Columbus, OH July 2008
If you live in Ohio and you’re looking to take your children out for a day at the local park, you might want to bring blindfolds for your little ones.
Recently, at Berliner Park a woman has been seen sunbathing “topless” that’s right, I said topless, (no pasties either) and apparently there’s nothing illegal about it under Ohio Law. This is a huge surprise considering the lengths that state of Ohio has gone and will go to “protect the children” and to get as many people on the Sex Offender Registry as humanely (or inhumanely) as possible -excepting the topless woman in the park.
Apparently that’s A-OK.
Of course there IS more to the story than just some ordinary woman sitting topless in the middle of a public park. The woman turned out to be a player in a sex sting authorities had devised to “catch” perverts (men) who they say have been exposing themselves in the park. Of course Law Enforcement adamantly denies the woman was connected to the sting in any way. Yeah right!
ABC news recently covered this and other bizarre stories on America's war on sex. They'll tell you who got caught and what happened to them in the aftermath.
Here is the ABC news story:
At a public park in Columbus, Ohio, a topless woman asked a man to expose himself. The park appeared empty to him, but police were actually videotaping him from an unmarked car nearby as part of a sting operation. Once he exposed himself, police officers drove up and arrested him, not her. Columbus law says being topless is OK, even if you're female. Sex in parks is a long tradition.
Movies show how teens have always used parks and the backseats of cars as places to fool around. And if a cop catches them, they'll often tell the kids to put their clothes back on and move along. But that's not how some local authorities react in the real world.
'I Was Horrified'
Authorities in Johnson City, Tenn., responded to complaints that gay men were using a local park for sex by setting up a sting operation. Ken Giles, 54, was one of the men they arrested, but he says he simply stepped off the trail to go to the bathroom. "I just thought I was in trouble for urinating in public," he said.
Police allege that Giles exposed himself to an undercover officer. They charged him with indecent exposure and disorderly conduct but did more than just arrest him. Before Giles and the other men were convicted, police released the names, photos and addresses of everyone who had been arrested. On his way to court, Giles saw his picture in the newspaper and front page headlines. "I was horrified," he said. He says he was told to plead guilty and did so to avoid a harsher punishment that would have come had Giles pled innocent and then been found guilty.
Afterward, his employer fired him. "When I lost my job over it my wife was so upset and distraught and distressed that she had a major heart attack," said Giles, whose wife died shortly after ABC News interviewed him.
"Right now, it's just about destroyed my life." Another man, also named by the police, committed suicide.
Sex therapist Marty Klein said this is part of America's "War on Sex". "Let's not just simply arrest them, let's humiliate them," he said. "Let's drag them through the mud. And that will make people think twice about ever doing that sort of thing again."
Click here for the full story! It is well worth the read!http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5390158&page=1July 2008