Date: Tue, 5 Jul 1994 22:13:27 -0400
From: Kevyn Jacobs <kevyn@ksu.edu>
Subject: Phelps / Topeka C-J controversy


Subject: Fred Phelps Story in New Times

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Copyright: The New Times, an alternative weekly publication Kansas City.
REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION
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Scared silent
What the Topeka daily paper doesn't want you to know about Fred Phelps
by C.J. Janovy

The real truth about Fred Phelps may have just been written. It's a 280-page manuscript containing "allegations
of grotesque child abuse, wife-beating, drug addiction, kidnapping, terrorism, wholesale tax and charity fraud
(and) business theft." But the n ewspaper that got the story now apparently doesn't have the guts to print it. 

Fred Phelps is the Baptist minister from Topeka, Kan., most well known for his anti-gay pickets, particularly at
the funerals of those who've died of AIDS. Phelps uses members of his family and a spattering of others to carry
his notorious "God Hates Fags " and "Fags=Death" signs at locations in Topeka, Kansas City and throughout the
country. After the Kansas City, Mo., City Council prohibited pickets at funerals in direct response to Phelps'
local activities, Phelps took his show on the road. He picketed the funeral of President Clinton's mother, and
appeared at the San Francisco funeral of journalist Randy Shilts (author of And the Band Played On and Conduct
Unbecoming). He gained national exposur e after he was profiled on ABC's 20/20 (in the introduction to that
segment, Hugh Downs said viewers were about to meet the most unsavory character ever to be profiled on the show). 

Phelps is so notorious that even conservative Christians have distanced themselves from him. Regardless of
people's social views, most are shocked that any one person could spew so much vitriol. 

One theory explaining the Phelps phenomenon has been proposed by writer Jon Bell. Working on special assignment
for the daily Topeka Capital-Journal, Bell (who initially worked with Capital-Journal reporters Joe Taschler and
Steve Fry) spent several month s researching Fred Phelps' past, and conducted extensive interviews of Phelps
family members. 

Bell spent three weeks with the Phelps family, who reside in a "compound" (Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church, whose
congregation is made up almost entirely of Phelps family members and spouses, and "a citadel of modest homes
joined by fences, sharing a comm on backyard"). The Phelps family knew Bell was a Capital-Journal reporter and
consented to his presence because, Bell says, Phelps loves publicity. 

What Bell discovered was apparently too hot to print. The book consists mostly of the testimony of Phelps'
estranged sons, Mark and Nate (both now raising families in California). The boys chronicle a tortuous life of
physical and psychological abuse inside the Phelps compound. Bell also documents alleged "tax and charity fraud"
and "business theft" by Phelps, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

Not a gay thing

Rather than simply making damaging allegations of child abuse, Bell's manuscript uses the history of alleged
abuse to propose a theory that answers the question about how one man could be so inordinately full of venom. 
Bell hypothesizes that when the Ph elps children began to leave home because of the alleged abuse, Phelps
realized he was losing his congregation (and therefore his livelihood). Bell writes that Phelps' estranged son
Mark "believes that Fred Phelps, no longer able to hate and abuse his adu lt children if he hopes to keep them
near, by necessity now must turn all his protean anger outward against his community." 

The manuscript documents an apparently pathological pattern of abuse of nearly everyone with whom Phelps came in
contact. 

Among the more hideous allegations:
* Bell writes that "Sometimes Pastor Phelps preferred to grab a child by
their little hands and haul them into the air. Then he would repeatedly smash his knee into their groin and
stomach while walking across the room and laughing." 

Bell writes that Mark and Nate "remember this happening to Nate when he was only seven, and to Margie and Kathy
even after they were sexually developed teenagers." 

Mark says he "was hit over sixty times and his brother, Nate, over two hundred with a mattock handle." The
mattock is "a pick-hoe using a wooden handle heavier than a bat." Bell writes that mattock-handle beatings were
near-daily occurrences in the Phelps home. When teachers and the principal of Landon Middle School in Topeka
noticed two of the Phelps boys' bruises and broken skin (which extended from the buttocks down to the backs of
their knees), attempts were made to intervene. However, after juvenile abuse cases were filed, Phelps defended
himself by filing a motion to dismiss. The motion, Bell writes, consisted of "a pontifically sobering sermon on
the value of strict discipline and corporal punishment in a good Christian upbringing." 

Bell writes that the boys were afraid of more beatings if the case went to trial. "At that time, there was
nothing we wanted to see more than those charges dropped. When the guardian-ad-litem came to interview us, we
lied through our teeth," Nate says. 

"Principals involved in the case speculate the boys' statements, along with superiors' reluctance to tangle with
the litigious pastor, caused the charges to be dropped," Bell writes. 

* Mark says of his mother, Phelps' wife Marge: "I can remember times when she'd get hit so hard, it looked like
she'd be knocked out, and she'd stagger and almost fall. She would give out this desperate scream right at the
moment when he would hit her." 

Bell writes that after one such session, Nate and Mark say their father threw Marge down the stairs from the
second floor. The stairs reportedly had 16 steps and no rail. "Mom grabbed at the stairs going over and tore the
ligaments and cartilage in her right shoulder. The doctor said she needed surgery, but my father refused. We had
no medical insurance back then. She's had a bad shoulder ever since. My father often chose that same shoulder to
re-injure when he was beating mom. He'd grab her right arm and jerk it. She'd yelp.'" During one period in which
Phelps isolated himself in his bedroom, Bell writes that he forced his wife to "remain with him in his bedr oom
for days at a time." Bell quotes Mark: "The kids would sit in grime and scum and filth for hours at a time...
tied to their high chairs or strollers by mom, for their safety, until she could sneak away from him to give them
a diaper change, redo their ties, and set it up for the older kids to feed them, so she could get back to him." 

* Bell tells of Phelps' obsession with keeping physically fit (after a period of alleged drug addiction and
obesity), in which Phelps forced his then 10 children--the youngest of which were 5, 6 and 7--to run five and
then 10 miles a day. 

In 1970, he allegedly forced some of his children to compete in a marathon. Bell quotes sports doctors who,
speaking on the condition of anonymity, caution against those under 16 running in marathons and list as potential
dangers "soft tissue damage; deve lopmental problems in the knee joints; high vulnerability to fatal heat stroke;
and hitting the 'wall' (running out of glycogen) long before the adult limit at 20 miles.... A small child forced
to run through the physical agony of their 'wall' can be emot ionally damaged by the experience." 

Phelps allegedly forced his children to fast. Bell writes that Phelps' oldest daughter, Kathy, "was locked in her
room for the biblical 40 days, given only water to drink, and allowed exit only to the bathroom." Bell writes
that when Phelps discovered tha t one of Kathy's siblings had smuggled a glass of tomato juice into her room, and
she refused to say who'd done it, "the boys report their father yelled and swore and beat her for nearly two
hours. They remark it was one of the worst beatings she ever rec eived. It was delivered by both fist and mattock
handle to what was, literally, a starving teenage girl." 

* During lean times, Bell writes, the Phelps children were forced to sell candy door to door late into the night;
if they didn't meet sales quotas, they were beaten. In the manuscript, Bell writes that "Pastor Phelps denies
beating his children or his wife." The manuscript quotes Phelps as saying, "Hardly a word of truth to that stuff.
You know, it's amazing to me that even one of them stayed." However, Bell goes on to allege that family members
aren't the only ones to experience Fred Phelps' hate. In an entire chapter devoted to Phelps' abuse through
simple litigiousness, Bell concludes that "Nowhere was the volatile and abusive nature of Fred Phelps more
visible th an in the law courts." Phelps was eventually disbarred for life; however, nine of his children and
three their spouses are lawyers, and they carry on the Phelps tradition of suing nearly everyone who crosses
their path. 

Bell writes that "On December 16, 1985, a complaint signed by every Federal judge in Kansas was lodged against
the Phelps lawyers. It called for the disbarment of seven family attorneys-Fred, Fred Jr., Jonathan, Margie,
Shirley, Elizabeth and Fred's daugh ter-in-law, Betty-and the revocation of their corporate charter. "The 9 angry
judges accused the Phelpses of asserting 'claims and positions lacking any grounding in fact,' making 'false and
intemperate accusations' against the judges, and undertaking a 'vicious pattern of intimidation' against the
court." 

Phelps also abuses the community around him through pickets and obscene faxes. Phelps holds weekly pickets at
various locations in Topeka, and routinely shows up to picket at churches and other events in Kansas City. In
addition to the pickets, "Phelps ha s gone to court and won his right to fax daily almost 300 public officials,
private offices, and the media with damaging and embarrassing information from the private lives of his
opponents-most of it false, wild, and unsubstantiated," Bell writes. The fa xes regularly describe public
officials as "fags" and "whores." 

And Phelps reportedly terrorized those around him through generally despicable behavior: Bell documents one
instance in the early Phelps years, in which he shot his neighbor's dog: "Aside from etching one of his
children's earliest memories, shotgun-blast ing the large German shepherd that had wandered into his unfenced
yard quickly got the novice pastor notice in his community.... The incident was discussed in the papers, and the
dog's owner sued the arrogant minister. Fred defended himself and won, an ac tion his son Mark believes may have
encouraged his father's turn to the law." 

