Bellevue Park Hints Of Past Scandal

IT WAS a quaint time, in a way, the 1950s in Bellevue. Today's bustling city was little more than a village then, and today's high-profile, sex-abuse crimes were in many cases viewed then as "indiscretions." Particularly if the wrongdoer happened to be a mayor and pillar of the establishment. Even today, getting at the truth of an episode in the Bellevue of that era may not be easy. ----------------------------------------------------------------- BELLEVUE - Everybody told her no. No! The first mayor of Bellevue definitely did not molest little girls.

Jeanhee Hong was researching a story last spring for her Bellevue Christian high-school paper, and she started to think everybody must be right. Hong could find no mention in city histories of a scandal involving Charles Bovee, who was elected mayor in 1953. And the people at the Bellevue Historical Society denied any such thing had happened.

"It was, `No way. That's just a rumor, completely untrue,' " Hong said. "I felt really bad, like I was nosing into something that wasn't my business."

But it was true.

In 1959, Bovee, 84, allegedly admitted to police investigators that he had molested several young girls. Bovee was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor on one count involving an 11-year-old girl, but the charges were apparently dropped when he agreed to leave the city he'd helped incorporate.

Bovee Park, named to honor the first mayor, kept its name. As the years go by, fewer and fewer people remember what happened. Some who do say the park is a painful reminder to Bovee's victims and to all molested children.

Others feel strongly that the Bovee case should stay buried.

"Why in the world go in there now after all these years and dig this stuff up?" asked Paul Smith, a former Methodist minister whose church Bovee and at least one of his victims attended.

Stefan Ulstein, Hong's English teacher and the paper's adviser, urged his star pupil to set the historical record straight. The story had been his idea, after a woman he knew well told him about Bovee and said that every time she went by Bovee Park, she'd get angry.

"It seemed to her the ultimate slap in the face to the children who were molested by him," Ulstein said.

"It bugged her, knowing what you go through as a victim with all the shame and the silence. It seemed so cruel."

Hong kept digging until she found a small newspaper article in the library:

Sept. 24, 1959: Ex-Bellevue Mayor Faces Morals Charge:

Charles W. Bovee, 84, first mayor of Bellevue, has been charged with a morals offense involving an 11-year-old girl. Justice of the Peace William Hoar has allowed him to remain at liberty under a $1,000 bond. Prosecutor Charles O. Carroll said the offense occurred during the summer.

Bovee has pleaded innocent.

Carroll said conditions under which Bovee is permitted to be at liberty include not speaking to children, undergoing psychiatric treatment and having his psychiatrist report to the court and to Carroll every 30 days on how Bovee is progressing.

Just a student

Hong faxed the article and one other to the historical society. She said she was told that Bovee "must have been senile" and that a story would only disgrace the name of a man who was very well-respected and dedicated to the city.

"They made me feel I'm just a high-school student, not even a real reporter," Hong said, "and that I had no business uncovering it."

But Ulstein told her she'd be revealing the truth. He also hoped that because of Hong's story, the park name might be changed.

"I would say a park where children go to play shouldn't be named after a child molester," Ulstein said. "Name the park after someone who was nice to children."

Hong published the story. The headline in her school paper, which has a circulation of 500 students and their parents, read, "What's in a name?" It was the first time in 35 years that the Bovee case had been mentioned in print.

"I thought it was something people had a right to know," said Hong, before heading off to her freshman year at Stanford University. "I thought it was something students and parents could talk about. I'm glad I wrote it. . . . But I don't want people to have hard feelings."

But the Bovee case inspired hard feelings from the beginning.

It was dealt with in back rooms and private chambers, was the subject of a libel suit and caused the police chief to resign.

"It was poison to me," said Harold Doss, who just weeks before the molestation reports surfaced had been hired as Bellevue's chief of police.

"There were five little victims, quite young, who were molested," said Doss, now a Kirkland resident. "Bovee did give a statement admitting to that."

Memories are hazy

More details are unavailable; memories are hazy and police reports were destroyed long ago.

Doss and Nick Giardina, his second in command, said they knew the case against Bovee would be dicey. Bovee was Bellevue's former postmaster and owner of Bellevue Realty. Long a business and incorporation booster, he'd held the first City Council meetings in his home.

