3a - Curley family drops case against NAMBLA

3a. Curley family drops case against NAMBLA

By Jonathan Saltzman, The Boston Globe, April 23, 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 claimed had incited their son's 1997 murder.

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 NAMBLA somehow spurred Charles Jaynes, one of the boy's convicted killers, to commit rape and murder on Oct. 1, 1997. A judge ruled 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 in 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 Liberities Union of Massachusetts, which defended NAMBLA and most of the defendants in the civil suit, said the case never had any merit.

Jaynes did belong to NAMBLA 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,'' said Wunsch. "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."