Brown Drops Kidnap Suit Against Parents

Ginger Brown, who was the prosecution’s key witness in a criminal trial that ended with charges of kidnaping, false imprisonment and assault and battery against her parents, sister and others being dismissed, has dropped her own, $2.75-million civil lawsuit against them.

Brown’s dismissal was recorded Thursday in Superior Court, and word reached her parents and others Friday.

“I’m delighted, for sure. I’m pleased beyond words,” said Dorothy Brown who, with her husband, Earle, were said by attorneys to be the first parents in the country to be charged with the kidnaping and false imprisonment of an adult child.

Ginger Brown filed her civil suit one day short of a year after she was taken from a parking lot in Encinitas to an Escondido home where, for five days in May, 1988, deprogrammer Cliff Daniels tried to persuade her to sever her allegiance to a small religious organization known as Great Among the Nations, which her parents believed was a cult.

The district attorney filed criminal charges against Earle and Dorothy Brown, both 58, of Santa Cruz; Holly Brown, 25, one of their other daughters; Daniels, 35, of Los Angeles, and Hank Erler, 23, in whose mother’s Escondido home the deprogramming effort occurred.

Although Earle Brown admitted in courtroom testimony that he and others took Ginger Brown in a deprogramming effort, defense attorneys argued that the daughter had baited her parents to take her so she could later sue them for monetary damages. The filing of the civil lawsuit, the attorneys argued, lent credence to that theory.

During the trial, Ginger Brown said she intended to drop the civil lawsuit against her parents and the others, but, to the trial’s end, the civil action remained active--a fact that was known to the Superior Court jury deciding the case.

The jury acquitted some of the defendants of some of the charges but was deadlocked on the most serious. Superior Court Judge David B. Moon Jr. then dismissed the case altogether, saying it never should have been brought to trial.

A spokesman for the district attorney’s office said Friday that no decision has yet been made on whether to appeal Moon’s decision that the case cannot be refiled.

According to court records, on Thursday, Brown, now 24, signed the necessary document to dismiss her civil lawsuit. She could not be reached for comment.

But her mother said she was relieved.

“I don’t see how we could have physically, emotionally, financially or any other way have gone through another trial,” Dorothy Brown said.

Ginger Brown’s attorney in the civil action, Caryle Christianson, had removed herself from the case last month and declined comment on Friday.

But attorneys involved in the Browns’ defense suggested Friday that Christianson dropped the case because she took it on contingency and saw little likelihood that the civil action would prevail, especially in the wake of the criminal charges being dismissed.

Saul Wright, Earle Brown’s defense attorney, said he was “relieved but not surprised” by the dismissal. “It was a bad lawsuit from the beginning. I’m sure when they saw the reaction of our jury, they concluded it wouldn’t be worth pursuing.”

The lawsuit named not only each of the five people who faced the criminal charges, but others including former members of Great Among the Nations who met with Ginger Brown during the deprogramming effort to try to get her to renounce her allegiance to the group, which claims to be a fundamental Christian Bible study group and television evangelism ministry.

The suit alleged that the defendants were guilty of negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress.