want?' 'To see them die.'
Mind Control
Victim Awarded $1 Million Bonacci article -
Des Moines Register Reprint ordering
information Quote of actual judgement at bottom of this page
in porn lawsuit A federal
judge in Lincoln, Neb., has awarded $1 million to an Omaha man who claimed the
former manager of a defunct Omaha credit union forced him into child pornography
years ago. Senior U.S. District Judge Warren Urbom said the judgment for Paul
Bonacci, 31, was a "fair amount" for mental and physical injuries
Bonacci attributed to Lawrence King.
Source: The Des Moines
Register Date: 02/24/1999 Price: $2.95 Document Size: Very Short (less than 1
page) Document ID: BM19990301010044634 Subject(s): LOCAL/REGIONAL Citation
Information: Issue: PSA-2292; Metro Iowa Section Author(s): Santiago Frank
Copyright Holder: 1999, The Des Moines Register Document Type: Article
U.S. government mind control
programs, like MK-Ultra and Monarch, directed against helpless victims--human
guinea pigs--have been virtually ignored by the Big Media Cartel. On Feb. 27,
1999, however, U.S. District Court Judge Warren Urbom found former Franklin
S&L manager Lawrence E. King guilty of numerous crimes committed against
mind control victim Paul A. Bonacci.
King, serving a 15-year
sentence for his role in the theft of $40 million from Franklin, an Omaha, Neb.,
credit union, was ordered by Judge Urbom to pay Bonacci $800,000 in compensatory
damages and an additional $200,000 in punitive damages.
This legal judgement against
a notorious perpetrator of satanic-ritual child abuse is unprecedented. In the
Memorandum of Decision, Judge Urbom wrote, "King continually subjected the
plaintiff [Bonacci] to repeated sexual assaults, false imprisonment, infliction
of extreme emotional distress, organized and directed satanic rituals, forced
the plaintiff to 'scavenge' for children to be a part of the defendant King's
sexual abuse and pornography ring, forced the plaintiff to engage in numerous
sexual contacts with the defendant King and others and participate in deviate
sexual games and masochistic orgies with other minor children.
"He [Bonacci] has
suffered burns, broken fingers, beatings of the head and face and other
indignities by the wrongful actions of the defendant King," the judge
declared. "In addition to the misery of going through the experiences just
related over a period of eight years [1980-1988], the plaintiff has suffered the
lingering results to the present time. "He [Bonacci] is a victim of
multiple personality disorder, involving as many as 14 distinct personalities
aside from his primary personality," wrote the judge.
"He has given up a
desired military career and received threats on his life. He suffers from
sleeplessness, has bad dreams, has difficulty holding a job, is fearful that
others are following him, fears getting killed, has depressing flashbacks, and
is verbally violent on occasion, all in connection with the multiple personality
disorder and caused by the wrongful activities of the defendant King."
Franklin
Coverup
Bonacci's lawyer, John
DeCamp, has waged a long, lonely and expensive legal campaign in exposing crimes
involving an international pedophile-pornography ring.
In 1991, DeCamp filed a
12-count suit in federal court, charging 16 prominent individuals and
institutions, including Lawrence E. King, Omaha World Herald Publisher Harold
Andersen and the Omaha Police Department with conspiracy to deprive Paul Bonacci
of his civil rights. DeCamp's suit detailed slander, false imprisonment, child
abuse, assault, battery and infliction of emotional distress suffered by Bonacci.
The complex case also
involved high-level politicians, business leaders, judges and police officials
with connections to the drug distribution/money laundering operations known as
"Iran"-Contra which goes back to then Vice-President George Bush.
DeCamp, a former Nebraska State Senator, even wrote a groundbreaking book about
the sordid history of the case called The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse,
Satanism and Murder in Nebraska.
Monarch
Project
The horrendous Monarch
Project "refers to young people in America who were victims of mind control
experiments run either by U.S. government agencies such as the Central
Intelligence Agency or military intelligence agencies," writes DeCamp.
"The story told by Monarch victims--one of whom was Paul Bonacci--is that
they were tortured for the purpose of creating 'multiple personalities' within
them," DeCamp continues from his book. "These multiple personalities
could then be programmed--as spies, 'drug mules,' prostitutes or
assassins."
An article by Anton Chaitkin,
quoted in the book, states that "professionals probing the child victims of
'Monarch' say there are clearly two responsible elements at work: the
government/military, and cooperating satanic (or more exactly pagan) cults.
