Operator of Santa Line Sues--Similar 976 Numbers Were Poles Apart

The operator of a “North Pole hotline” who contends that children reached dial-a-porn numbers by mistake last month when they tried to phone Santa Claus has sued Pacific Bell and two adult-message companies.

Robert H. Lorsch charged in a suit filed Monday in San Francisco County Superior Court that the phone company, with headquarters in San Francisco, and adult lines with a prefix of 976 based in Valencia and Scottsdale, Ariz., violated federal and state laws prohibiting sale of pornography to children who misdialed the Santa Claus number.

Instead of hearing a recorded story about Santa and his reindeer, children who were a digit off in dialing the North Pole hotline reached sultry-voiced women talking about sex, Lorsch said.

The suit asks $1 million in damages each from the two dial-a-porn companies and unspecified damages from Pacific Bell, which Lorsch accused of breach of contract and unlawful business practices.

Lorsch last month charged that operators of explicit-message lines requested--and Pacific Bell granted--$2-per-call numbers that are similar to his children’s line.

His Santa line was 976-2233. Explicit adult message lines were 976-2323 and 976-2223.

Phone company officials and the operator of one of the adult lines denied wrongdoing.

“I don’t believe in the Santa Claus lines or kids’ lines,” said Louise Ricks, operator of the Arizona-based Premier Communications, a defendant in the suit. “I think that’s ripping off kids.”

Reason for Choice

Ricks said she selected her number because the phone keys spelled babe, not because it was similar to Lorsch’s line, which draws about 1,000 calls a day.

“I’m kind of a babe in the woods myself,” Ricks said. “I didn’t even know there were kids’ services out there when I first started.”

Pacific Bell spokeswoman Charlene Baldwin said the phone company is on record as being opposed to dial-a-porn and has unsuccessfully sought to disconnect such services.

“Mr. Lorsch’s lawsuit doesn’t present any new legal arguments that would give us the right to disconnect dial-a-porn,” Baldwin said. “We feel we’re certainly against dial-a-porn and have tried to get that off our network. At every point, we’ve been prohibited from disconnecting them.”

A federal judge in Los Angeles and the state Public Utilities Commission have ruled that Pacific Bell cannot refuse to offer service for messages that the company believes are pornographic.

There was confusion Tuesday about the identity of the owners of the Valencia firm, but a lawyer for a partnership that operates the adult line said he had not reviewed the suit and would have no comment.

Toluca Lake Child

Complaints about misdialed Santa calls surfaced the week before Christmas when a Toluca Lake woman discovered that one of her children had reached a dial-a-porn number.

“My 7-year-old daughter heard the whole orgasmic thing,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be used. “She told me she got a lot of dirty words when she called Santa. I’m just furious. There’s a definite loss of innocence.”

Lorsch said parental concern about misdialed 976 numbers may have caused a 50% drop in calls to his Santa line this year. He started the line two years ago.

He said a proposal by Pacific Bell to seek permission from the PUC to segregate adult messages from general-interest 976 line messages by assigning new prefixes could harm long-established 976 message services such as his Beverly Hills-based Teleline.