BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON -- Carl Frybarger moved to Millville more than four years ago because of its cozy, safe, small-town atmosphere.
The transformation of a television repair shop into an adult video store almost three years ago spoiled the community's best features, he testified Tuesday in Butler County Common Pleas Court. He said he allowed his 17-year-old son to make two undercover purchases of adult videos in October at VIP Video because he wanted it to stop selling such videos.
"I wanted to make them either tone down or get out of town," Mr. Frybarger said.
The prosecution rested its case Tuesday in the trial of Billy J. Doan, a VIP Video clerk, on two counts of disseminating material harmful to a juvenile. One count is a felony and the other is a misdemeanor. This is the first of four Butler County trials concerning two adult video stores in Millville, just west of Hamilton. VIP Video is involved three of them, and Millville Video is involved in one. Mr. Frybarger, 38, who now lives in Columbus, said he asked his son, Mark, on Oct. 13 if he wanted to try an undercover scheme to see if VIP Video would sell an adult video to someone under 18, a violation of the law.
Mark Frybarger, who now lives in Moraine, Ohio, near Dayton, with his mother, bought an adult video that day with his father's driver's license and his stepmother's credit card.
The next day, wearing a hidden microphone supplied by the sheriff's department, he bought four adult videos from Ms. Doan. He told her he didn't have an ID, but had bought a video at the store the previous night.
That Oct. 14 purchase was planned by Sgt. Greg Blankenship of the sheriff's department with Carl Frybarger's verbal consent. Defense attorney Mary Lou Kusel contends that Ms. Doan, 60, of Cleves, was entrapped.
"You set up the whole situation, didn't you?," she asked Carl Frybarger under cross-examination. "Yes," he said.
Sgt. Blankenship said the sheriff's department had received "numerous" complaints about the store since January 1997. People complained that the store is near a bus stop for grade-school children and that some of the store's customers cause parking problems for nearby residents, he said.
The prosecution showed two adult videos Tuesday that Mark Frybarger bought at VIP Video.
The videos, Strip Poker and Thighs & Dolls, contained many sex scenes involving adults. Assistant Prosecutor Dan Gattermeyer decided not to show Passion for Fashion and withdrew it as evidence. On Monday, the jury viewed Nookie's Cookies.
After the prosecution rested its case, Judge H.J. Bressler rejected Ms. Kusel's motion to dismiss the charges against Ms. Doan.
She argued that Ms. Doan had been entrapped by police, the prosecution had not shown that she acted recklessly and Mark Frybarger entered the store with his father's permission and Sgt. Blankenship's guidance.
But Judge Bressler said that those are issues for the jury to decide.
Ms. Doan will testify this morning,and the case is expected to go to the jury this afternoon.
