Phillip Distasio

[dl meckes]

"Brother Petty" was sentenced to life in prison today, according to news reports.

I again want to thank the families who came forward. That was really brave.

[dl meckes]

Judge Kathleen Sutula sentenced Distasio to 26 life sentences plus additional years for the rape and molestation of at least 10 children.

Most of the victims were mentally disabled.

There will be no opportunity for parole

[Mike Deneen]

Thanks to everyone that helped to bring him down!

[Joe McClain]

DiStasio was used in the lede of a commentary of a Kenyan paper. This is strange, in that it implies that Phil was operating in Kenya. But it shows how he's become the poster boy for what we don't want. Congrats to all who had anything to do with uncovering this slime mold. (Sorry, that's an insult to the slime molds of America.)
Here's the article, from the Kenya Daily Nation. DiStasio's not only a pedophile, he's also a paedophile (Where's an æ ligature when you need one?):

COMMENTARY

Paedophile tourists headed to Kenya

Story by MWENDE MWINZI | Talking Point
Publication Date: 10/01/2006

From his photograph, Phillip Distasio, is nothing great to look at. Unless you like 'em side-burned and otherwise bland, that is. Pulled back into a ponytail, his hair is thin; his face and clothing lackluster and drab. At 34, and resembling more boy-than-man, the Teacher's Aide seemed innocent and unassuming. He had packaged it just right - to access and molest little boys.

"I'm a paedophile and I've been a paedophile for 20 years," he said in Common Pleas Court last year, "The only reason I'm charged with rape is that no one believes a child can consent to sex."

When arrested in September of last year, Distasio had molested two disabled boys and raped seven other autistic children while tutoring them at his apartment through the non-profit Positive Education Program.

They ranged in age from 8 to 10 and were defenceless. And to Distasio, irresistible. "Not all paedophilia is bad, he remarked, "sex [with boys] can be healthy!"

Found in his home by Police, were memorabilia of his perversion - journals describing his activities, as well as videotapes and pictures of him engaged in sex acts with the boys.

"This guy is [sic] the worst paedophile in America," Brendan Sheehan, Assistant County Prosecutor said at the time, "He preyed on young children who couldn't even tell their parents what had happened to them."

Distasio, like the thousands who partake in the multi-billion sex-tourism industry, targeted children to quench a need - children who, according to Sex Tourism and Sexual Exploitation of Children, the newly released UNICEF report, are increasingly from Kenya. It is here, the report states, that more than 1,500 underage girls have commercial sex per night.

Kenya girls are beautiful, a commentator offered on an interactive online discussion and archive database dedicated to providing information about prostitution, escort services and sex tourism. More than 15,000 minor commercial sex workers exist on Kenya's coast says the report, as it is believed that through this vice, wealth and material gain are easily attainable. Sometimes the demands are as simple as participating in the production of erotica and sexually oriented publications or indulging voyeurism. Other times, it gets deadly.

With the more lucrative anal sex charges ranging from Sh5,000 to Sh10,000 and with customers demanding unprotected sex, it is being reported that up to 35.5 per cent of minor-aged prostitutes engage in regular unprotected sex acts significantly increasing their risk of HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.

One must wonder how and why this can happen so openly in a country that has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Yet, to understand why Kenya is one of the top countries with the largest number of people exploiting children sexually, one must be clear about a simple fact: that in the absence of tough laws, child exploitation and tourism go hand-in-hand and that with tourism a major foreign exchange earner, consideration for children is secondary.

Kenya can chose (like many Asian countries) to enact tough laws against such acts or she can - out of threat by emerging destinations like South Africa and Botswana - indiscriminately welcome any tourist regardless of whether their visit is ostensibly to have sex with children or not.

UNICEF's launch last week of a fund aimed at supporting 250 destitute coastal households, is a commendable start to saving some children from prostitution. Yet and regrettably so, it is but a drop in the bucket and even worse, an effort in futility unless it is supported universally - by the intermediaries - the hotel staff, street pimps and family members pushing these young girls, and by new Government laws aimed at child protection.

In addition to the client, the Government can punish parties guilty of promoting or gaining from child prostitution and it can educate people on international support - that, for example, a British tourist who commits sexual offences in Kenya can be persecuted in the UK for those crimes under the UK Sexual Offences Act, 2003, article 72.

And what about finally following through on the international (optional) protocol on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, which the Government signed in September 2000 but never ratified?

The answers are plain. Kenya must act on laws strong enough to put paedophiles where such perverts belong.
[quote][/quote]

[Jim O'Bryan]

One must wonder how and why this can happen so openly in a country that has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Joe

Nice to wake up this morning and see your name on the board.

How is life treating you?

To answer your question simply. Everyone just wanted to pass him off to the next. Adults turned a blind eye. The media never did their job.

Most kept quiet because they needed to protect their own asses more than the kids.

Easy examples were the Lakewood business that never cooperated with Lakewood police. Never turned over their list of children Phil had brought into their store and had sign up for computer time. As this business started to fail, they helped to host beer parties to raise money for Phil's ministry outreach, because it brought business into their store. "Do you know how hard it is to keep a business going in this town." one of them said when we asked why they helped. This business was also owned and run by two teachers, that were not part of the Lakewood School System.

