--------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 210 VICTIMS/FALSEACC Ref: D5Q00000Date: 05/19/96 From: RICK THOMA Time: 03:43am \/To: ALL (Read 1 times) Subj: 1996-05-17 President Remarks at Signing 03:43:0305/19/96 THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release May 17, 1996 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN BILL SIGNING CEREMONY FOR MEGAN'S LAW The Oval Office 10:50 A.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. I want to welcome Senator Grams and Congressman Zimmer, Congresswoman Lofgren, Bonnie Campbell from the Justice Department. This has been a week in which our country is moving to combat crime and violence. A couple of days ago we awarded over 9,000 new police officers to some 2,500 communities. That brings us to 43,000 police officers in 20 months along the road to our goal of 100,000. We're ahead of schedule and under budget. But, today, the valiant presence of five American parents reminds us that this fight against crime is so much more a fight for peace and for safety for our people, and especially for our children. Richard and Maureen Kanka, Patty Wetterling, Marc Klaas and John Walsh have suffered more than any parent should ever have to suffer. They have lived through the greatest pain a parent can know -- a child brutally ripped from a parent's love. And somehow they found within themselves the strength to bear a further burden. They took up the parents' concerns for all children's safety and dedicated themselves to answering that concern. Each of you deserves the fullest measure of your country's thanks. Because of you, steps have already been taken to help families protect their children. Study after study has shown us that sex offenders commit crime after crime. So two years ago, we gave every state the power to notify communities about child sex offenders and violent sex offenders who move into their neighborhoods. We're fighting now to uphold these laws in courts all across the country, and we will fight to uphold them all the way to the Supreme Court. Today we are taking the next step. From now on, every state in the country will be required by law to tell a community when a dangerous sexual predator enters its midst. We respect people's rights, but today America proclaims there is no greater right than a parent's right to raise a child in safety and love. Today, America warns: If you dare to prey on our children, the law will follow you wherever you go, state to state, town to town. Today, America circles the wagon around our children. Megan's Law will protect tens of millions of families from the dread of what they do not know. It will give more peace of mind to our parents. To understand what this law really means, never forget its name -- the name of a seven-year-old girl taken wrongly in the beginning of her life. The law that bears a name of one child is now for every child, for every parent and every family. It is for Polly and Jacob and Adam, and, above all, for Megan. I thank the Congress for passing it. I thank those who led the fight. And I thank these families more than anything else. God bless you all. (The bill is signed.) Q Mr. President, you said here that studies have shown sex offenders commit crime after crime. But, apparently, the courts, especially on the state level, don't seem to recognize that fact. What makes you think that all the way up to the Supreme Court they are going to change that opinion? THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I hope that this law will be upheld if it is challenged. I believe it will be. And before we went forward with this, in consultation with the Congress, including the leaders of Congress who are here now, we did a great deal of legal research on it. And we felt that we could defend it, and we felt that it was right. And Congress has done its job. And now it is our job to get out there and defend this law, and we intend to do it if it's challenged. And in the meanwhile, we intend to enforce it. Q Have you talked to Mrs. Boorda? THE PRESIDENT: I have not because yesterday -- I intend to call her as soon as this is over. But yesterday I asked the Secretary of Defense to determine the family's wishes, and they wanted a day alone, and I understood that. But I intend to speak with her this morning as soon as this is over. Q Mr. President, Pennsylvania Avenue has been closed for a year now and it hasn't exactly become the urban park-like setting that was planned when it was closed. And it is frequently, in fact, cut off from tourist and pedestrian use. What