Naturalist Fights Perverse Guilty Verdict

It’s only natural that a convicted nudist would want to apeel.

Sorry. The legal woes of this unlucky sunbather are nothing to crack jokes about.

Bob Grothe, 45, had a squeaky clean record until he bared his principles in Spokane County District Court the other day. A six-member jury showed the Spokane man what it’s really like to get skinned.

Now the self-described naturalist and his attorney are praying an appeal will overturn Grothe’s lewd conduct conviction.

Judge Daniel Maggs handed Grothe a 10-day suspended sentence and a modest fine for getting an all-over tan at People’s Park last May. But it’s the nature of Spokane’s lewd conduct law that is the real killer.

In this city, harmless nude sunbathers are lumped into the same criminal category with perverts who masturbate, urinate or defecate in public.

Grothe is a former substitute teacher who now makes reeds for symphonic instruments. He knows such a morals violation is the kiss of doom for anybody with a teaching credential.

“With this on my record I can’t get a job with the government or day care or work with the elderly… Basically, I can’t get a job where I work with people,” says Grothe. “I’m rather incensed.”

As a professional journalist who has covered various nudists over the years, I confess I’ve never understood what the attraction is about dangling your modifiers in a crowd.

Besides the threat of getting skin cancer from too much sun, most members of the bare buns brigade I’ve seen are definitely not potential “Baywatch” cast members. Some even look worse than I do and I always try to avoid the mirror when stepping out of the shower.

But whether or not we comprehend their Bohemian urgings, what harm do these sun worshipers do?

Grothe was sound asleep on a secluded beach when cops with too little crime on their hands wandered into Spokane’s People’s Park. “To be honest, it was a slow day,” confesses Chris Honaker, one of the officers in on the big buff bust.

Located a short drive west of downtown, People’s Park has been a fleshscape bonanza since the days of a hippie encampment during Expo ‘74.

The park is city property. It’s open to the public although cars are locked out. It takes a half-mile hike to reach the spot where Hangman Creek gurgles into the Spokane River.

Because of the area’s remoteness, police long have had an unwritten agreement with the naturalists. They get left alone as long as they behave and cover up when the cops show up.

Grothe wasn’t quick enough. Nor were four other sunbathers, who were also cited but took various deals offered by prosecutors.

Only Grothe decided to fight. “I don’t like being railroaded,” he says. “Why should I plead guilty to something I didn’t do so I can get out of something else I didn’t do?”

The courage to put his beliefs to a court test was Grothe’s undoing. The jury rejected everything the man’s attorney, Bob Critchlow, threw at them. “We weren’t able to put on any defense because of the way the ordinance is drafted,” laments the lawyer.

Jurors ruled that, A. People’s Park is a public place, and B. Grothe was nekkid as a jaybird. End of story.

If Grothe finds justice it may come via the state Supreme Court. That’s a longshot, but already the man has dug up some interesting legal ammo.

It seems a Californian named Chad Smith was caught dozing in the all together on a secluded public beach in 1970.

The California Supreme Court overturned Smith’s conviction. The jurists ruled the man hadn’t lewdly exposed himself - that nudity by itself did not constitute a form of sexual activity.

Could the case of the slumbering nudist have a similar happy ending? Stay tuned.

“How can you be lewd when you’re sleeping?” wonders Grothe. “It’s impossible.”

, DataTimes