Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 02:17:18 -0500
Subject: More tales of the Emotional Plague
To: orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: "true paranoia [reads]" <orgone@shore.net>
Sender: owner-orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu

More tales of the Emotional Plague...

This article appeared in the December 29, 1995 issue of The Boston Phoenix.


Getting Personal
by Sarah McNaught

Was it innocent family fun or pernicious child porn?

On November 2, Toni Marie Angeli was arrested after a struggle with police at Zona
Photographic Labs, in Cambridge Mass., while she waited with her husband and
four-year-old son to pick up pictures she had taken for her photography class at Harvard University.
According to the Cambridge Police, the pictures of her little Boy appeared to be exploitative
and therefore raised questions about the potential violation of child-pornography laws.
Angeli, a full-time photography student at Harvard, contends that the pictures are innocent
portrayals of father and son horsing around and of her son and a friend playing.
On October 30, the police had received a phone call from the lab. An employee who develops
negatives reported what he believed to be pornographic nude photos of a small boy.
The police began investigating and arranged to have the photo lab call when Angeli returned
to pick up the negatives, according to the police report.
A week later, when the call came through two police detectives went to the lab, where Angeli
and her family were being distracted by an employee who told them that they would have to wait.
When the police told Angeli that they were there to question her about the possible
pornographic nature of the photographs, she says, she laughed at the allegations and demanded
her negatives. According to the police report, an argument then ensued and Angeli grew
increasingly agitated, screaming and swearing at the policemen as they tried to move her
into a back room to keep her from disrupting business, During the altercation, police say, she
threw a lamp at an employee and kicked a hole in a door. The police arrested Angeli and charged
her with disorderly conduct, malicious destruction of property, and assault and battery.
Angeli says she "lost control when I heard why the police were there."
She says one of the detectives told her the police had contacted the state's Department of
Social Services (DSS), whose officials were coming to take her child away. "I freaked," she admits.
"The real problem here," she says, " is the fact that my son was forced to watch as the police
physically and verbally assaulted his mother."
Angeli has pictures that show a large bruise on her forehead where, she says, one of the
detectives rammed her face into a door frame and proceeded to choke her. Angeli is scheduled to appear in Cambridge District Court on January 10 to face the three charges. The Cambridge Police have not yet charged her with child pornography, but have until
the end of January to do so.
While Angeli awaits the police Child Abuse Division's decision, she has been denied access to
her negatives and has been subjected to intensive questioning by the DSS. "I believe that children should be protected," says Angeli. "But I don't think allowing a small child to watch as his mother's head is slammed...and she is choked by a police officer is any kind of protection at all."
Angeli says her method of raising her son is very holistic. He does not watch television, except
for a few choice videos. His diet consists primarily of health foods. and the family is comfortable
with the child's wish to run around naked at times. Angeli says her son has been so traumatized by what he saw that he now has nightmares, grinds his teeth in his sleep, and ducks when he sees police officers. "If this company felt these photos were indecent or suggestive in nature
after the thousands of pictures they develop, then there was good enough reason for us to respond,"
says police spokesman Fran Pasquarello.
Angeli says even if charges of child pornography are never leveled, she is determined to clear
her name, "My son has changed because of this. I can't undo the trauma he has been forced to
deal with," she says. "There is no way I will drop this." Rowena Otremba, president of Zona, says, "This is not something we wish to publicize or get any further involved in."

David Huisken

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