Background: I was producing/anchoring KPIC's 11p.m. news the night that Roseburg police raided a relatively unknown "gentlemen's club" along a busy Roseburg thoroughfare. When Roseburg Police Lt. Les Bergmann dropped off a police video for KPIC to use on our newscast, it was already the talk of the town as to what had transpired on the police radio during the sting operation. The sting at Angels occurred in the late 1990s, but this column was written several years later, when the man who was convicted was appealing his prison sentence.
A Sutherlin man now serving a six-year sentence for promoting live sex shows wants to be released early from prison. Thirty-two year-old Charles Ciancanelli operated Angels Lingerie inside a two-story warehouse where the NE Stephens street Safeway is now located.
I still remember the night that police raided the adult establishment. I was at KPIC monitoring the police scanner that evening. A police supervisor radioed one of the officers at the scene, asking if he was free to respond to another call. "Not yet," responded the Roseburg officer. "I'm tied up at Angels right now."
If I ever compile a list of witty remarks overheard on emergency radio frequencies, that innocent comment will be near the top of the list.
Angels Lingerie was one of those businesses that you didn't know was there, until you stepped inside the door. There were no outside markings on the 50-year-old warehouse. Even though I worked in the media, I didn't even know about Angels' presence until shortly before the bust.
Ciancanelli has always maintained that he never did anything illegal. He's appealed his case over the years all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court. The basis of his argument is rooted in the Oregon state constitution, which presumably says there is no such thing as obscenity in Oregon.
The argument upheld by justices in the 1980s goes something like this: The pioneers who settled Oregon were a robust group of people who were accustomed to a challenging life and different community standards than elsewhere in the United States. Because early Oregonians were desensitized to what people elsewhere may consider crude, obscenity does not exist in Oregon.
Because the Oregon state constitution does not recognize obscenity, many types of conduct that are considered illegal in other states have protection here in the Beaver state. Ciancanelli's lawyer this year is carrying that same torch. Robin Jones says there is no law in Oregon against masturbation or sexual intercourse.
That's true. But there are laws in effect against "lewd conduct," "indecent exposure," "contributing to the delinquency of a minor," among other crimes now on the books in Oregon. Many Americans have already thrown out the Ten Commandments as a moral standard for conducting themselves. But regardless of whether one believes in God or is a devout atheist, most people still believe acts of sexual intercourse are degrading to women.
The government has not (yet) declared masturbation or sexual intercourse illegal, because individuals have the right to do what they want in the privacy of their own bedrooms, However, it is illegal to be naked in public or have sex in public (unless you live in San Francisco or Ashland).
Charles Ciancanelli crossed that line when he allowed undercover police officers to pay for a sex show in which two women had sexual intercourse. The courts should require Ciancanelli to finish serving his six-year sentence before being allowed to return to Sutherlin.
After all, we don't want any more police officers to waste their time being tied up in these types of adult businesses.
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