San Diego Court Calls Halt to 'International' Child Molester : Crime: He was a collector of lewd photographs of young men and boys, and an American who became a Canadian citizen despite a pending U.S. arrest warrant. Then he crossed the border to get a good price on film developing.

By ERNEST SANDER

June 11, 1995 12 AM PT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN DIEGO — It was more than a decade ago that Chris, a scrawny 13-year-old boy with a mop of long hair, posed nude for convicted child molester John Lewis, then 33.

Lewis approached Chris at a California beach and complimented his surfing. The next day, Lewis shot frame after frame of the youth in various stages of undress.

The photo session concluded with Lewis orally copulating Chris and telling him to “keep it between us,” according to Chris.

Lewis returned to his adopted home in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he continued to photograph and collect nude and semi-nude pictures of boys and men, amassing thousands of photos, prosecutors contended at Lewis’ recent trial.

As if curating a museum exhibit, he fastidiously organized the pictures into albums, marking them with the names and ages of his subjects.

Chris, meanwhile, struggled with his own sexuality, one day thinking he was gay, the next convinced he wasn’t. He moved to Arizona, married and had children.

Chris neither saw Lewis nor spoke with him again, until two months ago when Chris testified against Lewis in San Diego Superior Court.

This week, Lewis will be sentenced for molesting Chris, whose testimony helped convict the 47-year-old Lewis on one count of performing a lewd act on a child and one count of oral copulation on a child. Lewis, who continues to maintain his innocence, faces up to eight years in prison.

It will bring to an end a case that has frustrated prosecutors and detectives in Canada and the United States, one of whom is now in jail himself, and sullied the reputations of some members of Parliament.

“It’s an interesting cast of characters,” said San Diego prosecutor Jeff Fraser.

Lewis was finally arrested last year when he crossed the border into Washington state in a leased car. He jumped bail and did not surrender until an hour before his mother’s Sacramento home was to be claimed by the bail bondsman.

During Lewis’ recent trial, Fraser flipped through photo after photo, some of teen-agers and boys in sexual positions.

“I did not know he was 13,” Lewis said when asked about Chris. “I thought he was 14 or 15.”

While Fraser referred to Lewis’ photo albums as “chicken books”--”chicken” is police slang for kids who are preyed upon by molesters--Lewis called them art.

One defense witness, a married man with children who grew up next door to Lewis in Sacramento and went camping with him, testified that he had been photographed nude. He told jurors he trusted Lewis enough to let his own children pose naked for him.

On the stand, Lewis acknowledged enjoying sex with boys, but insisted it was always consensual.

Occasionally flashing a smile at the jury, the courteous, even-tempered Lewis said the 14- to 17-year-olds enjoyed the attention.

Donning reading glasses to see his own notations on the pictures, he told jurors that some teen-agers bragged to their girlfriends about their “modeling” careers. It was the boys who suggested the poses, he said; he was simply the cameraman.

Lewis’ lawyer, Kay Sunday, says her client is the victim of “an international homophobic witch hunt” that reflects the public’s insecurity about gays.

“These outlandish things being told about child molestation,” she said. “Part of it was just the times, the hysterical ‘80s.”

Despite his behavior, the short, effete Lewis gained status in Vancouver, first as a landed immigrant and later as a Canadian citizen.

He joined the Downtown Vancouver Assn., sat on the city’s tourism board and became a member of the Vancouver Centennial Commission, a rare feat for a non-Canadian.

“He has personality and charm and get up and go,” said Vancouver Detective George Kristensen. “If he had channeled his efforts in productive directions, he could have made a million dollars. Unfortunately, he uses it to evil ends.”

In 1983, Lewis pleaded guilty to three counts of gross indecency and three counts of buggery--or sodomy--with 15- and 16-year-olds dating back to 1978. He served four months in a Canadian jail.

When he was arrested, police found business cards from two members of Parliament, whom Lewis told police were “good friends” of his, Kristensen said.

About the same time, Vancouver police searched Lewis’ home on three occasions, confiscating thousands of photos on contact sheets and four of Lewis’ address books. The addresses--police say there were more than 1,000--were sorted by country, province, state and city.

Chris and other Lewis subjects appeared in the books, which the Vancouver police photocopied and distributed to the Los Angeles Police Department, which was also investigating him.

Lewis later sued successfully to have the pictures and address books returned.

The seizures came amid a backdrop of speculation in Vancouver that several members of Parliament and other high-profile Canadians were involved in an international child-prostitution ring. Newspaper accounts and city gossip instantly linked this story line with Lewis.

None of those allegations has been proven.

“If you are going to bust a guy, you bust a guy for what he did wrong,” said former Vancouver Sun reporter Terry Glavin, who testified on Lewis’ behalf.

“You don’t invent all this lurid fantasy about corruption in high places, about people pulling strings, about members of Parliament buying sex from children. These were inventions and fabrications, and they fairly engaged the Canadian public for some time.”

The defense blamed Los Angeles Police Detective Mike Brambles for fueling the rumors and trying to advance the case via unethical means.

Brambles, a veteran of high-profile cases, including the “Beverly Hills Madam” scandal, is a specialist on pedophilia. He is now in Los Angeles County jail, facing numerous charges of robbery and two charges of sexual assault himself.

Brambles had already busted a Los Angeles graphic designer-photographer and friend of Lewis’, and was attempting to prove the pair were in partnership to distribute pornography around the world.

According to the defense, in a 1983 meeting at which Brambles showed Chris pictures of Lewis, the detective coached Chris, persuading him the molestation occurred even though Chris’ memory was hazy.

Both Chris and the prosecutors deny that.

“They can say whatever they want,” Chris said in a phone interview. “I know what happened. I’ll never forget. Something that dramatic at that young age, you just can’t forget.”

It was a 1985 Sun article detailing the extradition effort that made Lewis’ fetish public and forced him to resign from the Centennial Commission.

That same week, he lost his job at Malibu Yacht Charters Ltd., a company that ferried teen-agers to and from a Christian camp on the British Columbia coast.

Authorities immediately ordered Lewis deported, an order that was curiously withdrawn during a secret hearing of the immigration appeal board.

Lewis allegedly told the board he had taken care of the charges pending against him in the United States--even though warrants for his arrest were outstanding--and friends testified that Lewis had reformed since his 1983 conviction.

Lewis stayed on in Vancouver and later became a Canadian citizen.

Though he crossed into Washington frequently to develop film--he told jurors that developing prices were better than those in Canada--he wasn’t caught until last year.

Chris, the son of a minister and doctor, says he has tried to forgive and forget the 1981 incident, but he can’t shake the horrifying thought that his own children are vulnerable to similar treatment.

“If the guy wants to be gay with consenting adults, that’s his prerogative,” Chris said. “But little kids--that’s not the right thing to do.”