Strong City

[I mailed this letter to Gary King on December 3rd.]

Gary King, Attorney General
Villagra Building
408 Galisteo Street
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501

Re: Court of Appeals No. 29,227, Wayne Bent Defendant-Appellant

December 2nd, 2009

Dear Mr. King:

First of all, I would like to send my condolences regarding the death of your late father, former governor Bruce King. If you loved and respected your father as I do mine, I am sure you feel a great loss.

I am 46 years old and live in Union County. I am the son of Wayne Bent whose appeal is now pending before the Court of Appeals. In this letter I will not get into very many details of his case since your office is in possession of my father’s Docketing Statement and Brief in Chief. But there are some things on my heart I would like to share with you.

When my father was recently turned down for an appeal bond by the Supreme Court, your office published a press release which included the words, “Wayne Bent, convicted sex offender….” I felt wounded anew by the shrill, triumphal tone of this statement, true from a legal standpoint, but utterly devoid of any heart or sensitivity towards the significant issues we have raised on appeal, and towards the people who are suffering as a result of the state’s actions in this case. I had hoped that your office would approach my father’s case with a different spirit than our local district attorney, who rushed to prosecute my father and who used his court hearings as an opportunity to grandstand during his reelection campaign.

You see, my father is innocent of the charges he was convicted on. I know him better than most people, and he is not a “sex offender” as claimed by the state. The two witnesses at his trial said they were not sexually touched or molested, and that the events in question were of a religious nature. You can read my dad’s Brief in Chief and get the full story. I don’t know how you can honestly read that brief and not have concerns of your own about how this case was handled.

Let’s get right to the point. My father was sentenced to ten years in prison because of the National Geographic movie about him that first aired in April, 2008, and aired numerous times after that right up to the time of his trial in Taos. We originally cooperated with that film in good faith, but the final product was inflammatory and downright dishonest in its portrayal of our practices and beliefs.

As you are probably well aware, ratings are what drive the media. In our case the straight truth would have been pretty boring. We sat through over 100 hours of filming to present all the tedious details of our religious faith, but almost all of that was excluded. This film had to be jazzed up so people would want to watch it.

The final product was a contrived evil caricature of a “cult leader” that was broadcast on NatGeo, creating a public sensation. I believe our district attorney sensed an opportunity. After my father was arrested on the original charges, the statewide news media was all too willing to stir the pot some more, for the same reasons of self-interest. This dynamic continued all through the process of my father’s pretrial hearings, trial, conviction and sentencing. Almost throughout the entire process I felt I was witnessing a legal, televised lynching.

My father is 68 years old, and had no criminal record prior to this case. His last traffic ticket was in 1968 when he was in college and I was five years old. I was raised with two younger sisters who never experienced, even once, an inappropriate touch from our dad, and who have signed affidavits swearing to this fact.

I have read about several recent cases in New Mexico where actual sexual intercourse occurred numerous times between a male in authority and a female minor, resulting in probation in one case and ten months work release in another. I can still hardly grasp the fact that my father was sentenced to ten years in prison over lesser charges that were simply not supported by the evidence. The only conclusion I can draw from this disparity in sentencing is that, because of public perceptions, created by the media portrayal of my father and our faith, it was politically expedient to put him away regardless of what the facts and the law said.

I know he would have received less time by pleading guilty, but it is against his religious beliefs to lie.

It seems that my father’s case was driven by what people felt his motivations were in the healing exercises in question, but not the actual events themselves. The elements of a crime simply weren’t present. The burden of proof wasn’t met.

I understand the eye-rolling incredulity of most people who hear about these practices and explanation offered. “Oh sure, he was healing those girls, alright” is the typical response. But since when do prejudice and opinion form the basis of our society’s decision to deprive a man of his liberty, removing him from family and friends who love him?

I would like to point out other religious practices within society that could be offensive to some people, were they not already established. Minors are served wine during the Catholic Mass, for example. Hasidic Jews practice the rite of circumcision, the practitioner orally suctioning the wound after the foreskin is cut from the infant’s penis.

There is much about mainstream culture my church finds offensive, and that we do not practice, but we do not advocate the imprisoning of anyone because of these practices.

We are a new religion. Are we in The Lord Our Righteousness Church not entitled to the same protection as the mainline faiths? I know you are familiar with the Founding Fathers’ ideal of liberty for the weak and the few, as well as the majority.

I am not saying that I believe it is a First Amendment right to have sexual contact with minors within a religious context. If my father had committed sexual contact with a minor, I would have encouraged him to plead guilty, since that would have been the honest thing to do, and I’m sure he would have agreed. It is against my own and my father’s moral convictions to support the sexual abuse or exploitation of a minor child for any reason. But CSM simply did not occur in this case. This fact was clearly testified to by both of the state’s witnesses.

The circumstances in question may seem offensive to the uninitiated and uninformed, and they do invite the imaginations of some to make judgments based on ignorance. To others, these circumstances may seem to be contrary to cultural mores. But, in my opinion, what actually occurred was not against the law.

Mr. King, I do not wish to belabor these issues, since they are well argued by John McCall in my father’s brief, so I will come now to the basic point of my letter.

I know it is your job to represent the side of the state in these matters, and I expect you will continue to do so. But does there not reside in your heart a place of reason and integrity that operates independently of the vested interests of the state, or what the crowd feels and thinks? That is my hope.

I am not asking you to approve of my father or his religious beliefs, or to take his side. What I am asking for is a dispassionate review of the facts and the law from the perspective of reason and an open mind, free of all the “background noise” that has dogged his case from the very beginning. I’m asking for a moderate tone. I ask that you not simply defend the status quo regardless of what the facts indicate.

It seems to me that the AG’s job is to defend the public interest, not just the state’s interests. Constitutional liberties and the rule of law prevailing in my father’s case, and for our small church, is in the public interest. I believe a lot of people have been hurt by the outcome in this case, and no one has been helped.

The injustice resulting from my dad’s conviction weighs upon me very heavily, as well as many others within my church. We know a good man has been wrongly imprisoned. If you loved your father as I do mine, I know you would have been crushed, and perhaps even outraged, to see him wrongly convicted of something he didn’t do, to appease public sentiment.

My father is a man of great courage, faith, and integrity, and I believe history will judge him accordingly. I hope and pray history will do the same for you.

Very sincerely,

Jeff Bent

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