A Hollister man accused of soliciting sex with an underage girl
over the Internet has been fired from his job, is working at a
minimum-wage job and has had his life ruined, according to his
attorney who is planning to file a class action lawsuit against the
Internet group that made the accusations public.
Hollister – A Hollister man accused of soliciting sex with an underage girl over the Internet has been fired from his job, is working at a minimum-wage job and has had his life ruined, according to his attorney who is planning to file a class action lawsuit against the Internet group that made the accusations public.
Attorney Dennis Roberts said he has been in contact with at least six attorneys who are representing clients like his own, and is attempting to get them together to file a suit against the Web site Perverted-Justice.com.
“They’re destroying people… it’s grotesque,” Roberts said. “He’s been wiped out. He’s at some minimum-wage job… it’s horrible, and he’s not the only one.”
Several months ago the Web site, which is a volunteer organization that surfs the Web attempting to expose pedophiles, posted a conversation from a Yahoo chat room of a Hollister resident they believe was making sexually explicit comments and sending lewd photos of himself to a volunteer posing as a 13-year-old girl.
The chat occurred in May and was later posted on the group’s Web site. The Free Lance is not naming the man because he was never arrested and charges have not been filed.
Perverted-Justice.com never contacted local police and police decided not to investigate the matter. Roberts said he contacted District Attorney John Sarsfield, who sent a letter saying that there were “no prosecutorial inquiries at this office.”
The man hired Roberts in mid-June after the site posted the entire chat on its Web site, along with a photo and other pornographic images the group alleged he sent via e-mail, and sent at least two flyers to the man’s neighbors claiming they lived next door to a pedophile.
Volunteers with the organization also contacted his employers, who subsequently fired him, Roberts said.
Roberts said his client is innocent of the accusations, and he’s been in contact with attorneys who have clients who have also been accused by the organization and wish to sue.
He hopes to have the suit filed within a few months, he said.
“We’re now in the fact-gathering process because there have been hundreds of these guys whose lives have been destroyed by these people,” he said. “But trying to get six lawyers together on a project… You’d do better with kittens.”
Site administrators of Perverted-Justice.com, who remain completely anonymous and have contact information available only through e-mail and screen names, did not return e-mails Wednesday.
Scott Morrow, founder of a Web site that counters Perverted-Justice.com’s actions called Corrupted-Justice.com, said he knows of at least 11 men around the country who say they have been wrongly accused by Perverted-Justice.com and have hired attorneys.
At least six of those attorneys have been in contact with Roberts.
Morrow, who founded Corrupted-Justice.com in April, said his Web site contacts the men “busted” by Perverted-Justice.com and provides them with advice on how deal with being posted on the site, and advises them to seek legal counsel and contact law enforcement.
He said his site is not intended to protect the guilty, and conceded many of the 726 people Perverted-Justice.com has busted probably did do what the site alleged they did.
“In some cases what they did or did not do is not the question… and some are pretty slimy,” Morrow said. “The point is not that (Perverted-Justice.com) does manage to get some slimy people, but they also manage to get some innocent people.”
If Roberts is able to get the lawyers he’s spoken with together to file a class action suit, Morrow said he will post a notice about the suit on his site and there’s no telling how many more people could join the suit.
“I suggested (to Roberts) there’s no shortage of people willing to get involved,” Morrow said. “If we posted it on our Web site, I suspect we’d have hundreds.”
The buzz about the scandal around the man’s neighborhood has pretty much dissipated, according Steven Allemand, who lives in the area.
Allemand was originally advised of the matter when the man informed him of it, he said. Since that conversation, Allemand said he hasn’t heard anything new and doesn’t see the man very much.
“I haven’t talked to him,” Allemand said. “I don’t bring the subject up – it’s none of my business.”
Erin Musgrave can be reached at 637-5566, ext. 336, or at
em*******@fr***********.com
.