would you like to see? THE PRESIDENT: Well, I would like -- if it is the judgment of the Secret Service and the other security people that we should keep it closed, I would like to see it fixed as it was intended in that plan that was developed about 30 years or so ago and turned into a genuine park so it can be made available to all the many people who live in and around Washington and all those who come here to visit. It's quite a nice space, and with a little investment, it could be made, I think, quite attractive. Right now the skateboarders and the rollerbladers seem to like it, but I'd like to see it made more helpful to more people. THE PRESS: Thank you. END 11:00 A.M. EDT --- FMail/386 1.0g * Origin: Parens patriae Resource Center for Parents 540-896-4356 (1:2629/124) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 210 VICTIMS/FALSEACC Ref: D5Q00001Date: 05/19/96 From: RICK THOMA Time: 03:45am \/To: ALL (Read 1 times) Subj: "Megan's Law" in action Saturday, May 18, 1996 UTAH LAW GETS TOUGH ON SEX OFFENDERS BY VINCE HORIUCHI THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Anyone with suspicions that their neighbor may be a pervert can find out by contacting the Utah Department of Corrections. A Utah law allows any citizen to request, in writing, information about a suspected sex offender living in the neighborhood. A petitioner can find out where the convicted criminal lives, his physical description and type of offense. The state law, passed by the Legislature during the 1996 session, does not apply to offenders convicted before the bill was enacted. Still, Utah's ``Sex Offender Notification Law,'' may satisfy requirements under the national ``Megan's Law,'' signed by President Clinton on Friday morning. ``Megan's Law'' requires states to notify local law-enforcement agencies if a sex offender moves into their community. It also makes that information available to the public. State officials have until September 1997 to establish how the public can be notified, or lose federal anticrime funds. The national bill was named after Megan Kenka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl killed two years ago. A sex offender who lives across the street from her was charged with her murder. ``We just have to take our current statute and evaluate it with what [the federal government is] asking to be done,'' said Dave Walsh, Utah director of programs and budget for the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. The Utah Department of Corrections maintains a sex-offender registry - - a list of sex criminals, including those convicted in other states who move to Utah. Someone convicted of a sex crime in another state must register with the department within 30 days of moving into Utah, said corrections spokesman Jack Ford. Offenders' names may stay on as the register as long as 20 years. Length of stay is determined by how long offenders are on parole, plus an additional 10 years after their parole has ended. Utah corrections officials make that list available to police, and can now provide information to citizens who request it. Rep. Brian R. Allen, R-Cottonwood Heights, who sponsored the Utah law, said it helps citizens identify potential problems with neighbors. ``Obviously, you wouldn't want [the sex offender] to baby-sit your kids or let your kids jump on his trampoline,'' Allen said. Some, however, are worried the law will promote vigilantism, and some neighbors may be misidentified as sex offenders. ``Who's liable [when] someone has been misidentified?'' corrections spokesman Ford asked, ``Especially with some common names.'' Earlier this year, residents took action against a man who had pleaded no contest for molesting a 4-year-old relative. The victim's family hired a private investigator to send out 5,000 fliers warning people the molester had been convicted of two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child in Texas and that he was now living in Utah. Allen said the new Utah law will not create a ``mob mentality. It's more like an insurance policy than a retribution tool.'' COPYRIGHT 1996, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE --- FMail/386 1.0g * Origin: Parens patriae Resource Center for Parents 540-896-4356 (1:2629/124) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 210 VICTIMS/FALSEACC Ref: D5Q00002Date: 05/20/96 From: RICK THOMA Time: 01:33am \/To: ALL (Read 1 times) Subj: (Part 3 of Globe series) A frightening search for homes BY JUDITH GAINES, GLOBE STAFF, 04/23/96 The children had begged to stay with their mother, but social