Noteworthy News Articles on Mental Health Topics, October 6-15, 2000

One in Four Americans Still Smoking
Associated Press, 10/6/2000

ATLANTA -- The number of American adults who smoke held steady in 1998 at one in four -- a rate that hardly budged during the 1990s despite anti-tobacco campaigns and new kick-the-habit aids like nicotine gum and the patch. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday that 24.1 percent of Americans 18 and older smoked cigarettes in 1998, the latest year for which figures are available. The rate was 24.7 percent in 1997 and 25.5 percent in 1990. The numbers fall far short of the CDC's goal of cutting the adult smoking rate to 15 percent by 2000.
    The nation's smoking rate has dropped sharply since 1965, when 44 percent of adults were smokers. The figure leveled off in the 1990s -- hovering between 24.1 and 26.5 percent -- in part because smoking increased among 18-to-24-year-olds, who probably started in high school, the CDC said. Dr. Corinne Husten, a medical officer with the CDC Office on Smoking and Health, said there are signs the smoking rate can go much lower. The 1998 survey found that only 11.3 percent of college-educated adults smoke and 39.2 percent of adult smokers had tried to quit in the preceding year.

High Court to Review Sex Offender Release
Kirk Mitchell, Denver Post, 10/7/2000

The Colorado Supreme Court surprised Attorney General Ken Salazar on Friday when it granted a new hearing on whether sex offenders can be placed on mandatory five-year parole terms. The high court ruled Sept. 18 that a 1993 law imposing the mandatory sentences did not apply to sex offenders covered by a 1979 law that makes parole discretionary and limits the number of years offenders can be supervised. "It was a pleasant surprise," Salazar said Friday evening. "Admittedly it was a long shot, given the court's 7-0 decision, but I am pleased we will get another day to try to persuade the court."
    Salazar said the wording in the Friday order gave him hope that he can win a reversal. He said the point can be made that the thrust of all legislation for sex offenders has been to increase scrutiny, not eliminate it. The Supreme Court order said the decision to rehear the case was made because of the number of sex offenders that could be affected by its ruling and because of public safety issues. The court will hear the Vance Martin case along with four other related sex offender cases. The ruling would affect as many as 900 sex offenders who were convicted between 1993 and 1996, including 170 child molesters and rapists on parole. The four other cases happened between 1996 and 1998, when the legislature passed the lifetime supervision law for sex offenders.
    Martin pleaded guilty in 1994 to sexual assault on a child by someone in a position of trust. He was sentenced to five years of probation. But after two probation violations, he pleaded guilty and was resentenced in 1997 to four years in prison and five years of mandatory parole. Martin appealed the sentencing, arguing that the 1979 law limited the amount of time sex offenders can be placed on parole. He argued sex offenders could not be placed on parole for longer than their prison sentences, or couldn't be placed on parole at all if they had served more than five years in prison.
    The Supreme Court on Friday said its earlier decision will not take effect until the court makes a decision after the rehearing, Supreme Court spokeswoman Sherry Patten said. Martin - or any of the sex offenders affected by the ruling - will not receive a new sentence until the issue is decided, Patten said. Last week, the state Department of Corrections started releasing sex offenders from parole and prison before Salazar halted further releases on Sept. 30.  A total of 84 offenders were notified they were no longer on parole, and nine were released from prison.  Acting on Salazar's recommendation, 82 of the parolees have been returned to parole, but the nine who were released from prison are still free.  Salazar said the decision to release sex offenders was made by lower-level officials and not by either him or Department of Corrections chief John Suthers. "I am appalled that it happened," Salazar said. "It was not appropriate. It was a breach of protocol." He said his office is currently reviewing how the decision was made. He may establish new procedures as a result. Suthers was out of state and could not be reached Friday.
    But Corrections Department spokeswoman Alison Morgan said the department relied on the recommendation of an attorney in Salazar's office as it does routinely in similar matters. "We were following procedure and following the recommendation of the attorney general's office," Morgan said. Morgan said the Corrections Department is awaiting further instruction from Salazar concerning the nine sex offenders who were released from prison. A district judge refused to sign arrest warrants for the convicts Thursday.  Salazar's staff may file a new petition for search warrants based on the Supreme Court's latest decision, Salazar said.
    Meantime, Salazar said he has also recommended to the Corrections Department that if any of the nine have failed to register an address with local law enforcement, as required by law, that they be arrested. The department has already notified police departments and sheriff's offices in the areas the nine are living about their status, Morgan said. Local law enforcement must make those arrests, she said. Sex offenders released directly from prison without going on parole have two days to register their names with law enforcement. Otherwise, they have five working days to register, Morgan said.

Gay Students Gain Safety, Acceptance in Alliances
Bonnie Miller Rubin & Diana Strzalka, Chicago Tribune- 10/8/2000

