A day after a Cook County grand jury handed up a series of sexual-misconduct charges against U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds, the first-term congressman and his attorneys issued an indictment of their own.
In interviews on Saturday, Reynolds and his attorneys argued that prosecutors were more interested in publicity than probity, feeding a press frenzy with excerpts from police reports and grand jury testimony in hopes of bolstering what they knew was an inherently feeble case.
Reynolds and Edward M. Genson, one of his attorneys, contended that a hunt for headlines energized an otherwise anemic investigation.
Cook County prosecutors “made a decision to go for it,” Genson said. “They were telling me up to Monday they weren’t sure what they had.”
Genson characterized the 20-count indictment, which included child pornography and obstruction-of-justice charges, as a “cheap” effort to garner publicity for State’s Atty. Jack O’Malley.
“It’s doing no more than pandering to the few votes that O’Malley thinks he needs,” Genson said.
Added Reynolds: “O’Malley did this porno (charge) at the last minute to sensationalize this thing. There’s no question about it.”
Genson said he “has taken action” against O’Malley’s office for the leaks, but he declined to elaborate.
Cook County state’s attorney officials could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Reynolds, who last week attributed his problems to racism, attacked the press on Saturday for being “irresponsible.” Lamenting the leaks that resulted in dozens of calls from reporters months before charges were filed, Reynolds offered the media this warning:
“They better hope I’m not found innocent,” the 42-year-old former Rhodes scholar said. “Because if I am, the media in this town will get the greatest tongue-lashing they’ve ever gotten in the history of this city.”
But, in order to be found innocent, Reynolds must clear himself of the 20 counts against him that include child pornography, criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a child, obstructing justice and unlawfully communicating with a witness.
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Beyond the sex charges, Reynolds’ personal and political finances are under federal scrutiny in a criminal investigation into charges his campaign opened bank accounts without reporting them to federal regulators.
In announcing the indictment Friday, O’Malley said that Reynolds began having sex with a 16-year-old campaign volunteer in 1992 and that the relationship continued into 1993. In Illinois, the age of consent is 17.
The charges stem from an investigation of the complaint filed by the teenage worker. The counts of obstruction and unlawful communications, O’Malley said, were filed because Reynolds allegedly tried to get the witness to change her story. She is in a witness protection program.
Reynolds met the campaign worker, now 18, two years ago during the heated Democratic primary campaign against controversial congressman Gus Savage. The charges depict a sexual relationship between Reynolds and the young woman while she was a minor.
Reynolds denied the essence of the charges before the indictment was announced. At an earlier news conference, prompted by a string of media inquiries about the sex charges, he denied he did anything criminal and attacked the character of his young accuser, calling her an “emotionally disturbed nut case” who left the military after admitting to being a homosexual.
He also released what he said were the results of two polygraph tests that he took in June and July and an affidavit signed by the woman on June 21, which retracts her allegations against him.
While prosecutors have worried privately about the strength of the case and the veracity of Reynolds’ accuser, their evidence is bolstered by telephone conversations between the young woman and Reynolds that were taped by investigators.
There are three levels of charges in the Reynolds indictment.
He is accused of aggravated sexual assault because of the allegation he had sex with a girl beginning when she was 16 years old and continuing when she was 17. Different statutes are applied in the indictment depending on the girl’s age with the acts occurred. He is accused of aggravated sexual abuse because the age difference between the alleged victim and the offender is at least five years.
Sexual assault convictions carry sentences of 4 to 15 years in prison. Aggravated sexual abuse convictions can carry sentences of three to seven years.
He is charged with obstruction of justice because, investigators said, he lied to them or caused others to lie to them, persuaded the victim to falsely retract her statements, persuaded the victim to leave Illinois so investigators could not interview her and tried to persuade witnesses not to testify.
He is charged with child pornography because, investigators said, he asked the victim to provide nude, pornographic photos of a 15-year-old girl. Prosecutors would not identify the girl of whom he sought photos.
