Ginger Brown Case Becoming a Cult Favorite in the Courts

Just what the Ginger Brown deprogramming case needs: Another trip to the courts.

Yes, a jury in Vista acquitted Brown’s mother and father and three co-defendants of false imprisonment and battery.

And, yes, the judge dismissed the kidnaping charges, saying the whole mess was a family feud that should never have come to trial.

And, yes, yes, Brown dropped her $2.75-million civil suit against her heartsick parents for trying to force her to forsake the religious group Great Among the Nations.

But now the case has spawned yet more legal action.

Nan Erler, whose rural Escondido home was used for Brown’s unsuccessful deprogramming, has filed a $500,000 civil suit against the tabloid television show “Inside Edition” and Graciella Guzman Altschul, wife of Great Among the Nations leader Benjamin Altschul.

Erler says Mrs. Altschul and an “Inside Edition” camera crew scared the bejabbers out of her by coming to her door unannounced on Jan. 18, just five days after the end of the trial.

Erler, 59, says that when she looked up and saw Mrs. Altschul and several strange men peering in her front window, she immediately figured they were hellbent on revenge.

“I thought the cult was coming to get us,” Erler said. “I saw Altschul standing by a strange van in my driveway, and I knew Great Among the Nations always travels in vans. I was scared.”

She says it was several hours before the mix-up was straightened out. Even then, she had to see a doctor for nerves and high-revving blood pressure.

“It was horrendous,” she said.

“Inside Edition,” a syndicated show based in New York, says its crew mistakenly thought Erler’s house was empty--an explanation that Erler does not buy.

“We’re looking into the matter,” said “Inside” publicist Marcy Baron.

One final question: Is Erler ready for a prolonged fight, with First Amendment overtones?

“It’s not something I’m looking forward to,” she said.

Adding Weight to His Words

Show and tell.

* Is Pete Wilson making a political issue out of crime and the slowness of the court system?

He’s only dragging a 24,965-page, nine-foot-tall transcript of the four-year Los Angeles “Nightstalker” trial to press conferences around the state.

* Workers for Assistant Sheriff Jack Drown are leaving nothing to chance.

One of them left a Drown-for-sheriff pitch on the answering machine of a home in Carlsbad. It was the home of Drown rival Vince Jimno.

Jimno heard it after a long day of campaigning: “I took my tie off and laughed like hell.”

* Workers for John de Beck, a business education teacher running for San Diego school board, are asking his fellow teachers to put campaign signs on their lawns.

One called Terri Harvey, a sixth-grade teacher at Grant Elementary School in Mission Hills.

Sorry. She’s backing another candidate: her husband, Scott, a governmental consultant and former top aide to then-Mayor Wilson.

Homer, Homer He’s Our Man

Past and future.

* Homer Simpson, the klutzy father on the cartoon show “The Simpsons,” is said to be a folk hero to employees at the San Onofre nuclear plant.

Makes sense. Homer works at a nuke plant.

* East County bumper sticker: “I’m Pest Off About Malathion.”

* Cherokee medicine man Rolling Thunder, a headliner at last weekend’s Whole Life Expo at the San Diego Convention Center, has his own publicist: Apache Bob.

* The Stealth attack fighter that organizers had hoped would come to the Air/Space America show will instead make its air show debut in July in Dayton, Ohio.

* One of the hottest items for sale at the Rancho Santa Fe bookstore is a 30-minute video: “House Cleaning--How to Instruct Your Spanish-Speaking Housekeeper (With English Subtitles).”

The video company, Home Partners, is working on similar tapes for child care, cooking and gardening.