Replies

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0101/07/impc.00.html
Aired January 7, 2001 - 9:00 p.m. ET

ANNOUNCER: CNN & TIME with Jeff Greenfield and Bernard Shaw.

BERNARD SHAW, CO-HOST: Good evening.

Freedom of speech, expression, constitutional guarantees that have long protected the views and ideas of even the most controversial groups. But many are now asking, where do you draw the line? Where does free speech and end responsibility begin?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CO-HOST: Robert and Barbara Curley are fighting to answer that question. The Massachusetts couple is suing the North American Man-Boy Love Association, an organization that openly defends what it calls inter-generational sex. Critics call them pedophiles.

The Curleys say that NAMBLA shares responsibility for their son's murder. Their lawsuit seeks millions of dollars in damages, the hope being that a massive verdict would effectively drive NAMBLA out of business.

The Curleys and their supporters say that this tactic is a legitimate way of holding groups morally and financially accountable. Opponents call it an end run around the constitution.

Here's Kathy Slobogin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Jeffrey Curley was just 10 years old when he was killed, not by strangers, but by men he thought were his friends, two men who wanted sex from him for the promise of a new bike.

Jeffrey was Robert Curley's son.

R. CURLEY: He wasn't going to play along with that. And that was the end. He said no. It was no. And that was it.

SLOBOGIN: Jeffrey's old bike had been stolen. His mother Barbara told him he had to wait for Christmas for a new one.

BARBARA CURLEY, MOTHER OF JEFFREY CURLEY: I just wanted him to learn some responsibility. And I have to live with that today. I think if I had just bought him the other bike, maybe it wouldn't have happened. Maybe they would have moved on to somebody else.

SLOBOGIN: Like thousands of children, Jeffrey was a latchkey kid. His parents were separated. Both worked days. But they say Jeffrey never roamed beyond his tight-knit neighborhood in East Cambridge, Massachusetts.

(on camera): I'm sure you told him all the normal things, "Don't talk to strangers," that kind of thing.

B. CURLEY: Oh, absolutely. No, he knew never to talk to a stranger or get in a car.

R. CURLEY: But unfortunately, that's not the way it works.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Salvator Sikari (ph) was a neighbor, a 21-year-old handyman who lived a block away. Jeffrey knew him.

B. CURLEY: He was just a little boy. He just said, "My parents always said stay away from strangers." And he didn't consider him a stranger.

SLOBOGIN: Sikari and his friend Charles Jaynes cultivated a relationship with Jeffrey. Jaynes was a pedophile. He belonged to the North American Man-Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA, a group which advocates sex with children.

DAVID YENETTI, PROSECUTOR: This was a seduction by these two grown men of this 10-year-old boy. Mr. Charles Jaynes has an 11-page record.

SLOBOGIN: David Yenetti (ph) prosecuted the murder case.

YENETTI: When they took him for rides, they let him steer on the highway. And they took him out to adult places to eat, an Italian restaurant downtown. So they made him feel like he was a big shot. And I'm sure that was appealing to him.

SLOBOGIN: Jeffrey never told his parents.

(on camera): So you didn't know about this relationship.

B. CURLEY: No, not at all. No, no, they kept it completely hidden.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): On October 1, 1997, Jeffrey stayed him sick from school. His mother stayed with him.

By afternoon, he felt better and took his dog down the street to his grandmother's house to give it a bath.

B. CURLEY: I got a phone call from my mother 15 minutes later. And she said to me, "Jeffrey did wash the dog and everything, Barbara. But he just came running in and said, "Nanna, Nanna, I've got to go. I've got to go. I'll be right back, Nanna. I'll be right back. And I promise I'll be right back." And we never seen Jeffrey again after that.

SLOBOGIN: At the corner by the neighborhood playground, Jeffrey got into a gray Cadillac with Jaynes and Sikari.

YENETTI: He thought they were his friends. And they were targeting him for sex. That was the reason for the whole seduction. That was the reason for the lure of the bicycle. And I think the evidence points to the fact that when Jeffrey Curley found out what these men were after, he said no, and he struggled. And that's why they killed him.

SLOBOGIN: Jeffrey Curley died in the backseat of Jaynes' Cadillac as Sikari drove through a Boston suburb. Sikari told police that when the child refused to have sex, the nearly 300-pound Jaynes sat on Jeffrey and held a gasoline-soaked rag to his face. Jeffrey fought for 15 to 20 minutes before he died.