Speaking of schools, Phil made a living teaching children. I know he was in at least 4 schools and centers in Northern Ohio. A couple in Columbus, probably the same in Lexington and St. Louis. In St. Louis Phil's roommate is serving a life sentence for molesting children.

I have no idea how any of those people live with themselves as they helped to facilitate Phil's evil actions and calculating mind.

My heroes list is: The parents that finally came forward. Dan Slife who spent time with him to keep him under surveillance, even after we thought he was a murderer. DL Meckes who provided us with hundreds of documents within hours of stumbling on to to him. Ken Warren, Steve Calhoun, who spent the evening having coffee and tea that fateful night when we first met Distasio, and Law Director and neighbor Brian Corrigan, who spent hours talking with me after that first night of meeting Distasio.

It will be good to close the door on this one.


.

[dl meckes]

This is long, but worth revisiting.

On June 15th, 2005, Phil Distasio wrote on the Observation Deck:

Once we can get everyone together enough, often enough, I want to start seeking out large enough spaces for us to do some really good jam sessions and drum circles.

As it stands now, however:

I am one of the only three very active (some would say hyper-active) volunteers of the Ministry. And I spend all of my day with the children who are taking part in the Youth Outreach.

I put everything I can (and sometimes more than I can) into getting the kids out and about and doing things with their summer.

I have a grant writer and a legal advisor who are working with me to get all the non-profit paperwork sorted out and to conduct the ever-lasting search for grants and funding.

The three of us work together with the merchants and artists that we have so far in order to plan our fundraisers, we're hoping for our next one in a few weeks.

Pateticus

June 21st, 2005

...We can hide safely behind our pseudonyms in order to express outlandish ideas that we'd never share in public. Uninhibitedness, so essential to the creative process, can now be applied from the very beginning of any venture and we can be free to associate with eachother and seek eachother out on the basis of mutual interest and belief alone.

This, in turn, could have lead us towards great feats of understanding and acceptance if we'd only put our mind to it. Instead, we use it to antagonize eachother in chat rooms and mailing lists and distract ourselves by dividing into teams so we can attack eachother in virtual domains. At this very moment, many of us are using this Web Hell for nothing more than to live out our most violent and perverse fantasies instead of allowing ourselves the all-important progress that this invention should be leading us to.

Furthermore, as governments and other agencies pick which parts of our private lives to legitimize, we pick amongst acceptable behaviors in order to pigeon-hole ourselves into a more acceptable mode of oppression. Networking to play board games and card games and putting together scrap books and logging on to satisfy carnal urges and addictions or to blow away a 9-year-old who's playing on a virtual combat team half a country away is okay, but to even suggest get together to help eachother with anything that interrupts the government control of health, education, social work and political action is considered nothing short of cultism, terrorism and perversion.

We've filled Web Hell with so many of our personal demons that we no longer believe anything we see here. Distracted by our own vices, we may occasionally find ourselves expanding on more creative and worthwhile ideas...only to fall short when it comes to trust. We've revealed so much of our darker selves and pretended to be so many things and have so many pretenders out there that many of us don't believe in anything we find on the net anymore.

Without ever considering that in a world where everyone has an opinion, every observation holds some kind of truth.

We've endeavored to reduce life to less than a 5 second soundbyte. Television and Radio, which were supposed to revolutionize the entertainment industry, now has more commercials than entertainment value. And now are considered more dangerous than fun. Just like the internet.

With everything I have on my website about spirituality, politics and the importance of building a caring network to support a community school...and because the average attention span prevents anyone from reading anything more than a few snippets of it at a time, it took me more than a year of spamming to find two people that weren't looking for sex or drugs or who didn't think I was some kind of a scam.

I was informed yesterday that I'm suddenly in the midst of a deadline. Though I, personally, have been blessed with the patience and perseverance of a man with a mission, this whole thing has impacted the most my friends and family. My family has tried to have me committed and my friends have jobs and family to think about. I started this myself because I'm a single man without a future, I've got nothing to lose, and it would be too much to ask for anyone else to make any more sacrifices.

I have finally begun to wear on the generosity of some of what I consider to be my closest friends. I am grateful that this has lasted as long as it has, and never expected them to hold out this long. But, a deadline is a deadline. In a few month's time, the venture has to start supporting itself, which means acquiring a property that will allow my volunteers to work, or I will have no choice but to disappear.

Real Life is waiting. I've sold off everything I own except for the necessities that have allowed me to live thus far. Everything else has gone to helping those that have been helping me with this nonprofit. My last day of societal life will be to sell off the rest and hit the road with what I can carry. I fear that if this isn't strong enough to pay its own bills by donations and community interest alone, in a few month's time it will disappear forever. For I know of no one else with a futureless life like mine to devote themselves to it full time.

Handing this over to someone else who can finance it is by far the best option. But I can't do that until people start to step up to the plate and take their best swing at whatever lopsided fastball I can toss them.

