Missing Danielle Parents Allegedly Swingers

Larry King Live ^ | Brenda & Damon Van Dam

[Petronski]

Larry asked them about it just now on Larry King Live (2-11-2), and they refused to deny it.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"All you've done here is criticize others because they refuse to see it your way..."

Pot...kettle...black...

[Luis Gonzalez]

No, that was my mistake.

[Luis Gonzalez]

BUMP!!!

Well said.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"You stated that you wouldn't be surprised to see us write that the child being taken was some kind of divine retribution..."

Then why the innordinate amount of time on this thread by some posters on the sin that the parents are guilty of?

I have yet to read anywhere that the people who came home with Mrs. Van Dam (if indeed some came home with her) where not the same people who went out with her, other than an unsubstantiated rumour that is, and they obviously know the neighbor being questioned. As best as I can tell, once I get past all the creative slandering in FR, there are no credible reports that a) Mrs. Van Dam brought home barflies whom she had just met, b) that there was an orgy that night, or c) that there where drugs involved.

This leads me to believe that if indeed someone outside the family harmed Danielle, it is someone whom the family knows. That's the case with most of these cases. Someone who the family and the child trusts does the harm.

Yet, FReepers are busy making up news. That pisses me off, I expect better than that from FReepers.

If these facts come to light, then I will form an opinion. I certainly WILL NOT do that without concrete evidence or information.

And if I am wrong, you will hear from me.

[winstonchurchill]

The Van Dams need REAL Christians around them, comforting them with prayer, and telling them about the love of God. Not judgemental blowhards calling them perverts and deviants. Ask yourself, is what you have done on this thread what Jesus would have done? Would Jesus be busy calling them names, or would he be trying to comfort them?

The answer of course is not one OR the other, but both. The comfort comes when the sinning stops. So, "Go and sin no more."

The "real" Christian, as you put it, will always offer comfort AND demand an end to the sin at the same time, knowing that the comforting of God cannot coexist with the sin.

So much nonsense passes these boards about homesexuality for the same reason; the false dichotomy that we must either accept perversion without comment OR be hateful. That is the false premise of the liberal. The Truth, of course, is hate (and condemn) the sin without hating and condemning the sinner. How hard is that?

[Selara]

Selara : My original question on the whole thing, was how could a lifestyle that parents felt compelled to hide or conceal from their children, be defensible?

HamiltonJay : Quite frankly the fact you ask this question makes me think you are one of two things, 1) a person who has never had children or 2) very foolish.

You went on to state that a parent who gives their children intimate details of their sex life, would not be a good parent, and I agree with that.

The keyword in my posts has been lifestyle. Lifestyle means the typical way of life for an individual, couple or family. For instance, when a medical professional, who resides in Chicago, spends a week camping in Alaska, without electricity, phone, etc...it would still be said that his lifestyle is probably urban professional. The week of roughing it in the wilderness was an event, but it was not TYPICAL of his way of life.

A single woman, lives in a crack house in New Orleans, along with her two small children. The lifestyle of this family unity will be much different from the lifestyle of the married, non drug using, monogamous couple with two children, who live but a few blocks away from the crack house.

The lifestyle of swinging, by it's very definition, involves a revolving door of various persons, entering the lives of the couple, and possibly the family, who have sexual appetites differing from the average person. This is a different lifestly from a couple who commits to a monogamous marriage. Can you see that?

Children do not need to be told the details of anyone's sexual life, to see and experience the fruits of a chosen lifestyle. The child living in the crack house does not need to be told the details of drug use, to experience the results of that lifestyle.

There are a variety of reasons why swinging parents attempt to hide this lifestyle from their children, they know it is extremely difficult to instill values of commitment, loyalty, faithfulness when they live the opposite. It is fairly well known and established that children who are aware of multiple sexual partners with parents, often experience emotional problems, as well as feelings of betrayal and anger. Children do not like to be very different from their peers. If they wish their children to be involved in a religion, this lifestyle is in opposition to most religions

There are a multitude of reasonings, but the bottom line is that swingers DO attempt to hide their lifestyle from their children. Monogamous couples do NOT attempt to hide their lifestyle from their children.

Incidentially, I have children, and I am not foolish. My children have no desire to hear the details of sexual intimacy with my husband, but they do experience a security from observing our obvious affection and love for one another. They have no fear that any arguement may lead to one of us leaving, because they know..they know..we are faithful to each other.

I hope that I have shown that events may come and go, but a lifestyle is a way of life...the typical and usual way of life.

In this particular case, the lifestyle of letting comparative strangers, who are intoxicated and have heightened sexual appetites, while the parents are intoxicated, into one's home with sleeping children could have contributed to this tragedy.

[sneakypete]

I'm not one of the ones who say their lifestyle caused the girl's abduction.

I know. I just put that out there so the others who are saying this would see it.

[sneakypete]

I'm sure the NAMBLA folks would use the exact same tact.

I'll have to take your word for that. I'm sure you are much more familiar with how child rapists think than I am.

[MizSterious]

Danielle van Dam — Victim of "Alternative Lifestyles?"

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 will—again, without being noticed.

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Then again, maybe not.

The practical realities and crime statistics—less than 1 percent of the 800,000 children reported missing in the U.S. last year were abducted by someone unconnected to the family—suggest 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 media—on 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 rumors—which are, it should be noted, only that—Westerfield 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.

[sneakypete]

Yes, but the quote you listed was not from me.

It was either a quote of yours,or somebody else with the same exact screen name. I even pasted your whole post including your signature line with your screen name in the last post I made about this. All you have to do is go back to post #665 and you can see this for yourself.

[sneakypete]

You don't know anything about me, and you've just proven it.

It seems that you don't know anything about you,either. You proved this by denying post #571 is yours,even though your screen name is plain to see on it.

