This posting is in response to a series of postings by Pipnorwell. Since I have previously challenged Pipnorwell's "objectivity," I will, in a spirit of full disclosure, first state who I am an what my interest is in the Angeli case.
In May of 1990, my partner, playwright Jim D'Entremont, and I were among the founders of the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression, an arts advocacy and anti-censorship organization. We're an informal affiliate of the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, also formed in 1990.
I've been active with the Political Issues Committee (PIC) of the NWU since it was formed at the Delegates Assembly in June of 1990. In March of 1992, I became national Co-Chair of PIC, and became Chair the following September. I remain in this position. I've also served a one-year term as a National Board Member of the NWU National Executive Board.
As PIC Chair, and as a BCFE founder, one of my principal activities for the past seven years has been fighting censorship.
I first learned about Toni Marie Angeli and Zona Photographic Labs on December 31, 1995, when I read an article by Sarah McNaught in the Boston Phoenix. I was most alarmed, because I had followed a great many similar cases. I felt then as I feel now: that Zona laboratories had done a terrible thing, that the police had behaved abominably, that Angeli's behavior under these extraordinary circumstances was not only understandable but commendable, and that the case had serious First Amendment implications. On behalf of the NWU, I wrote a letter of concern to Cambridge Mayor Reeves on January 2.
A few days after I had written to Mayor Reeves, I discovered that Angeli was being represented by John Swomley. Mr. Swomley is well-known to me as a civil libertarian. He was active with the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression for a while, and succeeded me as BCFE Cochair a number of years back. He has been too busy for some years to be active with the BCFE, but we've maintained friendly ties and he has been the BCFE's attorney. He's a dedicated person who does a tremendous amount of pro bono work. He has given legal help to a great many artists (and others) who are unable to pay him.
I phoned John for information about the case. He faxed me Angeli's statement. I obtained permission to distribute this statement, and I keyed it in and posted it to alt.censorship. It was subsequently cross-posted by others to more newsgroups.
Several people emailed me asking if there was a defense fund. I spoke with John, and then posted a very short note about the fund to Usenet. My other previous Usenet postings were attempts to correct what I considered factual errors.
I had no prior acquaintance with Toni Marie Angeli, or the owners and employees of Zona. Neither the NWU, the BCFE, or myself have anything to gain by damaging Zona's business or reputation. I have, however, a compelling and demonstrated interest in the First Amendment, and I am actively soliciting funds for Toni Marie Angeli's appeal. If the First Amendment is to be preserved, hysteria and witch hunts must stop.
In one important respect, the jury did choose to believe Angeli and her husband and not the police. They acquitted her of throwing a lamp at Morgan Segal. The police were very specific in their account of Angeli picking up and throwing the lamp. Segal testified that the lamp "came at him" during the scuffle. Sternbach testified that Angeli "pushed" the lamp, but added that he was not nearby, that he was not looking in her direction, and that he saw all of this "out of the corner of my eye." (The prosecutor, Marilee Denelle, stated in her closing summation that Sternbach said that Angeli had thrown the lamp, but that is not true.)
I do not believe the police were truthful in testifying about the lamp and I do not believe Detective Phillips when he denies slamming Angeli's head into the door or choking her. I fully admit to being partisan and, given the choice of believing Toni Marie or believing the police, I believe Angeli. I'm been around the block a few times and I've had my own experiences with cops. But I concede that the police were not the ones on trial.
When Angeli was accused of committing the "crime of pornography," and when the police refused to accept her explanation of the photographs, she admits saying, "Fuck you!" I've lived in Cambridge a long time, and I know that if you say "Fuck you!" to a Cambridge cop, there's no way in hell you're not going to be arrested. Saying "Fuck you!" to a cop is not disorderly conduct. Saying "Fuck you! to a cop, in fact, is Constitutionally protected speech. But if I ever had the nerve to say such a thing, I know I'd be arrested, and I know I'd be treated pretty damn roughly in the process. What Angeli said was legal, but I grant it was probably not prudent.
Angeli freely admits to kicking and in general to vigorous protestation after they decided to arrest her. I personally don't fault her one bit. A door was damaged and a picture fell off the wall. The jury decided that this constituted disorderly conduct and malicious destruction of property. The jury may well have believed Angeli's account of what happened. But most people have been taught that defiance of authority is never justified. I happen to disagree with this, but I can understand why a jury might not.
