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Web posted
Florida Highway Patrol troopers arrested John Burt, 65, shortly before 1 a.m. at an Interstate 10 rest stop near Chattahoochee, about 170 miles east of Pensacola. He had been driving a van with a Choose Life license tag. Burt is accused of assaulting a 15-year-old resident of Our Father's House, the wayward girls home he owns in nearby Milton. He is charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, lewd or lascivious conduct and three counts of lewd or lascivious molestation. The girl and another resident who is a potential witness have been taken into protective custody by the state. Santa Rosa County sheriff's spokesman Jerry Henderson said investigators are seeking other potential victims. Burt was being returned Tuesday to the county jail in Pensacola and it could not be determined if has an attorney. A call to Our Father's House seeking comment was not returned Tuesday. A daughter, Karen Krzan, told the Pensacola News Journal on Monday that Burt had simply fallen on the alleged victim. "He's made enough people angry around here that anything they could get on him they will try," she said. When protests and violence made Pensacola the center of the national abortion debate in the 1980s and 1990s, Burt was at the forefront. He was often accompanied by "Baby Charlie," which he said was a preserved fetus wrapped in a blanket, until it was buried after a funeral service. "John has been a magnet," said the Rev. Dallas Blanchard, a Methodist minister and sociology professor emeritus at the University of West Florida. He wrote one book on anti-abortion violence and co-authored another. "He has attracted national folks to Pensacola, all the significant national players" in the anti-abortion movement. When two young couples bombed three Pensacola abortion clinics on Christmas Day 1984, Burt led pickets supporting the bombers outside the federal courthouse. Burt spent 141 days in jail for resisting arrest without violence for pushing his way into the clinic and breaking equipment in 1986. His probation on that charge was revoked two years later when he took a would-be bomber to case a clinic. Then in May 1993, one of Burt's followers, Michael Griffin, fatally shot Dr. David Gunn of Eufaula, Ala., as he arrived at Pensacola Medical Services. Burt was leading a demonstration on the other side of the clinic. Griffin, a volunteer at Our Father's House, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Gunn's children sued Burt, alleging he influenced Griffin with anti-abortion literature and videos and by pointing out their father at a protest. Burt also prayed with Griffin three days before the killing. The case was settled in 1996. The terms were not made public but a sign saying "Lot for Sale ... Estate of David Gunn" appeared on a sliver of land Burt had owned and used to hold demonstrations next to a second clinic, The Ladies Center, which had been bombed in 1984. Later renamed Community Healthcare, it was there in July 1994 that another frequent demonstrator, Paul Hill, killed retired Air Force Lt. Col. James Barrett and Dr. John Britton, of Fernandina Beach, and wounded Barrett's wife with a shotgun as they pulled into clinic parking lot. The Barretts were clinic volunteers. Burt had been seen with Hill, now on death row, when he photographed Britton on an earlier occasion. The violence ebbed after those slayings. Today, the clinics are the scene of sporadic, generally peaceful protests attended by a few demonstrators.
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