"I was kind of guiding the chief a little bit," recalled Giardina, who now lives in Scottsdale, Ariz. "I told him this is a case that maybe should be handled by you and I, rather than expose anything. So we did all the paperwork, the investigations and the inquiries."

A longtime Bellevue resident remembers that Bovee's wife never spoke of the situtation. In fact, the woman said, no one talked about it. To this day, she said, she doesn't know the names of the little girls, who would now be women in their 30s and 40s.

"I don't ever want to know," she said. "It probably would have been one of my children's playmates. They were evidently quite young girls. They thought he was a nice grandpa."

Sex crimes against children were no less common in 1959 than they are today, says Charles Carroll, who was King County prosecutor for two decades and still lives in Seattle. "In those days it was called indecent liberties, I think. We did file a lot of them."Not fit for discussion

But they were not thought to be a fit topic for discussion. Neither of the two Eastside newspapers reported the story until Sept. 24, 1959, when The Bellevue American published an editorial without names:

"The arrest of an elderly retired businessman and civic leader on a morals charge has stirred the community more than any other single event we can recall. It has been the policy of this newspaper as well as that of practically all others to eliminate such stories from its columns. It is a distasteful subject, one in which naming names would bring much additional anguish to the defendant's innocent family and friends."

The editorial noted that Doss wanted the case filed as a felony in King County Superior Court.

But Carroll, who years later was indicted but never prosecuted for allegedly accepting gambling kickbacks, said he believed a trial would be a "public ordeal" for the victims.

The publisher of The Eastsider weekly ran a front-page editorial criticizing Carroll and calling for a felony filing. Bovee, who wasn't identified but called a "prominent citizen," promptly filed a $100,000 libel suit. "That got everybody shook up," Doss recalled.

Doss resigns

Two weeks later, Doss abruptly resigned. Carroll was after his job, Doss said, and it just didn't seem worth it. "But I so was disgusted with myself for taking the easy way out, I came back right next door and became chief (of Kirkland)."

Doss retired from that job in 1975.

The Bovee case went to justice court - the forerunner of district court - as a misdemeanor. "There was a private hearing in the judge's chamber," Giardina said. "Whether he was just given probation or just required to stay away from little kids, I don't know. He didn't do any jail time."

The disposition of the case remains unclear. The other small article Hong found in an old copy of The Seattle Times implies that the case was dismissed:

Nov. 12, 1959: Bellevue Man in Morals Case to Leave Town:

Charles W. Bovee, 84, first mayor of Bellevue, is going to move from Bellevue, he told Justice of the Peace William Hoar today when he appeared on a morals charge.

Judge Hoar continued the case to November 24 for proof that Bovee has left Bellevue. "We want the public to know," Bovee's attorney, Charles L. Hamley, told the court, "that we have not asked for any special favors or special treatment. Mr. Bovee made a mistake but he is not a degenerate."

Bellevue District Judge Joel Rindal, Carroll's chief deputy in the 1950s, said he doesn't remember the case clearly but believes Bovee agreed to move to Ephrata.

It wouldn't have been unusual for the case to have been dismissed in return for Bovee leaving town, Carroll said. "Justice was completely different in those days. I wouldn't be surprised if Judge Hoar said, `Get out of town.' "

Today, the Bovee case likely would be charged as first-degree child molestation, a felony, because the victims were under 12, says Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County prosecutor's office.

Under today's standard sentencing range, conviction on just one count would bring up to 68 months in prison.

That would be harsher than what Carroll was accustomed to. Still, when the former prosecutor was told about Hong's story, he said, "I wouldn't think they'd want to name a park after him."

Bovee died in Ephrata two years after leaving Bellevue. A short obituary in The Times said he'd moved away to be closer to his son. Charles Bovee Jr., 81, who still lives in the Eastern Washington community, recently said he had no knowledge of any problems his father had with the law.

The Bovee name lives on north of the Bellevue city center in the four-acre park named by the City Council just weeks before he was arrested. Afterward, the council never discussed if the honor should be rescinded.

City Councilwoman Chris Heaton wants to change that - just as Ulstein had hoped.

"I just don't see that it's appropriate to celebrate a man who caused so much harm to his community," Heaton said. "I don't think you celebrate something like that and leave a reminder for people who have been victims and still are living in the community."