Ed Kramer, who co-founded Atlanta's Dragon*Con in 1987 and has served as its chairman ever since, is in the Gwinnett County (Ga.) Jail after being charged with molesting a 13-year-old boy.

Local police and the FBI are investigating an anonymous tip that Kramer, 39, had sexual relations with one of the three sons of an ex-girlfriend. After interviewing the alleged victim, police arrested Kramer Aug. 25, on a charge of aggravated child molestation. According to police, Kramer performed oral sex on the boy sometime between July 3 and July 8.

While police and FBI investigators prepare evidence for a grand jury, Kramer is being held without bail. No arraignment date has been set, and in the meantime, Kramer has been denied bail on the basis of the prosecution's arguments that: 1) the defendant has no ties to the community and might try to flee; 2) the defendant has regular contact with children and is a potential threat to other boys in the community; and 3) he could try to influence witnesses.

Though the prosecution chose to describe Kramer as having "no ties to the community," he is a prominent community figure well-known as the principal organizer behind Dragon*Con, a major annual Atlanta gaming, science-fiction and comics convention that has been mentioned in every local media report on the case. In the past, the mainstream media has generally portrayed the gaming community as some strange form of cultism often linked to unsavory acts of goth delinquency among the nation's youth. Thanks to the charges against Kramer, pederasty can now be added to the list of sordid associations. Kramer, who had fought an uphill battle for more than a dozen years to present a positive view of gamers and fantasy fans to the general public, is now at the center of the worst scandal ever to hit Dragon*Con.

Gwinnett is no sleepy rural township where any case of sexual abuse might be expected to receive heavy coverage in the local paper. As a close suburb of Atlanta, it has been exposed to plenty of horrible area crimes. The element of this case that caused reporters from the Atlanta Journal-Chronicle, the Gwinnett Daily Post and the alternative weekly Creative Loafing, as well as four television stations to pack the Gwinnett County Courthouse for Kramer's Sept. 25 bond hearing was the defendant's connection to Dragon*Con. Although the TV news crews were required to share the feed from a single camera, friends of Kramer reported being turned away from the courtroom because local media had filled it to capacity. To the media, the connection to Dragon*Con added another dimension of luridness to the story.

Gwinnett Daily Post reporter Jim Kvicala told the Journal, "We were interested in the story by virtue of his prominence with Dragon*Con."

If Kramer has become a liability for the convention, the convention has proven to be an equal liability for Kramer, according to his attorney James Altman. Altman told the Journal, "All the media attention is definitely a factor in this case. I think my client was denied bail primarily because of the media coverage. Charges regarding child molestation are highly emotional and tend to brand one guilty until proven innocent."

For the full story see TCJ #228.

All site contents are © 2002