Dressing the Story in a Few Details

I don’t repeat topics usually, but there’s been such a response to the story about the Mom and the male stripper that I can only conclude one thing:

You people must just LOVE stories about Moms and male strippers.

(Particularly this being a holiday season, with festive visions of Moms and male strippers in the air.)

Let’s bring everybody up to date.

I’m sure many of you watched the nightly--national, no less!--TV news Wednesday and saw the 39-year-old mother from Pleasanton standing before a judge, trembling like a wet puppy.

I couldn’t help but feel sorry for this woman, who isn’t, after all, a hardened criminal. She’s a mother who let her daughter’s slumber party get out of hand.

Face it, this is not somebody who, say, hijacks a 7-Up delivery truck and leads the cops on a long freeway chase and then stands before a judge with “7-Up” shaved into his skull.

(Around L.A., we don’t get white-collar criminals, we get soda-head criminals.)

No, this is just a Northern California suburban single mom who is now out on $20,000 bail, all because of her hostess skills.

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Questions and comments keep pouring in, from people who can’t understand how a mother could permit--let alone pay for--a stripper to entertain at a party attended by 40 to 50 girls, none older than 15.

They still want to know:

* What kind of party was this?

A well-planned one. Leaflets were passed out at school, advertising a “Girls Night Out” slumber party. Guests had to pay $3 apiece, for food and, uh, entertainment.

* Did everybody know about the stripper?

No. Some did, because the motivation behind it was apparently to “one-up” a wild party held by a bunch of sophomore boys. Kids have told the cops this. Some girls did leave the party as soon as the stripper showed up.

* Why didn’t the boys get in trouble?

Because nobody filed a police complaint. A few of the girls’ parents did, after their daughters told them what happened.

* Did Mom know about the stripper?

Yes, but the question is when. It appears more and more likely to police that Carye Gail McGrath’s 15-year-old daughter telephoned Strip-a-Gram and placed an order by using a number off one of her mother’s old credit-card receipts.

(A man identifying himself as stepfather of a girl who attended the party e-mailed me to say this is what happened. He says his stepdaughter will testify to it.)

Trouble is, McGrath did admittedly see a grown man in a G-string dancing for 15-year-olds and do nothing to stop it, so she wouldn’t “embarrass” her own kid. The stripper, 29, is accused of fondling three girls beneath their blouses and accepting $20 for a sex act with a fourth. Many parents are furious with the mother.

“I even made sure a parent was going to be present,” one of the girl’s parents was quoted in a local paper. “Now I see that what I needed to ask is, ‘Will a stripper be present?’ ”

* What’s the stripper’s story?

Steven Schmitt says he thought everyone was 18. (Right, 40 to 50 girls, and they ALL looked 18.)

* Mom saw the whole thing?

No. She was in a bedroom. Some girls say McGrath refused to let her daughter have a stripper, but relented once he showed up. She told the girls to look but not touch. Then she went back to the bedroom. (Hear no evil, see no evil?)

“I meant no harm,” McGrath put in a written statement to police.

* But what about those condoms?

Just a Halloween joke, ha ha. The girls went door to door--reportedly it was McGrath’s idea--on a scavenger hunt, asking for condoms. Back at the McGrath house, they threw the condoms into a pie pan, sprayed them with whipped cream and bobbed for condoms, like apples.

Quite a party game. I guess they forgot to play pin the prophylactic on the donkey.

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A lot of the comments I’ve gotten from readers wonder if this mother is a terrible woman or merely a stupid one.

Probably neither. She’s probably just a woman who did a really stupid thing. I bet her daughter was determined to throw a party wilder than the boys’ party, a party that everybody would talk about. Well, she got her wish.

One reader asked, “Why do you waste your time on this? It’s not Bill Clinton, it’s a bunch of teenaged girls.”

I know. The mail I got on Clinton? I got three times as much on this.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053, or e-mail mike.downey@latimes.com