Topeka XXX Stores Under Attack

Four adult retailers in Topeka must submit to a grand jury probe as a result of anti-porn zealot Philip Cosby's campaign to rid Kansas of pornography.

Topeka Evangelical Area Ministries is supporting Cosby's National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families (NCPCF) in the push to prosecute local porn shops for obscenity. The stores under attack are Priscilla's, After Dark Video, Adult Entertainment Center and Sinsations.

"Kansas law is specific on things that should not be offered for sale," Ministries president Rev. Paul Barnes told the Topeka Capital-Journal. "We believe there are several stores in town that have broken the law."

Earlier this year, Cosby enlisted religious and community leaders in a petition drive calling for grand jury investigations of adult businesses throughout Kansas and Missouri. The four stores in Topeka count among 13 sexually oriented businesses in the county, including strip clubs, and Cosby intends to go after them all.

"We didn't put all the eggs in one basket," Cosby commented. "We've got a Plan A, a Plan B, a Plan C and a Plan D."

The campaign was begun, Cosby said, under the tenet that porn and crime are linked. "There's a real connection between criminal behavior — rape and pedophilia, for instance — and pornography," Cosby asserted.

Pre-trial motions by one of the business' owners to thrown the case out were dismissed by Shawnee County District Judge Evelyn Wilson. Previous grand jury petition drives spearheaded by Cosby managed to get charges brought against adult stores in the Kansas towns of Wichita, Abilene and Ellsworth, while another aimed at two stores in Salina failed to generate enough support for a grand jury to be convened.