workers decided Brenda was incapable of caring for them. Now they were going from foster home to foster home, getting therapy and seeing Brenda once a week during supervised visits. As the months wore on, the family seemed no closer to reuniting for good. BROCKTON - Seven-year-old Corey had been in his new, split-level foster home for less than two days when the foster mother complained that her home life was becoming intolerable. Sad, wild Corey had tried, half-heartedly, to run away, but his foster father easily caught him. He had slugged a neighborhood boy in the face, giving him a bloody nose. When the boy's mother tried to intervene, Corey had yelled, ``Shut up, bitch.'' He had been swearing profusely. Dawn O'Laughlin, who already had four other foster children and her own daughter in her care, was upset by Corey's understandable, if exhausting, outbursts. With the situation deteriorating rapidly, social workers agreed that Corey must be moved to another foster home. It was the first of many placements for Brenda Austin-Thomas' four youngest children, who had been taken from her largely because she failed to give them structure and a sense of limits. At first, their life under the care of the Department of Social Services was hardly more stable. For Corey, who was suffering from what a psychologist later described as ``a feeling there is nothing good he can say about himself,'' the trauma of separation and implied rejection was more than he could stand. He had screamed obscenities when he was first placed in the O'Laughlin home. Still, when it became clear that he was being moved again, he threw a fit and refused to budge. The social worker dragged him to her car, where he cried and kicked. Then he curled up in a ball and moaned ``No, no'' as she drove him to the next foster family, where she hoped he would feel more at home. He barely lasted 20 minutes there. At first, Corey refused even to enter the small, Spanish-style home, although the foster mother - a Hispanic woman with a black eye patch and generous smile - greeted him warmly. When he finally ventured inside, he stayed in an unlit hallway, unwilling to meet her two polite foster sons. Foster mother Donna Monteiro and a social worker named Teresa Barnette sat at the kitchen table, discussing the situation. How did he do in the last foster home, Monteiro wanted to know? Teresa admitted there had been problems. While they discussed his future, Corey slumped in the darkness on a stair step. A table in the hall was lined with trophies; he wanted to sling them all on the floor, break things, make noise, be as destructive as possible. Then his negative thoughts turned on himself. He wanted to go to a store and buy a knife ``so I can stab myself again and again and make myself die.'' Or maybe, he said, he would ``bash my head in with one of these trophies.'' The foster mother decided Corey was more than she could handle. ``My heart goes out to these troubled kids,'' she said. ``But I've seen ones like him before, and I know they don't work out.'' One of the problems DSS often comes up against, Teresa said, is that some foster children develop a reputation. Every foster parent asks: How did they do last time? After a few bad experiences, prospective families are reluctant to take on a 51-pound load of trouble like Corey. So there it was: Friday night, about 7:30. One of Teresa's daughters, age 7, whom she had picked up from day care en route to the first foster home, was tired and hungry. Corey, barely 7 himself, was talking about taking his own life. Now he had nowhere to go, no one who wanted him. Worried about what Corey would do next, Teresa used Donna Monteiro's telephone to call police - to help her transport him to a mental health screening center. They waited a half hour, but no officers arrived. So Teresa proceeded on her own, telling Corey she was taking him someplace where doctors could help him. He did not protest. In the 53 hours since DSS had taken Corey from his mother, it was the first time he had gone anywhere willingly. At a multi-service health center in Brockton, doctors decided Corey's problems were real: Late that night he was committed to the children's ward at Pembroke Mental Hospital. Barely a week later, social workers concluded that the O'Laughlin home was the wrong place for 9-year-old Michael, too. The four foster children already living there included one boy his age, who was jealous and acting out. And Michael was too mouthy. ``He thinks everything's a joke,'' Dawn O'Laughlin said. A diabetic, O'Laughlin was entering her