[FresnoDA]

Danielle van Dam’s Parents’ Sexual ‘Swinging’ Put Her in Danger
New ‘Alternate Lifestyle’ Is Latest on Secular Left’s Agenda
By Allyson Smith

A murder trial currently underway in Southern California is proving that “alternative sexual lifestyles” practiced by “consenting adults” in the “privacy of their own homes” can have unforeseen consequences for society at large — and in this case, may have cost the life of a little girl.

Seven-year-old Danielle van Dam was discovered missing from her bedroom on Saturday morning, February 2, by her parents Brenda and Damon van Dam. On February 27, her badly decomposed and nude body, minus a foot and reproductive organs, was discovered along a rural roadside in East San Diego County. Because of the body’s condition, the medical examiner was unable to determine the exact cause of death or if little Danielle had been sexually molested.

David Westerfield, a 50-year-old self-employed design engineer and van Dam neighbor, has been charged with Danielle’s kidnapping and murder. He is also charged with possession of child pornography after police found thousands of pornographic images on his computer.

In opening arguments last week, prosecutor Jeff Dusek told jurors that DNA evidence found in Westerfield’s motor home and on a jacket would conclusively link him to Danielle, and that his possession of child pornography would supply the motive needed to convict him of her murder.

However, the prosecution’s case against Westerfield has been complicated by the van Dams' debauched lifestyle. Westerfield’s defense attorney Steven Feldman argued that Brenda and Damon van Dam’s “risqué behavior” — including their promiscuous sexual relationships and marijuana and alcohol use — opened their home to several people who could have abducted and killed their daughter.

‘SWINGING,’ DRUGS, AND ROCK-AND-ROLL
On February 1, the night Danielle vanished from her home in the upscale San Diego suburb of Sabre Springs, her mother and two female friends, Denise Kemal and Barbara Easton, partied at a local bar. Before leaving for the bar, the three women drank alcohol and smoked marijuana in the van Dams' garage, where a door leading into the house had been altered so that Danielle and her two brothers, then aged 5 and 9, could be locked out from inside the house. Damon van Dam also admitted drinking and smoking marijuana with the women before they left.

Damon stayed home with the children while Brenda, Barbara and Denise went to nearby Dad’s Café. There, according to court testimony, they continued drinking, danced provocatively, and went outside at one point to smoke more marijuana supplied by another “family friend,” Rich Brady. They also ran into Westerfield, whom Brenda and Danielle had visited earlier in the week to sell Girl Scout cookies.

When the bar closed, the women — described as “toasted” by that time — came back to the van Dam home with Brady and another male friend, Keith Stone, who had expressed a sexual interest in Easton. Upon arriving home, Brenda van Dam noticed that an alarm light was in the house. She and Kemal searched the house and found that the side garage door was open. While they did so, Easton went upstairs to the van Dam bedroom, where she got into bed with Damon van Dam, rubbed his back, and they kissed.

Noticing Easton’s absence, Brenda van Dam went upstairs and found her with her husband. She told the two to come downstairs to join the others. Shortly thereafter, all four guests left, and Brenda and Damon went to bed. Sometime after 3:00 a.m., Damon van Dam awoke to find another alarm light blinking. Going downstairs, he discovered the kitchen sliding glass door open. He closed it and went back to bed without checking on the children. Hours later, when Danielle failed to emerge from her bedroom, the van Dams called 911 to report her disappearance.

‘SWAPPING’ OR ‘SEX PARTY’?
Initially, the van Dams lied to police detectives about their sexual activities and acquaintances. However, on the stand last week, Brenda and Damon confirmed that many of the rumors about their “lifestyle” which had circulated throughout San Diego since their daughter's disappearance were true.

In addition to his activities the night of Danielle’s disappearance, Damon van Dam testified that, on at least three occasions, he had sex or tried to have sex with Easton in the presence of his wife. He and Brenda also admitted having had sex with Kemal and her husband, Andy, at a Halloween party in October 2000.

When asked by the prosecuting attorney if she had had a “sex party” at her home the night of Danielle’s disappearance, Brenda van Dam denied it, saying, “There has never been a sex party at my house.” She subsequently admitted to the defense attorney during cross-examination that she and Damon had engaged in sex with the Kemals during the Halloween party but said, “I don’t consider that to be a sex party.” Kemal similarly downplayed the Halloween party, saying it was “more like a swap” and adding that the van Dam children were not in the home that night.