Because of Phelps' notoriety, and particularly because he is currently running as a Democratic candidate for
governor of Kansas, the allegations contained in Bell's book are significant and relevant to "the public's right
to know." However, after the Tope ka Capital-Journal spent approximately $20,000 (according to Bell's estimate)
to see the Phelps investigation through to completion, and after Bell and Taschler spent months working on the
project, developing sources who were not initially inclined to spe ak for the record (but who were assured by
Bell that the newspaper would print the story and stand behind it), Bell says the newspaper's new publisher
canned the story. 

Bell contends that the new publisher, Robert Hively, had been brought in by Stauffer Communications, owners of
the Capital-Journal, in order to "clean up" the paper so that it could be sold, and that the lawsuits that were
sure to follow any Phelps expose would have complicated the sale. Bell says Hively told him "I don't want that
man (Phelps) suing me for the rest of my life." 

The paper blinks

The Topeka Capital-Journal's parent company, Stauffer Communications, Inc., "owns 28 newspapers in nine
states-plus seven TV stations, two AM/FM radio stations, the Kansas City Royals Radio Network and a handful of
other operations. In 1992 it reported co mbined operating revenues of $129 million," according to the Metro News,
a Topeka weekly. Jon Bell was hired to work on the Phelps investigation on August 2 of last year, by associate
editor Karen Sipes and managing editor Joe Sullivan. He was contacted p rior to that time, Bell says, about
simply doing some editing on a Phelps expose the paper had already put together. That piece, Bell says, needed to
be re-worked, and its accusations needed to be substantiated. Bell says he was reluctant to take on the p roject.
He was not a professional journalist but rather, a novelist who had written some humorous features for the
Capital-Journal, and was primarily in Kansas to complete his Master's Degree in English at KU. Furthermore, Bell
says, "It wasn't my issue. I'm not gay. And I wanted to be a grad student, not a journalist." 

However, Bell says, he eventually agreed to accept the assignment and soon found himself the sole reporter on the
project. Perhaps in order to get around a newsroom hiring freeze, Bell was hired as an intern, for $8 an hour,
and proceeded to work on the P helps project under the direction of Sipes and Sullivan. Hively became publisher
of the newspaper on October 15. Bell says he suspected that Hively was going to kill the Phelps story, but his
editors told him to keep working on it. He turned in the finish ed draft on December 9. According to the Metro
News, labor talks and management changes took place at the Capital-Journal in December and January. Bell's
internship was terminated on February 3, several months early. Hively fired Sullivan 10 days later, B ell says,
allegedly for "creating too many litigious situations." "It's generally known Hively was brought in to chop
expenses and make the paper more attractive to potential buyers," says Bell. "After spending months forcefully
persuading key witnesses t o p ut their financial security and peace of mind on the line--that, if they would
stand up and tell what they knew, all of them together, then we at the Capital-Journal would print the truth and
take our chances alongside them--suddenly I was afraid my paper was going to walk away," he says. 

Bell says that's exactly what happened. "The vulnerable witnesses came forward, the reporters did their job, and
the paper blinked. To avoid litigation and protect the price of its stock in the coming sale, Stauffer
Communications dumped its integrity and, along with that, its claim to be an ho nest and reliable public
informant," Bell says. "The betrayal at the corporate level by the Capital-Journal of the community it serves is
without a doubt one of the more venal and cowardly acts an American newspaper could commit," he says. 


Guerilla copies

Unable to accept the fact that his months of hard work and unpaid overtime--and the significant revelations about
Phelps--would never see publication, Bell attempted to interest other media outlets in the project.  However, on
June 2, Bell received a noti ce from the Capital-Journal's lawyer, telling him he was not allowed to talk about
the book. "This work is the property of The Topeka Capital-Journal, and does not belong to you. My client will
make all decisions regarding the piece. You are not authorize d to speak on behalf of the Capital-Journal
regarding this work, or even to reveal its existence for that matter," wrote the paper's lawyer. Last week, Bell
filed suit against the Capital-Journal, claiming intellectual property rights to the manuscript. I ncluded as
part of the pleading, filed in the District Court of Shawnee County, is the manuscript. 

Because it is now a matter of public record, the manuscript--with all of its damning allegations about
Phelps--can be legally excerpted by the media. An official copy of the document is on file at the Topeka Quick
Print at Sixth and Kansas Ave., available to anyone willing to pay six cents a page-$17.22 altogether. According
to an employee at the Quick Print, the day after Bell's manuscript was filed as a court document and made
available as public record, "about 21 to 22 people" had bought copies of the manuscript. The Capital-Journal's
managing editor, Pete Goering, says the paper is considering "any unauthorized release in a very serious manner,
and we will take the necessary measures to prevent any further distribution of the book." 

"We just didn't like it"

Goering says the reason the Capital-Journal decided not to run Bell's piece is because "it is inaccurate and
potentially libelous. That decision was made six months ago, because there were potential inaccuracies and we
just did not like the manuscript." 