sixth month of pregnancy and having troubles with it. As her visits to the hospital became more frequent, her sister, also a foster mother, began assuming responsibility for her sister's five charges, as well as three of her own. Michael was one problem too many. All week long, he and his siblings - who were scattered in three homes around the South Shore - had been anticipating a Friday trip to DSS offices, where they had been promised an hour-long visit with their mother and each other. But the reunion was canceled when Brenda forgot to comply with an agency rule that she call by 9 a.m. to confirm that she would be there. Michael had been the man-in-charge at his mother's home - ``parentified, '' in DSS lingo. He arrived at the office expecting to find his family, and was stunned to discover he was alone. ``Where are my brother and sisters?'' he asked. ``Why am I here?'' He was going to another foster home, the caseworker explained, gently as she could. As reality sank in, Michael tried to be brave, fighting back tears. His face was drawn. He didn't like that other foster mother anyway, he said. She had blamed him unfairly for the other boy's behavior. But leaving the school where he was just settling in was going to be hard. His new fourth grade teacher had given him a good part in an upcoming Christmas play, and now, again, he was moving. Ten days later, Teresa decided that 6-year-old Tanya and Melanie, 3, had to be moved, too. They had been staying with Josephine Hardy, an elderly woman who came to Boston 35 years ago from Atlanta and became a foster mother to fill the emptiness after her husband died. A tall, big-boned woman with a heavy Southern accent, she had raised a dozen or so children, grandchildren and foster kids in a dingy yellow wood triple-decker with brown trim. But the girls had been happy in Hardy's home, where she also cared for two other foster children and two of her own grandchildren. Tanya [cont] --- FMail/386 1.0g * Origin: Parens patriae Resource Center for Parents 540-896-4356 (1:2629/124) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 210 VICTIMS/FALSEACC Ref: D5Q00003Date: 05/20/96 From: RICK THOMA Time: 01:34am \/To: ALL (Read 1 times) Subj: (Part 3 : 02) called Hardy ``grandmother'' and little Melanie routinely climbed in her arms to fall asleep. ``They seem to need petting,'' Hardy said. The problem was that Hardy's apartment was located just blocks from the home where the girls' mother still lived, and Tanya passed that way to and from school. It was a constant reminder of what had happened to her, and the consequences were taking a toll on the first- grader. She was wetting herself as often as 10 times a day. At school, she was functioning at a nursery school level. Teachers said she clung to them at the end of each day, begging not to be forced to go home. Even Brenda had requested that the girls be moved farther away, which caseworker Teresa viewed as a sign of strength. ``It's one of the first signs of her thinking of her children's needs first,'' she said. So the girls were transferred, quietly and uneventfully, to the home of Dawn and Bob O'Laughlin, where their brothers had stayed and been made to leave. But soon Tanya's physical condition began to deteriorate. She was wetting herself more and more often, and emitting a fecal body odor. Then her urine turned black. Her foster mother took her to a hospital emergency room, where doctors attributed the wetting to anxiety, some sort of physical manifestation of her lack of control over her life. Her bowels also were severely impacted, ``from trying to hold everything in,'' one said. Then doctors discovered something else: Anal inflammation and scarred tissue which they believed were consistent with having been sexually abused with an object. Tanya was upset at the emergency room - crying, kicking, recoiling when anyone tried to touch her. The next day Teresa said she asked her why. ``Mommy,'' were the little girl's first words. ``What about mommy?'' Teresa asked. ``She touches me.'' ``Where?'' ``Down there,'' said Tanya, pointing to her vagina. She said Karen Gibson, an aunt who lived with the family, did it to her, too, ``using gloves.'' That day, the social worker filed an official 51-A form, reporting an allegation of sexual abuse and identifying the mother and the aunt as the perpetrators - charges that ultimately would be unprovable against the women or anyone else. The form arrived in Brenda Austin-Thomas' mailbox on Dec. 2. It was her birthday. SIDEBAR 1 REIMBURSEMENTS To foster parents from DSS:..... SIDEBAR 