[MizSterious]

source:

---

Hope for missing girl fading

Police say time elapsed with no news does not bode well

By Joe Hughes
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

February 13, 2002

San Diego police conceded yesterday that the odds of finding Danielle van Dam alive are diminishing and that an arrest in the case could be weeks away.

"We are not real hopeful on her condition," homicide Lt. Jim Duncan said.

Against that grim backdrop, searchers continued to scour areas around the Sabre Springs neighborhood where 7-year-old Danielle was reported missing 11 days ago.

Searchers combing a riverbed near Danielle's school, Creekside Elementary, found a blue backpack stuffed with old papers, a blue denim shirt and some underwear. They were collected in evidence bags by San Diego police.

Duncan, lead investigator on the case, said he had not been notified about the items. Asked about their potential significance, he said, "I would assume if somebody picked up something worthwhile to the investigation, I'd have heard about it."

Duncan said the investigation remains focused on David Westerfield, 49, a self-employed design engineer and a neighbor of the van Dams.

Westerfield has submitted a DNA sample for study, Duncan said. It has been sent to the FBI crime lab in Washington, D.C., and given the highest priority. Other evidence has been sent to a local crime lab.

Detectives brought in a bloodhound from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department yesterday to search Danielle's room for any sign Westerfield had been there. Police searched Westerfield's home and the girl's room with dogs last week.

Duncan said the bloodhound is better trained and has a more acute nose than dogs used previously. It has been used by the FBI in high-profile cases.

Danielle was last seen by her father, Damon van Dam, when he put her to bed about 10 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 1. Her mother, Brenda van Dam, returned home with friends in the early-morning hours of Feb. 2. The couple discovered their daughter missing at 9 a.m.

People who were in the van Dam home Friday and Saturday have been cleared, Duncan said.

"We have no other potential suspects," he told the media yesterday.

"Progress is slow," said Duncan. "We do not appear to be close to an arrest."

Much rests with the examination of forensic evidence, a painstaking task that can take time.

Duncan said some material was taken from the motor home Westerfield took to the desert the weekend Danielle disappeared, even though Westerfield cleaned it before it could be examined, Duncan said.

He also said there has been no confession in the case.

As investigators concentrate on Westerfield, Danielle's parents continue to be questioned about their private lives on radio and television.

In CNN's "Larry King Live" Monday, the van Dams refused to discuss what King called spousal swapping. They said the focus should be on finding Danielle.

An investigator said police looked at swinger Web sites early in the case. One has shut down since Danielle disappeared.

Yesterday, Duncan said the couple's "lifestyle is not our focus. That is not the direction we are going to go; we want to solve this case."

In another development, Don Blakstad, a retired San Diego phone company owner, said he would offer $100,000 for Danielle's safe return. Blakstad said he hasn't spoken with the van Dams or the police about the reward.

He said he thought more money might convince someone who knows something about the case to come forward.

His attorney, Charlie Becker, said Blakstad has money to back a $100,000 check.

The latest offer follows $75,000 in rewards announced Monday.

---

(Note: bolding mine)

[Luis Gonzalez]

So, when Mrs. Van Dam went out for the night the people she left with are called, in every account of the story, her friends. Yet, when the same people come back later that night home with her, they are "strangers"?

How do you figure?

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

Thank you for posting that article. This is so sad. That poor child had perverts for parents. The other children don't stand a chance. There is no way that a husband and wife can go out and have sex with other people, and watch each other have sex with other people, and still think that they are responsible parents.

[Selara]

So, when Mrs. Van Dam went out for the night the people she left with are called, in every account of the story, her friends. Yet, when the same people come back later that night home with her, they are "strangers"?

I considered not replying to you, Luis, because you seem locked on to your belief that parental actions can have no effect on their children's lives, and I find that irrational.

However, in the interest of acuracy, as I recall, I wrote "comparative strangers," rather than strangers. Varying accounts say Mom went out with "the girls", but other accounts indicate men were involved at the bar, and later at the home. She has stated that she talked to the neighbor two doors down from her only a few times, yet he has indicated a different story.

People met in a bar, even if interacted with several hours, are "comparative strangers" when it comes to letting them into your house with your children, especially if the parent is in an intoxicated state. Hope this clarifies things for you.

[MizSterious]

Please also see post #60 on this thread. Roberts appeared on Fox News Channel yesterday, and under critical questioning from Van Susteren, insisted that his source was very trustworthy. If Roberts is lying, his career and his reputation is toast. But do read this--if it came from law enforcement as he claims, it's utterly and completely damning.

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

I have seen the Van Dam's on television and heard radio interviews. Mrs Van Dam never answers yes or no, to if they are swingers. She always says " Our personal life is not in question, we are looking for our daughter".

If they were not swingers, they would say..." I am disgusted that you were even insuinate that we would have such a vile lifestyle".

[Selara]

have seen the Van Dam's on television and heard radio interviews. Mrs Van Dam never answers yes or no, to if they are swingers. She always says " Our personal life is not in question, we are looking for our daughter".

Their PR firm should have reminded them, that when you dodge and refuse to answer questions, people ALWAYS see the answer in the dodge.

As in the Condit/Levy tragedy, these evasion/dodge tactics, the dribbling out of little pieces of the truth over a long period of time...just uses up the small time window of hope.

[FITZ]

Most 13 year-olds that I read about disappearing are runaways.

Who is spreading rumors now? Where is it documented the little girl is 13? She is 7. She supposedly was put to bed by her father by 10 pm and wasn't in her bed at 9 am the next day.

[sneakypete]

2. Again, this is ad hominem,

No,it's not. It is a honest evaulation. You made a post saying people wouldn't want their children exposed to swingers,and my post was my answer to that statement.