Jury Convicts Rights Leader in Incest Case

By Bill Brubaker (Contact)

Originally published at 2:01 p.m., April 10, 2008
Updated at 5:50 p.m., April 10, 2008

Civil rights leader James L. Bevel was convicted today in a Loudoun County incest case, only hours after it was sent to the jury.

Earlier today prosecutors told the jury that a comment Bevel made about pregnancy in a taped telephone conversation with a daughter is the "damning" piece of evidence against him.

In the 1 1/2 -hour phone call that Leesburg police recorded without Bevel's knowledge in 2005, the daughter asked her father about his motivation for having sex with her in the 1990s, when she was 14 or 15 years old, and why afterward he asked her to use a vaginal douche.

Bevel responded, "Because I had no interest in getting you pregnant," according to prosecutors.

In her closing argument to the jury, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Nicole Wittmann recalled Bevel's denial that he had sex with his daughter before posing the question, "How do you get someone pregnant without having sex with them?"

The jury of seven men and five women began deliberating shortly before noon today in the Loudoun Circuit Court building in downtown Leesburg.

Bevel, a Christian minister, has pleaded not guilty to a single count of unlawfully committing fornication while he lived with the daughter in Leesburg from Oct. 14, 1992, to Oct. 14, 1994. The charge, if proved, could send the 71-year-old confidant of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to prison for up to 20 years.

Photo Gallery

Bevel Convicted

Photo: 0/1

« Previous | Next »

Larger Version

From left, siblings Bacardi Jackson, Aaralyn, Douglass Bevel and Chevara Orrin. (Rebecca Drobis - Copyright Rebecca Drobis 2007)

Larger Version

The Rev. James Bevel holds a sign during a demonstration at U.S. District Court in 1990. (Rich Lipski)

Larger Version

Reginald Green, James Bevel, Dion Diamond, Joan Mulholland and Paul Green hold the mugshots that were taken when they were arrested in Mississippi 46 years ago as part of the Freedom Riders. ()

Larger Version

A D.C. superior courtroom was filled with community activists, lawyers and others as Judge Zoe Bush convened a grand jury that explored the case of the District of Columbia vs. Cane in October 2007. The mock trial was an effort to highlight the contributing factors of youth violence. The Rev. James Bevel, a veteran Civil Rights leader who worked with Martin Luther King Jr., offers opening remarks. (The Washington Post)

Larger Version

Aaralyn Mills outside the Loudoun County Couthouse before testifying against her father, James Bevel. (Rebecca Drobis - Copyright Rebecca Drobis 2008)

Larger Version

James L. Bevel. ()

View all thumbnails

The Washington Post generally does not identify people who have alleged they were sexually abused.

In her closing statement today, Bevel's court-appointed attorney, Bonnie H. Hoffman, urged the jury to consider that while the daughter testified this week to many specific details about her life, she could not pinpoint even the year when her father allegedly had sex with her.

"At the end of the day, you have to judge a single fact: Did Mr. Bevel have intercourse with his daughter?" Hoffman said.

Hoffman also reminded the jury of testimony by Bevel's oldest daughter that the alleged victim planned to write a book, presumably about the allegations. She told the jury to focus on the charge and not other interactions that Bevel had with his daughter.

Yesterday, she asked Bevel whether he had ever rubbed his daughter's chest -- another allegation she has made but that is not part of this criminal case.

"Yes, I have engaged in rubbing [her] chest in an educational context," Bevel said. He was not asked by his attorney or prosecutors to elaborate, but he testified that as a minister and teacher, he has often educated people, including his children, on the "science" of sex and marriage.

Bevel suggested that the charge is part of a conspiracy, although he did not say who instigated it. At times soft-spoken, at times emotional, he called the allegations by his daughter a "military attack."

"Someone has plotted to destroy my reputation, my being," he said, raising his voice as jurors leaned forward to listen.

Under cross-examination by Wittmann, Bevel testified that he has 16 children through relationships with seven women. (Today, Hoffman said he has 14 children). Bevel also acknowledged that he considers himself a recovering "sex addict."

Bevel said he grew up in an environment where fornication was common, "and you get addicted to that." He said he is recovering from an "all-pervasive disease."

He firmly disputed testimony by the daughter on Monday that he had sex with her in Leesburg. He also generally disputed her allegations that he often sexually molested her, beginning when she was 6.

A brother, son and daughter of Bevel's testified about two family meetings called in 2004 and 2005 to discuss the allegations. At one meeting outside Selma, Ala., family members presented Bevel with an affidavit that accused him of being a pedophile and having sex with the daughter.

Family members testified that the affidavit was prepared partly because they feared he would sexually abuse his youngest daughter if she continued to live with him.

The three family members testified that when asked at the meeting about the allegations, Bevel did not deny them.

Later, he testified that he told family members about the allegations, "I'm not going to contest that." But he said that did not mean he agreed with the allegations, but that they should discuss them further.

"Every problem has a cause," he said. "My position was something has happened, and we have to have a solution to this."

Bevel suggested that the daughter had serious problems and that he wanted to resolve them through dialogue, rather than confrontation. "My interest is in [her] salvation," he said. "She's the one who has the problem."

Bevel was a leader of the Freedom Rides to desegregate public accommodations in the South in the early 1960s, and he helped conceive the March on Washington in 1963, the Selma-to-Montgomery march in Alabama in 1965 and the Million Man March in Washington in 1995. He was with King the day he was assassinated in 1968.

"My question is . . . who is attacking me?" Bevel said. "I'm a social scientist . . . Who are these people? Are they communist guys? Who is trying to destroy me?"

Your Thoughts...

Are you happy that the school year is over?