Klansman to Apologize for Harassment

For eight months, the former grand dragon of the Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klan sat menacingly on a bench outside housing activist Bonnie Jouhari’s office window almost every day.

Sometimes he would photograph her as she worked, then display her picture on his cable television show, along with a threatening video that labeled her a “race traitor.”

Jouhari grew to fear the sight of Klansman Roy Frankhouser, and she and her daughter moved four times within 15 months in an attempt to escape him and his cohorts.

But the next time Jouhari sees Frankhouser, he will be delivering a public apology on his “White Forum” cable show in Pennsylvania under the terms of a novel agreement brokered Thursday by federal authorities on behalf of the 44-year-old woman.

“This is about justice. It’s about sending a message to these people that they can’t hide behind the Klan hood and get away with it,” Jouhari said in an interview.

Thursday’s agreement, under the auspices of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was hailed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other civil rights leaders as an important step in the battle against racial intolerance. They said it amounts to a public renunciation of the Klansman’s conduct of intimidation.

Frankhouser must apologize on television and in several Pennsylvania newspapers to Jouhari and her daughter, broadcast public service announcements at the close of each of his cable shows, post a fair-housing poster outside his home, perform community service and undergo sensitivity training. Largely destitute, he is also required to donate $400 to the United Way and pay the Jouharis part of his income if he earns more than $25,000 a year, officials said.

In exchange, Jouhari agreed to drop her claim with HUD that Frankhouser--the self-described “chaplain to the Ku Klux Klan”--violated a federal housing law that prevents the intimidation of fair-housing advocates.

In a case that has drawn nationwide attention to her plight, Jouhari was vilified by white supremacists in the late 1990s for publicly defending the fair-housing rights of minorities in eastern Pennsylvania near her Reading home. Her picture was posted on a neo-Nazi Web site, along with a threatening caption and an animated image of her office being blown up every five seconds.

Jouharis Faced Months of Intimidation

Jouhari, who is white, was warned that she would be “hung from the neck from the nearest tree” for betraying her race. Her daughter, Danielle, whose father is black, was branded a “mongrel.”

Even after the pair moved cross-country to the Seattle area, menacing phone calls at their new home continued and a bullet was left in a kitchen cabinet. Jouhari and her daughter, now 18, moved for the fourth time just a few months ago to an undisclosed location, and she says that she still has not opened a bank account or gotten a driver’s license for fear of being tracked down again.

One provision in Thursday’s agreement requires Frankhouser to disclose within five days the identity of the person who informed him that Jouhari was moving to Washington state in late 1998.

Frankhouser, 60, who has a history of criminal convictions, including involvement in a school bus bombing and synagogue vandalism, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

He told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he agreed to the deal to avoid a long and costly lawsuit and that he would abide by the terms. But he vowed to stand by his views. “If they think they’re going to brainwash me, they’re in for a big surprise,” he said.

Jouhari is still pressing a separate claim against white supremacist Ryan Wilson, whose neo-Nazi group in Pennsylvania ran the Web site that branded her a “race traitor.”

A HUD administrative judge has already entered a default judgment in Jouhari’s favor against Wilson after he failed to contest the allegations earlier this year. Her attorneys believe she may be awarded more than $1 million in damages.

But the money may be secondary, those involved in the case say.

“This is really of tremendous symbolic significance when you have the former leader of the Pennsylvania Klan having to publicly apologize and put up fair-housing notices in his window,” said Brian Levin, a hate-crime expert at Cal State San Bernardino who was one of Jouhari’s lawyers. “That kind of decree is really unprecedented.”

The significance is not lost on Jouhari’s daughter.

“What I’ll really love to see is the words of this apology coming out of his mouth. That would make me very happy. This is a man who for his entire adult life terrorized my hometown, and he finally has to pay for it,” she said.

The agreement requires Frankhouser within 10 days to read a public apology on his public-access cable show renouncing his “hateful” conduct toward Jouhari. “I would like to publicly express my deep remorse for my actions. Despite any philosophical differences that Ms. Jouhari and I may have, I have come to realize the negative effect that I have had on the lives of these two people, and for this I apologize,” the statement reads.

But Jouhari herself is still not satisfied. While she says that the legal resolution may help afford her and her daughter greater peace of mind, she said that she remains “very, very, very frustrated” with the Justice Department’s handling of the case.

Faulting the Justice Department

Justice Department officials “have failed us miserably”--both by failing to bring criminal charges against anyone involved in the case and by offering her and her daughter no assistance in establishing new identities and a safe home, she said.

“I think it sends the message to people out there that this sort of thing is OK,” Jouhari said.

Justice Department officials said Thursday that their civil rights division is continuing a criminal investigation into the allegations raised by Jouhari and that no determination has been made into whether to seek charges.

Jouhari said that HUD officials, particularly Secretary Andrew Cuomo, deserve the credit for taking up her cause. But Cuomo, appearing with Jouhari at a news conference in Washington, said Jouhari is the one who deserves thanks for the years of work she has done in promoting fair housing for minorities in the face of obvious adversity.

Fair-housing advocates such as Jouhari “are heroes, and we will protect them from efforts to halt their courageous efforts,” Cuomo said.