These are multi-generation groups, whose parents donate their own children--who
are proudly called 'bloodline' or simply 'blood' cultists--to be smashed with
drugs and electric shock and shaped. Other children are kidnapped and sold into
this hell, or are brought in gradually through day care situations.
"Paul Bonacci and other
child victims have given evidence in great depth on the central role of Lt. Col.
Michael Aquino in this depravity," continues Chaitkin. "Aquino,
alleged to have recently retired from an active military role, was long the
leader of an Army psychological warfare section which drew on his 'expertise'
and personal practices in brainwashing, Satanism, Nazism, homosexual pedophilia
and murder." DeCamp's victory in court and the million dollar judgement is
a vindication of mind control survivors Paul Bonacci, Alisha Owens and others
who were falsely imprisoned to keep them from testifying against their abusers.
Police and
FBI Cover-Up
According to the sworn
testimony of Noreen Gosch, an activist on behalf of "Missing
Children," whose own 12-year-old son Johnny, a West Des Moines, Iowa
paperboy kidnapped in 1991, was drugged and sold into prostitution and
pornography. "There was no law on the books in Iowa or most any other state
in the country specifying that the police would have to act sooner than 72
hours-even though we had five witnesses that could describe the car, the man and
various details of the kidnapping. So I wrote the first piece of legislation
which became the Johnny Gosch Bill.
Gosch also alleges that the
FBI were active in quashing a TV expose. "Just prior to the 'America's Most
Wanted' story going on the air...within a week or two of airtime, the FBI in
Quantico, Virg. contacted 'America's Most Wanted' and told them to kill the
story," Gosch continued. They did not want the Johnny Gosch story
broadcast," she says. The only reason the story went on is because John
Walsh is a personal friend, and he stood up to them, and he said this story
goes. This woman does not lie. I've known her for years. We're going with the
story. You can fire me afterwards. We're doing the story.
And they did the story. But
the FBI tried to kill this story."
When DeCamp, the attorney,
asked her if she knew why, she replied, "Well, of course. It would have
opened up the biggest scandal in the United States, bigger than the Iran-Contra
story. Bigger than President Clinton's infidelities." The Satanic-Military
MK-Ultra Mind Control Connection Continuing her sworn testimony, Noreen Gosch
spoke about "the MK-Ultra program developed in the 1950s by the CIA. It was
used to help spy on other countries during the Cold War because they felt that
the other countries were spying on us. It was very successful.
"...Then there was a
man by the name of Michael Aquino. He was in the military. He had top Pentagon
clearance. He was a Satanist. He's founded the Temple of Set. And he was also a
very close friend of Anton LaVey [the late founder of the Church of Satan].
The two of them were very
active in ritualistic sexual abuse. And they deferred funding from this
government program to use this experimentation upon children where they
deliberately split off the personalities of these children into multiples, so
that when they're questioned, or put under oath, or questioned under lie
detector, that unless the operator knows how to question a multiple personality
disorder they turn up with no evidence.
"They use these kids to
sexually compromise politicians or anyone else they wish to have control
of," Gosch continued. "This sounds so far out and so bizarre. I had
trouble accepting it in the beginning myself, until I was presented with the
data. We have the proof. In black and white."
DeCamp asked her, "You
known that Colonel Aquino was drummed out of the military?" "He
was," replied Gosch. "But then there were no charges filed against him
that stuck [the San Francisco Presidio child abuse allegations]...I know that
Michael Aquino has been in Iowa. I know that Michael Aquino has been to Offutt
Air Force Base [described by numerous victims as a center of mind control-ritual
abuse]. I know that he had contact with many of these children."
Bonacci's
Story
One of the most
heart-rendering parts of the court transcript is the testimony of Paul A.
Bonacci, the mind control victim survivor, on whose behalf DeCamp sued Lawrence
E. King. Bonacci testifed that King took him on many trips to Washington, D.C.,
Kansas City, Chicago, Minnesota and Los Angeles, where he prostituted the
kidnapped and drugged youngster to the rich and famous--and depraved.
Bonacci said that "one
person I'm not afraid to talk about because Larry King always said him and this
guy were on opposite ends of the field because this guy was a Democrat and Larry
King was a Republican...And this guy--every time I see him on TV, my wife knows
my hatred for him...His name is Barney Frank."
When asked if he
"relationships" with him, Bonacci replied, "In Washington, D.C.