Pipnorwell asserts that "Testimony from eyewitnesses proved that the two detectives did not tell her [that] her photos were child porn." This assertion was made by Detective Phillips not to Angeli but to Luke, Angeli's husband. Pipnorwell also falsely asserts that there was "a nude man" (Luke) in the photos with Nico. This is not true. There would, of course, be nothing wrong with this. It just happens not to be true. I suspect that Pipnorwell may be trying to bolster the tenuous claim that Zona was justified in calling the cops.
I'm not sure what point Pipnorwell is trying to make when he denies the claim that "a stranger" picked up Nico and removed him from the lab. Angeli's statement reads, "At that point Morgan Segal, the clerk who had lied to Ms. Angeli, grabbed Nico and ran with him out of the lab." In any case, Mr. Segal was certainly a stranger to Nico, Angeli herself had only been to Zona once before, to drop off the film, and on that occasion had dealt with Steve Sternbach. In any case, Nico was removed from the lab by Segal and taken back to the lobby.
Pipnorwell claims, "Angeli admits...kicking some expensive photo developing equipment." This is again not true. I was there when Angeli testified and she said nothing of the sort. I also heard Angeli testify to saying, "Luke, they are breaking their arms." A customer also testified that he heard her say this, a fact Pipnorwell neglects to mention. Luke also testified about the choking and said, "Take your hands off my wife." Thus it's not true that Angeli was the only one to testify about the choking incident.
Anyone who ever has had a blow to the head knows that it takes a few hours for a contusion to develop. Pipnorwell claims that Angeli didn't mention being hit when she saw Ian Metcalf that evening. On the contrary. Metcalf testified that he saw Angeli immediately after her release, and that Angeli had a lump the size of half a golf ball on her head. That's why the defense called Metcalf to testify, for God's sake! Another defense witness, who saw Angeli later that evening, also testified to seeing the lump. Photos of Angeli clearly showing the lump were introduced into evidence.
I admire Toni Marie Angeli for sticking with her principles by refusing to sign anything that could be construed as an admission of guilt. I doubt I would've had the guts to do the same if I'd been in her shoes. Pipnorwell states, "Toni Marie Angeli is right where she belongs." The kindest response to this is to assume that Pipnorwell knows nothing about MCI Framingham. It is a horrifying place.
Pipnorwell also says, "I'm sorry, but this is America." After witnessing Angeli's trial, I can't help but say the same thing, and not proudly. Early this month, I phoned my 75-year old mother in Minnesota to tell her about the Angeli case (My mother has some 1950s home movies of my youngest brother, at about the same age Nico now is, running around naked, free and happy . There was a time when rational adults could look at pictures of nude children without thinking filthy thoughts.) My mother responded, "Oh for heavens sake! What is this country coming to?"
I first became involved because I was alarmed about attacks on free speech by what I call the theocratic right. (I believe the terms "religious right" and "Christian right" needlessly insult genuinely religious people and sincere Christians.) It did not take long for me to become aware that the censors also comprised anti-sex "feminists" and "liberal" advocates of political correctness. I soon learned, in short, that advocates for censorship exist all over the political spectrum.
For several reasons, hysteria over so-called child pornography is the censor's most lethal weapon. For one thing, child pornography is the form of speech with the least Constitutional protection. Serious literary, scientific, artistic, or social value is not a defense. It is the onlyform of speech that is illegal merely to possess. The definition of child pornography, according to both statute and case law, is so vague that no one knows for sure exactly what it is. For example, according to the Knox ruling, not only is nudity unnecessary for something to be child pornography, it is not even necessary that genitals be discernible under completely opaque clothing.
Most importantly, child pornography is the censor's most lethal weapon because so many voters are parents, and good parents rightly care first and foremost about the welfare of their children. When most parents hear about child pornography, they visualize documentation of dreadful child abuse and they are understandably horrified. Parents can be convinced to throw the Bill of Rights into the trash if they sincerely believe that such a step is necessary to protect their children. It's hard to fault them for feeling this way. The people using child pornography as an anti-free- speech weapon, however, have no sincere concern about the welfare of kids. They want the Bill of Rights tossed into the trash because it is an impediment to their ambitions to increase their power.
