Salem, Oregon - A Marion County jury on April 10, 1998, after a four day trial, found Will Gaston (Santa Claus to many people in the Salem, Oregon area) not guilty on all charges brought against him by the State. The State had charged Gaston with contempt and violating two restraining orders, plus refusing to submit to a court ordered mental health examination.

The same jury also found Pamela Meziere, Gaston's fiancee, not guilty of violating a restraining order and not guilty of refusing to submit to a court ordered mental health examination.

Gaston and Meziere repeatedly admitted that they violated the court orders because they were sham documents issued in furtherance of an ongoing conspiracy to stop Gaston and Meziere from exposing the child pornography ring and black market baby selling ring being run out of the State agency known as the SOSCF (State Office of Services to Children and Families).

Among the 53 conspirators named by Gaston and Meziere in a Racketeering complaint are Marion Court Judges: "Gregory West, Paul Lipscomb, Don Dicky, Joseph Ochoa, Connie Haas, Pamela Abernethy, Loraine Anglemeier, Terry Leggert" and Silverton police officers Gay Robertson and Jack Mattingly. Numerous other state employees and individuals rounded out the 53 named conspirators.

During the trial, Meziere, with indignation, told the jury how she was abruptly run out of the courtroom of Connie Haas when she tried to speak. She told the jury that Lipscomb was so frightened of her and Gaston that he would hide when they went to his office to pick up papers or find out about a court date.

During the trial Meziere, showing complete outrage, charged Robertson with lying, falsifying documents, sexual abuse of children, perjury and racketeering. He admitted under oath to committing some charges made against him. He sat red-faced and silent as Meziere repeatedly asked him if he did not in fact falsify documents and then use those falsified documents to wrongfully remove Melissa Gaston from the care of Will Gaston. He continued to sit red-faced and silent as Meziere asked him if he and defendant Hazel Spees had not in fact, on their own, decided to issue a criminal complaint for stalking against Gaston and Meziere. Robertson also admitted on the witness stand that as a Silverton police officer he had no authority to issue stalking complaints to Gaston and Meziere, who live in Mt. Angel, Oregon.

The stalking complaints were issued because Gaston and Meziere had printed a flier, The Voice For Children, which described Spees, foster mother of Melissa Gaston, as a child pornographer and pedophile for taking video pictures of Melissa while she was nude and masturbating. Spees was charged with instructing and encouraging Melissa.

Senior Judge Duane R. Ertsgaard repeatedly blocked Meziere's attempt to introduce as evidence the fact that Robertson's partner, Officer Mattingly, had been sent to jail three weeks earlier by Judge Guimmond for falsifying police reports and for abuse of power. Reportedly, the only way Robertson had avoided going to jail was by Mattingly plea bargaining. Ertsgaard also refused to let Meziere tell the jury that she and Gaston had to get 26 signatures on a petition to remove Judge Gregory West from hearing the Mattingly case because both Judge West, Mattingly and Robertson are defendants in the Racketeering complaint that Meziere and Gaston filed January 6, 1998, against Spees, West, Lipscomb, Ochoa, Haas, Dickey and 52 other defendants. That complaint, describing the abuse that Gaston and Meziere have been subjected to for exposing the child pornography and black market baby selling activities of the defendants was the feature story in the February 1998 edition of The Oregon Observer.

When Hazel Spees took the witness stand she first admitted, then later denied she had taken the nude video movies of Melissa masturbating. Spees sat nervously as Meziere read to her from her own report, that what she was doing was pornography and that she wanted SOSCF case worker Larry Lawson to give her a letter protecting her from any liability. Spees denied on the stand that Gaston was the biological father of Melissa. She had a blank look on her face when Meziere read to her prior court testimony where she acknowledged Gaston was the biological father of Melissa.

On the witness stand Spees admitted she lied when she said she found The Voice For Children on her front door. Not once did she or prosecuting attorney Atcheson (brought in specially from Columbia County, Oregon), deny the repeated charges leveled against her by Meziere and Gaston; that she was a "vile, shameless, pedophile and child pornographer." When Will Gaston first took the stand he could not speak as he was so choked with emotion. Then he related how Melissa had been taken, after defendants Bruno and Vega had suborned perjury by having Judy Strom falsely say that Gaston had molested Melissa. She later testified, under oath, in Judge Sullivan's (Deschutes County) court that she had lied. Gaston testified that Judge Leggart had ordered SOSCF to charge him or return Melissa to his care.

Gaston learned in October of 1997, that Spees and Lawson had made the pornographic movie of Melissa. It was then necessary for SOSCF to bring new charges against Gaston so Melissa would be unable to tell Gaston what SOSCF caseworker Larry Lawson and foster mother Spees were doing. So without any credible evidence, SOSCF filed new false charges, claiming that Gaston had molested Melissa's half sister Amanda.

Gaston testified that through the Freedom Of Information Act he was able to get the documents showing that Melissa had in fact been sexually molested in three foster homes, then burned, as a form of punishment in one of the homes.

