Bundy Tape--$600,000 in Grants : Dobson: The Christian broadcaster said he distributed proceeds from the prison interview with the serial killer to anti-pornography groups.

Christian broadcaster James C. Dobson says he has given more than $600,000 in proceeds from videotaped copies of his execution-eve interview last year with serial murderer Ted Bundy to anti-pornography organizations, including $200,000 to a new group in the Los Angeles area.

The Pomona-based broadcaster, in a letter to followers of his Focus on the Family ministries, said he answered 38,000 requests for videotapes of his January, 1989, prison-cell interview in Florida with Bundy, who claimed his exposure to pornography as a youth “guided and shaped” his turn to sexual violence.

Some psychologists objected that Dobson was using the interview to make a case for linking hard-core pornography to violent crime, a correlation they claimed was unproved generally and particularly in the case of Bundy, the confessed killer of 30 women in nine states. One of Bundy’s biographers described him as a “chameleon” who “gave back what the listener wanted.”

Dobson wrote in his March letter that he had expected much of the “secular press” would be offended by “this link between obscenity in pornography and real live violence against women.” He added that he was “then accused of unethical motives”--of cashing in on the interview--when he suggested $25 donations for the tape. He made the suggestion on his program, which is heard on more than 1,400 radio stations.

Attempting to show that Focus on the Family kept no money above expenses from the project, Dobson presented a breakdown of figures as of last Jan. 31. (A spokesman said relatively few requests have been received since then.)

Dobson said donations totaled $964,559 and $9,154 more was earned in interest. “This (interest) figure is low because the money was quickly distributed as it was received,” Dobson said. Focus on the Family kept $360,731 to cover the costs of production and mailing, he added.

Dobson noted that none of the additional money was retained by his ministry, “even though we are also actively involved in anti-obscenity work.”

Of the 13 organizations given money, Dobson said, an organization called the “Los Angeles Anti-Obscenity Campaign” received the highest total--$200,000.

That group, formed last year with offices in Monrovia and Tustin, officially goes under the name California Care Coalition. Its executive director is Douglas Kay, who left his job as director of public policy for Focus on the Family to take the new position.

The coalition is a subsidiary of the Cincinnati-based National Coalition Against Pornography, which received the second-largest grant from Dobson--$116,111.

The California Care Coalition is “just getting off the ground,” said spokesman Paul Maurer, and plans to fight pornography through education.

Keith Atkinson, public communications director for the Mormon Church in California and a member of California coalition’s advisory board, said the new group “hopes to create an environment in which child pornography and illegal obscenity--acts not protected by freedom of speech--will not be seen as socially acceptable.”

Paul Hetrick, a Dobson aide, said two Focus on the Family officials also are on the advisory board of California Care Coalition. But none of the ministry’s people are on the board of the controlling national body, he added. “If we were, it could be perceived as a conflict of interest--to give money and determine how it is spent,” he said in an interview.

Some of the other grants by Focus on the Family included $90,000 to an anti-pornography campaign in Great Britain and $67,500 to a project in Kansas City, Mo. The rest were for smaller amounts.

Dobson wrote that he had expected his ministry would have to make only 4,000 copies of the videotape, but 10 times that amount were requested.

“These tapes are circulating today in homes, churches and schools across North America,” he said. “Who knows what influence Bundy’s final comments have had toward hard-core and violent pornography in our culture? I believe it has been significant,” he said.