After dark, with the body in the trunk, the two men drove to Manchester, New Hampshire, where Jaynes kept an apartment.

YENETTI: Sikari in his statement to the police said that Jaynes sexually abused Jeffrey Curley after he was dead.

SLOBOGIN (on camera): What did they do with the body?

YENETTI: Jaynes and Sikari, when they were done with Jeffrey Curley, put him in a Rubbermaid container completely naked. They wrapped the container with duct tape. And they drove it to a bridge in South Berwick, Maine, where they dumped the container into the water of that river.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you heard anything about him?

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): The next morning as friends and neighbors handed out fliers for the missing child, Sikari showed up at the Curley home offering to help. The Curley family found something suspicious about Sikari's behavior, enough so that police took Sikari and Jaynes in for questioning.

Later that night, Sikari broke down, confessed, and said Jaynes had killed Jeffrey.

B. CURLEY: It was like my heart was ripped out of my chest. I just went into a total shock. I couldn't believe it. I thought maybe they'd just rape him or leave him in an abandoned building or anything. I was just like, I can't -- why did they have to kill him? Why did they have to kill him?

SLOBOGIN: In the backseat of the car where Jeffrey died, police found publications from NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association. They included drawings of nude boys.

In a kitchen closet at the apartment, a NAMBLA membership renewal card in the name of Anthony Scaccia, the alias used by Charles Jaynes.

On a shelf beside his bed, half a dozen more NAMBLA bulletins. One issue shows two young boys having sex, beneath the drawing the words "join NAMBLA."

NAMBLA, founded 22 years ago in Boston, is a loose organization of about 900 pedophiles. On its web site, NAMBLA says it is against sexual abuse and coercion. It calls itself a political organization and advocates the repeal of age of consent laws.

B. CURLEY: It really sickens me. We're talking about little children that don't even know what sex is. They don't know what sex is. That is statutory rape.

SLOBOGIN: The Curley family believes their son was as much a victim of NAMBLA as he was of the murderers.

In a diary where he detailed his seductions of young boys, Charles Jaynes wrote that buying his first NAMBLA bulletin changed his life. "This was a turning point in discovery of myself. NAMBLA's bulletin helped me become aware of my own sexuality and acceptance of it."

FRISOLI: As a result of reading the NAMBLA bulletin, he came to cope with his feelings and his desires and then became to realize that it's OK to go out and have sex and rape little kids. And that's what he did.

SLOBOGIN: Lawrence Frisoli, the Curley family attorney, has filed a $200 million wrongful death lawsuit against NAMBLA and seven of its leaders in a test of the legal limits of free speech. (on camera): You know what NAMBLA says. They say that they're just a political advocacy group. They don't endorse force or coercion and that they had nothing to do with what these two men did.

R. CURLEY: What do you want them to say? They can argue whatever they want, whatever point they want. They can put whatever kind of spin they want on it. But they're out there actively advocating for crimes against children.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Attorney Frisoli points to stories in the NAMBLA bulletin like "A Gift From Santa" where an older man has sex with two boys. It's not just a story, he says, but a blueprint for perversion.

FRISOLI: NAMBLA doesn't say, "Force yourself on the child." NAMBLA will say, "Do the A-B-C-D to convince the child to consent to this activity." And then you read it and say, "Ah-ha. This is where I go and this will happen to me. This is what I have to do and this is how I will succeed."

SILVERGLATE: The stories would obviously be titillating to a pedophile. A pedophile might feel encouraged by them. But it is not the same thing as saying to somebody, "Go out and attack that boy."

SLOBOGIN: Harvey Silverglate is a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union in Boston, which is defending NAMBLA in the Curley lawsuit.

(on camera): The ACLU argues that no matter how offensive NAMBLA's views may be, they're protected by the 1st Amendment. It says the constitution draws a clear line between free speech and action and that there's no evidence NAMBLA had anything to do with Jeffrey Curley's death.

SILVERGLATE: There is room for people to believe that man-boy love is OK. There is room for people who believe it, who say it, but not to do it. We shouldn't confuse stuff that we read that gets us scared, that gets us enraged, that makes us disgusted. We shouldn't confuse that with illegal speech.

FRISOLI: When it comes to the commission of a crime, which is the rape of children in America, free speech doesn't protect you.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): NAMBLA itself was not charged in the criminal case. No one from NAMBLA responded to our requests for an interview.

This man was once part of NAMBLA's inner circle, elected to the steering committee the first time he went to a national meeting.

TOM POLHEMUS, DETECTIVE: We kicked that off for a moment of silence for two of our members that were at the prior conference who couldn't be at this conference because they're both locked up. And I locked them up.

SLOBOGIN: Tom Polhemus, married with a family, is a police detective in Fairfax County, Virginia. For two years in the mid-'90s, he worked undercover inside NAMBLA.

POLHEMUS: And you sit in a meeting, and they will warn you, "Don't say something to the guy sitting next to you that you wouldn't say to a uniformed policeman because you don't know who it is." And that's a constant theme at the meeting.

SLOBOGIN (on camera): What about one-on-one outside of the meetings?

POLHEMUS: It's a whole other ballgame.

SLOBOGIN: What do they talk about then?

POLHEMUS: Travel that they do around the country and around the world in order to have sex with children, boys in particular, of course.

SLOBOGIN: They're actually trading how-to information about seducing and having sex with children.

POLHEMUS: Yes. If you meet somebody after the meeting, "This is where I go to meet boys. And this is how it's done."

ROY RADOW, PEDOPHILE: I'm quite proud to be a boy lover, to be a pedophile.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Roy Radow (ph) is a defendant in the lawsuit. He didn't respond to our interview request. But he did speak to CNN for a program on pedophiles in 1995.

RADOW: We unequivocally condemn any relationship, sexual or otherwise, with people of any age that involves coercion or exploitation.

POLHEMUS: Their definition of coercion might be different than yours or mine. I mean, to me coercion would be to me a 47-year-old and a 10-year-old, and, "Come on, I can give you everything you want." It's friendly coercion. But it's coercion nonetheless.

SLOBOGIN: Roy Radow insists most pedophile relationships with children are platonic.

RADOW: If you look at the overwhelming population of pedophiles, there's not a lot of sexual activity going on. We're talking about friendship. We're talking about emotional support, mutual emotional support.

SLOBOGIN: A year later, police arrested Radow in his apartment. He was accused of masturbating in front of a 12-year-old boy, the son of a friend. His trial ended with the jury deadlocked.

(on camera): Most parents fear strangers. Is there actually a greater threat from adults that their children know?

POLHEMUS: Oh, absolutely. That's how the vast majority of these cases come about. It's a trusted friend or family member. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Sikari is ordered by the court to be punished at the state's prison for life.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Salvator Sikari and Charles Jaynes have been locked up since the day after Jeffrey Curley was killed. Both were convicted of murder. Neither man would testify at trial.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jeffrey Curley was dead at 4:30.

SLOBOGIN: Their silence was broken only once by Jaynes as the case was going to the jury.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dead in the car. He got that tarp to cover Jeffrey Curley's body...

JAYNES: I never hurt him. I never hurt (INAUDIBLE)! I never hurt him!

SLOBOGIN: Jaynes declined to talk to us about the murder or the lawsuit. The ACLU is asking for a court to dismiss the case.

(on camera): Does it make you uncomfortable to know that NAMBLA material was in the backseat where that little boy was killed?

SILVERGLATE: Of course. Of course it makes me uncomfortable. I'm a human being after all. But I do think that the overriding principle, the 1st Amendment, must be preserved even in hard cases. Is this a hard case? You bet. But is this a close case legally? No.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): But for the Curley family, this is a necessary fight.

B. CURLEY: Every day I just expect him to come running in and say, "Mommy, mommy, make me something to eat. I'm hungry."

If all of this just, we come out with saving some children and educating some people, that would be enough for me. But I really would like to totally demolish this organization in memory of my son Jeff.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: NAMBLA's membership has always been kept secret. The Curleys' attorney says one of the goals of their case is to make that list of names public.

ANNOUNCER: If you'd like to chat with the detective who infiltrated NAMBLA, our online discussion with Tom Polhemus begins at 10:00 p.m. Eastern. You can join the conversation from our Web address, CNN.com/CNNTIME.

Even more lurid details about NAMBLA killers at:
http://www.courttv.com/archive/verdicts/sicari.html