Minnesota- www.startribune.com- If you expose yourself for years on a commercial pornography website, do you still qualify for state licenses to offer child day care and foster care?
An unusual court case in northern Minnesota has revealed the answer: yes.
Now, a judge is considering a related question — whether a Grand Rapids, Minn., couple who filmed explicit, live Web feeds in their home are eligible to retain custody of two young children they wish to adopt.
The now-defunct website anne34dd.com featured Anne Gale’s nude videos, erotic stories and sex toys. She and her husband, Joe, who shot the videos, shut down the site in 2004. The following year they began offering home day care and foster care for children.
Like all child-care workers, the Gales underwent background checks, which found no criminal past or mistreatment of children. When Itasca County approved the child-care licenses in 2005, officials knew the couple have been in the adult porn business.
“Sometimes [in] smaller communities and so forth, you become more comfortable knowing these people and knowing maybe even some changes that they have made in their lifestyles,” said Lester Kachinske, Itasca County Health and Human Service director.
The Gales’ history of pornography and swinging has now landed in Itasca County District Court, because a young mother who left her children with the Gales two years ago, intending to give them up in a private adoption that was never completed, is fighting to regain custody. The couple say the children, both younger than 4, have bonded with the Gales’ family and are best left there.
In court, both sides have questioned each other’s lifestyles. The children’s mother, Rachel Voight, has pleaded guilty in the past to forging checks and has admitted to smoking marijuana. Neither side agreed to an interview about the case.
According to court papers filed by Voight’s attorney, the Gales have a “morally deficient lifestyle” that her client didn’t know about until recently. Although the Gales say they have stopped selling pornography, Anne Gale’s nude photos have remained on a sex site controlled by someone else.
The Gales’ online activities began in the 1990s. Early on, the Web lured a possible stalker to their home.
According to a June 2000 report the Gales made to the sheriff, a man whom Anne Gale met in an Internet chat room showed up in person after she “sent him an e-mail breaking off the relationship.” The couple didn’t want him back, the report said.
Six months later, the Gales launched anne34dd.com. On the site, she declared, “I am a Mom, Wife and Exhibitionist!! In that order!” The site charged subscribers $12.95 a month to watch live webcam shows in which she touched herself sexually, according to Web pages archived at www.archive.org.
By early 2002, word of her sex site had spread in Grand Rapids, population 7,764, so the couple tried blocking access from local Internet addresses, according to the archived website. Itasca County officials heard about it and investigated the Gales, who have two other children of their own, but did not take any child-protection action. That’s because there is “no correlation between [the Gales’] ability to parent and their prior lifestyle choices,” according to court papers filed by their attorney.
Their sex site didn’t make money, according to the Gales’ bankruptcy filing in 2003. The following year, they shut it down. According to court papers filed by the Gales’ attorney, the couple changed their lifestyle after Anne Gale got help for depression and anxiety. On her sex site, she told viewers: “It is time for me to move on in new directions with my life, and I know you all support me!”
Gale was required to obtain state licenses to offer day care for up to 14 kids and foster care for up to 3 children in her home.
According to human services officials, background checks of child-care workers look mainly for criminal conduct or maltreatment of children. Child-care licensing rules no longer have a morals clause because people don’t agree on morality standards, said Jerry Kerber, director of licensing for the state Human Services Department.
“As far as we can find, adults engaging in sexual activity in front of a camera and putting it up on the Web isn’t actually illegal,” Kerber said.
Such explanations don’t cut it with Voight’s attorney, Ellen Tholen of Bovey, Minn.
“On the licensing issue, had my client known that Itasca County grants licenses to people who engage in that behavior, she would never have used them as a day care much less placed the children with them with an intent to adopt,” Tholen said.
The road leading to the adoption dispute began in 2007, when Voight, of Marble, Minn., then 21, dropped off her young son and daughter with the Gales. At the time, Voight’s lifestyle included smoking marijuana and forging checks, for which she later pleaded guilty, court papers say. Her attorney argued that Voight, a single mother, also had medical issues and couldn’t provide for the kids financially. The children’s father doesn’t support them.
According to a report by the children’s guardian, cited in court papers, Voight “effectively abandoned the children and has not provided for even their most basic needs.” Then, last year, Voight told the Gales that she had changed her mind about adoption and wanted the children back. The Gales then asked the court to grant them custody of the children, who are still living with them.
Judge John Hawkinson presided over a nonjury trial in the custody case in January. He has yet to rule.
The custody battle in a nutshell: Between 2000 and 2004, Anne and Joe Gale ran a now-defunct pornography website from their Grand Rapids, Minnesota home. The website featured nude videos, erotic stories and sex toys. They shut down the site in 2004, and in 2005 began offering home day care and foster care for children. A background check was conducted when they went into the childcare business and it found the pornography background, but no criminal past or mistreatment of children. The Gales were given an approved child-care license in 2005.1
In 2007, Rachel Voight dropped her two young children at the Gales’ home, saying she was unable to care for them. A year later, she decided she wanted the children back; and the Gales asked the courts to give them custody of the children. The court case balances the Gales’ history with Voight’s, who has pleaded guilty to drug and check forgery charges.1