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As prosecutor and state legislator, Cheryl Jacques made putting people in jail for imaginary sex-crime the center of her political career. Under one law she championed, gay men who cruise Massachusetts parks face life in prison. Jim D'Entremont investigates the extraordinary record of the woman tapped to lead America's richest and most powerful lesbian & gay lobby group.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC)-- the largest organization working to uphold the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered US citizens-- has announced that on January 1, Cheryl Jacques will succeed Elizabeth Birch as its president and executive director.

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A Massachusetts state senator whose district encompasses Needham and adjacent Boston suburbs, Jacques, a Democrat, was initially expected to vacate her elective office by mid-December. She has decided, however, to delay her resignation until January 2004. This maneuver will increase her state pension benefits while disrupting the Massachusetts Democratic Party's plan to hold a primary for replacement candidates in mid-January-- a schedule that would have enabled voters to choose Jacques's successor in March at the time of the state's Democrat-intensive Presidential primary. "My only concern is my district," Jacques told the Boston Globe.

The HRC appointment will give the ambitious lesbian politician instant name-recognition outside Massachusetts, enhance her status as a talking head on national TV news programs like "Nightline," and provide her with a wealth of inside-the-Beltway Washington connections. A 1987 alumna of Suffolk University Law School, Jacques (pronounced "Jakes"), 41, received her undergraduate degree in 1984 from Boston College, a Jesuit institution that has produced an inordinate number of Massachusetts prosecutors focused on sex cases.

Prior to her 1992 election to state office, the then-closeted Democrat served on the prosecutorial staff of the Middlesex County District Attorney's office, whose jurisdiction extends from the northern edge of Boston to the New Hampshire line. She also worked for a time in the Trial Bureau of the state Attorney General's office.

During her tenure as a Middlesex County prosecutor, Jacques and her colleague Martha Coakley gained notoriety for rigorously prosecuting Lowell, Massachusetts, grandparents Ray and Shirley Souza on sex-abuse charges. The couple was accused in 1990 and convicted in 1993. The Souza case hinged on recovered-memory evidence, a prosecutorial tool that Coakley, the present DA of Middlesex County, continues to wield. (Such evidence, though increasingly discredited, remains the basis of the Middlesex County DA's pending case against Father Paul Shanley, accused of molestation by several men who say that after the appearance of a 2002 Boston Globe exposé of Shanley's homosexuality, they retrieved repressed memories of childhood rape.)

Jacques worked closely with the Souzas' accusing daughter Heather, who, after having an erotic nightmare involving her mother, began to produce "memories" of abuse with the aid of a therapist. The self-promoting young prosecutor publicly participated in the Souzas' demonization by the media while working behind the scenes to help craft the DA's case against them. The Souzas were freed last year after a nine-year term of house arrest. Sources close to the case remember Jacques as "a snake," and blaze with anger at the mention of her name.

Unfounded beliefs

The Souza prosecution was shaped by-- and typified-- the culture of the Middlesex County DA's office, which since the '80s, during Scott Harshbarger's reign as District Attorney, has been steeped in a therapeutic vision of justice conjured out of the recovery movement. Tenets include the notion that children never fabricate tales of sexual abuse; that all allegations must be believed; that sexual abuse is so traumatic that the memory of it is often repressed; and that rigorous investigation or cross-examination "revictimizes" people who have suffered grievous wrongs.

Much of Jacques's legislative work on victims' rights reflects the Middlesex County prosecutors' world view. At a 2001 Harvard Law School conference on wrongful sex-abuse convictions, feminist social critic Wendy Kaminer noted, "It is important to remember that a courtroom is a place for justice, not therapy." Jacques, like many victims' rights advocates, appears to believe the reverse.

Along with Wendy Murphy, an attorney attached to a militant child-saver organization called the Leadership Council, Jacques maintains an "of counsel" relationship to Brody, Hardoon, Perkins, and Kesten. A founding partner of this law firm is Larry Hardoon, a former Middlesex County prosecutor who in the 1980s helped lead the notorious daycare witchhunt targeting Gerald, Cheryl, and Violet Amirault for chimerical crimes against children. In 2000, Jacques received an award from a victims'-rights organization called the True Memory Foundation, which promotes belief in recovered memory. The award commended Jacques for her efforts on behalf of sex-abuse prevention.

"This woman has made a career of exploiting people's fears for their children," says New York gay activist Bill Dobbs, a civil libertarian who suggests that the new head of the Human Rights Campaign carries a repressive streak reminiscent of Anita Bryant.

A prolific legislator who has filed numerous crowd-pleasing crime bills, the six-term senator is responsible for a Victims' Bill of Rights whose provisions include victims' access to parole hearings. The intent is evidently to assure Parole Board members that no matter how remorseful or reformed a criminal may seem to be, the victim's continuing torment justifies the wrongdoer's ongoing incarceration. Jacques has also been involved in efforts to roll back statutes of limitations for sex crimes and eliminate confidentiality between counselor and client.

In a gesture worthy of reactionary US Attorney General John Ashcroft, Jacques co-sponsored legislation to require all felons to provide DNA samples. "The long arm of the law just got longer," said Republican Governor Mitt Romney as he signed the DNA bill into law on November 12. (As one of her fellow legislators has observed, felonies commonly committed in Massachusetts include such low-level transgressions as nocturnal clam-digging.) For the newly appointed head of an organization whose inaugural fundraising efforts stressed privacy rights, Jacques has a markedly poor record on privacy issues.