To date, the remaining van Dam children have not been removed from the home.

MOLES: ‘SWINGING’ MOCKS MARRIAGE
According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, the Westerfield trial is “one of the most closely scrutinized trials in San Diego County history.” Its aspects, including the van Dams’ sexual proclivities, “have generated a raucous public discourse ranging from pedophilia to proper parenting.”

The case also turns a spotlight on organizations like the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), based in Washington, D.C., that advocates “alternative sexual expressions” such as “swinging” (wife-swapping), “polyamory” (multiple simultaneous sexual relationships), and “consensual” sadomasochism. See the April 18, 2002 C&F Report article to learn more about the full agenda of the NCSF, which now works closely with major homosexual and transsexual activist groups such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) and GenderPAC.

Cindy Moles, director of Concerned Women for America of San Diego and Imperial Counties, has followed the van Dam case and said: “This ‘lifestyle’ cheapens marriage and reduces it to nothing more than a contract between two people who share a house and a checkbook. The ‘swingers’ movement makes a total mockery out of fidelity and marriage, and threatens the children who would normally find safe haven in a home with parents who are faithful to each other.”

Moles said it is interesting that “just as special interest groups worked to normalize and legalize homosexuality, organizations like the NCSF are advocating for this appalling ‘swinging’ lifestyle.”

Child advocate Douglas Howard Pierce warned on his Millennium Children’s Fund Web site: “America needs to be aware about another type of hidden swingers called ‘family affair.’ This is when the children are involved in family group sexual encounters. This type of underground activity is prevalent via the Internet and chat rooms titled ‘family affair.’”

‘LIFESTYLES’ HAVE CONSEQUENCES
San Diego pro-family attorney Bill Trask offered the following analysis of the van Dam story: “In a criminal case, the defense has to produce enough evidence that causes the jury to doubt that the defendant committed the crime. One way of doing that is to show that there is another reasonable explanation” — in this case, that the van Dams opened their doors to a variety of unsavory characters.

“I think what this case boils down to is a principle that is generally applicable regardless of what the lifestyle is, and that is that even though in our society we are free to engage in any lifestyle we want, it doesn’t mean that we’re free from the consequences of that lifestyle,” Trask added.

Allyson Smith, a regular contributor to Culture & Family Report, is a freelance reporter based in San Diego, California.

[FresnoDA]

Danielle van Dam — Victim of "Alternative Lifestyles?"
By Chris Weinkopf
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 13, 2002

MAYBE, JUST MAYBE it was a total stranger who abducted seven-year-old Danielle van Dam from her San Diego home almost two weeks ago. Some thug could have picked her parents’ house at random and snuck in during the middle of the night, evading detection despite the home-security system. Somehow, the intruder could have found his way up to Danielle’s bedroom and removed her against her willagain, without being noticed.

Then again, maybe not.

The practical realities and crime statisticsless than 1 percent of the 800,000 children reported missing in the U.S. last year were abducted by someone unconnected to the familysuggest otherwise. Yet to judge by the initial coverage of Danielle’s disappearance on national TV, one would think her kidnapping had to be the exception to the rule.

The story, as first told on The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, Larry King Live, and America's Most Wanted, mirrored the account of Danielle’s parents, Brenda and Damon: Brenda was out partying that Friday night with friends at a San Diego nightspot. Damon put the kids to bed around 10. Brenda and her pals showed up around 2:30 and joined Damon for some pizza. The friends then left, and Brenda and Damon went to bed without first checking in on their daughter. They didn’t discover that she was missing until 9 a.m. Saturday morning.

As usual, the story behind the story has been available mostly outside the establishment mediaon the Internet and talk radio.

Last Friday, San Diego talk-show host Rick Roberts presented his listeners with an alternative scenario for what might have happened. According to his "reliable" source "high in law enforcement," the van Dams are "swingers," and not in the dancing sense. They engage in "lots of wife-swapping," and reportedly did so in their garage the night Danielle disappeared. According to rumors circulating like mad on local talk shows and Internet bulletin boards, the van Dams lock their garage from the inside during their swingers’ parties to make sure Danielle and her two brothers don’t stumble in on the festivities.

