Special to WorldTribune, February 18, 2025

Following is the third in a series of excerpts from the book, “Shattered Innocence: A Shared Global Shame”, by investigative reporter Christine Dolan, a veteran U.S. broadcast and print investigative journalist who worked as CNN’s Political Director in the 1980s. See Part I, Part II.

As the day ended [at a conference of the group working to decriminalize pedophilia in the United States] and Carolyn and I were heading toward the car in the parking lot, a group of about three attendees were outside.

“Are you going to advocate for us?” one guy yelled out.

I turned to him and said, “I do not think so.”

Flippantly, he said, “You do know everyone in that room is gay?”

I just nodded and said, “But, not everyone,” and smiled.

What we heard at the conference was disturbing.

In retrospect, it was a very clever lobbying tactic to invite therapists and hold the financial carrot in front of therapists to get what [Minor-Attracted Persons] MAPs wanted.

One of the men in the room who identified as a MAP was originally from Germany and was living in California. During the conference, he claimed that George Soros’ money was funding university curricula for courses on pedophilia. He never stated which universities or whether the funding was direct or through a cut-out organization.

After we left, I reported back to Bob.

“You hit the potential motherload,” wrote Bob Hamer.

I pulled up open records on Michael Harris because of his actions later at the conference.

He returned to our table and handed each of us his cards. One of Harris’ cards reads that he is an Indiana Advocate for [National Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws] NARSOL.

A file anyone can find on the Internet about Harris I found interesting.

“On or about February 26, 1999, Harris pleaded to one count of child molesting, a Class B felony for his sexual contact with a ten-year-old boy. On April 29, 1999, the trial court sentenced Harris to ten years in the Indiana Department of Correction for his child molesting conviction. While incarcerated, Harris earned an associate and a bachelor’s degree in general studies. On November 6, 2002, Harris was released on parole.”

Prior to his release, Harris executed his “Conditional Parole Release Agreement.” Part of the agreement included that he “shall not use any computer with access to any “on-line computer service” at any location (including place of employment) without the prior approval of your parole agent. This includes any Internet service provider, bulletin board system, e-mail system or any other public or private computer network.”

“You shall not use your employment as a means to acquire new victims. Your parole agent may contact your employer at any time. You will not work in certain occupations that involve being in the private residence of others, such as, but not limited to door-to-door sales, soliciting, or delivery. Your parole agent must first approve any employment that you do engage in.” the agreement reads.

“You shall not possess any items on your person, in your vehicle, in your place of residence or as a part of your personal effects, which attract children, or that may be used to coerce children to engage in inappropriate or illegal sexual activities. You will not engage in any activities that could be construed as enticing children,” the agreement further reads.

Harris also agreed that he would “have only one residence and one mailing address at a time.”

Harris’ file stipulates what happened next on parole after his release.

“Harris began working as a casting director at “Michael L. Harris Productions” (“MLH Media”), a film and video production company that he had incorporated prior to his molestation conviction,” reads his file.

Harris was developing video production scripts with a cast of characters that included parts for minors as actors. He reached out to another party who was a casting director. He told her he was producing a film that called for “(approximately) 90 child actors.” According to the case file, Harris never disclosed to the other casting director that he was a convicted sex offender. The casting director sent seven actors to Harris before she discovered Harris was a convicted sex offender. Two of the actors were under the age of 18.

The file can be found at: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/in-court-of-appeals/1150073.html

The NARSOL card lingered with me. The statements in the room that day have resonated with me since.

NARSOL stands for National Association for Rational Sex Offense Laws.

For more than a decade, NARSOL has hosted national conferences. On their website, they have posted that “NARSOL opposes dehumanizing [sex] registries by working to eliminate all laws, policies and practices that propagate them.”

In June 2024, NARSOL will host another one of their national conferences in Atlanta, Georgia. NARSOL claims to represent 800,000 registered sex offenders. The organization claims to be working with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

NARSOL’s Chair is Robin Vander Wall, the former Director of Faith and Family Alliance, a political advocacy group.

He has been active in republican political circles and has been associated with major conservative politicians and political players on the national scene from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Ralph E. Reed, Jr., and Grover Norquist, who were tangled in what has been known as the “Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal” in 2005. It involved bribery, extortion, and fraud.

When the Washington Post reported on that story on October 16, 2005, they describe Vander Wall as “a former Regent University Law School student and Republican operative,” who “was later convicted of soliciting sex with minors via the Internet and is serving a seven-year term in Virginia state prison.”

In 2004, Vander Wall was convicted on five counts of computer solicitation of a minor and one count of attempted indecent liberties with a child.
At the time of Vander Wall’s conviction, the Virginia State Attorney General’s office issued a press release.

Vander Wall’s conviction was “a result of an undercover investigation that involved Virginia Beach Police officers pretending to be three different 13-year-old boys in Internet chatrooms between November 2002 and January 2003,” read the news release.

Today, Vander Wall not only sits on NARSOL’s Board, but founded Vivante Espero, the foundation that financially supports NARSOL. He has been the recipient of a fellowship with Just Leadership USA, another non-profit organization, “dedicated to cutting the US correctional population in half by 2030.”

Vander wall is also associated with North Carolinians for Rational Sexual Offense Laws (ncrsol.org).

On that website, the group makes one of their objectives well known in an article authored by John Covert, a member of the Arizonans for Rational Sex Offense Laws Executive Committee.

As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 decision to have sex registries available to the public beyond law enforcement officials, these groups want to change the law because they feel discriminated against – the same mantra that we heard in the 2019 B4UAct.org conference in the Baltimore area. Some of these registered sex offenders claim they are stigmatized for sex crimes because they are required to register. MAPs stated that they feel stigmatized for their sexual orientation and want their sexual attraction to minor to be officially recognized as normal and legal.

“Policy makers around the country took it as an invitation to pile on new regulations and requirements, vastly expanding [sex] registries that had once focused on a narrow spectrum of serious crimes to include an ever-growing list of offenses, even including such things are public urination and sex among underage teenagers,” wrote Covert.

The current Vice-Chair of NARSOL is Michael Shimkin, the Founder of the non-profit Global Village Engineers (GVE), which is an affiliated organization of the World Economic Forum’s Disaster Resource Network.

GVE “recruits and manages a volunteer corps of civil engineers, environmental scientists and other technical experts to work with rural communities and non-governmental organizations in the developing world,” reads one of their Internet postings.

Shimkin’s NARSOL bio states that in 2002, “he was selected as one of the World Economic Forum’s 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow.” He is also a member of the Sex Offender Policy Reform Initiative Executive Committee of Massachusetts and serves as a member of the Vivante Espero Investment Committee.

Vivante also publishes NARSOL’s bi-monthly newsletter, “the Digest,” which has been in circulation since at least 2014.

These newsletters are interesting to say the least as they serve as a roadmap to what NARSOL’s state chapters are focusing on for their judicial reform in state legislatures for over 10 years.

At the 2019 B4UAct.org conference, Michael Harris also handed us his card for Indiana Voices. The organization was founded in 2002. It is an affiliated chapter of NARSOL.

“Christine Dolan is a formidable journalist. She has been ahead of all of us in the media having covered human trafficking now for almost a quarter of century. There are few journalists who can match her commitment, experience and knowledge on this subject, and her generosity to share with the rest of us. Shattered Innocence: A Shared Global Shame explains how she discovered a level of evil that many of us in legacy media never investigated.” — Lara Logan, Award-winning television journalist and war correspondent.

Third in a series. See Part I, Part II

  Irredeemable: Pro-pedophile organizations defend the indefensible