When plans for a gay club at Kennedy High School on the city's Southwest Side surfaced last week, some community members denounced the proposal, saying it was not only immoral but would target gay students for harassment and disrupt education. Teens involved in such clubs, however, say the groups actually create a bulwark against abuse.  "I would be physically or verbally attacked almost every day," said Tom Wartell, a recent graduate of Naperville Central who played a key role in creating a group for gay and straight students there last year. "Its very presence made life tolerable." Wartell was one of about 800 teens and adults at the national convention of the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a national organization dedicated to fighting homophobia in schools. The conference opened Friday in Arlington Heights and continues through Sunday. The issue of gay-straight student alliances dominated the agenda Friday, with one workshop suggesting how to "Turn your GSA into a highly-efficient, outspoken homophobia-fighting machine." Such groups were introduced about a decade ago and are becoming almost as familiar on the high school scene as debate club or yearbook, with some 800 groups nationwide. In Chicago-area high schools, there are about 25 such clubs, from Marshall and Whitney Young in the city to New Trier, Glenbard West and Wheaton-Warrenville South in the suburbs. While a few have started without so much as a raised eyebrow, the community uproar witnessed at Kennedy is far more typical.
    "I'm not against them, but I'm against having a club in school," said Richard Zilka, president of the Garfield Ridge Civic League in the conservative, working-class neighborhood where Kennedy students live. "We don't want sex in our schools." Zilka's sentiments were echoed by other board members who viewed the group as a distraction and a safety risk. Inside the school, though, the response has been more supportive, said Ron Cozzalino, head of the school's guidance department. He said he hopes straight students will join the group in support of gay students.   "It's not easy for a kid that is 15 or 16 and coming out," Cozzalino said. Opponents of such groups usually come up against the Equal Access Act, a federal law prohibiting schools from selectively denying clubs on the basis of content. In other words, if the Young Republicans can meet on school property, so can gay students.
    However, in some communities across the country the anti-GSA contingent is so strong that the decision is ultimately left to the courts. The Salt Lake City Board of Education took the strongest action, deciding in 1996 it would rather eliminate all clubs than allow the formation of a GSA. "It's the scorched-earth policy ... it's better to harm all students than protect a few," said David Buckel of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which has played a role in a number of the nation's high-profile cases. Thursday, after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation, Salt Lake City quietly lifted the ban on extracurricular activities. Now, all clubs--including a GSA--will be allowed to meet on school property, a victory lauded by many at the conference.
    A small group of protesters picketed the meeting outside the Arlington Sheraton Hotel on Friday, saying they are morally opposed to the gay-straight alliances and worry that the groups "endorse and promote" homosexuality.  "If it's going to be in school then two sides ought to be presented," said Peter LaBarbara. "Why should their opinion be the only one allowed?" Supporters counter that the case for heterosexuality is made with every school dance and election of a homecoming king and queen--sending a clear message to gay students that they fall outside the norm.  At Sandburg High School in Orland Park, members of a gay-straight club have been meeting over the past month with administrators to discuss what the students describe as an intolerant atmosphere in the school, including the use of offensive language.
    Tim Brown, superintendent of Orland High School District 230, said comments against homosexuals will no longer be tolerated. Administrators at the high school also plan to expand their harassment policy to ban discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. Sandburg's gay-straight club meets on a weekly basis, Brown said, and is comparable to other student groups that have unofficial status at the school, such as a Muslim group that prays in the afternoon.  Julie Libes, who started Lane Tech's club in 1997, credits such organizations with helping not just students like her, but straight students as well. "If nothing else," said Libes, an Oberlin College sophomore, "it made them think about their homophobia."
    Seeing a notice for a GSA as an 8th grader at University of Chicago Lab School validated Hannah Garber-Paul's feelings of being different and ultimately led to self-acceptance, she said. "I went from `There are gay and lesbian students' to `I could know some' to `I could be' to `I am,'" said Garber-Paul, now a senior at the school. Betty Lark Ross said that had there been a GSA when she attended Schurz High School 30 years ago it would have transformed her adolescence. "At the time I was in high school, this was unthinkable. [Being a lesbian] was considered degenerate behavior," said Ross, an art teacher at Latin School who has spent 15 years with her partner. "When things are out in the open, you can live a life of integrity. You don't have to be afraid."
    Numerous studies show that gay students' fears are well-founded. They are five times more likely to skip school because they feel unsafe, seven times more likely to have been threatened or injured by a weapon at school and four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A recent Gallup poll of students ages 13-17 found that "hatred of gay people" is one of the most common topics voiced by violent students. Safety was key in a change of heart for Joyce Kenner, principal of Whitney Young High School, about gay-straight alliances. Though she had opposed the creation of a GSA in 1996, today she says it was her own "ignorance and bias" that shaded her reaction. Whitney Young was the first Chicago Public School to deal with the controversy. "We're dealing with teenagers and they are still young people who need guidance and advice," Kenner said. "These are kids, period, and they need to be protected."

Indians Cast Out Liquor
Linda Ashton, Associated Press- 10/9/2000

TOPPENISH, Wash. (AP) -- The Yakama Nation was hoping to temper the ravages of alcohol abuse when it banned alcohol sales on its sprawling reservation in south-central Washington. But most tavern owners -- who are not tribal members -- have kept the liquor flowing since the ban was enacted three weeks ago, and they are looking to the state that issues their liquor licenses for protection. The state attorney general has sued tribal officials contending that, despite Yakama Nation sovereignty, it cannot legally impose its regulations on the 20,000 non-tribal members living on the reservation. Yakama leaders in turn have asked U.S. Attorney Jim Shively in Spokane to enforce an 1830s federal law that prohibits intoxicants on Indian land. ''As some kind of tribal ordinance, we don't have the resources to enforce it,'' said Tribal Councilman Jack Fiander, a lawyer.  Tribal leaders are not interested in prosecuting alcohol possession for personal use; instead they are targeting sales.
    Alcohol is frequently cited as a problem for some of the 2.4 million Indians in 558 tribes in the United States. Leaders on reservations across the country have taken various steps to deal with it. On the Yakama reservation, home to 5,000 tribal members, empty liquor bottles are found at nearly every crime scene. There are 13 unsolved homicides involving young Indian women, most of whom were last seen in a local tavern. Alcohol has long been banned from the parts of the reservation open to tribal members only, as well as at its casino and convenience store.
    ''The Lower Yakima Valley is a fairly small, mostly rural area.   To have 50-plus commercial establishments selling alcohol, that's too big a part of the economy,'' Fiander said. He told of a grocery store owner complaining the ban would kill her business, which earns 78 percent of its profits from beer and wine sales. ''That was sort of our point -- if 80 percent of your profits were from selling alcohol, that's not a grocery store. It's a liquor store.'' Earlier this year, the state closed its two liquor stores on the reservation, but the owners of 47 other businesses that sell alcohol could lose their livelihoods and their investments to the ban. ''This business is not worth a dime,'' Buster Windsor, owner of Little John's tavern in Toppenish, said when the ban took effect Sept. 17. ''I couldn't give it away.''    
    State Attorney General Christine Gregoire has asked the U.S. District Court in Spokane to find that the liquor resolution does not apply to people who are not tribal members or on property owned by nonmembers.  The state filed the lawsuit reluctantly, and has no quarrel with the tribe's efforts to regulate its own members, said Gary Larson, a spokesman for Gregoire's office. ''We're very understanding about the desire of the tribe to address the serious problems of alcohol,'' Larson said. The suit, he said, was intended to clarify whether the tribe could impose restrictions on non-tribal members who didn't have a vote in the decision to implement this ban.
    Yakama leaders started talking about the restrictions in 1993 after studying fetal alcohol syndrome, which can afflict children born to mothers who consumed excessive amounts of alcohol during pregnancy. The rate of children born with the birth defects is about 500 percent higher on the Yakama reservation than in society at large, Fiander said.  The rate of traffic deaths also is higher, said Gary Carter, an environmental health officer for the tribe. From 1993 to 1996, 78 percent of all motor vehicle deaths on the reservation were alcohol-related, compared with 39 percent for the state of Washington and 48 percent for the nation. For the last two years, the Blackfeet Tribal Council in Montana has banned alcohol sales during certain celebrations. ''They recognize our heritage and culture and tradition without alcohol,'' said Emorie Davis-Bird, director of the Blackfeet Department of Revenue.
    Similar to the Yakama Nation, the Blackfeet reservation is a checkerboard of privately and tribal-owned land. Most of the taverns, licensed by both the state of Montana and the Blackfeet tribe, are owned by non-Indians, she said.  There were complaints but in the end ''everyone was very respectful,'' Davis-Bird said. Statistics showed later there were fewer arrests and disturbances during the events. Across the country, there are both dry and wet reservations. In Washington state, the Makah reservation is dry, for example, but three others have tribal liquor stores.   At the Tulalip reservation, in western Washington, the role of alcohol is constantly debated. The center of the reservation, where most tribal functions occur, is alcohol-free, but liquor is sold at a casino and three stores on the eastern edge of the reservation.
    In Nebraska, Indian activists have unsuccessfully tried to shut down white-owned liquor stores in Whiteclay, two miles from the dry Pine Ridge Indian Reservation over the state line in South Dakota. Four stores in Whiteclay sell millions of dollars worth of beer each year, most of it to Oglala Sioux. The Yakamas may be breaking new ground by going from wet to dry. ''As far as I know, we're the first tribe that's done this by changing course midway through its history,'' Fiander said. ''It's symbolic when you enact something that excludes alcohol from the reservation. It's like you're casting it out.''

