4 Convicted in Ecclesia Case Sent to Prison Despite Plea

After listening stone-faced to a plea for mercy from Ecclesia Athletic Assn. founder Eldridge Broussard Jr., a Clackamas County judge Thursday imposed the maximum sentence on four members of the Los Angeles-based religious group who were convicted of beating Broussard’s 9-year-old daughter to death.

“I am here today to beg the court to please release these people. . . ,” Broussard said, choking back tears. “These people are not criminals.”

Defense lawyers also made impassioned appeals for leniency, describing their clients as honest, hard-working people who believed fervently in Broussard’s plan to improve life for ghetto children by giving them a mixture of religion and athletics.

Said lawyer Tim Lyons to Circuit Court Judge John Lowe: “Never again in this court’s career is it going to be faced with sentencing four people who are this far removed from what we have come to know as the criminal element.”

Lowe, however, was unconvinced. The judge castigated each defendant and ordered 20-year terms for each of the four, although he varied the minimum time each must serve depending on the extent of their participation in the fatal beating of Dayna Broussard.

Willie Chambers, Constance Jackson, Frederick Doolittle and Brian Brinson were convicted six weeks ago of beating Dayna Broussard hundreds of times and of forcing 53 other Ecclesia children to watch and keep count. Most of those children are still in foster care in Oregon.

The testimony of Dayna’s father, who was permitted to address the court as the victim’s next of kin, was the latest unusual twist in an unusual case that has captivated the attention of this rural county southeast of Portland.

“I’ve heard of circumstances where relatives of the victim had compassion for the perpetrators,” prosecutor Alfred French said, “but never under circumstances like this.”

Eldridge Broussard, who did not attend the manslaughter trial and has maintained a low profile for months, cut an imposing, dramatic figure as he walked into the courtroom, dressed in a loose-fitting gray denim patchwork shirt and olive-green cotton pants.

Accompanied by his wife and some of his followers, the Ecclesia leader entered the courthouse through a side door and was hustled into the courtroom by sheriff’s deputies seeking to keep a throng of reporters at bay. Broussard remarked afterward that he is given similar treatment “mostly everywhere I go . . . because they know the media will be following me.”

Unlike previous public appearances in which he has lashed out in angry tones, Broussard was polite, soft-spoken and, for the most part, composed during his 20-minute monologue from the witness stand.

He said he meant no disrespect to Oregon authorities, but believed that they were duped by media reports that have portrayed his group as a cult and him as a manipulator and cult leader.

Complaining about “insinuations of mind control,” he said of his followers: “These people are very opinionated. They do things on their own.”

Broussard, who is being investigated by the FBI for alleged civil rights violations in running the group, faces no criminal charges. Some officials connected with the case have said privately that they find it ironic that Broussard--who, testimony showed, instructed his followers to physically discipline his daughter--is now stepping forth on behalf of the defendants.

But Broussard told the judge that he remains deeply hurt by his daughter’s death.

“I walk on a tightrope,” he said. “When I don’t show emotion I’m considered inhuman. And yet,” he added, sobbing, when he does show his feelings, “people think I’m faking.”

As for the defendants’ actions on Oct 13, the night his daughter died, Broussard said: “I believe that some decisions were made that were not wise, but they were not made maliciously.”

Judge Lowe, however, had no kind words for the defendants.

To Chambers, who, according to testimony, did most of the beating, Lowe said: “Your actions are intolerable . . . indefensible and quite, frankly unimaginable.” Chambers, 35, was ordered to spend a minimum of 10 years in prison.

To Jackson, who witnesses said punched, bit and kicked Dayna after the child bit her, the judge said: “It took more guts for 8-year-old Dayna Broussard to bite you than it did for a prisoner of war to spit in the face of his captives.” Jackson, 39, was ordered to serve at least five years for the manslaughter conviction, followed by a minimum of two years for separate convictions on five counts of child abuse.

And to Doolittle and Brinson--each ordered to spend a minimum of 40 months in prison for restraining Dayna while Chambers beat the child--Lowe said: “Your souls had to be screaming with questions.”

Prosecutor French, who maintained that the defendants were equally culpable and recommended that each serve a minimum of seven years, said he was satisfied with Lowe’s decisions.

Defense lawyers, meanwhile, said they were not surprised by the harsh sentences. “I expected nothing less,” said Jackson’s lawyer, Ron Gray. The defendants could serve less time than the judge ordered if the state Parole Board overturns the minimum sentences, as it may do under state law.

Thursday’s sentencing is by no means the end of Ecclesia’s entangled legal problems, which continue to clog the criminal and juvenile courts here.

Three more Ecclesia members--Sherion Johnson, Josie Faust and Vanessa Chambers, Willie Chambers’ wife--are scheduled to go on trial next month on charges of criminal mistreatment in connection with the beating of other Ecclesia children.

And Thursday, as the sentencing was getting under way in the Clackamas County Courthouse on Main Street, authorities on the other side of town arrested yet another Ecclesia member, Roosevelt Brown.

Brown, 31, was arrested at the request of Los Angeles authorities, who allege that he beat his own son, Roosevelt Jr., 11, at Ecclesia headquarters on Avalon Boulevard in South-Central Los Angeles last October. Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Ralph Plummer said he is seeking extradition of Brown, who is wanted on two felony counts of child abuse.

Brown was arrested at the Clackamas County Juvenile Court building, just as he was about to attend a hearing concerning the custody of his four other children, who are in foster care in Oregon.