2 DSS BY THE NUMBERS Number of families involved with DSS, 1995...... This story ran on page 1 of the Boston Globe on 04/23/96. --- FMail/386 1.0g * Origin: Parens patriae Resource Center for Parents 540-896-4356 (1:2629/124) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 210 VICTIMS/FALSEACC Ref: D5Q00004Date: 05/19/96 From: CHARLES RING Time: 07:19pm \/To: RICK THOMA (Read 1 times) Subj: Stroudsburg: Finale RT> THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE SUES SCHOOL DISTRICT ON BEHALF OF RT> VIOLATED JUNIOR HIGH GIRLS DID ANYONE NOTICE that sixth-grade BOYS were similarly examined by the FEMALE DOCTOR and NO ONE SEEMS TO MIND????? --- * Origin: W3NU Online Sharon, PA (412) 346-5535 (1:2601/100) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 210 VICTIMS/FALSEACC Ref: D5Q00005Date: 05/20/96 From: DENNIS JAMES Time: 09:48am \/To: CHARLES RING (Read 1 times) Subj: Stroudsburg: Finale Hello Charles! Sunday May 19 1996 19:19, Charles Ring wrote to Rick Thoma: RT>> THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE SUES SCHOOL DISTRICT ON BEHALF OF RT>> VIOLATED JUNIOR HIGH GIRLS CR> DID ANYONE NOTICE that sixth-grade BOYS were similarly examined by the CR> FEMALE DOCTOR and NO ONE SEEMS TO MIND????? Yep...course thats alright..they are only male...and unimportant in our PC country. Dennis --- FMail/386 1.0g * Origin: DisAbility Hotline BBS -San Antonio,Texas-210-979-6150 (1:387/590) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 210 VICTIMS/FALSEACC Ref: D5R00000Date: 05/21/96 From: CHARLES RING Time: 11:05pm \/To: DENNIS JAMES (Read 1 times) Subj: Stroudsburg: Finale RT>>> THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE SUES SCHOOL DISTRICT ON BEHALF OF RT>>> VIOLATED JUNIOR HIGH GIRLS CR>> DID ANYONE NOTICE that sixth-grade BOYS were similarly examined CR>> by the FEMALE DOCTOR and NO ONE SEEMS TO MIND????? DJ> Yep...course thats alright..they are only male...and unimportant in DJ> our PC country. I still think it's incredible that NO ONE, including the non-PC Michael Reagan whose talk show spread the news of this atrocity, even bothered to ask about the boys. The report here is the only place where I heard this: === Cut === The state form asks physicians if a student's genitalia are normal or abnormal. Heath said it is up to the doctors to decide how they want to conduct that part of the test. "In this particular situation, the doctor that we had this year did an external visual exam," Heath said. Vahanvaty said she examined sixth-grade boys and conducted physicals on 59 girls. During each examination, a female nurse was present. === Cut === No one questions this?? --- * Origin: W3NU Online Sharon, PA (412) 346-5535 (1:2601/100) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 210 VICTIMS/FALSEACC Ref: D5S00000Date: 05/21/96 From: RICK THOMA Time: 02:59am \/To: ALL (Read 1 times) Subj: (Part 4 of Globe series) The caseworker: on a mission BY JUDITH GAINES, GLOBE STAFF, 04/24/96 At 33, Teresa was five years younger than Brenda. Now she had control over Brenda's family. If Brenda had been negligent, as the state charged, she had to be diligent to get her four children back. But Brenda kept missing appointments and ignoring advice. Teresa felt both up to and overcome by the work ahead of her. Late one December evening, five weeks after 6-year-old Tanya had been taken from her mother, two social workers hurried her from an East Bridgewater foster home to Children's Hospital in Boston. Tanya had been listless and fevered all day, hardly talking, walking in baby steps, her small body bent over from pain. She had not moved her bowels in 10 days. Now she was scared, clinging to the social worker-in-charge, Teresa Barnette. Watching her, holding her, Teresa worried that the little girl was poisoning herself with her own fecal toxins and would cause her colon to rupture. In situations like this one, Teresa could have gone home and let the Department of Social Services' auxiliary night staff take over. Normal office hours were long past. But the auxiliaries would have been strangers to Tanya, and she was anxious enough already. So the veteran social worker - herself a single mother of three -had hastily dropped off her own children, ages 3 and 5, at her mother's. Her 7-year-old daughter was now curled on a couch in the hospital lobby, dozing fitfully. She just wanted her mother to take her home. Dedicated, compassionate, tough, Teresa saw the situation simply: Tanya was at risk. Tanya needed her. The social worker's own family would have to wait. Shortly before