Alcohol Use Top College Campus Problem
Associated Press, 10/9/2000

WORCESTER, Mass.--David M. Eskew, a senior at the College of the Holy Cross, knows that if he drinks more than four beers at a party, his behavior will change. ''I've had a couple of occasions where I had a few too many,'' the 21-year-old told the Worcester Sunday Telegram. ''I've never been sick, but have been uncomfortable with the extent of drinking. From experience, I've learned to stop.''
    Alcohol consumption is the No. 1 problem on college campuses across the country. But even as some students drink until they get sick or pass out, colleges are not giving up the effort to slow consumption. Eighty-five percent of 65,033 college students responding to a nationwide survey last year said they drink alcohol, and 46.8 percent of students said they had consumed five or more drinks in one sitting, according to the Core Institute, a nonprofit organization based at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. At Assumption College, alcohol abuse contributes to the majority of violations on campus, which can number anywhere from 200 to 800 a year.
    College administrators in Central Massachusetts say that while alcohol education programs help, it is virtually impossible to stop student drinking. Instead, they are encouraging students to drink responsibly if they do use alcohol. The alcohol-related death of a Holy Cross junior earlier this year was the second involving a Holy Cross student in as many years. Across the United States, many colleges have rules to control the flow of beer on campus, and administrators and others say there are several other strategies from which to choose.  H. Wesley Perkins, a professor of sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., said the best prevention is to tell students the truth about alcohol and their peers: namely, that many of them are not drinking it.  William DeJong, director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention in Newton, said colleges need to let students know they are part of a responsible majority that either abstains from alcohol or drinks in a mature manner. The center emphasizes limiting availability and access to inexpensive alcohol on campus. Joint efforts between colleges and community officials can encourage restaurants and bars to stop advertising low-priced drink promotions.
    In the areas surrounding campuses, behavior related to drinking has caused periodic problems. On one weekend last year, more than 50 students were arrested near Holy Cross. Ann-Marie Matteucci, alcohol and drug abuse education coordinator at Holy Cross, said non-drinking students are in the minority on most campuses. And there is subtle pressure for them to drink. ''It's pressure to walk into a room and be offered a beer,'' Ms. Matteucci said. ''You have to come up with a reason why you don't want it.''

Illinois County Aiding Young Victims of Domestic Violence
Ken O'Brien, Chicago Tribune- 10/9/2000

They are called the forgotten victims of domestic violence. Children 12 and younger live in nearly half the houses where domestic violence occurs each year, according to the Justice Department. Since January, Groundwork, a program of the Guardian Angel Home in Joliet, Illinois has offered a counseling program for children whose mothers are leaving their partners because of violence. So far, Groundwork has served 25 children ages 5 to 13 in 30-minute to hour-long sessions held once a week.
    The agency started the free program after receiving a $10,000 grant from the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Groundwork recently learned that the grant will be renewed for a second year, said Sister Dorothy Kinsella, a vice president of Guardian Angel Home. In 1986, Groundwork started offering traditional counseling services for children, Kinsella said. But over the years the counselors identified children who were suffering severe effects from living in a home with domestic violence. The counselors recognized that the children needed help with the resulting emotional and behavioral problems, she said. "This [therapy] addresses the hurt that they feel, the torn feelings that they have about their family being apart. With therapy, they are better able to express it and grasp how this has hurt them."
    "We have an epidemic problem that we have to address quickly," said Will County State's Atty. James Glasgow.  Nationally, a woman is beaten every five seconds and is assaulted every three minutes, making domestic violence the leading cause of injury to women, according to Glasgow. Will County prosecutors filed domestic violence charges in 1,347 cases this year through August, according to Glasgow's office.  Last year, Groundwork provided services such as shelter and legal advocacy for 800 to 1,000 families, Kinsella said.
    By receiving the grant to provide therapy for children, Groundwork was able to contract for counseling services through the Family Center, a Guardian Angel Home program, Kinsella said. Three therapists at the Family Center have provided the therapy, she said. "We try to provide a safe environment for them to express their thoughts," said Amy, a therapist who didn't give her last name for safety reasons. "Sometimes, we do it through play therapy so they can show us what they have experienced. Because their mother and their father are involved in the situation, for them to have somebody neutral to talk to, it is very comforting." The therapists try to provide a sense of normalcy to the children, she said. The program provides referral services for fathers and some counseling help for mothers.  "A lot of them are affected by the anxiety that their mom is showing," she said. "Often, I try to talk to the mom too, to calm her down and to try to bring stability to the home."