Guantanamo for queers

Most disturbingly, Jacques has worked to expand the number of sex offenses that can be used as a basis for civil commitment. In Massachusetts, prosecutors have the option of filing petitions for one-day-to-lifetime civil commitment of prisoners completing criminal sentences for any one of 11 sex offenses. This means that a five-year sentence for inappropriately touching a minor can segue into detention for life at the Massachusetts Treatment Center, a facility indistinguishable from the rest of the state prison system. The double-jeopardy aspects of this practice have been sidestepped by the US Supreme Court under William Rehnquist.

Jacques wants to expand the list of sex crimes justifying civil commitment to 26. These would include thought crimes such as "kidnapping with intent to rape," and catchall categories such as "open and gross lewdness." In Massachusetts, "open and gross lewdness" can mean having sex in outdoor cruising areas, peeing in public, or swimming nude at a deserted beach. In 1998, gay Boston artist TJ Norris and a nude male model were arrested and charged with "open and gross lewdness" after someone with binoculars spotted them conducting a non-sexual photo shoot on a remote breakwater in Gloucester.

In October, Jacques's civil commitment bill was unanimously passed by the Massachusetts Senate. It is expected to meet minimal opposition in the House of Representatives. Governor Romney has stated his intention to sign the bill into law.

Many who have praised various Jacques-sponsored legislative initiatives are less enthusiastic about her ethics. Her principled opposition to recurring right-wing "Defense of Marriage" legislation has sometimes been exercised in less than principled ways. In 2002, she and Massachusetts Senate President Tom Birmingham managed to kill debate on a right-wing referendum question defining marriage in traditional heterosexual terms by summarily adjourning the state Constitutional Convention before the item could be discussed. Jacques's commitment to tighten firearms restrictions led to the passage of the Massachusetts Gun Control Act of 1998, perhaps the toughest gun law in the nation. But it is worth noting that while pushing this regulatory package through the legislature, she cut ethical corners by illegally expropriating the services of a federally funded youth program to campaign for gun control.

It has also been alleged that Jacques's partner Jennifer Chrisler, the birth mother of their twin sons, has received special favors. During her four-and-a-half years of employment in the state senator's office, Chrisler quickly rose from secretarial worker to staff director; through repeated promotions, she received six pay raises that upped her salary from $25,000 to $48,000 a year. Jacques and Chrisler claim they became personally involved only after Chrisler left Jacques's staff.

During a conference-call interview staged for gay reporters after the HRC announced her appointment, Jacques said her goal is to help "America fulfill her promise of fairness and equality to every citizen." Asked about her six-figure HRC salary, Jacques refused to disclose the exact amount. Asked about the HRC's position on the rights of transgendered individuals, she hedged. She stressed the importance of bipartisan legislative efforts, coalition-building, and gay visibility.

"I know how many minds I changed when I came out," Jacques told reporters. The experience must be extremely fresh in her memory, since Jacques came out as a lesbian only three years ago.

The occasion was a Boston Globe interview published during a political struggle over support for Gay-Straight Alliances in high schools. In Boston-area LGBT leadership circles, the admission made her an instant star. Some voiced concern, however, that in a state that had passed a gay rights bill in 1989-- and where openly gay politicians, most notably Congressman Barney Frank, have thrived in elective office for years-- Jacques had remained closeted until the year 2000. Her coming out seemed timed to precede her campaign, later abandoned, to become lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. Jacques also made an unsuccessful bid for the Ninth Congressional District seat vacated when Democrat Joseph Moakley died in office in 2001.

Massachusetts voters may have opted not to send Jacques to Washington, DC, but the state's gay and lesbian political strategists, by securing her appointment to the HRC, have nonetheless found her a place there. Veteran activist Mary Breslauer of Massachusetts co-chaired the HRC selection committee, which enlisted the aid of a Boston research firm. Although its roots lie in San Francisco and Washington, the HRC has strong ties to the Bay State. Vic Basile, the HRC's founding executive director, is from Massachusetts, as is Tim McFeeley, Elizabeth Birch's predecessor.

The HRC, which has an annual budget of over $20 million, attracts a conservative, bipartisan group of affluent supporters who attend its frequent black-tie dinners. Anne-Imelda Radice, George Bush père's pro-censorship, semi-closeted chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts, has turned up at HRC affairs. Founded in 1981 as the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the organization began with seed money from wealthy gay men, including James Hormel and Dallas Coors. It now claims half a million members. Its staff has expanded from 14 to 100 in the past 15 years. Following a $28 million capital campaign, the HRC has purchased a building at 1649 Rhode Island Avenue in the District of Columbia. The new Human Rights Campaign headquarters, dedicated on National Coming Out Day (October 11), formerly housed the Washington offices of B'nai Brith. The completely renovated interior houses classrooms, meeting rooms, and a retail store that sells HRC tchotchkes.

The HRC's current agenda includes lobbying for passage of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), controversial for its lack of protections for transgendered expression, and a long-stalled hate crimes bill. The HRC is also involved in strife over gay marriage and partnership issues, which will become more urgent as the 2004 US Presidential campaign gathers momentum. Jacques, a strong proponent of gay marriage, comes from a state whose Supreme Judicial Court is soon expected to rule on the question.

It remains to be seen whether Jacques will follow in the footsteps of Elizabeth Birch, who presided over a period of growth and stability at the HRC, or Elizabeth Toledo-- who stepped out of the closet and into the directorship of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 2000, only to resign within a year.