"At various times now the Capital-Journal has said that the book is unsubstantiated, poorly written and
indefensible in court," Bell says. "What's important to remember here is that it is basically the story of what
it was like to grow up inside the compo und of the Westboro Baptist Church. It's an eyewitness account from two
of Phelps' sons, Mark and Nate Phelps. That testimony has been reviewed and confirmed by a third Phelps child.
Furthermore, it has been extensively corroborated by written records and
 by relevant outside witnesses," he says.

Bell says "the execution of this book was closely supervised by the Capital- Journal." He says he was required to
turn in chapters every 10 days, and discussed what he would be investigating with his editors. He would then
write the next chapter and submi t it for their scrutiny.  Bell says he would "like to know what inaccuracies
they're talking about, and then I'd really love to see them produce the evidence for that." Goering declined to
name specific inaccuracies in the manuscript, except to say, "Ther e are a lot." 

Nate Phelps, who says he saw a draft of the manuscript, says from what he saw "there were no inaccuracies at all.
If anything, (the allegations of abuse were) dealt with gently." 

Nate's brother Mark agrees. "From everything I'm aware of (the manuscript is) completely accurate. The issue is
how do you go back 20 or 25 years and affirm or deny it. But it's very clear in my mind. There's no question
about it. I was asked to talk abou t my life experience and that's what I did. I can assure you personally that
there was no exaggeration, it was the highlights. That was our life. We lived it 18 hours a day," he says. Mark
says that his motivation in speaking about growing up in the Phelp s compound was "to say to people with a
situation like this, 'You can do something about it.'" 

"I don't really see it as that constructive to talk about what somebody who's crazy does," Mark says, "but if
there's an outcome that can be helpful, you kind of have to start with that and see if it can go to a better
level." 


So sue us

As of early this week, the Capital-Journal's lawyer was sending out a Phelpsian flury of letters to anyone who
copied or used the manuscript in any way. The Quik Print received a letter requesting that all copies be
destroyed, and advising them that any copying of the document would be at their own risk. News organizations
also received warnings. 

Marty Matthews, news director for KTKA-TV, an ABC affiliate in Topeka which aired a story, says his station's
coverage of the story was somewhat inhibited by Stauffer's attorneys. 

"We had gone down and gotten a copy of the manuscript. As we were working on the story, we called the attorney
for the Capital-Journal, and in the process of trying to make sure the quotes were accurate, they put us on
notice that they considered the manu script to be copyrighted material and any news organization that used
material from it would do so at their own risk," Matthews says. 

 "After consultations with our attorneys, we decided that it would be okay to paraphrase, but we certainly would
not be able to take exact quotes from (the manuscript). We had at that point planned to use exact quotes from it,
but as it was we just paraph rased," Matthews says. 

Matthews says his attorney says it's questionable whether Bell had the right to file the manuscript as an exhibit
along with his pleading.  In Kansas City, KSHB-TV 41 aired stories in which it quoted directly from the
manuscript. "Their attorney talked to our reporter, Mark Toma. Mark told me the attorney made it clear that it
was copyrighted material, that it was not our property, and we did not have their permission, nor did we have the
authority to broadcast it. 

We felt that it was part of the public record and also thrust into the public spotlight, and that we not only had
the right but also the duty to put it on the air," says Jeff Burnside, executive producer at Channel 41. "Even if
we (thought we would be sue d), that wouldn't have deterred us. I had a conversation about the whole thing with
our general manager before we went on the air with it," Burnside says. 

"We tread on sensitive ground when we start withholding news based on the threat of lawsuits. The same thing
happens with Phelps--I mean, he sues everybody, I understand. That shouldn't prevent news organizations from
proceeding with a valid news story,"  says Burnside. Meanwhile, the publisher of the Topeka Metro News, a
twice-weekly legal paper, is waiting to hear from his attorney whether the entire manuscript can be published as
a court document. 

"It is a little strange that Stauffer should go to such extremes, threatening such actions, because... for a long
time they've been stalwarts of the First Amendment, and now there's information that is of public record and
they're doing everything they ca n to keep it from getting out," says publisher Cliff Hall. "If it's about
anybody else, they're the first to jump on it. If it's anything to do with them, they want to keep it behind
locked doors," Hall says of the Capital-Journal. Hall says he believes " Bell's not really interested in any
money, I don't think, but he is interested in notoriety. I think his interest is getting this into the public's
hands." 

"If it's such a dreadful document and they have no intention ever of publishing it, why not release it to me and
let me hang myself with it?" Bell asks.  As of July 1, Goering said the Capital-Journal would not release the
copyright, and was preparing "an other series of stories" about Fred Phelps. By the time you read this, there may
be hundreds of copies of the manuscript floating around; check at the Kinko's at 2208 W. 39th in Kansas City. 


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REPRINTED TO THE QRD WITH PERMISSION OF AUTHOR
Kevyn Jacobs, Phone conversation 10.31.94