Pastor Says Confession to Racist Prank Tainted

Two Lancaster youths charged with putting a cross adorned with racial slurs in the yard of an elderly African-American couple were tricked into confessing by a false FBI promise that no action would be taken against them, a minister who counseled the boys protested Tuesday.

Neither the FBI nor the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, which brought state misdemeanor charges against the youths, would comment.

The Rev. Henry Hearns, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Littlerock--who is also a Lancaster city councilman--said Tuesday that the boys spoke to the FBI voluntarily only after an agent had made them a promise, using Hearns as a go-between. Hearns said he passed along a message from the FBI agent that “if they would come to him and talk there would no problem at all, (and) because of their age they would not be exposed” to criminal charges or public identification.

Hearns, also an African-American, had known the identities of the youths, 16 and 17, since shortly after the incident in January, but had refused to reveal them to investigators, citing the ministerial counseling privilege. The youths meant no harm, were sincerely repentant and tried to make amends, he said.

But charges were brought Monday in Sylmar Juvenile Court against the boys, who were ordered to appear in Lancaster Juvenile Court on Tuesday to face charges of interference with the enjoyment of civil rights and of terrorism against a property owner, based on an FBI report that the U. S. Department of Justice forwarded to the district attorney’s office.

They were not publicly identified because they are under 18, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Bill Ryder, and laws governing juvenile cases barred him from discussing details.

Gary Auer, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Ventura office, which investigated the matter, said he could not comment.

The youths placed a 6-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide wooden cross, carrying Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist slogans, in the front yard of the Lancaster home of Eleanor and James Pate on Jan. 9, according to the district attorney’s office.

Eleanor Pate, 63, discovered the cross early that morning, and called her husband James, 70, who contacted authorities. The couple, who previously had been reluctant to press charges, declined comment.

Controversy has dogged the case from the beginning. At the center of the storm are Hearns, the FBI and the Antelope Valley branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

About two weeks after the incident, the older youth contacted Hearns, pastor at the church where the Pates attend services, and confessed to placing the cross in the couple’s yard.

The boy, who said his conscience bothered him, then told Hearns the name of his accomplice and provided the boy’s parents’ names, their phone numbers and address. Hearns invited the youths to a memorial service for slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, held at the Lancaster Performing Arts Center the following week.

They attended, met Hearns, and gave him letters apologizing for what they had done, asking him to pass them on to the Pates, his congregation and a local newspaper, Hearns said.

Hearns said he believes that the matter should have ended there. “The thing was done and put to bed and that’s the way it should have stayed,” he said. “It really gives me a heartache with the system.”

Without a victim to prosecute the case, the Sheriff’s Department also closed its books.

But the NAACP asked the FBI to look into the case as a possible civil rights violation against the community as a whole, said Antelope Valley branch President Lynda Taylor.

“When you are displaying this type of hatred in the community, you’ve got to send a message that this sort of thing won’t be tolerated,” she said. “I’m glad to hear they looked into it. There needed to be some filing.”

When Hearns was questioned by FBI agents, he refused to divulge the boys’ identities, saying that as a minister he had to guard the confidentiality of those who sought his counsel.

“They said, ‘Tell nobody.’ I made that promise and I would have died with that. They could have put me in the gas chamber and I wouldn’t have told them,” he said.

Hearns said he told the agents that he had no doubt that the boys were sorry. They’d told him that the incident was “a big prank,” that they had no idea who lived in the house or whether the occupants were black or white, he said.

But the NAACP has said the cross was not the first hate incident involving the Pates. The couple lived in fear and had received numerous racially charged crank calls, a NAACP spokesman has said.

While Hearns would not divulge the boys’ identities to authorities, he did act as a go-between, passing on messages and arranging meetings between the boys’ minister, himself and the FBI.

At one meeting at his city office, Hearns said an FBI agent assured him that nothing would happen to the boys if they came forward and talked with agents. He said he passed on the FBI’s promise and let the boys decide for themselves.

“I told them the guy told me he would not turn them in if they would come to him and talk. They felt guilty and ugly about it. They went in there and poured their little hearts out to him.”

“It’s not right” that charges were brought anyway, he said. “I think it’s terrible.”