Sex Offender Still at Large; Eight Arrested
Kirk Mitchell, Denver Post- 10/9/2000

One of nine inmates released because of a state Supreme Court ruling remained at large Sunday night after the remaining eight were put back behind bars. The department is aggressively seeking the ninth, Gary Breazier, 36, who is believed to have left the state, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Alison Morgan said. His mother said he is headed to California.  The arrests were made early Sunday after the Supreme Court agreed late Friday to rehear arguments in the Sept. 18 decision that led to the inmates' release. Corrections authorities crisscrossed the state Sunday with help from officers from the Colorado Inspector General's Office, parole officers and local police, and sheriff's deputies, Morgan said. All the arrests were made without incident. "No one seemed surprised," Morgan said.
    The eight were identified as Michael Acres, Rodney Hanninen, Harold Haslett, Kenneth Hoover, David Kostecki, Joseph Martin, David McCulloch and Randy Salazar.   The inmates were released Sept. 28 and 29 after an attorney in Attorney General Ken Salazar's office recommended they be freed to avoid wrongful-imprisonment lawsuits. The Supreme Court ruled that a 1993 law imposing mandatory five year parole terms on felony convictions could not be applied to sex crimes. It said the law conflicted with a 1979 law that imposed discretionary parole sentences not to exceed the original prison term. The ruling affects up to 900 sex offenders convicted from 1993 to 1996, when a lifetime-supervision law for sex offenders took effect:
- 112 sex offenders, including Breazier, in prison for violating parole. The Supreme Court ruling meant they shouldn't have been on parole in the first place.
- 170 offenders currently on parole. The ruling would end their parole supervision, including regular meetings with parole officers, therapy sessions, random drug tests and travel restrictions.
- 600 offenders now behind bars who would be released in the coming months and years without parole.
    The department had released nine of the 112 parole-violation inmates, and notified 84 of the 170 parolees that their supervision was over, when Salazar halted the action on Sept. 30.  He said it was premature to release the offenders from parole and prison pending a motion to the Supreme Court to rehear the case. While a trial-court judge refused to issue arrest warrants for the nine released inmates last week, the Supreme Court agreed Friday to rehear arguments and that gave Salazar the OK to have the men rearrested, Morgan said. The rehearing may not take place for another 2 1/2 months, Morgan said.

Sister: 'I'm Afraid of Him'
Kirk Mitchell, Denver Post- 10/9/2000

He's mentally ill, a repeat sex offender, and he has AIDS. Gary Breazier, 36, is a dangerous mix of character and circumstances, Colorado law-enforcement officials and family members say. As of Sunday, Breazier is also the only one of nine sex offenders recently released from custody, through an interpretation of a state Supreme Court ruling, who remains free.
    Breazier has been in and out of Breazier prison since 1983 for theft, robbery, sexual assault, harassment and trespassing. In 1988, Breazier was high on LSD when he robbed and sexually assaulted a Longmont Social Services center worker at knife-point, records show. And five years ago he molested his 7-year-old nephew. The boy's father, Breazier's brother-in-law, wonders who will become the next victim. "It's just a matter of time," said the boy's father, who spoke on condition of anonymity to help protect his son's identity. "But the next time he's going to give some poor kid AIDS."
    Breazier was one of nine sex offenders released by the Department of Corrections on Sept. 28 and 29 in the wake of a Sept. 18 Supreme Court ruling. The court ruled that a 1993 law adding five-year mandatory paroles to felony convictions could not be applied to sex crimes. It said a 1979 law limits paroles for sex crimes to no more than the original sentence. Attorney General Ken Salazar said Breazier and eight other inmates shouldn't have been released. He ordered the offenders who'd been told their parole was over back onto parole and sought arrest warrants for the nine released inmates pending a motion to the Supreme Court to rehear the case.
    The last time any relative or parole officer heard from Breazier was hours after his Sept. 29 release from prison. He said he planned to travel and was headed to California, his mother, Donna Do negan of Denver, said Sunday. "He called and said, "I'm finally free. Now I can go wherever I want,'- " Donegan said. "He was happy." Corrections spokeswoman Alison Morgan said police in another state have been put on alert about Breazier. She declined to say which state. Donegan said she doesn't believe her son will re-offend because he's been undergoing therapy. But Breazier's sister and brother-in-law aren't so sure.
    When the brother-in-law learned Breazier had molested his son five years ago while infected with the AIDS virus, he said he could have put a bullet in Breazier's head. "They should have never released him," the brother-in-law said. He and his wife say Breazier is driven by impulse. He walks away from jobs, steals, molests and screams out in rage without provocation or warning. "I don't think he has fear of doing anything," Breazier's sister said. "He's been to prison. He's got that attitude. What does he have to live for?" Breazier and the other eight sex offenders released from custody at the end of September had been behind bars for parole violations. The violations included having contact with children, sexual contact with a cat, and possessing alcohol and pornography. Breazier had been arrested Sept. 14 after he failed to remain in an approved home and missed sex-therapy sessions, Morgan said.   Donegan also said that while on parole, Breazier has been in her home with his other nephews.
    Boulder County District Court records describe Breazier as an "extremely high suicide risk" who was sent to the state psychiatric hospital in Pueblo for evaluation after the 1988 robbery and sexual assault in Longmont. He was sentenced in March 1989 to eight years in prison, where he was raped and contracted AIDS, his mother said. She says Breazier is mentally ill and becomes depressed when he doesn't take his medicine. Breazier was released in 1995 to his sister's home in Dacono. No one else would take him in, his sister said. "Who would?" She and her husband helped Breazier get jobs and attend sexual therapy sessions, she said. Then on the night of May 24, 1995, Breazier sneaked into his 7year-old nephew's bed and molested him. "(Breazier) said he was scared and he didn't know what to do or where to go and that's why he did it," Donegan said. He also had run out of medication and was depressed and wanted to go back to prison, she said.
    His victim hasn't been the same since, his parents say. The once-happy boy became angry and incorrigible after he was molested, his mother said. He was in therapy for two years, she said. "It was worse than murder," the father said. "He ruined his whole life." Breazier was sentenced to four years in prison in October 1995. "I'm afraid of him," his sister said. "He is angry. I think he would break the law so he has a place to stay."