And also I was sent to a house, I believe it was in Massachusetts in Boston
where I believe it was his house because there's pictures on the wall with him
and different people and stuff, that he had met I guess, but it was in his
basement.
Suffering from Multiple
Personality Disorder, currently called Dissassociative Identity Disorder (DID),
Bonacci testified that as one of his alters called Wesley, he lured Johnny Gosch
into the van when he was kidnapped.
"I went up to him,
asked him [Gosch] a question," said Bonacci. "At that point he was
close enough to the car where Tony [another kidnapper] had pulled up in the van
and they pushed him in the car and they had a rag with chloroform in the bag
that they had us stick over his face. And then put it back in the bag after he
was out...We drove several miles...we met up with a station wagon and a van
several times."
After switching vehicles and
changing direction, the kidnapping of Johnny Gosch was over.
More Chilling
Memories
When the judge asked Paul
Bonacci if Lawrence E. King ever sexually abused him, he answered, "Yes, he
did on numerous occasions." How many times would you estimate, the judge
then asked. "Probably a couple of hundred. Within all of the different
personalities. Beginning at the time I was approximately 12 or 13 years old. Up
until I was about 17 or 18."
And what was his primary
duty, according to directions he received from Mr. King, asked the judge.
"It depended on what was needed," replied Bonacci. "Most of the
time it was to compromise politicians so he could get whatever he wanted from
them...If they wanted to get something passed, through the legislature or
whatever, he would put some people that were against it in a compromising
position, by using us boys and girls." And how often was he used at these
"parties" in Washington? the judge asked.
"Kind of hard to
say," replied Bonacci. "Because there were times when there would be
four or five in a night. And I hardly knew, I didn't know most of them. But
probably a couple of thousand times." New Ramifications Since the judgement
in favor of Paul Bonacci contradicts the previous findings of the U.S. Attorney,
Nebraska Attorney General, and the entire judicial system regarding the
"Franklin Cover-Up,"
DeCamp has issued an open
letter challenging the verdicts of the last ten years of court battles regarding
this case and its principals. DeCamp wrote, "I believe that the U.S.
Attorney has no choice but to either charge the witnesses with perjury having
testified under oath in a federal court...or the U.S. Attorney has an obligation
to investigate further into the Franklin saga and reopen matters.
"This time there are
pictures [tens of thousands of pornographic photos taken by Rusty Nelson],
continues DeCamp. "This time Rusty Nelson [King's former porno
photographer] exists and testified completely contrary to Chief Wadman's
testimony under oath to the legislature. This time Noreen Gosch validated the
credibility and story of Paul Bonacci...At a minimum some Federal or State
authority has an obligation to reopen the Alisha Owen case."
Alisha Owen, another mind
control victim, was sent to prison for 15 years for refusing to recant her
testimony against her abusers, namely former Omaha Police Chief Wadman. Despite
this victory, the mind control cover-up continues-as long as Alisha Owen and
others remain in prison.
And the Monarch Program? As
more and more survivors appear and give eyewitness accounts of mind control
atrocities, these outrageous human rights abuses-the Secret Holocaust of the
20th Century-will finally become common knowledge.
Bibliography
Constantine, Alex. Virtual
Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in America (1997); $14.95; Feral House,
2532 Lincoln Blvd., Suite 359, Venice CA 90291.
DeCamp, John. The Franklin
Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism and Murder in Nebraska (1996); $12.95; AWT,
Inc., P.O. Box 85461, Lincoln, NE 68501
Mind Control Foundation
Website: http://www.mk.net/wmcf . Sullivan,
K. MK (1998) $18; K. Sullivan, Box 1328, Soddy Daisy, TN 37384. Taylor, Brice.
Starshine: One Woman's Valiant Escape from Mind Control (1995);
Brice Taylor Trust, P.O. Box
655, Landrum, S.C. 29356.
Dowbenko is CEO of New
Improved Entertainment Corp., and can be reached by email at: u.dowbenko@m...
In the United States
District Court For the District of Nebraska
Paul A. Bonacci, Plaintiff
4:CV91-3037 vs Lawrence E. King, Defendant Memorandum of Decision Filed February
22, 1999
On February 27, 1998, I
found that default judgment should be entered against the defendant Lawrence E.
King in favor of the plaintiff, Paul A. Bonacci. A trial on the issue of the
damages due the plaintiff by that defendant was had on February 5, 1999.
