Toplessness charge lands woman in court today

By DAN SEUFERT
Union Leader Correspondent
October 12. 2015 9:30PM



LACONIA — The woman who is leading the state’s Free the Nipple movement will be in court this morning to answer for a misdemeanor charge of toplessness at a Gilford beach in September.

Heidi Lilley, the leader of a New Hampshire group that is part of a national and international Free the Nipple movement, said she will answer the charge today and will plead not guilty.

She said will ask for a trial on the charge, but she doesn’t think the police will take the charge beyond the arraignment, which will take place in Laconia District Court at 8:15 a.m.

“I don’t think they will want to go to trial over a $25 fine,” she said.

The Gilford police prosecutor, Sgt. Eric Bredbury, could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.

Lilley and other members of the New Hampshire movement offended some people by going without swimsuit tops at the Gilford Town Beach on Sept. 6.

Local police charged Lilley and another woman in her group with toplessness, which violates a town ordinance on the beach.

The people complaining, among them parent Melanie D’Agata, said they and several children called the police to complain about the show of bare breasts, as the women were making the children and parents “uncomfortable.”

At the time, Lilley said the tickets were just what the movement was hoping for. She had gone topless on Weirs Beach on Sept. 5 in attempt to challenge Laconia’s ordinance against toplessness, which was instituted about 20 years ago so police could arrest women who were baring breasts on Motorcycle Weekend.

The group planned to challenge Laconia’s law, which they believed was the only local law in the state prohibiting bare breasts in public. That move followed the group’s initial “statement of equality for the female breast” on Aug. 23 at Hampton Beach, when more than 50 topless women “made a statement for equality of the female breast,” said Lilley, 54.

The movement, Lilley said, wants women to have the same rights as men when it comes to wearing no clothing on their upper bodies.

She said the movement’s goal is to desexualize the female breast.

“I want to have children see female breasts in a non-sexual way, but I don’t think the children understand that, because the parents really don’t seem to get it,” she said.

D’Agata said Lilley did not understand the problem.

“I am all for a good cause in an appropriate setting. This was not it,” she said.

According to the website freethenipple.com, “Free the Nipple is a film, an equality movement and a mission to empower women across the world. We stand against female oppression and censorship.”

dseufert@newstote.com

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