The hysteria over child pornography has been intensified by the traditional mass media and by politicians who need monsters to oppose now that Communism has fallen. Traditional mass media has been threatened by the emergence of cyberspace, and much of the demonization of the internet, especially on television, is a likely response to this threat. Moreover, Americans are obsessed not only with monsters, but also with sex. Thus tabloid talk shows about sexual monsters attract huge audiences. The political costs of opposing this hysteria run high. When a Congressional resolution affirming the principles of the Knox decision was passed, for example, only onecurrent member of Congress had the courage to vote against it. (Nadler, NY). The moral panic is analogous to historical moral panics over witchcraft, and the anti-Communist hysteria of the 50s-- which I well remember.
The American kiddie-porn industry is as mythical as the American snuff-film industry. The demand is simply too low and the penalties too Draconian to make such a business profitable. If such an industry existed, the people running it would hardly be so stupid as to take their photographs to commercial developers such as Zona!
I have seen a few photos posted on the internet that legitimately qualify as child pornography. (Before you send the FBI or Cambridge police to my house, however, let me assure you that I'm not so stupid as to retain any images that might be illegal.) What I've seen has been old, crude, and amateur. Most of it has been posted at politically suspicious times. Last June, for example, when Congress was debating the Exon Amendment and Senator Exon needed nasty images from the internet to shock the other Senators.
There have also been cases where adults have surreptitiously snapped photos of kids. The crime here, of course, is not abuse but invasion of privacy. This is a very serious crime, but not a terribly common one.
When witch hunters couldn't find real witches, they burned innocent eccentrics as witches. When Red hunters couldn't find real Communists, they went after people with "subversive" political beliefs. And now, during the great kiddie-porn panic, law enforcement agents (unable to find any real pornographers) go after law-abiding people, many for photographing their own kids. The case of Toni Marie Angeli is by no means unique.
In 1988, for example, the two children of Virginia photographer Alice Sims were temporarily removed from her home and given medical examinations after Dart Drug photo developers alerted police to pictures of a naked infant and a naked 3-year-old Sims had shot for a collage series called "Water Babies. Sims's property was searched for nonexistent evidence of abuse. In 1989, Patti Ambrogi, a teacher at Rochester Institute of Technology, was targeted with four complaints of child abuse and pornography when she exhibited photos of her nude twin daughters at a campus gallery. The offending pictures were removed. Also in 1989, FBI agents raided internationally acclaimed photographer, Jock Sturges, seizing equipment, prints, and negatives. Sturges photographs nudist families, primarily in France. No charges were ever filed, but his legal bill ran to $100,000 and much work was destroyed. The US government spent 2 million dollars in its investigation. (Predictably, the folks who put the NEA out of business for the use of $150 to fund partially a performance by an artist with AIDS, made no complaint about this misuse of our "hard-earned tax dollars.")
In 1994, police raided an art gallery in Tucson and seized innocuous photographs of Robyn Stoutenburg's four-year old son. Marilyn Zimmerman, professor of art at Indiana's Wayne State University, was the target of a search and seizure operation after a janitor discovered a discarded proof sheet of Zimmerman's three-year old daughter and turned it in to the police. And another photography student, Eljat Feurer of Bernardsville, New Jersey, was arrested and forced to live away from home for a year when he took nude photos of his six-year old daughter for a course at the International Center for Photography in New York City.
Moral panics, fortunately, eventually run their course. The Salem and McCarthy witch hunts are now remembered as shameful eras in our nation's history. Someday, and I hope it comes soon, the great kiddie-porn panic of the late 20th Century will be remembered similarly. This panic has exacted an enormous cost in freedom of expression. Just today, for example, the Telecommunications bill was passed overwhelmingly and Clinton will hasten to sign it. Free speech on the internet is no longer legal.
The moral panic also has exacted a terrible cost borne by the children who actually are abused. Child abuse-- emotional, physical, sexual--is a terrible thing and it is happening now. The diversion of public attention and law- enforcement resources to the pseudo-problem of child pornography robs innocent kids who really are abused. The prurient obsession on sexual abuse, for instance, has resulted in an appalling lack of concern for the victims of physical and emotional abuse. While abusers of all sorts, sexual and non-sexual, go unpunished, our law-enforcement system persecutes decent law-abiding people--such as Toni Marie Angeli and her family, Jock Sturges, Robyn Stoutenburg, Marilyn Zimmerman, Eljat Feurer, Alice Sims, Patti Ambrogi.