Northwest Heroin Use Is Epidemic
Rene Sanchez, Washington Post- 10/ 9/2000

SEATTLE –– The junkies drift along downtown streets, scrounging for change and another hit. They cluster in alleys waiting for community vans to arrive with clean needles. And by the hundreds they straggle into Kim Murillo's health clinic here every month, doped up and wiped out by heroin. "We're seeing so many people," she said. "Many of them are desperate to quit, but the habit can be extremely hard to break. They think they need it to survive. It's such a vicious cycle."
    It is also an epidemic. No region in the country is having a deadlier struggle with heroin than the Pacific Northwest. The problem is not new, but all signs suggest that it has been getting worse. Deaths from heroin overdoses have more than doubled in King County, which includes Seattle, over the last decade. They have risen so much in the nearest metropolitan area, Portland, Ore., during the same time that the drug is now ranked among the leading causes of death among white men there age 25 to 54.
    Treatment centers in both cities are handling record numbers of heroin cases. Needle exchange programs are besieged with demand. Jailed criminal suspects commonly test positive for the drug. By some estimates, there are now as many as 20,000 heroin addicts around Seattle. In a report this summer, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called some of those statistics the most severe in the nation. Heroin use has been rising across the country, but the overdose fatality rate in the Northwest is twice as high as the national rate. "We have a pretty big chronic user population, and it seems like more and more young people here keep getting recruited to the heroin scene," said Gary Oxman, the director of the Multnomah County Health Department, which covers Portland. "It really is exacting a large social toll on the community."
    Heroin has become a drug of choice, and a public health scourge, in the Northwest for many reasons. It is plentiful, usually smuggled into the port here or north of the border in nearby Vancouver, then whisked down the Interstate 5 corridor by a sophisticated network of traffickers. It is also getting cheaper, often sold for only about $20 a dose. And what's available on the streets is mostly a crudely refined "black tar" heroin made in rural Mexico. Its potency is wildly unpredictable and thus more dangerous for addicts.
    Both Seattle and Portland also are magnets for transient youths fleeing the otherwise largely rural Northwest. Without steady jobs or any other ties to the area, they easily can fall prey to the heroin culture because it is communal and easy to find. "For some this seems to fill a spiritual void," Murillo said. Drug counselors say that underground circles embracing the drug have thrived particularly since Seattle became popularized last decade as a hip haven for "grunge" slackers, artists and musicians. Some local officials even wonder if the frequently rainy, cloudy weather in the region contributes to heroin use. In Portland, Oxman said he believes the heroin problem in the Northwest intensified when traffickers changed their marketing strategy and essentially put the drug on sale. "They figured out it was more profitable to have more people hooked at a lower price," he said.
    The clinic that Murillo directs, Stonewall Recovery Services, aids one of the most troubled groups of addicts, young gay men and lesbians. Some live on the streets of the clinic's neighborhood, which is near downtown and filled with fashionable coffee shops and restaurants. But it is also a hub for the heroin trade. Murillo's staff counsels about 400 addicts a month. The clinic distributes about 36,000 clean needles to heroin users each month, hoping to protect them from diseases such as hepatitis or AIDS. It also enlists a brigade of recovering addicts to roam the area and try to persuade other drug users to get help.
    "A lot of people want to quit, but the availability of heroin around here makes it almost impossible for them to stop," said one of those outreach workers, a 26-year-old addict named Luke, who declined to give his last name for fear of arrest. "You can find it almost on any corner." Dressed all in black with a ponytail, he said that some addicts resist treatment because they no longer see any other way to live. "Once you experience the escapism, it can become your god," he said. "But people are dying. Some of this stuff is so bad that when they do a big slam, it knocks them out."
    Here and in Portland, officials are fighting the problem in part by expanding programs that provide addicts with methadone, an opiate that satisfies a craving for heroin without the same destructive effects. They are also dispatching more health workers into the field to seek out and help heroin junkies. But hundreds of addicts still spend months on waiting lists for treatment. Seattle Mayor Paul Schell recently appointed a community task force to study how the city can better treat heroin addiction. Health officials also are urging the county and the state to shift its philosophy more toward "harm reduction" than abstinence. Giving addicts CPR lessons or safe injection rooms supervised by nurses, they say, could save lives, reduce crime, and slowly but surely lure junkies in from the street for medical help to break their habit. But some elected officials say the steps could promote more heroin use.
    Police also are cracking down. Last month, after a two-year undercover investigation, Seattle narcotics investigators and federal agents arrested nearly two dozen people and charged them with running one of the more organized heroin distribution rings in the city. But they suspect other traffickers are still rolling up and down the Northwest's I-5 corridor. "If you're transporting anything like this, Seattle is conveniently located," said Capt. Jim Pryor, the commander of Seattle's vice and narcotics unit. The recent raid temporarily dried up some of the heroin market in Seattle. Yet it also could have some dire consequences.
    Health officials are bracing for a new rash of overdoses because heroin addicts desperate for a fix that has been harder to find lately apparently have been buying and injecting even cruder forms of the drug, or mixing it with other drugs. "They have been needing much more to get high," Murillo said. "But then something stronger suddenly comes along and they don't realize it." Last year, about 110 people each in metropolitan Portland and Seattle died from heroin overdoses. More than 1,500 heroin addicts are now in treatment around Seattle. Officials say the victims are a diverse group. Some are middle-aged and middle class and held a wide range of prosperous jobs until they succumbed to addiction. "They aren't necessarily just the young, inexperienced, rock-crazed types that people expect," said David Solet, an epidemiologist in the King County Health Department.
    In both Portland and Seattle, public health officials say they are starting to see encouraging results from recent steps to expand treatment and needle exchanges and from the greater use of recovering addicts as mentors to junkies. Overdose deaths have even declined a bit lately. No one is predicting a swift end to the heroin crisis, though. A decade of soaring overdose rates suggests the problem is hardly just a passing fad. "We're making progress, but we're in for a long struggle," Oxman said. "Among young people, this has become just another drug. And I wouldn't say that heroin has just been glamorized to them. The main thing is that it has been normalized. It's regarded with a lot less concern and fear than it once was."

