The_Info_Web/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Ocean Living Institute.md

tags	category	summary	location	start	relations	created	updated
Organization Foundation UnitedStates NewJersey 1970s NorthFoxIsland AdamStarchild	Private Organization	Tax-exempt corporation formed in Delaware in 1974, ostensibly for oceanographic research, with Adam Starchild as president and Dyer Grossman as executive director; Gerald Richards named it as a front for child pornography.	New Jersey, USA	1974	type with reverse role fn head_of Adam Starchild true president 2 type with reverse role fn employed_by Dyer Grossman true executive director 2	2026-04-28	2026-09-22

The Ocean Living Institute was incorporated in Delaware in 1974, with its principal place of business in New Jersey, ostensibly to promote education and research in oceanography. Adam Starchild was listed as its president and Dyer Grossman as its executive director. The Internal Revenue Service granted it an "automatic" tax exemption, as it did the The Church of New Revelation, without challenging or investigating its claim to be a charitable organization. Gerald Richards, organizer of Brother Paul's Children's Mission on North Fox Island, told police that the institute, the church and the Educational Foundation for Youth of Illinois had been set up as tax dodges and used as fronts for the production of child pornography; Starchild said they might have been "used" for that purpose by Grossman.¹

At Richards's arrest in July 1976 police found a letter from Grossman proposing "child care" sites in Michigan, New Jersey, California, Arizona, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Oregon and the District of Columbia, observing that counties would pay up to 150 dollars a month per boy, state agencies up to 400 and federal agencies up to 700, and that profits would be greatest if each site were set up under the church or the Educational Foundation for Youth because of their tax exemptions.¹

The Grossman Letter

Richards was said to have handed over the letter in August 1976, postmarked July 19, 1976, with the institute's return address, and it was said to have mentioned a twelve-year-old boy Grossman had obtained through a Big Brother program. The institute was described as a sea-steading project. Starchild was said to have been Malcolm Willis McConahy, an offshore tax attorney who faked his death in 1975, and a scoutmaster in Minneapolis expelled in 1965.²

Footnotes

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1. Wright, Marilyn. "Porno Ring Uses Church, Tax Laws." Traverse City Record-Eagle, 1977, reprinted in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime. Sexual Exploitation of Children, hearings, 95th Congress, 1st session, Serial No. 12, 1977, pp. 86-87. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41153502_0041 ↩︎

2. Dovey, S. Eye of the Chickenhawk. Thehotstar, 2023. Sole source for the passages so cited. It gives New Jersey as the state of incorporation; Starchild's continued activity under that name in 1976 to 1985 is documented in the federal trust litigation. ↩︎