Sordid scandal splits town

Press, 15 November 1984, Page 17

Sordid scandal splits town

By

DAN OBERDORFER

of Reuters through NZPA Jordan Some residents of Jordan, Minnesota, a quiet country town, say they are living through a return of the witch hunts of colonial America, drawn into a sex scandal in which their own children are pointing the accusing finger. For a year the town’s 3000 people have been frightened, appalled, and angered by allegations that 24 adults were involved in two connected sexual abuse rings where bestiality and pederasty were commonplace. Their supposed victims were 40 children, many younger than 10, some of them sons and daughters of the accused.

There are even allegations that children brought in from outside for pornographic filming were murdered.

As was the case in the seventeenth century Salem, Massachusetts, where 20 accused witches were executed in one of the most notorious witch hunts in American history, the case against the alleged child abusers of Jordan is based in large part on the word of

children. Before the scandal, this conservative Roman Catholic and Lutheran town 65km south-west of Minneapolis was considered an ideal place to raise children, free from the pressures and crime of big city life. Today its reputation is so smudged that residents are finding it all but impossible to find buyers for their homes when they want to move. The 24 adults had been formally charged with child sexual abuse. Jack Erskine, head of the Minnesota State Crime Bureau which has since assumed most of the investigation, said of the reported slayings, “These kids have seen something. What it is we are ...” The Rev. Paul Larsen, pastor of the Amerian Lutheran congregation in Jordan, told one newspaper, “I have problems believing some of these people could be involved. But lots of people are capable of lots of things. I could not dream up some of the horrors these kids say they have experienced.

But in a sudden change of tactics which raised the talk of a witch hunt, the local prosecutor, Kathleen Mor-

ris, dismissed all the charges.

Ms Morris said she did not want to expose the children to the ordeal of a trial. Other officials hinted that the emphasis had shifted to a murder investigation triggered by reports that as many as six children brought to the area for pornographic picture-taking may have been killed. "I don’t think a five-year-old or six-year-old has the experience to make it up.” Evidence to back the children’s statements has been mixed. Some doctors have said physial examinations indicate at least some of the youngsters were abused. Therapists said they take the children at their word when they say they were hurt.

On the other hand, searches have failed to uncover any pornographic pictures. No bodies have been found and only one adult witness, a man considered one of the principal figures of the sex rings, has stepped forward to back the charges. He is James Rud, aged 27, a trash collector, who was the first person arrested a year ago in the case. He agreed to testify

against others in return for having all but 10 of the more than 100 charges against him dropped. A resident of a trailer court in Jordan, Rud had twice before been convicted of child abuse charges. In the year after Rud’s arrest, waves of residents were also arrested. First came a group of people in his trailer court, many of whom were new to the community and still considered outsiders. But then the arrest net began to snag long-time residents in more respectable parts of town. A police officer was arrested and so was a deputy sheriff. ■ All said they were innocent and some said that the children had been brainwashed by Ms Morris whom they accused of being on a runaway witch hunt. In court, one lawyer called Ms Morris a "sick person” and “a little go'd” seeking a repeat of the news media attention she won earlier in sucessfully prosecuting three generations of one family on sexual abuse charges in the same county.

In one of the Jordan cases which went to trial before the charges were dropped, Robert and Lois Bentz were

acquitted of 12 counts each of sexual abuse by a jury that deliberated three days.. The couple said afterwards that two of their children who testified against them in court had been manipulated by the prosecutor. A third child said he was not aware of anything abnormal in the family. Sex abuse was the worst thing to be charged with, said Lois Bentz. “If you are charged with other things you at least get the benefit of the doubt. Not this.”

In recent weeks Ms Morris has been critiised both for dropping the charges and for persecuting innocent people. She turned the investigation over to State, officials and the F. 8.1.

“I should not be the focus,” she said. “Children should be the focus because they are the ones getting hurt out there, not me.” ..

As the. Minnesota winter settles in on Jordan there remains an uneasiness — a dread that the unproved horror may yet be proved, and a fear that even if it is not, the stain may never go away.