Facts About Sex Offenders
Diane Carman, Denver Post- 10/10/2000

His name is Lee and he's a former sex offender. He spent four years in prison Hin Colorado during which time he received no counseling. "I got more out of six months of counseling through social services after I got out than I got in four years in prison," he said. "In prison it was worthless. I don't think I met a single sincere person in there." Lee was released from prison 12 years ago and has been working, going to college at night and putting his life back together ever since. One thing he has not been doing is reoffending.
    Despite impressions to the contrary, a majority of sex offenders do not reoffend after they are released from prison. But public perceptions are hard to change, so Lee keeps a low profile. While Coloradans struggle to understand what is going on with the release and rearrest of sex offenders from state prison in the past few weeks, it's no time to panic. It is time for the state to take a hard look at how sex offenders are treated and what it's not doing to reduce the chances of them reoffending because the constitutional question is not going to go away.
    The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this session on Washington state's version of the mandatory probation law that is under scrutiny in Colorado. Washington's sexually violent predator commitment law keeps sex offenders confined after their prison sentences have been served. It is being challenged because critics say treatment is inadequate or nonexistent, so the continued state supervision constitutes unlawful punishment - not therapy.  The controversial release of sex offenders from state prisons in Colorado could be just a glimpse of what's to come across the country. Nationally, the debate over how to handle sex offenders already is in full swing, and a movement is building to try to introduce a bit of rational thought to the process.
    According to Bureau of Justice statistics, recidivism rates for sex crimes actually are lower than for other types of crimes. Untreated sex offenders reoffend at a rate of 18.5 percent after their release from prison, compared with a recidivism rate of about 25 percent for drug offenders and 30 percent for offenders convicted of other types of violent crime. Sex offenders who receive treatment have a recidivism rate of 10.9 percent. And if long-term care is available with counseling "boosters" and support groups, the risk is reduced further.
    The problem is with a small portion of the sex offender population - the serious chronic offenders. A Massachusetts study found that 8.5 percent of sex offenders committed 37 percent of the repeat crimes in a 10-year period.  These are the ones who strike fear in communities across the country. Since public safety concerns remain paramount, it's important to reduce the threat from all sex offenders. The chronic cases must be diagnosed more accurately and supervised more intensively, and all offenders should be treated more aggressively. "For too many people, prison is a revolving door," Lee said. "It doesn't have to be that way. "If only people knew that."

Oregon Catholic Church Admits Priest Molested Boys
Joseph B. Frazier, Associated Press- 10/10/2000

PORTLAND, Oregon--The Roman Catholic Church apologized today for one of the largest claims of clergy sexual abuse and settled a lawsuit with 22 men who said they were molested by a priest as far back as 50 years ago.
The amount of the settlement was kept confidential by both sides. The plaintiffs charged in their $44 million lawsuit that the Rev. Maurice Grammond enticed them to engage in sexual acts from 1950 to 1974. The settlement and the church’s apology were announced at the county courthouse in Portland. A state judge and a federal judge acted as mediators in efforts to keep the case from going into a lengthy and expensive trial.

'A Half Century of Shame'
"This settlement ends half a century of fear, secrecy, silence and shame that protected Father Grammond," said David Slader, lawyer for the plaintiffs. Grammond, 80, is a resident of the Alzheimer’s unit of a retirement center in suburban Gresham. The church’s apology, which is to be read in every church in the Archdiocese of Portland, was part of the settlement. In it, Archbishop John Vlazny concedes that "some of the priests" of the archdiocese "have sexually molested children who were entrusted to the care of the church." "To any person who has suffered from abuse by any personnel of the Archdiocese of Portland and to their families, I express my deep regret and ask for pardon and forgiveness," his statement says.
    Over a period of more than three decades, Grammond served at a home for troubled and abused boys in Portland, for parishes in the coastal town of Seaside and in Oakridge, a logging town in the western foothills of the Cascades. Most of the plaintiffs had been altar boys in Seaside, where Grammond spent 20 years before his retirement in 1985. The plaintiffs, who had kept quiet about the sexual abuse for decades, mostly live in Oregon and range in age from 39 to 61. The first lawsuit was filed last year by Joe Elliott, who grew up in Seaside and now lives in Portland. After that, more plaintiffs came forward.
     Doug Ray, now a city councilman in Seaside, has said that from the third or fourth grade until he was a freshman in high school, Grammond subjected him to increasing sexual abuse "as bad as one can imagine, and worse." The lawsuits accused the archdiocese of failure to notify parishioners of Grammond’s past molestations of boys, failure to monitor his activities and advise authorities and failure to have other adults accompany Grammond on camping trips and other youth activities.

Echoes of Massachusetts Case
Slader has said the case was the biggest of its kind after one involving the Rev. James Porter of Massachusetts, who was accused by 99 people of molesting them while they were children in the 1950s and 1960s. He pleaded guilty in 1993 to molesting 28 children and was sentenced to 18 to 20 years in prison. Porter, who married and had four children after leaving the priesthood, also was convicted in Minnesota of molesting a teenage girl, a baby sitter for his children. That conviction was overturned on appeal and a prosecutor opted not to retry him. The Portland archdiocese also has been sued by two men who claim the Rev. Aldo Carlo Orso-Manzonetta, who died in 1996, abused them when they were teenagers at St. Michael the Archangel Church in Portland and that the archdiocese ignored complaints.

