The Framing of Todd Bertrang If he’s not circumcising little girls, maybe he’s a child porn distributor? At the beginning of this year Todd Bertrang and his partner and procedural assistant Robyn were arrested for conspiring to perform genital mutilation on minors, even though they’d never done so and had never consented to do so for anyone. Since then, they’ve been in solitary confinement, both threatened with life in prison, and Todd has lost his assets and Robyn’s daughter has been taken away. Most recently, they’ve been forced to plead guilty to a crime they didn’t commit after being threatened with an unfair trial and potentially permanent incarceration. (Click here for the original article on the arrest, and click here for later details and an earlier interview with Todd. You can also click here to read the first interview we did with Todd while BME was in its infancy.)“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
 The Setup Todd Bertrang is a body modification artist known for his large gauge piercing work and his definitive labial removal and female genital sculpting procedures, as well as being a pioneer in herbal aftercare techniques that almost all that have tried swear by. However, Todd is also a highly sexual (and in some people’s opinion predatory) flirt, and in online chat rooms, many felt he was a menace because his world view was so sexual. As much as the majority of people who’d had work done by Todd (both male and female) swore by his procedures and aftercare, he had an endless line of enemies who’d never met him awaiting his downfall.“Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.” In 2002, these people began a concerted effort to have Todd Bertrang put out of business by any means necessary. One of the ways they did this was by filing a barage of false complaints about him to the FBI and other authorities. People would write in claiming that they knew that Todd was performing genital surgery on minors, and one even went so far as to claim that Todd had pictures on his website of a sixteen year old that he’d cut. Even though that “sixteen year old” was actually Todd’s adult partner Robyn, the FBI took the threat seriously and decided to make Todd the test case for an untested anti-FGM law that was designed to keep Islamic and African immigrants from mutilating their daughters — even though it was well known that Todd’s motivation was improving people’s sex lives, and it had nothing to do with the type of culturally sanctioned oppression that law was trying to fight. Two undercover FBI agents posing as a wealthy Egyptian family contacted Todd about having their daughters circumcised. Todd of course refused, telling them that to perform such a procedure on a young girl would “mess them up” sexually and they wouldn’t be happy with it, and he wasn’t interested in doing the procedure. The fake parents insisted that they were going to have it done either way, and kept aggressively escalating their offer and told him they’d pay him $8,000 per girl. Todd still refused to do the procedure, but even though every one of his friends was telling him to stop talking to these people, he stayed in contact with them, urging them to at least wait until the girls were older and could decide for themselves. As a last ditch attempt, the agents told Todd that “as wealthy Egyptian investors” they’d be willing to do a “one hand washes the other” sort of deal and invest $20 million into Todd’s growing antique motorcycle business if he reconsidered his initial refusal. For $20 million I suspect the average person would murder their best friend, and Todd made the terrible mistake of saying, “I’ll think about it.” Before Todd could decide whether he’d actually compromise himself like this for $20 million (and before he saw through this obvious — and increasingly desperate — sting), the FBI busted down his doors, searched his home, seized his computers, and arrested both Robyn and him. The prosecutors told the grand jury that they had dozens of victims, none of which ever materialized (since they were fake reports by anonymous online individuals who didn’t like Todd). Even though there was never a shred of evidence against Todd, he and Robyn stayed locked behind bars, as the government scrambled to figure out how to continue harassing this innocent couple. With his assets out of reach and his income from his one-man motorcycle business frozen, Todd lost his house and his cars as he and his friends scraped together enough money to at least get him a little bit of legal defense, and Robyn’s daughter was taken from her. Whether she will ever be able to see her again is still in question.
After half a year of sitting separately in small cells by themselves, Todd and Robyn were offered a shocking deal — all charges would be dropped against them if they plead guilty to “manufacturing of child pornography”. Even though they’d done no such thing, knowing that neither the body piercing community nor the BDSM community was willing to come to their defense, and that bloody photos of their procedures would be all over the trial, the government told them that either they plead to this false charge or they’d be spending the rest of their lives in prison. The prosecuting team showed them photos of cuttings, asking them “do you really think a jury is going to care about the facts after they see these photos?” Desperate to see freedom again, they plead guilty as sex offenders, hoping to receive five year sentences instead of fifty year sentences.“Fraud is the ready minister of injustice.” But how can they be charged with child pornography? That is a rather serious charge after all... After it was clear that there was no evidence against Todd and Robyn on the initial charges, the feds were faced with having to back down and release them as they’d committed no crime. But, as happens all too often, instead of releasing them, they manufactured a crime by digging through their personal photo albums. In one of these albums they found a photo of Robyn’s young daughter without a top on (which incidentally wasn’t even taken by either Robyn or Todd, but by a visiting family friend). Nothing more — a picture similar to what you’d find in most parents’ photo albums around the world. There was no child porn. There was no crime at all. Maybe you’re like the people who turned Todd in. Maybe you’re saying “good riddance” or “the end justifies the means”. But are you really content to let people be imprisoned for things they didn’t do? Are you really happy to let the government fabricate crimes when they’re conducting a witch hunt for people they find distasteful? Is that the kind of world you want to live in? And really, isn’t it a fundamental violation of justice to put someone in prison just because you think they’re sleazy and you don’t like them personally?
Todd and Robyn continue to sit in solitary confinement as they await their sentencing, and they need your help. If you knew Todd (or Robyn), please consider writing a character reference letter to the judge letting them know why you think Todd is a good person (there’s no need to — or point in — commenting on the injustice issues though, since these are just character letters to help with the sentencing). Here’s a sample letter that another associate of Todd’s wrote, as well as my own letter to the judge:“A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as well as that of his fellowman, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.”
Email: [email protected]The sad fact is that Todd is not the first person inside this community to be busted for fabricated child porn charges after the government was unable to lay legitimate charges. If having an innocent picture of your six year old kid running around without their shirt on is a crime, then there’s a lot of guilty people out there. What about the department store that sells string bikinis for five year olds, with little g-strings and a top with hearts on the nipples? What about the Walmart that has a t-shirt for eight year olds that says “party girl” or “sexy” on the front in glitter writing? That seems a lot closer to child porn! How is it acceptable for big business to overtly sexualize children in the name of profit, but illegal for a parent — who’s changed that child’s diapers — to have a photo of their kid running around their house without a shirt on? Are we really that pedo-obsessed a culture that we have to consider Todd and Robyn the bad guys here? Who’s the real criminal?
Todd’s been remarkably positive about this whole experience and it hasn’t broken him. Still, having your life stolen from you unfairly and being in solitary confinement for half a year wears on a person. Todd needs to know he has friends on the outside thinking about him. Even if you can’t help with the character letter, consider contacting Todd personally. Here’s his current contact info:“Americans, indeed all freemen, remember that in the final choice, a soldier’s pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner’s chains.” Todd BertrangYou can send letters to that address, but books and magazines have to be sent from the source (Amazon.com and so on can ship to prisons if you’d like to send Todd some reading materials). Thank you for reading this and helping out,
Copyright © 2004 BMEZINE.COM. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published August 4th, 2004 by BMEZINE.COM in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. We’ve done our best to confirm the information in this article, but by definition there is some room for error. |