midnight, Tanya was admitted to the hospital, where she would remain for more than a week and then return for surgery. Later doctors would say that she could have died from pelvic infections, if they had not been tended to so quickly. During both those stays, the 6-year-old had not a single visitor - not even her own mother. More than anything else, the case of Brenda Austin-Thomas, whose four youngest children were taken from her on Nov. 1, was a drama of disconnection. Brenda seemed to love her children, but was consistently uninvolved in their lives. Alarmed, Teresa broke up the family, even sending the children to separate foster homes. Her hope was to one day unify the family in a healthier way. In many respects, the two protagonists were polar opposites. The 38- year-old mother: passive and withdrawn, often confused, unable to take charge of her home or to act with conviction on her own behalf, even as her life was unraveling around her. The 33-year-old social worker: resolute, driven by a kind of moral fervor, putting herself on the line at any hour of the day, intent on making families whole by her own standards. Yet their lives were linked by more than bureaucratic connections. Both were single black mothers, separated from their husbands, struggling to get by. As girls, both had known the pain of being separated from their own parents. Both had lived, uncomfortably, with foster families for a time. As Teresa went about her daily duties, juggling her three children and all the others in the 20 or so cases typically under her supervision, she often thought back to her own childhood in Cape Verde. In a rural village without electricity or running water, she was born into a family of 12 children, her father a carpenter, her mother a homemaker. But the feeling of family unity somehow eluded them, and Teresa yearned for it. Her parents, searching for a better life, had moved to the United States when she was 5 - but they left Teresa and her siblings behind. She was placed in the care of her grandmother, a strict woman with a houseful of rules. Her brothers and sisters were scattered in the homes of several other relatives. Teresa did not see her mother again until she was 11, when Teresa moved to the Boston area. By then, her mother had given birth to another son. When her family reunited, she said, ``it was like getting to know each other all over again.'' What Teresa knew about nurturing came mainly from her third grade English teacher, whose heart reached far beyond the classroom. She taught her how to bake cookies and took her on nature walks. She was forever finding injured animals and nursing them back to health. She became Teresa's role model. Always trying to better herself, Teresa put herself through college, the first in her family to go beyond high school. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in modern languages from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth in 1985, she channeled her middle-class aspirations into the daunting world of social work. It was a logical choice. Teresa wanted to repay her teacher for all her help. Somewhere deep in her blood, she said, ``I knew what people needed when they're separated, and how they can get back together.'' In Boston's Cape Verdean community, she had always been a social worker, one way or another. She was always taking somebody to see a doctor or lawyer, translating for them in her native Criullo, figuring out how to work the system on their behalf. Some people might have balked at intervening so deeply in so many other lives. But Teresa charged ahead, doggedly. She believed anybody could raise themselves up. She had no qualms about telling people how to do that. After 10 years with the Department of Social Services, Teresa remained committed to the job, despite pay so low that she often worked weekends at a homeless shelter or a mental health clinic to support her family. Before and after joining DSS, she got herself intimately involved in other people's affairs. She even made momentous decisions for them - such as whether Tanya should have surgery, and whether her 7-year-old brother, Corey, should be sent to a mental hospital. Yet, she was intensely private herself. At 33, she was older and more experienced than most of the six other social workers, all women, in supervisor Sam Celia's unit. Together, they occupied one large room with desks crammed along the walls and a small, glass-enclosed office for Celia. The women shared perceptions and sometimes duties, stepping into each other's cases in emergencies. But they had