That would explain why the van Dams might have failed to notice an intruder breaking into their home and walking off with their child. It also provides a motive for neighbor David Westerfield, the only suspect thus far identified by San Diego police. According to the rumorswhich are, it should be noted, only thatWesterfield was a frustrated, would-be swinger who wanted to attend the van Dams’ soirees, but was denied admission for lack of a partner.

There’s more to the Westerfield angle: He saw Mrs. van Dam at the bar earlier in the evening, where, he claims, they danced (which she denies). He also high-tailed it out of San Diego and into the desert the next morning, which was enough to make police suspicious. So far, they have searched his home, where they found child pornography, and seized two of his vehicles, but they haven’t sought his arrest.

It’s easy to speculate by connecting the dots: At the nightclub, Westerfield might have learned about the orgy planned later in the evening. Mindful that Danielle’s parents would be distracted, he could have used the opportunity to sneak into their home and take her, thereby satisfying his perverted sexual appetites and exacting revenge against the van Dams for not including him in theirs.

It’s just a theory, and it’s rooted purely in conjecture, but it’s also the best lead available so far, which raises a worthwhile question: Why have so many in the press, the national TV media in particular, been reluctant to pursue it?

Surely it’s not just that the stories are unsubstantiated. That, after all, never kept the media from investigating claims of Nicole Brown Simpson’s drug use, the basis of O.J. defenders’ absurd charge that drug lords were "the real killer."

For their part, the van Dams have yet to deny the innuendos categorically. Asked about the alleged swinging on a San Diego TV station, Mrs. van Dam replied that "rumors are rumors," and "they have absolutely nothing to do with this investigation." Newsweek, one of few national media outlets that’s questioned the van Dams’ telling of events, quotes their spokeswoman, Sara Fraunces, as issuing the classic non-denial denial: The van Dams "do not lead a perfect lifestyle," she said, but that’s immaterial to the matter at hand.

Fraunces no doubt chose her words carefully. In the last 35 years, the term "lifestyle" has become not only the code word for any sort of sexual deviance, but also the quick way to claim a certain immunity from inconvenient questioning about it. This is the same logic Bill Clinton and his defenders used to rationalize perjury and lying to the American public, because it was "just about sex." For Gary Condit, it justified denying his affair to Washington police. His lifestyle took precedence over their duty to find Chandra Levy, dead or alive.

Like the "right to privacy" (a term invoked almost exclusively in sexual matters), the "lifestyle" claim is an appeal to the sexual revolution and its promise of an uninhibited sex life free of all responsibilities and moral judgment. It supersedes even laws, justice, or, in the case of Danielle van Dam and others, human life. To many of the reporters covering the van Dam story, the couple’s right to privacy similarly transcends the need for a complete and thorough investigation of their daughter’s disappearance.

But the couple’s "personal life" is a legitimate subject of inquiry, and not just for investigators. With their appeals to the press and calls for volunteers to help look for Danielle, the van Dams have made the investigation into their daughter’s kidnapping a very public affair. Privacy concerns should keep neither police nor reporters from pursuing all viable leads certainly not when there’s a chance Danielle may still be alive.

It may be, as Mrs. van Dam claims, that Danielle’s abduction has nothing to do with her parents’ sexual predilections, but at this point, there’s no way for the van Dams to know that for sure. If they are lying about that Friday night’s events, then their credibility on all matters must be called into doubt. And even if they are telling the truth about that night, but they hosted sex parties in their home on others, that could yield a long list of potential suspects people with unhealthy sexual behaviors who know the lay of the house.

The fetishization of "privacy" shouldn’t keep the van Dams from being forthright, or preclude the press from doing its job. The life of a little girl is at stake.

[KLT]

Interesting Fresno...very interesting...seems we are up against more then we just the regular "alternate lifestyle" agenda....

These people have not one moral bone in their bodies...

[afraidfortherepublic]

...her badly decomposed and nude body, minus a foot and reproductive organs, was discovered along a rural roadside in East San Diego County. Because of the body’s condition, the medical examiner was unable to determine the exact cause of death or if little Danielle had been sexually molested.

I'd say that if her "reproductive organs" were missisng that it is a safe bet that she'd been sexually molested -- unless animals got to the body.