In an ironic but very appropriate linkage, a Google search on the name “Charles Rust-Tierney” first yields the headline: “Former ACLU Chapter President Arrested for Child Pornography,” and then the very next item is headlined, “Statement of ACLU on Loudoun Filtering Policy: Statement read by Charles Rust-Tierney.”[1]

In that public statement made back in 1998, Charles Rust-Tierney, as the President of the ACLU of Virginia, urged the Loudoun County Library Board not to put any filters on the library’s internet portals. He said, “Recognizing that individuals will continue to behave responsibly and appropriately while in the library, the default should be maximum, unrestricted access to the valuable resources of the Internet.”[2]

The FBI recently arrested Rust-Tierney for multiple counts of child pornography, which he acquired over the internet.[3]

The 51 year-old Arlington County lawyer[4]  and youth sports coach[5], was named in a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Alexandria and was taken into custody on February 23, 2007 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Arlington County police.[6]

The web site for Virginia’s ACLU chapter indicates Charles Rust-Tierney served as its president as recently as 2005 [7], and is still a board member.[8]

The D.C. Bar’s listing for Charles M. Rust-Tierney says he is a lawyer with the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C. and his office is located in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.[9]

Since 1991, Diann Rust-Tierney, Charles Rust-Tierney's wife, has been the ACLU’s lead strategist and spokeswoman on the death penalty as the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project.[10] In 2004, she became the executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.[11]

Maybe she’ll re-think her opposition to the death penalty after seeing and hearing the cries of pre-teen girls being bound with rope and raped on her husband’s videos.[12]

One might be led to believe that President Nichol is a just a go-along-get-along, laissez faire sort of guy were it not for the fact that a few months earlier, in late October 2006, Nichol ordered a brass cross removed from the Wren Chapel (in the oldest academic building in continuous use in the United States) because, he said, the “chapel, like our entire campus, must be welcoming to all.”[14]

So how can a supposedly intelligent college president reconcile censoring a historic cross out of a chapel because it might possibly offend a few people, while paying for live sex acts that are certainly offensive to many of the college’s students, faculty and alumni?

The answer is revealed by the items listed in Nichol’s official resume on the College’s website which showed he had been: President, North Florida ACLU, 1984; Chair, University of Colorado Task Force on Gay and Lesbian Issues, 1992-93; Colorado Democrat of the Year, 1999; Member, Board of Directors, North Carolina Civil Liberties Union (2002- ); Colorado ACLU (1999- 2000); Keynote Address Speaker, North Carolina - American Civil Liberties Union annual banquet, North Carolina, October, 2004.[15] 

A donor has withdrawn a pledged $12 million gift to William & Mary because of Gene Nichol’s ACLU-style logic[16], and so one can expect that he will soon be out of a job. But he shouldn’t have to look too far for a new one.

Since the FBI’s report says Charles Rust-Tierney confessed to possessing the child pornography, and he will thus be disbarred sooner or later, there’s going to be a vacancy in the Public Defender’s Service office at  St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Maybe Gene Nichol can submit his resume to them.