a common complaint: They were always harried, always rushing to keep up with their cases. Through it all, Teresa was forever trying to help. Two years ago, when a co-worker was ill and anxious and afraid he was dying, other people offered him kind words and condolences. Teresa, ever practical, brought him self-help books about healing. To ease their own anxieties, the women sometimes stole time for power walks at lunch and told jokes that outsiders might consider macabre. The social workers were required to visit each of the families under their supervision at least once a month. Every interaction had to be [cont] --- FMail/386 1.0g * Origin: Parens patriae Resource Center for Parents 540-896-4356 (1:2629/124) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 210 VICTIMS/FALSEACC Ref: D5S00001Date: 05/21/96 From: RICK THOMA Time: 02:59am \/To: ALL (Read 1 times) Subj: (Part 4: 02) documented in detail and in longhand (since the office was not fully computerized), creating reams of paperwork. Meanwhile, clients called constantly. Teresa was responsible for scores of young lives. Over the winter, she had to watch out for nearly 90 children - 19 of them in foster homes, each of them with special needs. ``Everyone always wants a piece of me,'' she said. In the Austin- Thomas case alone, ``I feel like each of these kids needs their own social worker. They're very high-risk kids.'' Despite a talent at negotiating the system, Teresa felt hemmed in. She was constantly frustrated by the lack of resources available to help Brenda's children, and her many other clients in the increasingly bizarre and time-consuming cases that fell her way. For instance, she could not arrange a suitable site for visits until four months after the family had been separated. Or schedule a prompt psychological exam to determine if Tanya had been sexually abused. Or find any foster home that would accept all four children, which might have helped to ease their grief. But despite all the trauma, the risks, the problems that this difficult case was causing, Teresa was certain she had done right by taking the children from their mother. ``I'd do it again, 20 times over, '' she said late one February afternoon, as she drove Brenda's two daughters to yet another new foster home. Teresa's attentiveness earned her the children's affection. But she was loathed by their mother, who could barely stand to look at her. In Brenda's eyes, Teresa was a condescending know-it-all, who didn't visit her often enough or understand her well enough to be messing in her private business. Brenda insisted that, in fact, she had wanted to visit Tanya when the little girl was alone in the hospital. But DSS had decreed that Teresa would have to accompany her. Brenda said her phone calls went unanswered. Teresa said she never called. While Tanya recuperated from surgery that successfully corrected a congenital bladder problem, the mother and social worker were at a standoff, yet again. It was the same sort of push-pull Brenda felt during the holidays, when a DSS practice prevented her from seeing her children. The hope was that her anguish would compel her to set herself straight. ``She don't talk to me about do I need this, do I need that,'' Brenda complained, about a week before her case would be reviewed by a Brockton District Court judge. ``Teresa never listens to me. How can Teresa judge?'' This story ran on page 1 of the Boston Globe on 04/24/96. --- FMail/386 1.0g * Origin: Parens patriae Resource Center for Parents 540-896-4356 (1:2629/124) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 210 VICTIMS/FALSEACC Ref: D5S00002Date: 05/21/96 From: RICK THOMA Time: 03:16am \/To: CHARLES RING (Read 1 times) Subj: Stroudsburg: Finale > RT> THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE SUES SCHOOL DISTRICT ON BEHALF OF > RT> VIOLATED JUNIOR HIGH GIRLS > DID ANYONE NOTICE that sixth-grade BOYS were similarly examined > by the FEMALE DOCTOR and NO ONE SEEMS TO MIND????? In the dozen or more articles I have read I have seen no mention of boys being so examined. This is not to say that it didn't happen, rather to say that if it did it wasn't widely reported. I have recently obtained a tape of an interview with one of the Rutherford attorneys which I have yet to listen to. I'll let you know if there is any mention of it. When I'm done with the Boston Globe series, I may post some more Stroudsburg related articles. Evidently, this event has caused quite a stir. --- FMail/386 1.0g * Origin: Parens patriae Resource Center for Parents 540-896-4356 (1:2629/124)