LOS ANGELES – A self-described pedophile from Washington state who says he is attracted to young girls but doesn’t actually molest them was ordered Friday to stay at least 30 feet away from every person under age 18 in California.
The temporary restraining order was issued against Jack McClellan by Superior Court Judge Melvin Sandvig, who also scheduled an Aug. 24 hearing to discuss the matter further. McClellan, who was not in court, told The Associated Press he didn’t learn of Friday’s hearing in time to attend.
“That was granted? Oh man, I didn’t think it would be,” McClellan said, adding he believed such an order would be an unconstitutional restriction of his rights.
The order was obtained by attorneys Anthony Zinnanti and Richard Patterson, both parents of young children. As soon as Sandvig issued it, Zinnanti raced to Los Angeles International Airport to serve it on McClellan, who had boarded a flight to Chicago for a TV appearance.
“He was on an airplane, and we managed to get him off the airplane and jam him with it,” Zinnanti said by phone from the airport. He said McClellan accepted it nonchalantly and got back on the plane.
McClellan, who is unemployed and lives out of his car, has created a furor across Southern California since arriving several weeks ago from Washington, where he had lived with his parents.
For years, McClellan maintained a Web site in Washington where he posted photos of children he’d taken in public places. He also discussed how he liked to stake out parks, public libraries, fast-food restaurants and other areas where little girls, or “LGs,” congregate.
“Most libraries have frequent programs and events for children, and sometimes you can get quite close to LGs there,” he said in one posting.
In a phone interview with the AP, McClellan said his intentions are misunderstood and insisted he would never actually molest a child.
“I guess there is some small chance maybe someday I might be able to get some sort of friendship with a girl and maybe then I might worry would I cross the line,” he said. “But right now, no. There’s no doubt in my mind I wouldn’t.”
Although he didn’t post any recognizable photos of girls on a similar Web site he put up after arriving in Los Angeles, McClellan said, word about him quickly spread in Internet chat rooms maintained by mothers of young children.
At least one mother, Sandra Vasquez, believes he may have photographed her daughter at a Los Angeles street fair.
“I thought I saw a man take a picture of her as he passed,” she said in an e-mail to the AP. “I have no idea if it was him, but we had been at the location that he described on his site just prior to leaving the fair.”
McClellan’s Internet service provider took his Web site down a month ago, and he said Friday he isn’t sure whether he’ll try to put it back up.
“I’m listening to the criticism. I’m trying to see the other point of view. I’m trying to put myself in the parents’ shoes,” he said. “That was one of the reasons I really reformed the camera stuff.”
McClellan, who says he lives on Supplemental Security income and suffers from depression, maintains he launched the site as a form of therapy.
“I’m determined not to do anything illegal,” he said, and police and public records confirm his assertion that he has never been arrested.
Still, police and pedophilia experts are skeptical of his intentions.
“If you talk to individuals dealing with pedophiles or chasing pedophiles or watching them, they usually act out on their fantasies eventually. So he is dangerous, even if he hasn’t acted,” said Dr. Astrid Heger, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.
Since his arrival in Southern California, people have reported seeing McClellan, 45, in several communities where large numbers of children were present. He doesn’t deny being there, acknowledging Friday that he visited the Orange County Fair in particular several times.
In Santa Monica, a mother saw McClellan in a restaurant and called police, who arrived in time to talk with him and ask if they could take his picture.
He agreed, saying he thought it would allow them to quickly clear him of any sex crimes in their city. But he was unhappy when they posted it on the Internet along with his driver’s license photo and a warning to parents to call them if they see him.
“It’s almost kind of like a sex offender flyer on me,” he said.
It also gave a clear view of the self-described pedophile’s face, which he has shielded in several TV appearances with dark glasses and sometimes a floppy hat.
Such appearances, in which McClellan appears articulate but disheveled, have confounded both parents and experts on pedophilia.
“It is very unusual. We’ve found that pedophiles and sexual predators normally operate in the dark and don’t make that type of thing public,” said Capt. Joe Gutierrez, who heads the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s special victims unit.
Asked if the whole thing could be a hoax, Gutierrez replied, “It’s always a possibility.”
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