NAMBLA calls e-mail messages 'forgeries, 'pranks'

Internet e-mail messages from a “man-boy love association” that have been submitted as evidence in a wrongful-death lawsuit are “fake” and “fictitious,” say representatives for the association.
“Sensational e-mails submitted to federal court in Boston” last month “are forgeries, created as pranks by hackers,” the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) said in a news release received this week.
“NAMBLA never sent any e-mail from ‘nambla.org,’ ” NAMBLA spokesman Arnold Schoen said in the release. “We have never sought members or ‘welcomed’ them by sending e-mail.”
NAMBLA leader Peter Herman, who spoke with The Washington Times by phone this week, called the e-mail messages “completely fake.”
They were filed in U.S. District Court in Boston last month as part of a wrongful-death lawsuit against NAMBLA.
The plaintiffs are the family of 10-year-old Jeffrey Curley, who was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered in 1997 by two young men from his neighborhood, Salvatore Sicari and Charles Jaynes.
During the trial, Jaynes was found to have ties to NAMBLA, and in May, the Curley family sued NAMBLA and its leaders, including Mr. Herman and Mr. Schoen, for playing a role in Jaynes’ crimes against their son. The family is seeking $200 million in damages.
Last month, Cambridge, Mass., lawyers Lawrence W. Frisoli, who is representing the Curley family, held a news conference to say that he was turning over 2,356 e-mails about NAMBLA to Judge George O’Toole Jr.
Most of the e-mails were taken from Jaynes’ computer, said Mr. Frisoli. They included membership solicitations, welcome messages to new NAMBLA members, reminders about NAMBLA’s annual dues and offers to give members the “addresses/phone numbers of young boys in your area.”
Mr. Frisoli said yesterday that he believes the e-mail documents are authentic. One of the e-mail documents, he said, is a contract between NAMBLA and an Internet service provider. The e-mail contract “matches” one that NAMBLA filed with the U.S. Department of Commerce, he said.
Sarah Wunsch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, which is representing NAMBLA, said yesterday that the e-mails are obviously “suspicious” and even “ludicrous.”
The defendants will be filing papers this month to have the case dismissed, she said. But if necessary, she added, the ACLU will produce computer experts who “will be able to say that this is garbage.”
NAMBLA describes itself as a 21-year-old political and educational organization that supports consensual love relations between men and boys. The group is not secretive and has always spoken out against coercion and violence in any form, said Mr. Herman.