Research: Do DWI Offenders Benefit From Victims' Stories?
   Melissa Schorr, ABC News- 10/11/2000

BOSTON--Gene Gierek, 46, recognizes apathy in an alcoholic’s eyes. Every month, Gierek drives down to the First Congregational Church in Bellvue, Wash., and pleads with drunk drivers at "victim impact panels" to consider the potential effect on victims when they get behind the wheel. But for many, the message never gets through. "To be honest, it probably sinks in about 10 percent [of the time]," he says. "You can see it in their face — when the light has turned on or when the light never even came on."

Shaming Drunk Drivers
Started in the 1980s, victim impact panels are court-ordered programs where drunk drivers come face to face with those who have lost loved ones to their crime. The hope is that hearing the devastating effects of their action will shame drunken drivers into not becoming repeat offenders. But research remains inconclusive about these panels: The programs may only prevent very few people from drinking and driving again. Yet proponents of the panels say they at least help some people. Doubters, however, say they may be a waste of resources and believe different preventive measures, such as lowering the blood alcohol limit, might be a better way to prevent drunk driving.
Although Gierek speaks at these meetings, he is not a victim. Thirteen years ago, on the night of his best friend’s 33rd birthday, Gierek passed out behind the wheel and struck a guardrail, instantly killing his companion. After serving 42 months in jail, Gierek was still drinking and driving and was arrested a second time.  It wasn’t until he attended — and began speaking himself — at a victim impact panel that he was able to finally get sober.

Victim Impact Panels Widespread
Victim impact panels began in Washington and in Massachusetts, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving has helped coordinate the programs since 1982. Since then, they have become a mandated part of the judicial system in around 300 counties within 46 states, with fees collected from the offenders to perpetuate the programs. The programs are typically held in courthouse auditoriums or church basements, where three or four victims of a drunk driving accident or loved ones of victims, tell the assembled group of convicted drunk drivers about the emotional effects their tragic losses had on their lives. Sometimes a reformed drunk driver — like Gierek — also will speak.
    Shirley Anderson began the panels in Bellevue, Wash., with the help of a judge after her son, Mark, a member of the Air Force, was killed by a drunk driver. "When Mark was killed, my world crashed down around me," she tells the assembled group of drunk drivers. "I stumbled around trying to figure out why this would happen. Now, whenever we hear a 21-gun salute, that snaps us into remembering, because Mark had one, too."
    Proponents say victim impact panels work because they assign responsibility to the behavior without attacking the person. "It’s condemning the deed, not the person, in a non-blaming manner" explains Stuart Fors, director of the department of health promotion and behavior at the University of Georgia in Athens. "If you start pointing fingers, people shut off." Many offenders leave the groups swearing they will change their ways. "By the blood of my soul, I will not drink and drive," one offender wrote afterward. "I will fight with tooth and nail those who dare." "Defendants come up afterward and hug us and apologize," Anderson says. "I know we have a strong impact on these offenders."

Too Drunk to Care?
But others are indifferent or may be too addicted to heed the message. Only a few studies in the scientific literature have vigorously tested the panels’ effectiveness — and the findings are mixed. Of drunk drivers arrested for the first time, an estimated 20 percent to 28 percent will repeat their offense. Studies have revealed that victim impact panels reduced repeat offenses by as little as 10 percent to as much as 65 percent. A 1999 study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol compared 12-month re-arrest rates for offenders before and after a victim impact panel was instituted in a Georgia county. The researchers found those who attended a panel had a 6 percent re-arrest rate, while those who hadn’t attended the panels had a 15 percent re-arrest rate. But a more recent study, from the September issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research examined more than 5,000 drivers convicted of a first-time driving-while-intoxicated offense and found that attending a victim impact panel had a insignificant impact on re-arrest rates. And the gold standard of research, a randomized study, which was recently completed, also found no effect.

Better Strategies?
"We need to concentrate our resources into programs that are effective, and perhaps victim impact panels shouldn’t be a top priority," says Sandra Lapham, director of the Behavioral Health Research Center of the Southwest in Albuquerque, N.M., who helped conduct the September study. Other more effective strategies to discourage repeated drunk driving may include license suspension, car impounding, ignition locks with installed breathalizer tests, intensive probation, and jail time, Lapham says. William Miller, director of research at the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addictions at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque says the panels were widely adopted before being properly tested. "If the state is going to coerce an offender to accept a prevention program, there ought to be reasonably sound evidence that the program is beneficial," Miller notes. "Unfortunately, confrontation is an ineffective way to address alcohol abuse and can even backfire."

Hard to Reach Everyone
Even proponents admit the panels don’t reach everyone. Experts say the panels may be less effective in persuading drunk drivers with multiple convictions, whose alcoholism overrides emotional appeals. "We found it really hasn’t had that dramatic effect on repeat offenders because their problems run so much deeper," says Regina Sobieski, assistant director for victim’s advocacy for the national headquarters of MADD in Dallas. "[Many of] our clients need professional mental health care, not people whose lives have been personally affected by drinking and driving," says Jessica Towne, an attorney who defends drunk drivers in Gwinnett County, Ga., which began the panels this April. But even if the panels were utterly ineffective in curbing drunk driving, they may serve another purpose: catharsis for the victim. "They say it’s helpful to them," MADD’s Sobieski says. "If they can stop one more person from hurting a family, they feel it’s all worth it."

