Attorney for Parents in Abortion-Kidnapping CaseWants Counseling Not Jail 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 28, 2006
Portland, ME (LifeNews.com) — The attorney for a Maine couple that has been charged with kidnapping their pregnant 19 year-old daughter and attempting to take her to New York for a forced abortion wants them to receive counseling and not be jailed for their actions.
Defense lawyer Tom Hallett says Lola and Nicholas Kampf need to receive mandatory counseling as a punishment for the crimes and not be sentenced to prison.
The charges prosecutors have filed against the pair could net them 30 years in prison, though officials have said they won’t ask for the full prison term.
District Attorney Stephanie Anderson told the Associated Press she doesn’t think Hallett will get what he wants for the couple and said it was unrealistic that the charges would be dropped.
"This is a crime. The fact that it was perpetrated by a family member doesn’t make it not a crime," Anderson said. "We’ve been understanding this for many years with domestic violence. And this is in the same category."
Anderson said that the reverse could be true as more charges may be filed in the case by the time it is presented to a grand jury in November.
Yesterday, Katelyn’s attorney Sarah Churchill said she wants her parents to be punished for their crimes.
She indicated Katelyn Kampf "has made known her position of what happened to law enforcement and she just wants the criminal process to see its way through so they can be punished for what they have done."
The Kampfs are free on $100,000 bail after being charged with kidnapping Katelyn Kampf on September 15.
Hallett said the Kampfs are "heartbroken" by what happened and say that their intentions were quite different from what has been portrayed in the media.
He indicated they received word about Katelyn’s pregnancy the day before they were scheduled to leave for a trip for Florida. Their plans changed when they learned about the pregnancy.
Hallett said that the parents were not motivated by Katelyn’s boyfriend’s race, he is black, but were concerned about her because she had dropped out of George Washington University and returned to Maine without telling them.
He also told AP the Kampfs are disappointed that Katelyn has been granted a restraining order preventing them from contacting her.
"The whole thing is really disturbing. Not being able to talk to your daughter at a time when the daughter needs their attention is disturbing," he said. "Her parents still love her very much."
Hallett has alleged that Katelyn and her parents were on the "same page" about the abortion and that Katelyn suggested a place in Massachusetts where she could have the abortion done.
But Churchill retorted that Hallett’s comments were "quite upsetting" and that Katelyn stands by her statements that she did not want an abortion and her parents were attempting to force her to have one.
"There are two sides to every story," Churchill said. "I believe that it’s Katie’s story in the end that’s going to prevail."
Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion previously told the Associated Press that Katelyn Kamp, the daughter, said her parents wanted her to have an abortion because Johnson is black.
Dion previously indicated that Katelyn said her mother "was pretty irate at the fact that the child’s father was black, and she had made a number of disparaging remarks about that."
He said the Kampfs had treated Katelyn’s boyfriend well until they received a phone call from her last Thursday indicating she was pregnant. That apparently "changed the dynamic" he said.
Dion indicated Katelyn told him her mother "kept referring to the baby as a thing, as ‘It,’ and there were other comments made."
Johnson’s mother, Peggy Johnson, told the Boston Globe that Katelyn is telling the truth about what happened.
"She has no reason to lie. They found all the stuff in the car. She would not have gone with them," she said.
The Kampfs allegedly used a shotgun to forcibly abduct their daughter. They tied her up with rope and loaded her into the back seat of their car. But police said she was able to get one of her parents’ cell phones and called police when her parents thought she was using the restroom.
When police nabbed the Kampfs, they found rope, duct tape, scissors and a .22-caliber rifle in the vehicle. Nicholas had a loaded .22-caliber magazine clip in the pockets of his pants.
Police said a physical fight led to the kidnapping.
The Kampfs, who formerly owned the State Theater in Portland, thought the abortion should be done in New York because the baby was in late stages of pregnancy.
The incident comes at a time when Congress has passed legislation to prohibit non-parents from taking a minor teenager across state lines for an abortion. The bill has been approved by both the House and Senate, but Senate Democrats used a procedural motion to prevent a final version of the bill from going to President Bush for his signature.
