ACLU’s Indiana Affiliate Promotes Child-Molester Rights     8/21/2002
By Martha W. Kleder

ACLU’s Indiana Affiliate Promotes Child-Molester Rights
Fights Law to Ban Predators from City Parks
By Martha W. Kleder

Predator Park Privileges

The Indiana Civil Liberties Union (ICLU), the state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, is challenging a Michigan City, Indiana, law in federal court. The law bans convicted child molesters from city parks.

ICLU Legal Director Ken Falk took up the case of 57-year old Robert E. Brown, who was convicted in 1995 of child molesting, saying the ordinance violates Brown’s constitutional rights and constitutes double jeopardy, punishing someone twice for the same crime.

“They have served their sentence but now, in effect, their crimes are being punished again,” Falk told The South Bend Tribune.

He also reasons that the Michigan City ban is targeted at a specific group of people, convicted child molesters.

“If I murdered or raped someone before, I can go to the parks,” Falk said.

City officials claim that Brown’s own actions were the impetus for their adopting the ban. They alleged that almost every day in July, Brown stared at 70 children participating in a month-long day camp.

Brown was said to drive past Washington Park slowly in his motor home when the children were present, viewing them through binoculars and taking photographs.

“We’re responding to what we perceived as a clear threat,” LaPorte County Deputy Prosecutor John Espar told The Tribune. “Parks are to be designed and offered in a way that promotes and enables the greatest good for the greatest number of people.”

Michigan City officials enacted the ban after a federal court last September upheld a similar ban in the city of Lafayette.

There, in January 2000, the city banned one particular child molester from city parks after he admitted to his therapy group that he went to the park to watch children and young teens and that he had sexual fantasies about them.

The ICLU is appealing that ruling as well.

This is not the first time that the ACLU has defended advocates of sex between adults and children. Last year, the ACLU of Massachusetts agreed to defend NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, in a civil suit brought by the parents of Jeffrey Curley — a 10-year-old boy who was molested and murdered by two men. Police found NAMBLA materials in the home of one of the men, leading Curley’s parents to sue the pedophile organization using a federal racketeering law. See the July 25, 2001 C&F Report article for more information.

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