John Wayne Riddle, who once led the Louisville anti-pornography coalition COMPASS (Citizens of Metro Property and Safety & Security), pleaded guilty last Wednesday to solicitation of prostitution, a Class B misdemeanor. Riddle, now 65, was arrested 14 months ago in the company of Mary Perry, one of the city’s most notorious hookers.

John Wayne Riddle was a leader of COMPASS when he got busted with well-known hooker Mary Perry in tow. The Jefferson County Attorney’s office was determined to see the case through to a resolution, and 14 months after his arrest, Riddle pleaded guilty last week to solicitation of prostitution, a Class B misdemeanor. (Photos courtesy of Jefferson Co. Dept. of Correcti)

Riddle received a $100 fine plus court costs. He was credited with time served for two days spent in jail following his arrest, according to Bill Patteson, spokesman for the county attorney’s office.

Reached by phone on Monday, Riddle declined comment and hung up.

In November 2003, he was caught at the corner of 17th and Rowan streets in the Portland neighborhood with Perry in his car. Patteson said Riddle had a bottle of Viagra, a drug used commonly by males to treat erectile dysfunction, and admitted to the arresting officer that he had intended to use the Viagra at that time.

Following his arrest, Riddle quickly resigned his leadership post in COMPASS, which continued to lobby Metro Council for an adult business ordinance until its passage at the /files/storyimages/of last year. The group is now fronted by Sandy Lawson, who expressed support for Riddle early on. Lawson could not be reached for comment this week.

It wasn’t the first time Riddle had solicited a prostitute, according to Jefferson County Attorney Irv Maze, who said Riddle had visited and picked up prostitutes in the Louisville area several times before.

Perry’s record of prostitution and drug-related arrests is long and deep, and that’s why Riddle’s case was pursued so judiciously, Maze said, describing Perry as a “frequent flyer” who has been in and out of jail for repeated offenses.

“As soon as they mentioned her name, all my prosecutors knew who she was,” Maze said.

Perry pleaded guilty to prostitution charges shortly after the arrest. She was sentenced and agreed to testify in court to make the case against Riddle, Maze said.

It took about 14 months for prosecutors to follow through on the case, an unusual but not unheard of amount of time, Patteson said. Riddle’s lawyer requested and was granted a string of continuations, a strategy sometimes employed in the hope of diluting prosecutors’ focus from various cases. But Maze was persistent; he assigned prosecutor Matthew Golden to see Riddle’s case through to conviction or a plea agreement. The latter was finally reached last week.

Louisville's most notorious hooker, Mary Perry. (Photos courtesy of Jefferson Co. Dept. of Correcti)

“The case here was we were dealing with someone who everybody knows her name,” Maze said. “(Prostitution) was her vocation.”

It may seem strange for a prominent activist to get entangled with the sort of thing he had publicly railed against, but it happens, and it may be attributable to an inability to reconcile one’s impulses for sex with “proper” social behavior, said Dr. Neal Dunsieth, a forensic psychiatrist and assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati and also at Wright State University’s Dayton, Ohio campus.

“I think that at times their inability to manage those (sexual) impulses kind of sends them headlong into the precise opposite of what they’re doing,” Dunsieth said. “What they do is to try to compensate for their inability to control their impulses; they turn themselves radically in the other direction and condemn those practices.”

Riddle’s not the only local moral crusader with a questionable sexual past. John Reneer, leader of a group called War-Line, has convictions for armed robbery, murder and first degree sodomy under his belt. Reneer made a name for his group by photographing patrons coming and going from adult businesses, then posting the photographs on his Web site (www.war-line.com). Reneer is a registered sex offender in Kentucky.

At any rate, the question seems obvious: Why would a person with so much at stake continue to engage in such risky behavior?

“They’re getting away with it,” Dunsieth said. “I think on some level they struggle with whether or not they think it’s wrong, and that’s why their actions speak so loudly in contrast to what they’re doing.”