Two counts are alleged
against the defendant: King in the complaint. Count V alleges a conspiracy with
public officers to deprive the plaintiff of his civil rights, designed to
continue to subject the plaintiff to emotional abuse and to prevent him from
informing authorities of criminal conduct. Count VIII charges battery, false
imprisonment, infliction of emotional distress, negligence and conspiracy to
deprive the plaintiff of civil rights. Between December 1980 and 1988, the
complaint alleges, the defendant King continually subjected the plaintiff to
repeated sexual assaults, false imprisonments, infliction of extreme emotional
distress, organized and directed satanic rituals, forced the plaintiff to
"scavenge" for children to be a part of the defendant King's sexual
abuse and pornography ring, forced the plaintiff to engage in numerous
masochistic orgies with other minor children. The defendant King's default has
made those allegations true against him. The issue now is the relief to be
granted monetarily.
The now uncontradicted
evidence is that the plaintiff has suffered much. He has suffered burns, broken
fingers, beating of the head and face and other indignities by the wrongful
actions of the defendant King. In addition to the misery of going through the
experiences just related over a period of eight years, the plaintiff has
suffered the lingering results to the present time. He is a victim of multiple
personality disorder, involving as many as fourteen distinct personalities aside
from his primary personality. He has given up a desired military career and
received threats on his life. He suffers from sleeplessness, has bad dreams, has
difficulty in holding a job, is fearful that others are following him, fears
getting killed, has depressing flashbacks, and is verbally violent on occasion,
all in connection with the multiple personality disorder and caused by the
wrongful activities of the defendant King.
Almost
certainly the defendant King has little remaining financial resources, but a
fair judgment to compensate the plaintiff is necessary. For the sixteen years
since the abuse of the plaintiff began I conclude that a fair compensation for
the damages he has suffered is $800,000. A punitive damage award also is
justified, but the amount needs to be limited because of the small effect that
such a judgment would have on the defendant King, given his financial condition
and presence in prison. I deem the punitive damage award of $200,000 to be
adequate. Dated February 19, 1999. By the Court /s/Warren Urborn United States
Senior District Judge
Holohoax-victim rapes children
and claims victory!
When the West sided itself
unanimously behind the Danish cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, the Arab world
vocalized one clear reaction: “hypocrites!”. One honestly cannot defend
freedom of speech for a dozen of lame cartoons while on the other hand a dozen
of dissident historians, chemists and authors are in jail strictly for
questioning the Holocaust-dogmas.
When the
former AEL-president Dyab Abu Jahjah gave his bidding and consequently
published a cartoon about the Holocaust these
“enlightened” Western opinion molders became hysterical.
What surprised us most in this
matter was the fact that the Arab reactions to the Danish cartoon-affair
(aside from the sad burnings, boycotts and the like) without exception
involved the hypocrisy of the West and its sacred Holocaust-dogmas in the
West. Questioning the ‘Six Million Gassed Jews of Auschwitz and Everywhere’
implicates the severest form of persecution and state repression. At the
moment the Canadian Ernst Zündel, the German Germar Rudolf, the Swiss René
Berclaz, the Fleming Siegfried Verbeke, the Briton David Irving and tens of
lesser gods from the revisionist pantheon remain locked up in state
facilities. Their only crime is their different opinion about certain alleged
aspects of the Second World War.
The West which on one side
demonstrates the greatest tolerance – call it unwillingness – for recidivist
and antisocial criminals such as thieves, rapists and murderers, doesn’t spare
a chance to prosecute and silence the revisionist school and to bring them for
an Inquisitional court.
Those Egyptian, Iranian,
Syrian and Lebanese columnists in this matter clearly have a better
understanding of the degree to which the free West allows itself to be
tyrannized and paralyzed than the bunch of sociological and political experts
who merely portray their hypocrisy over our democratic rights.
Worse is the fact that these
international and mostly Arab commentators only see the tip of the iceberg.
Aside from the open repression of the dissident revisionists and the
institutionalized Freudian analytical lessons in state schools where Germans
are branded as “culprits” from the cradle to the grave, we sadly see that the
unmentionable, small and isolated cases of Holocaust exploitation lead to the
gravest excesses.
And so we read in the Flemish daily De Standaard
(02/03/2006) about the trial of an 80 year old man before a criminal court for
charges of raping underage children. As with many trials of a certain
sensitive nature, this one was also held behind closed doors. The reason for
that appeared later on. In 2003 the defendant molested up to seven children
near a swimming pool of a recreational domain and a play garden, seven
children that were all under five years of age.