[For a more in depth discussion of some of the issues raised in this section, see my essay "The Limits to Free Expression and The Problem of Child Pornography"]
But I exonerate neither the owners of Zona Labs nor the Cambridge Police Department.
The Zona owners have claimed that Toni Marie's pictures were "alarming." On the stand, Detective Phillips said that he and Lt. Lester Sullivan (who with Phillips had viewed the photos before the Angeli sting operation was set up with Zona), agreed that the photos were "gross." Phillips said, "a normal person wouldn't take pictures like these."
Predictably, the theocratic right has leapt to Zona's defense. Early in January, on local television I debated a member of the Parents Rights Coalition and on national television (Day and Date on CBS) I debated Bruce Taylor, head of the National Law Center for Children and Families (one of the big players in the fight to pass the Communications Decency Act.) Taylor passionately defended Zona, saying "These pictures are dangerous!"
I replied, "Anyone who thinks these pictures are dangerous has a dirty and twisted mind."
There was nothing wrong with the pictures. They were not gross. They were not alarming. They were not abnormal. They were not obscene or pornographic. There was no indication of any form of abuse or perversion. The abuse, the pornography, the grossness, the abnormality, the perversion, the danger, the obscenity--all of these existed only in the minds of the beholders. In the minds of Zona owners Rowena Otremba and Mary Osgood. In the minds of Detective Phillips and Lt. Sullivan. In the mind of prosecutor Marilee Denelle. And perhaps in the mind of Pipnorwell.
No Massachusetts law requires a photographic lab to report photos of nude children to legal authorities. For many years, Morality in Media (an important theocratic organization in Massachusetts) has filed legislation, but it has never made its way out of committee.
I suspect that if Toni Marie Angeli had brought in photos of Nico bruised or with a black eye, no calls to the police would've been made. If there was a concern about physical abuse, Zona might've phoned Angeli and asked a few questions. If her answers were unsatisfactory, they might then have called the Department of Social Services.
If Zona was really "alarmed," why didn't they Zona call Angeli and ask a few questions? If they had, this ridiculous incident would never have occurred.
Angeli's pictures were so innocuous that no calls at all were necessary. Had the pictures given realistic cause for concern, however, there were better things Zona could have done. They could have asked their own lawyer, Max Beck, to take a look at the pictures. They could have called the District Attorney's office. They could have called the Department of Social Services. But no, they called the Cambridge cops instead. And believe me, as a longtime Cambridge resident, it doesn't surprise me in the least that a Cambridge cop would find an innocent nude picture of a child gross and abnormal.
I am a partisan person. I'm sure Pipnorwell is as well. Pipnorwell has stated that he knows both Zona owners. I am loyal to my friends, and I respect others who are loyal to theirs.
Although I admire Pipnorwell's loyalty, I deplore his tactics, and also the tactics of Zona owners Rowena Otremba and Mary Osgood.
Pipnorwell makes unfounded accusations about "Angeli's campaign of revenge." Otremba and Osgood released a statement accusing Angeli "and her supporters" of appearing on "numerous news and talk shows to excoriate us at Zona" and to "wage a campaign of distortion." I know of exactly three people who have appeared on news and talk shows defending Angeli: myself; the nationally respected First Amendment attorney Harvey Silverglate; and his wife, the talented photographer, Elsa Dorfman. What Otremba and Osgood said about us is untrue, and borders dangerously on libel. I will write Zona presently, on behalf of myself, the National Writers Union, and the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression, and request a written apology.
I appreciate that Otremba and Osgood do not want to lose business, and I'm sure they have both worked long and hard to establish Zona. As an independent business person myself, I sympathize. But if Zona is receiving angry letters and phone calls, it is not because Bob Chatelle, Toni Marie Angeli, Harvey Silverglate, and Elsa Dorfman are waging a nefarious campaign against them. People are intelligent enough to comprehend that Zona did something stupid without our having to tell them. People have legitimate grounds to contact Zona and to complain of Zona's behavior. If Zona is receiving offensive hate mail. however, that is immature and unproductive and I certainly deplore such behavior.
I suspect most of you are as partisan as I am. If you are partisan to Zona's outlook on this event, I'm sure Pipnorwell will be willing to offer you suggestions.