Ginger Brown’s Father, Accused of Kidnaping, Calls It a ‘Rescue’

Testifying on his own behalf, Earle Brown told a Vista Superior Court jury Tuesday that he and his wife, Dorothy, decided to “rescue” their daughter, Ginger Brown, from the influence of the leader of a religious group in order “to save her, to return her to a free state of mind.”

“We wanted to restore Ginger to her free will and to get her to act responsibly in society,” Earle Brown, 58, said of the unsuccessful, five-day deprogramming effort in May, 1988.

Brown said he and his wife decided to forcibly take their daughter after she had been home in the fall of 1987 for a supposed reconciliation but was still anti-social.

“Ninety percent of the time she was there, she wouldn’t talk with us,” he said. “She took no meals with us, wouldn’t watch TV with us, wouldn’t go to shows with us. I was confused.

“On Thanksgiving Day, she wouldn’t eat with us. She left the house early that morning and didn’t come home until late at night.”

The decision was made after that to try to remove her from the small religious group known as Great Among the Nations, Brown said. But, on the fifth day of the deprogramming effort, Brown said, he and his wife gave up and decided to return Ginger Brown to her apartment in Carlsbad. Instead, he said, she tricked them into taking her to the Sheriff’s Department substation in Encinitas.

“We did a quick U-turn,” he said. “I wanted to get her back safely to her apartment. “She started banging her head--bang! bang!--on the motor cover (of the van). I said, ‘Dorothy, we’ve got to let her go.’ I’d rather have her off, out in the night, than hurting her head.”

Brown said he pulled over and his daughter jumped out of the van. He and his wife then returned to the sheriff’s substation, where they asked for help in finding her and were, in turn, arrested.

The Browns, another of their daughters, Holly, and two men--Hank Erler, in whose mother’s Escondido home the deprogramming attempt was made, and Cliff Daniels, the deprogrammer--are standing trial for kidnaping, false imprisonment and battery.

Attorneys believe the Browns are the first parents to stand trial in this country on kidnaping charges stemming from a deprogramming attempt.

Earle Brown said that, although his daughter was kicking and swinging her arms when she was taken from an Encinitas parking lot, efforts were made not to hurt her. Contrary to his daughter’s testimony that she was punched in the face and lifed into the getaway van, Brown said, he and an accomplice simply lifted her into the van, where a mattress had been placed on the floor so she wouldn’t be hurt.

Asked if he struck his daughter, Brown said: “She was biting into my shoulder. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I swiftly pushed her face away because the pain was unbelievable.”

Again contradicting his daughter’s testimony, Brown said her head was never rammed against the van’s floor. “She’d go into these kicking attacks. I’d say, ‘Please, be still, please be quiet, we want to talk. Calm down, calm down.”

Brown conceded he told his daughter he might break her leg, but he said he was joking out of nervous tension. “I said that in jest to her. I thought it would elicit some joke or ha ha from her. I was in shock, and she was in shock.”

While inside the home in Escondido, Brown said, his daughter at one time “hammered her forearm against the wall real hard, as if to bruise it.” Another time, he said, Ginger Brown was “picking scabs” from an earlier wound.

“No one at any time attempted for Ginger to renounce her faith,” he said. Rather, the group was trying to get her to disavow her allegiance to Benjamin Altschul, the leader of Great Among the Nations to which his daughter belonged.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gary Rempel said after Brown’s testimony, “Nothing he said hurt us, except that he’s her father. But, as far as the law goes, he hasn’t said a thing that constitutes a defense to kidnaping.”

During a break in Tuesday’s proceedings, Rempel asked Judge David B. Moon Jr. to admonish persons in the courtroom for supposedly applauding rulings that went in the defense’s favor and for crying in view of the jury to evoke sympathy on behalf of the Brown parents.

Rempel’s remarks were apparently in reference to television actress Maureen McCormick (“The Brady Bunch”) who, along with another trial watcher, television character actor Bob Pierce, said she was present in support of the Browns.

Asked by Moon if he had seen applauding or crying, courtroom bailiff Elmer Blaikie said, “I’ve seen a lot of people crying, but I haven’t seen anybody clapping, your honor.”

Rempel’s cross-examination of Earle Brown continues today. Holly and Dorothy Brown are expected to testify on their own behalf Wednesday and Thursday, but the case isn’t expected to go to the jury for deliberations until the first week of January.