I built this network on people that the system considers useless. These people either have no jobs or are only marginally employed. Some of them have families, but all of them have some kind of skill that they can contribute. This venture has cared for myself and for dozens of others in the past year, and it was done with little to no money at all. It was completely done on networking and on volunteer interest alone.

This proves without a doubt that money is not necessary for happiness. It only makes things easier and provides the people of the bureaucracy the illusion that they're doing something with themselves. If this fails it's because of nothing more than a human lapse of faith.

If we continue to get together on the internet...if we continue to start as many of these nonprofits as possible and get them to work together, maybe someone else will be able to succeed where I fall short.

You have to get off the net in order for the net to work for you. I cannot emphasize this enough. This can prosper if enough people believe in it. But if all you do is log on, all you do is sit still.

I cannot over-emphasize the importance of other people's Real World Involvement at this juncture. Whether you're a big person or a little one, near or far, no matter how useless or stuck you might be, you are now essential to the operation of this organization and in a position where you can help.

I'm not asking you for money, I'm not selling anything. I'm giving this away and I'm asking for your help--Real Life Help. Your time and your skill.

Everything I know and everything I've done is on my website. You need to read it and you need to understand it if you expect it to work. If you don't understand, ask a question. If you want to do more, help out. But if you want to get started on your own and you feel you need my help, you need to ask for it soon. Because now my time is limited.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arcadianf ... essage/182

From: "Brother Pateticus" <pateticus@...>
Date: Sun Jun 26, 2005 10:22 am
Subject: The Ultimatum...

...I was told, in no uncertain terms, that if I didn't shut myself down that
they would do it for me by manipulating the media and digging up the seedy little details of my past and private life. This, not more than a week away from when I intended to get started.

How is this a miracle?

...These people are looking for a fight, I'm not willing to give them one.

Our livlihood, our freedom, is at stake here.
I can't think of a better prize...

Pateticus

From March 14th 2005 on his Yahoo account,

Because criminals are people that excel at taking advantage of certain loopholes. And when you do not trust your public officials and your caregivers--ie, when you don't make an effort to know them--you create a loophole of trust. Where a criminal can sneak in and take advantage of that trust. The only way you can close those loopholes isn't through more rules and more technology--but through the simple act of getting to know the people around you. So that you know without a doubt that your neighbor is not a child molestor or a psychopath or an ineffective judge, lawyer, deputy or minister.

In an email to Observers Mon, 27 Jun 2005,

How many times does an abuser need to make it into your schools, churches and neighborhoods before you realize that the only way to trust people is to sit down face to face once in awhile and keep in touch with them? How many times does your reliance upon credential have to lead you to victimization before you stop relying on the credential and start paying attention to what you see and hear?

The murder Jim referred to was that of Toby Antone, who was killed by Robbie Molloy, an instructor at Jefferson Community College. Robbie had been mentoring Toby over the internet and then later persuaded him to relocate to Kentucky from Florida, helping him obtain financial aid from the school where Robbie taught. Toby's family came to know Robbie and supported the move.

When he was murdered, Toby had booked a flight back to Florida. Toby had indicated that he was leaving Robbie permanently.
http://www.wlky.com/news/776636/detail.html

[Joe McClain]

Jim, I appreciate the response, but I have to point out that I didn't write the bit about the Convention on the Rights of the Child. True, I copied and pasted it, but it was part of the commentary from the Kenyan paper by the person with the African name.

Life's treating me pretty good, though. We had a kitchen fire and are cooking on a Coleman stove and toaster oven now.

Hot Tuna's coming to Charlottesville next month. I may make the trip.

[Jim O'Bryan]

Jim, I appreciate the response, but I have to point out that I didn't write the bit about the Convention on the Rights of the Child. True, I copied and pasted it, but it was part of the commentary from the Kenyan paper by the person with the African name.

Life's treating me pretty good, though. We had a kitchen fire and are cooking on a Coleman stove and toaster oven now.

Hot Tuna's coming to Charlottesville next month. I may make the trip.

Joe

Realized you did not write it.

I thought everyone down there cooked on a Coleman Stove or using Sterno. I was happy for you when Steve Davis had mentioned you were doing so well you had a stove. Sorry to see the fire has reduced you back to the norm down there. Maybe with insurance you could add a second burner.

Hot Tuna, was that the last time I saw you? Glad to hear you might get the chance to see them. I am still trying to bring them to Lakewood, currently the House of Blues has an exclusive with them, and as Hot Tuna plays all the House of Blues, they are not willing to get them mad.

Two events slated for next year that might being you back to the Wood.
Sometime in May - Federal Cat Show
Sometime in Summer - Music you would like on a larger than normal scale.

You are missed, but I am very glad it is working out for you and your family.

.

[stephen davis]

Hot Tuna, was that the last time I saw you?

Jim,

The last time you saw Joe was at a HUGE cocktail party with servants. You met Ken Warren and said goodbye to Joe. No small day in the history of Lakewood.

Steve