Bikers evoke love, loathing

The rumble can be heard blocks before the parade of Harley-Davidson riders decked out in black leather and attitude roar two-by-two into a quiet Payson neighborhood.

Fifty-five members of Bikers Against Child Abuse park their motorcycles along the street in front of Ann Clark's house. Her 6-year-old twin boy and girl eagerly await their arrival. The children wear T-shirts reading, "Warning: The surgeon general has determined that it is hazardous to your health to mess with a BACA child."

The bikers, some sporting grizzled beards, black bandanas and ponytails, form a serpentine line in front of Clark and her children. They're looking for hugs, but the shy, dark-haired girl prefers high fives as her mother holds her. Her freckle-faced brother runs around greeting bikers left and right.

"I was a little nervous about having them come at first," Clark said of BACA's initial visit in April. But now two months later she said she has seen a change in her daughter. She no longer hides behind her when a man approaches. "It's probably the best thing I could have done for their healing."

BACA members often are big teddy bears who gently hug an abused child. And sometimes they are burly brutes who enforce the mock surgeon general's warning on the T-shirts. They have been known to threaten and allegedly even beat up suspected child molesters.

"Some guys have a tendency to take the law into their own hands," one former member says.

Critics call them vigilantes. Others see them as sort of Hells Angels of mercy.

They straddled their hogs in search of Elizabeth Smart. They were kicked off an airplane for intervening with parents whom they believed inappropriately disciplined a toddler. They sit menacingly in courtrooms glaring at accused child molesters. "We're not vigilantes. We're not out hunting down people. We're here for the children," said JP "Chief" Lilly, a Provo child therapist who founded BACA.

The April visit to Clark's home resulted in a heated, profane confrontation with Payson police. The teenage perpetrator, who has since been placed on probation, lives on the same street, and his father called police because the boy was scared, Lt. Bill Wright said.

BACA members said they didn't know where he lived until police told them.

"We don't go out and harass 15- and 16-year-olds. If he's 21, maybe," said Chris Clark, BACA's Utah president. (No relation to Ann Clark.) "We work hard to be nice."

The June ride went off without trouble.