A self-proclaimed pedophile who posted pictures of little girls to his Web site and made blood boil by insisting he was within the law to do so soon may find himself in the center of another uncomfortable dialogue: whether he will be banned from a community.
Two California lawyers on Friday were scheduled in court to seek a temporary restraining order to keep Jack McClellan away from the Santa Clarita Valley area, ABC7.com reports.
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"We're firmly convinced that he creates a clear and present danger and a risk to our daughters and to the children in this community, and he stated that he's coming back," said lawyer Richard Patterson, who along Anthony Zinnanti is seeking the restraining order. Both have daughters.
McClellan says he is innocent.
"All I can say is I've done nothing illegal since I've been here in California, the whole state. My conscience is clear. I'm just going to keep on keeping on what I'm doing, obeying the law," he said.
McClellan has insisted he was never sexually abused as a child and said he created the Web site to promote association, friendship and legal, consensual cuddling between men and pre-pubescent girls, he said.
Earlier this week McClellan defended his right to post pictures of little girls, telling FOX News he was considering a lawsuit against the Santa Monica, Calif., police department for posting his picture on their Web site after he recently surfaced there.
Santa Monica police "questioned me last week in a restaurant, and right before they left one of the officers asked if they could take my picture," he said.
"I figured this might be beneficial if a child is sexually assaulted in Santa Monica — they could just pull that out and immediately eliminate me as a suspect," he said.
"I had previously explained to him my concerns about all the threats and everything and it didn't even enter my mind that they would immediately turn around and put this out as some kind of a sex offender notification. ... It was on the Internet the very next day."
Warnings that McClellan had surfaced in Santa Monica spread like wildfire, with several posting his mug shot along with descriptions of his car — a Blue 1993 Ford Escort two-door with Washington license plate — and even hourly postings of sightings throughout Santa Monica.
Circulating a flier with McClellan's description and a warning of his whereabouts is unusual for the police considering he's not wanted for any crime, and has never been convicted of any sexually related crimes. The flier simply warns parents about McClellan's residence in the area and of his proclivity for little girls.
When pressed, McClellan, 45, insisted he was doing nothing wrong by posting photos of children as young as 3, even admitting that he would have sex with little girls if it weren’t against the law.
McClellan ran the Web site “Seattle-Tacoma-Everett Girl Love” from where he lived in Washington state, until it was shut down by its server after widespread public outrage.
Wearing his trademark dark sunglasses, which he refused to remove, McClellan faced Ron Tebo, a father who created the Web site www.jackmcclellan.com to counter the self-proclaimed pedophile's actions and "take traffic away."
In a dramatic on-air confrontation, Tebo pressed McClellan to respond to allegations that he was still taking pictures of children.
"I don't do it anymore," McClellan said, adding that his latest Web site no longer was available online.
Appearing earlier on "The Morning Show With Mike & Juliet," McClellan made this startling admission:
"I got to be honest with you — if it was legal and if it was a completely consensual thing, I could see myself taking it all the way to a sexual" level.
Click here to see the interview on "The Morning Show With Mike and Juliet."
McClellan has never been convicted of a sex crime, and police say they have had no legal grounds on which to shut down any of his Web sites because the content and photos posted on them haven't been pornographic.
McClellan tells other pedophiles where to go to be around children — suggesting swimming pools, parks, elementary-school plays and libraries. When he was posting photos, they would be pictures he’d snapped when he was in places where children were gathered.
McClellan even rated his photo shoots — from one to five hearts — for fellow pedophiles, assigning one heart for places or events that failed to attract an abundance of little girls, to five hearts for photo shoots offering a plethora of young children.
He has said he is attracted to little girls between the ages of 3 and 11.
“My primary physical and emotional attraction is to pre-pubescent girls,” he said on the FOX morning show on Tuesday.
FOX News first interviewed McClellan in March, when he still was in Washington.
“I guess the main thing is I just think they’re cute, a lot cuter than women,” he said then. “I admit there is kind of an erotic arousal there.”
"I really think a lot of this pedophilia hysteria is overblown. I think there are a lot of people like me,” McClellan told FOX News in March. “They have the attraction but they're not going to do anything physical because of the laws. It just makes me happy to attend these events."
Said lawyer-dad Zinnanti: “It's not OK to go out and put those images on the Internet. It's a blatant violation of the law.”
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