The sexual assault charge is the most serious, according to Alan Raphael, a professor of criminal law at Loyola University Law School. That kind of assault occurs when anyone age 17 or older, in a position of trust, supervision or authority, has sex with someone 13 to 17 years old.
Believing the victim is old enough is no defense.
“Even if it is fully consensual, she’s below the age where she can give consent,” Raphael said.
O’Malley underlined the nature of the charge at the indictment news conference. “We are not alleging physical force was used in that sort of physical assault sense . . . children are not legally able to consent to having sex with adults,” the prosecutor said.
Trying to assess how the charges will play politically, regardless of the outcome of any trial, is more difficult. Many a political career has survived charges of sexual misconduct. But sexual misconduct that includes an allegation of child pornography puts the case into another category in the court of public opinion.
“There are a lot of people in Congress who have sex outside of marriage, if they’re married, and instances of people having sex with others under age,” Raphael said. The sheer number of births out of wedlock to girls below the age of consent might also become an element.
“When you think of it, we have thousands and thousands below the age of consent who give birth every year in Chicago. The state’s attorney is not interested in bringing charges in those cases. He may have an argument that they’re just picking on him for behavior that a lot of other people engage in. And he also denies it,” Raphael said.
But it is likely that there will be wide public interest in the child pornography charge because it touches such a sensitive nerve in the society. “Regardless of whether there is a conviction, if there’s something to it, it could end a political career,” he said.
The nature of Friday’s indictment seems to all but overwhelm the other investigation Reynolds faces, although that probe, too, tarnishes the character of a politician who was viewed a short time ago as the perfect counter to Savage’s controversial style.
Reynold’s political committees had told the Federal Election Commission that all funds were being held in the South Shore Bank, but records and interviews show Reynolds opened accounts in as many as four other banks without notifying the election commission.
He has denied any wrongdoing, attributing the problem to sloppy record keeping. Justice Department investigators are trying to determine whether any laws were violated or whether he diverted campaign money for his personal use.
If the charges against Reynolds destroy his career, it would be one of the swiftest and most surprising falls in long annals of political scandal.
Elected only 18 month ago, Reynolds was the great black hope of the white political power structure, the perfect candidate to send against the incumbent Savage.
Savage had built a 12-year career on being offensive, a stunt that made him comic relief on Capitol Hill and had a certain resonance among enough of the electorate in the old 2nd Congressional District to send him back election after election.
Reporters who questioned Savage on anything from personal behavior to office expenses to campaign practices were promptly labeled faggots. His opponents were racist by definition. He embraced Louis Farrakhan’s assessment of Adolf Hitler as “a great man.”
He was notorious for not showing up, legendary in his inability to meet deadlines and standards for disclosing campaign contributions, criticized for nepotism and accused of sexual harassment. Bigotry was added to the list after he talked about the “suburban Zionist lobby” and opponents who got “pro-Israeli money.”
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It took the scholarly Reynolds, with his background at Oxford, Yale and Harvard’s Kennedy School and his deep connections to Chicago’s political power structure, three tries. But with the help of some redistricting that added suburban support, he finally unseated Savage in 1992.
This was viewed as the most refreshing change in the recent history of Chicago congressional politics, the triumph of intelligence over racial division and the opening of a door that would lead to a brilliant career for Reynolds, who entered Congress just after celebrating his 41st birthday in 1993.
The indictment and financial investigation have put the first cracks on the surface of a persona that seemed tailor-made for a career in Congress, where Reynolds, as a freshman, already had negotiated his way onto the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.
His roots deep in the Mississippi Delta, Reynolds, married and the father of three, could point to his humble background even as he spoke of his days working on the presidential campaigns of Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson. In Congress, he has been a staunch supporter of President Clinton.
He has been comfortable in the corridors of power, handily raising the hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds he needed to defeat Savage, using powerful Chicago connections to gather not only funds, but the blessings that come along with them.