This serial child rapist received an absolute meager five
years in jail. Five, that is about the average age of the children he raped
and that will be emotionally and physically scarred for the rest of their
lives. Five, even less than the amount of seven young children he raped.
Belgium which internationally still is associated with the drama of 1996 and
which is also internally struggling with a post-Dutroux complex (the serial
pedophile who ran a prostitution ring) committed the worst imaginable
public relations. Although the tolerance for pedophiles among magistrates
and judges ended abruptly since Dutroux’ arrest, this 80 year old recidivistic
child molester received an historically low sentence of five years. Thanks to
the Lejeune-legislation he most probably will only have to spend one third of
this sentence in a cell.
Then what is the reason that a recidivistic pedophile can
account for so much goodwill? According to the defense the culprit is “traumatized”
of his imprisonment at the Auschwitz concentration camp where he allegedly “had
been tested on”. This completely prefabricated, fictitious account of an
alleged treatment by the miracle doctor Mengele could only hail from the
Holocaust mythomania of Lanzmann, Wiesenthal and others. The fact that a judge
succumbed for this fabric of lies and clearly disregarded the unmentionable
suffering of these seven children, proves once more the thorough psychological
tyranny and paralyzing of the West. Whoever mentions the magical code word
“Holocaust” can account for the biggest, unconditional understanding. At the
same time the most incompetent Belgian minister of foreign affairs, Karel De
Gucht, felt the insatiable need to criticize the Iranian ambassador in Belgium
for the Iranian tolerance of Holocaust revisionism and the promotion of
anti-Zionism. That is the psychologically disturbed and mentally colonized
West the Arab commentators should be criticizing whenever a Western country
insults them.
Apart from the dozens of imprisoned revisionists we can
observe an ever larger plague coming over our heads: the conditioned Pavlovian
reaction of Westerners whenever a mythomanical Jew brings up the Holohoax and
thus all rationale must be abandoned. A serial child molester will be free
again in one and a half years, while his victims will bear the scars for a
lifetime. The quest for justice in the West colonized by Zionists seems a task
for Sisyphus.
"Conspiracy of
Silence" is a powerful, disturbing documentary revealing a
nationwide child abuse and pedophilia ring that leads to the highest
levels of government. Featuring intrepid investigator John DeCamp, a
highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and 16-year Nebraska state
senator, "Conspiracy of Silence" reveals how rogue elements at all
levels of government have been involved in systematic child abuse
and pedophilia to feed the base desires of key politicians.
Based on DeCamp's riveting book, The Franklin Cover-up, "Conspiracy
of Silence" begins with the shut-down of Nebraska's Franklin
Community Federal Credit Union after a raid by federal agencies in
November 1988 revealed that $40 million was missing. When the
Nebraska legislature launched a probe into the affair, what
initially looked like a financial swindle soon exploded into a
startling tale of drugs, money laundering, and a nationwide child
abuse ring. Nineteen months later, the legislative committee's chief
investigator died suddenly and violently, like more than a dozen
other people linked to the Franklin case.
So why have you never heard of the Franklin cover-up? Originally
scheduled to air in May of 1994 on the Discovery Channel,
"Conspiracy of Silence" was yanked at the last minute due to
formidable pressure applied by top politicians. Some very powerful
people did not want you to watch this documentary.
You may find yourself becoming angry or upset while watching
"Conspiracy of Silence." Many people do. However, consider that each
of us has at times in our life acted out of selfish motives when it
comes to sexuality and ended up hurting others in one way or
another. Let us take this information not only as a call to stop
this kind of abuse at the nationwide level, but also as a call to
examine our own sexual relationships and make a commitment to deep
honesty and integrity in our own lives around this most sensitive
issue. Thanks for caring and may we all work together to build a
brighter future for ourselves and for our world.
A copy of this videotape was furnished anonymously to former
Nebraska state senator and attorney John De Camp who made it
available to retired FBI Agent Ted L. Gunderson. While the video
quality is not top grade, this tape is a blockbuster in what is
revealed by the participants involved.
NOTE; This film had to be reassembled from remaining VHS fragments
after an all-out effort was made to block the films release and
destroy all extant copies. Every effort has been made to restore it
to the original and complete "meant to be broadcast" version.