Jury Urged to Forgo Pity in Parental Kidnaping Trial

Prosecutor Gary Rempel on Wednesday admonished jurors in the Ginger Brown case to come down on the side of the law, and not sympathy, when deciding the fate of the defendants on trial for the alleged kidnaping, battering and false imprisonment of the 24-year-old woman.

The Vista Superior Court jury’s verdict, Rempel said in his closing argument, will decide “whether we’re a nation of laws, or righteous anarchists easily swayed by professional kidnapers who renounce the very freedom of choice (of religion) that brought the Pilgrims to our shores.”

Rempel told the jurors in Judge David B. Moon’s courtroom not to try to “heal bleeding hearts at the cost of the basic principle of the Bill of Rights . . . which in no way authorizes parents to kidnap and lock up their adult children.”

Ginger Brown was taken from an Encinitas parking lot in May, 1988, and held for five days in an effort by her parents, Earle and Dorothy Brown, and another of their daughters, Holly, to get Ginger to disavow her allegiance to Great Among the Nations and its leader, Benjamin Altschul.

The parents said they feared for their daughter’s safety and alleged that the religious group, which describes itself as a fundamental Christian Bible study and evangelism ministry, was a cult whose members had lost their free will by Altschul’s doing.

Also charged are Cliff Daniels, a Los Angeles deprogrammer, and Hank Erler, in whose mother’s Escondido home the deprogramming effort occurred.

Lawyers familiar with the case say this is the first time in the nation that parents have been criminally charged for the attempted deprogramming of a daughter from an alleged cult.

Ginger Brown was the chief prosecution witness, testifying that she joined the group of her own free will and tried to fight off her abduction. She returned to the small organization and has refused to speak to her parents during the four-week trial.

In his closing argument, Rempel said Daniels should not be considered a good Samaritan.

“You can put aside any misguided sympathies,” he said. “He’s in it for the bucks, pure and simple. He asks for more (money) than a brain surgeon. You can ask for sympathy, or for money, but not both.”

He compared the five defendants to an “urban guerrilla SWAT organization, and now they want you to excuse them because they’re nice people. The parents lost sight of their adult daughter’s training that they had given her, to make her own life’s story.”

Instead, Rempel said, the parents are now asking jurors to have sympathy “for the very viper who took their money for what amounted to five days of demented criminality.”

“It’s true this is a sort of ‘Love Story,’ ” Rempel said. “But it’s also one of broken trusts, of hired mercenaries and vigilantes. Your function is not to seek a happy ending. . . . You’re not here to solve any family problems.”

Defense attorneys are scheduled to give their closing arguments to the jury today, and the case may go to the jury by day’s end.