Nambla cleared in Curley case

Parents of slain boy drop lawsuit against NAMBLA

Witness incompetent to testify, judge rules

Email|Print|Single Page| Text size ? + By Jonathan Saltzman

Globe Staff / April 24, 2008

The parents of Jeffrey Curley, the 10-year-old Cambridge boy raped and

smothered by two men who lured him into a car, have dropped their

federal lawsuit against a group that advocates sex between men and

boys, which the parents contended had incited their son's 1997 murder.

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Lawyers for Robert and Barbara Curley filed papers Tuesday in US

District Court in Boston ending their wrongful death and civil rights

lawsuit against the North American Man/Boy Love Association and 18

reputed members after almost eight years of litigation.

Robert Curley said his lawyer recently told him that the plaintiffs

had only one witness prepared to testify that the association somehow

spurred Charles Jaynes, one of the boy's convicted killers, to commit

rape and murder on Oct. 1, 1997. A judge ruled that the witness was

not competent to testify, Curley said.

"That was the only link we were counting on," said Curley, a 51-year-

old mechanic at the Cambridge Fire Department. "When they ruled that

out, that was the end of the line."

Sarah R. Wunsch - a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties

Union of Massachusetts, which defended the association and most of the

defendants in the suit - said the case never had any merit.

Jaynes did belong to the association for a year, Wunsch said. But, she

said, there was nothing illegal about the magazines he obtained from

the organization - they are available in some bookstores - or the

association website that the Curleys alleged he viewed shortly before

the murders.

"There was never any evidence that NAMBLA was connected to the death

of Jeffrey Curley," Wunsch said. "It's been our view that for the last

eight years, it's been the First Amendment that's been the defendant

in this case. In America, there's freedom to publish unpopular ideas,

and that's what this case was about."

Elizabeth A. Lunt, a private lawyer for an association member sued by

Curley's parents, said the plaintiffs "did not have a shred of

evidence to support their contention that NAMBLA somehow caused this

terrible homicide to happen."

Jeffrey Curley was abducted in East Cambridge after he was lured into

a car driven by a neighborhood resident, Salvatore Sicari, and Jaynes,

of Brockton. Authorities said the men promised Curley a new bike.

When Jaynes made sexual advances toward the boy, he fought back in a

struggle that authorities said lasted about 20 minutes in the back

seat. Jaynes subdued and smothered Curley, stuffing a gasoline-soaked

rag into his face.

The child's body was sexually assaulted in Jaynes's apartment in

Manchester, N.H., before he and Sicari placed their victim in a 50-

gallon plastic container, filed it with lime and concrete, and dumped

it in a river in southern Maine.

Both men were convicted of murder charges and are serving life

sentences.

After the slaying was solved, the outcry in Massachusetts and Robert

Curley's public anger propelled the Legislature to within one vote of

reinstating the death penalty. But Curley has turned against the death

penalty in recent years, saying he is troubled by the possibility of

the state executing the innocent by mistake.

In May 2000, the Curleys filed a federal suit alleging that Jaynes

obtained materials from the North American Man/Boy Love Association

and "became obsessed with having sex with and raping young male

children." The Curleys received legal support from the Thomas More Law

Center, a conservative advocacy group based in Michigan that has

criticized both the ACLU and the organization it defended.

Robert Curley said the suit raised public awareness about the

association.

In August 2000, a Middlesex County jury awarded Curley's family $328

million in a wrongful death lawsuit against the boy's killers. But it

was strictly a symbolic victory, because neither of the men had any

significant assets.