Judge bars 2 AIDS activists
The men are suspected of threatening Chronicle staff members
 

Tuesday, November 13, 2001 Chronicle Staff Report

A San Francisco judge yesterday barred two AIDS activists suspected of making threatening telephone calls to several Chronicle staff members from having any contact with the newspaper's employees.

Judge James Robertson II's temporary restraining order also forbids Michael Petrelis and David Pasquarelli from coming within 300 yards of any Chronicle employee or the newspaper's offices.

Pasquarelli is a member of the AIDS dissident group ACT UP/San Francisco.

The newspaper requested the restraining order on Friday after several editors and reporters said they received dozens of obscene and threatening phone calls from the two activists. Employees say they began receiving the calls Wednesday both at home and at work.

On Sunday, employees had to evacuate The Chronicle offices after the newspaper received a bomb threat from one of the activists, attorneys for the newspaper told the judge.

In court papers, lawyers for the paper said that the activists apparently were angered over two stories published last month in The Chronicle. One was about the rise of unsafe sex practices among gay men in San Francisco, and the other was about increases in the rates of syphilis among the city's gay and bisexual men.

The order will be in effect until at least Nov. 28, when Robertson holds a hearing on The Chronicle's request for a permanent injunction against the two activists.

Since the mid-1990s, ACT UP/San Francisco has repeatedly clashed with mainstream AIDS organizations over its belief that HIV does not cause AIDS. In April, a judge ordered members of the dissident group to stay away from the offices of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation after the group staged a noisy demonstration.