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Today, the Omaha World Herald reported that a jury had convicted John L. Biggs of Omaha for secretly videotaping his stepdaughter naked in their bathroom:
A Douglas County jury of three men and nine women convicted John L. Gibbs Wednesday of manufacturing child pornography for shooting the video of the girl from the neck down as she got out of the shower. He faces up to five years of probation or 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in February.
AdvertisingGibbs, 41, had left no doubt as to who the cameraman was that day. After filming the girl, Gibbs went to shut off the video camera and inadvertently captured his face on tape.
In turn, he told a Douglas County sheriff's investigator that he grabbed the video camera only because he heard a blood-curdling scream from the bathroom and wanted to make sure the girl was OK, prosecutor Molly Smith said.
Slight problem: The girl said she didn't scream that day.
After discovering the videotape in June, it was the girl's mother who wanted to scream.
Married to Gibbs in January 2006, the woman didn't notice anything suspicious about Gibbs until last year. In December, Smith said, the woman discovered a videotape her husband had taken of a woman sunbathing. Although nothing explicit was shown, Smith said, Gibbs' wife found it strange and confronted him.
He promised not to do it again.
Then on Father's Day, the woman discovered the video of her daughter.
The video, shot under the door, showed towels on the floor and a few seconds of the girl emerging, naked, from the shower, Smith said. That footage was found on the videotape right after a slide show that Gibbs had produced for his grandmother's funeral.
Gibbs' wife immediately called police and, within two weeks, filed for divorce.
The article goes on to describe some of Gibbs' other camcorder exploits:
Douglas County sheriff's investigators searched Gibbs' home and found other videos, including video shot through the windows of homes of women changing their clothes, young women in swimsuits at an outdoor pool and one apparently taken from a camera inside Gibbs' car of young women at a charity carwash. In some of the videos, the camera zoomed in on the women's body parts, according to court documents.
However, Smith said, those videos didn't show anything explicit - and prosecutors could not determine who the women were or prove that Gibbs shot the videos.
Gibbs previously had done video work for Mission Nebraska, a nonprofit organization founded by assistant Nebraska football coach Ron Brown, Gibbs' estranged wife said. Investigators searched Gibbs' work equipment and found nothing suspicious, she said.
It was that last bit about Mission Nebraska that caught my attention. I had never heard of this group so I did a bit of online searching. It seems Mission Nebraska is heavily into the Evangelical men's movement-Promise Keepers and all that. Here is their website, and here is a description of one of their events by the group's co-founder Ron Brown:
"We want to unleash the most powerful force in our state, in this generation and the next . . . the men of Nebraska," Brown said. "We're calling the event 'Freedom: The Conquest '09', and the whole idea is based on a biblical message to live a free life. To live a free life, men must take a stand and never let anyone put a harness of slavery on us again."
While his focus will be on his players and on the field during the game, Brown also has a heavy emotional investment in the grass roots effort that influenced so many fathers and sons to buy tickets to an all-day Freedom event at Lincoln's Pershing Auditorium.
The timing is not coincidental. In a savvy move for a football rabid state, a ticket to a day of inspired worship also includes a ticket to the Spring Game. All 4,200 will meet at 8:30 a.m. at Pershing. At 11:45 a.m., they will take a Freedom Walk together from Pershing to Memorial Stadium, where they will sit together in black Conquest T-shirts to signify the group's unity.
The shirts also symbolize the conquest - an act to conquer by force and overcome all opposition - physical or moral - to achieve the victory of freedom.
Further online sleuthing led me to John Gibbs' Youtube channel where we can see this promo that Gibbs apparently shot for Mission Nebraska. Mr. Gibbs even appears in a speaking part in the video, at 1 minute and 24 seconds in:
Gibbs' Youtube videos also include this Adventureland home video that is unremarkable except for the inexplicable 5-second zoom-in on a male friend's crotch, and this compilation of photos featuring James "JD" Biggs and his family. JD Biggs, apparently a close relative of John, is a leader in Mission Nebraska and a talk show host on MN's Christian radio station.
It appears John Gibbs didn't quite get the message put forth by Mission Nebraska. Or maybe he did. After reading through their online material, I'm still trying to figure out what that message is.