He went on to say that when he learned from the documents that SOSCF caseworker Tim Airmen was a registered sex offender, and when he learned that Hazel Spees was a child pornographer and pedophile, he began to publish these facts in his newsletter, The Voice For Children, in order to alert the public.

Gaston testified he is 71 years old and hard of hearing and therefore could not hear what was being said when he was brought into the courtrooms of Haas and Dickey. Meziere testified that she was standing in the hall, after being kicked out of Haas' court, and overheard the caseworkers and D.A. laughing over the fact that Gaston couldn't hear as they left the courtroom where Gaston had appeared.

Gaston said that after the restraining orders were issued he went to the school where Spees teaches to take pictures of other parents protesting the way that Spees was abusing their children. One of the witnesses said Gaston was sitting 60 yards from the school and across the street on the grass when he was arrested for violating the stalking order. Gaston said he was left handcuffed in the back seat of a hot police car for over an hour with the windows rolled up before being transported to jail. He was released on $500 bail, then re-arrested four days later in court, when he appeared for arraignment on orders of Judge Lipscomb. His bail was then raised to $20,000. At one point while Gaston was on the witness stand he stood up and with indignation pointed a finger at Spees and said, "These child pornographers and pedophiles should all be hung." He then walked over to the jury box and said to each juror, "What would you have done if this had been your daughter or granddaughter."

In her closing argument, Meziere stated, "This is the first time in two years that I have been allowed to speak in court" and she thanked Judge Ertsgaard in front of the jury for conducting a fair trial. She made this statement even though she had criticized Ertsgaard in front of the jury for not allowing her to read to the jury the hundreds of pages of Spees reports, wherein she describes in detail the sexually explicit language Sprees used, over and over again in talking to Melissa.

Meziere was allowed to read Spees' reports into the record, while out of the presence of the jury. The records documented Spees prurient obsession with deviate sexual discussions with children. Meziere also complained that Judge Ertsgaard would not read the entire stalking statute to the jury. Meziere stated that she and Gaston had done nothing to violate the stalking statute. Those in the courtroom sat silent and riveted as an intense and indignant Meziere told the jurors that in this country they are the sovereign authority in the courtroom, with the duty to judge both the facts and the law.

She said that the judge and the prosecutor are public employees who have taken oaths to uphold the constitution, which recognizes that the citizens are the sovereign authority in this county and that nothing can he taken from them without due-process of law. She said that all the good citizens have been asleep and have allowed a group of corrupt and perverted individuals to take over our courts. She added that a ~roup of corrupted and perverted militant lesbians and pedophiles have taken over SOSCF.

During her closing argument she held up the February issue of The Oregon Observer, which carried the front page story about what SOSCF was doing to Gaston, Meziere and Melissa. She told the jury as she pointed to the paper, "This is the reason we are being prosecuted. They are trying to shut us up for good." She closed her final argument by saying that everything she said in court was true and then she thanked the jury for their attention during the trial.

Judge Ertsgaard instructed the jury that they must find the defendants guilty, unless the jury found by the greater weight of the evidence that the judges were involved in a conspiracy. Judge Ertsgaard told the jurors that even if someone lies to a judge and the judge issues an order, that order must be obeyed. But if the judges are involved in a conspiracy then the order is a nullity and of no force or effect.

The jury was given a verdict form with five charges, three against Gaston and two against Meziere. After deliberating four hours, the jury returned and was asked by the judge if they had reached their verdict. The jury reponded that they had. The judge then sked if it was unanimous. The jury responded that it was. The judge then asked for the verdict and sat visibly shaken.as the six jurors said, "Not guilty" five times.

Also visibly shaken were the six Marion County Deputy Sheriffs present: Sgts. McMullen and Cornforth and officers, Papenfus, Lumley, Price, Melgard and Nieholson.

Present continuously during the hearing was State Senate candidate Jesse Lott. Lott had appeared before a Oregon State Senate hearing two months earlier with Gaston and others, demanding that immediate Senate oversight hearings be convened to expose the widespread corruption in the courts, state government and specifically SOSCF

Since the jury found Meziere and Gaston not guilty of the trumped up charges brought against them by the "police state" agency, SOSCF and their accomplices, the state has retaliated. They have arrested Pamela Meziere on morc trumped up charges. They maced her, falsely arrested her and they even went to her house and performed absolute harassment against her, as well as against her child and Will Gaston.

Our readership should be fully aware that Will Gaston's daughter, Melissa, was taken from hirn for over two years without the state ever charging him with a crime. Since Gaston and Meziere have attempted to speak out and inform others of the atrocities that are routinely conducted by Oregon's Children's Services Division (with the help of abusive police officers and prosecutors), they have been subjected to absolute police state tactics and abuse. Remember, the jury found that the judges and officials involved were conspiring against both Meziere and Gaston.

Don't miss the June edition of The Oregon Observer as we intend to publish the names of the current abusers and the facts surrounding their illegal attempts to stop Meziere and Gaston from exposing them and their crimes.