Anti-Abortion Minister, Backers Fined

A Santee minister and 23 followers were fined and placed on probation Wednesday for violating a court order that restricted picketing outside an abortion clinic that was burned in September.

The Rev. Dorman Owens was fined $150, while the others were each fined $50 by Superior Court Judge Wesley Buttermore. All were placed on a year’s probation. Owens was convicted of eight counts, while the others were found guilty of one count each. The maximum penalty they could have received was a $1,000 fine and five days in jail on each count.

Owens also was sentenced to 10 days in jail, but Buttermore suspended the jail term.

“I don’t think it’s an appropriate case for jail. I believe what you (Owens) did was in good faith, but I think you sought a confrontation,” Buttermore said. Buttermore also offered some mild criticism of Owens for “not having respect for the other person’s rights.”

The 24 defendants were convicted of violating several court orders that limited picketing in front of the Birth Control Institute on El Cajon Boulevard. The clinic suffered $80,000 in damages in an arson fire set early in the morning on Sept. 13. No arrests have been made in the case, and Owens has denied any involvement in the fire.

Owens’ followers viewed the light sentences as a moral victory. After Monday’s hearings, one of the defendants commented that “it wasn’t so bad . . . we had television, radio and the papers here” covering the hearing.

Church members have been permitted to picket in front of the clinic, but several court orders have stipulated that the picketers must be moving at all times and they cannot shout or yell at the clinic’s patrons.

The demonstrators were arrested on three occasions in July and August for standing in front of the clinic and reading aloud from the Bible and yelling at people who walked in and out of the building. Owens and the others denied yelling at anyone and said they did not violate the court’s orders.

Clinic Director Carol Roberts called Buttermore’s decision “shameful” and said she was disappointed that Owens and his followers did not get any jail time.

“Who really suffers are the women and clients who are trying to utilize the services . . . they have to walk through a line of shouting and abusive picketers,” said Roberts, who has charged Owens with being “morally responsible” for the fire at the clinic.

Owens said anti-abortionists are convinced that they will have to break the law in order to outlaw abortion, and he justified the lawlessness on grounds that they are “following God’s law.”

“We’re putting one (God’s) law above the other, absolutely,” Owens said. “The time will come when people will be forced to protect themselves and their rights outside of the law.”