Home > Stories On Schiavo Protestor Miss One Point: He’s A Registered Sex Offender

Stories On Schiavo Protestor Miss One Point: He’s A Registered Sex Offender

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 5 April 2005
4 comments

Religions-Beliefs Health USA

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news...

Stories On Schiavo Protestor Miss One Point: He’s A Registered Sex Offender
E&P Staff
March 28, 2005

NEW YORK As protests outside the hospice housing Terri Schiavo in her final days mounted last week, numerous newspaper reports, many based on an Associated Press account, mentioned or quoted 10-year-old Joshua Heldreth and/or his father, Scott Heldreth. Josh was one of several youngsters arrested for crossing police lines in Pinellas Park, Fla., in an effort to take water to Schiavo.

None of the stories revealed that Scott Heldreth, a religious activist and anti-abortion crusader, is a registered sex offender in Florida— until The Charlotte Observer mentioned it on Sunday.

A widely published AP story on Sunday by Allen G. Breen had painted a warmer picture of the Heldreths, noting that it was young Josh who insisted that his father take him to the protests from their home in North Carolina, not the other way around. “God’s with me,” Josh said.

The article continued: “Scott Heldreth, a veteran of the Operation Rescue and Operation Save America campaigns against abortion, didn’t intend to join this fight, until his son asked to be brought to Pinellas Park. ‘My wife and I, we felt like if God really put it on his heart, we should come down, to allow him to live out what God had put on his heart,’ says Heldreth, a carpenter.”

The story said some of the children at the protest carried signs accusing Terry Schiavo’s husband of murdering her and urging that he be sent to jail.

The Charlotte Observer story, however, revealed that Heldreth had pleaded guilty to sexual battery, was in jail for parts of 1992 and 1993, according to court records, and served time on probation.

“The former Naperville, Fla., resident remains listed on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s sex offender registry,” the Observer reported, “but he’s not registered on North Carolina’s; the N.C. equivalent applies to offenders convicted on or after Jan. 1, 1996.”

According to the story, Heldreth claimed that his religious beliefs came to him while in jail. Before then, he said, "I basically agreed with everyone trying to kill Terri Schiavo." Then, he said, he accepted Christ and turned his life around.

Heldreth declined to discuss the specifics of the incident that led to his jail time. Online research shows that Heldreth was arrested after an incident at Ohio University and charged with two counts of rape and one count of kidnapping.

Forum posts

  • It is always these religious fanatics that behind closed doors are raping their children and doing perverted things. Then they go around preaching to the world about how holy they are and how the church gave them two gold stars for getting up in church and telling nasty stories about the non believers. Atheists crimes are unforgivable, while mine are sanctioned by the church and God. This Heldreth mess should be exposed for what religion has become a bastion of hypocracy and phony bleeding hearts who in their own lives turn out to be low lifes and crimminals.

    • Ha ha ha ha ha, I bet this is one that you won’t hear about on FOX news. This is hilarious and so typical of the phony Christians.

  • Amen to that. I’m a Christian who sided with Schiavos husband.I get really tired of these wackos acting like they have morality and honor cornered.. Early on a priest made a statement that I carry with me:" areal Christian asks himself or erself every day: is someone NOT a Christian because I AM?" Guys like this must have to say a litany of "yes"

    • How can anyone who calls themselves Christian stomach these pretenders that seem to dominate the churches? Why are the "real" Christians unwilling to expose and make an issue out of these kinds of people? How can Christians pretend to be "good" while they remain silent about a man like this one, while they threaten death to Mr. Schiavo, and the judges who back his legal rights. The churches and all of the people who claim to be members make themselves look ridiculous and disgusting when they condone people like this and remain silent instead of condemning him and his crimes against children. Is the Catholic faith so now completely infiltrated with perverts that it has become the norm? Is child abuse the new sacrament, the new prayer, the new ticket to heaven?