 Group Criticizes Massachusetts' Efforts to Prevent Delinquency
Associated Press, 10/12/2000

BOSTON-- A juvenile justice advocacy group criticized the state's efforts to prevent delinquency among at-risk youth Wednesday, saying more funding is needed to help troubled children before they turn to more serious crime.  Citizens for Juvenile Justice gave the state's efforts a ''C,'' citing a 1998 study by the state probation commissioner that found 54 percent of truants, runaways, stubborn youth and school discipline problems are arraigned in the adult or juvenile court within three years.  The group also pointed to what they said is an unacceptably high level of truancy. In Boston, about 3,000 students are absent on any given day without a legitimate excuse, according to the report.  In addition to increased funding, the group urged more parental accountability, including raising the fines that can be levied against parents for failing to sent a child to school, from $20 to as much as $250.   ''Services are fragmented and inconsistent and accountability for system officials, parents and youth is severely lacking,'' said Jack Gately, executive director of Citizens for Juvenile Justice.
    Carol Yelverton, a spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services, said the study points to areas that can be improved.  ''The state through the court system has to have the ability to hold children and parents accountable,'' Yelverton said.   The group also urged family mediation and programs designed to get youths back in school and out of trouble be available in every juvenile court.  The group is advocating a $15.2 million increase in spending on delinquency prevention, including $8 million for so-called ''diversion programs'' and about $2 million for 32 new coordinators who work with troubled youth.

Two New Reports Call for More Early Childhood Awareness
Ephrat Livni, ABC News- 10/12/2000

Parents, professionals and policy makers are ignoring research on the most effective ways to raise healthy infants, and their inaction could lead to a more troubled society, two recent studies say. "From Neurons to Neighborhoods," a National Academy of Sciences analysis of 40 years of early childhood development research, found that despite explosive growth in the field, policy makers are not using new knowledge to inform government programs created to aid parents and infants. With more working parents than ever before, the Oct. 3 report calls for more support and wiser allocation of already-available early childhood funds. The other study, released Oct. 4, confirms the need for wiser governmental parenting policies. A poll of 3,000 adults showed parents overwhelmingly approve of more government support for programs, such as paid parental leave. The survey was conducted in June and July by two nonprofit groups — Chicago-based Civitas and Zero-to-Three of Washington, D.C. — and Brio Corp., a toy manufacturer in Germantown, Wis. "We’re not using the knowledge we already have, and early childhood issues aren’t on the political agenda," says Dr. Jack Shonkoff, author of the National Academy of Sciences report and dean of the Heller Graduate School at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. He spent more than two years reviewing early childhood research data to understand where the science stands and what development myths needs debunking.

Too Much Focus on Flashcards
Saying stable early relationships are a major determinant in babies’ later outlook on life, Shonkoff worries parents and professionals disproportionately focus on cultivating infants’ intellect at the expense of emotional and social development. Scientific evidence shows that even very young children are capable of experiencing deep anguish and grief in response to trauma, loss, and personal rejection. But many early childhood programs have failed to apply such findings to everyday dealings with kids, he concludes in the report. "Supercharged enrichment doesn’t work," agrees Dr. Kyle Pruett, Zero-to-Three president and clinical professor of psychiatry at the Yale University Child Study Center in New Haven, Conn. Playing and interacting with children —even if it’s just using a Tupperware top — stimulates more curiosity than rigorous drills with fancy flashcards or computers, he explains.
    The joint survey revealed a majority of parents had unreasonable expectations of their babies’ development, as well as misconceptions about discipline. According to the study, 62 percent of all adults said they believe that a 6-month-old infant can be spoiled. Pruett says infants cannot be spoiled and that parents who leave very young babies crying in an attempt to toughen them up only teach their children that the world is unsafe and they aren’t cared for.
Another danger, he says, is spanking. The study found 61 percent of adults still condone spanking as a regular form of punishment, though research indicates it is detrimental to a child’s development. Of those, 37 percent think spanking is appropriate to children under 2 years of age. The study also said 51 percent of parents of young children unrealistically expect 15-month-old kids to share toys.

Teaching Through Self-Discipline
Childhood development experts are worried by the figures. "Children are not raised by a parent’s discipline," says Philadelphia-based child psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Berger, author of Raising Children with Character. "They are raised by parents’ self-discipline." She says the best way for parents to teach babies is by being emotionally responsive, mature and respectful. "Tensions run high all the time in normal families but if parents are emotionally self-disciplined, children will identify and emulate," Berger says. "A child who feels his parents are kind will feel guilty about his aggression."
    Since infants are highly attuned to mood even when in the womb, Pruett warns, they are also susceptible to parental depression. Kids who sense a caregiver’s sadness or anxiety can become withdrawn and fall off the developmental track, but the survey showed that 61 percent of parents were unaware of this. "The reality is that a 4-month-old can be clinically depressed," says Zero-to-Three Executive Director Matthew Melmed. "Babies are programmed to interact, but if they don’t get it back they withdraw." Nurturing plays a critical role in the brain’s growth during infancy, he says. Melmed and his colleagues want to raise public awareness about infant depression to save them from experiencing mental illness in adulthood. Although there are no figures on infant depression, he says, Early Head Start programs nationwide, serving pregnant moms as well as mothers of babies and toddlers, report 30 percent to 50 percent of their caseload consists of women who are depressed and putting their kids at risk for the same. "We need to help parents early on with things like maternal depression, marital conflict and violence in the home," adds Pruett. But he emphasizes the poll was not created to make parents feel bad, rather to generate discussion that could prevent later problems.
    Shonkoff, the author of the National Academy of Sciences report, believes an important way to help deal with those problems is for government to encourage businesses to offer paid parental leave and better quality child care. It is impossible to raise children independently, he says, and government, businesses and parents need to cooperate to create a healthy society. "This isn’t a blame game," says Shonkoff. "It’s a call for the country to rethink how we approach parenting and early childhood development."

Census Counts Two Million 'Deadbeat Dads'
Genaro C. Armas, Associated Press, 10/13/2000

WASHINGTON -- Nearly 2 million deadbeat fathers who owed child support failed to make any payments in 1997, the Census Bureau reported. While the Census Bureau report being released Friday also shows that more custodial parents were getting full-time jobs and leaving public assistance programs, advocacy groups contend the numbers highlight glaring weaknesses of a child support system in transition. Of the 6.3 million U.S. mothers owed child support from absentee fathers in 1997, roughly 30 percent or 1.99 million women, did not receive any payments, Census data show. Four years earlier, 1.72 million women owed support, or 29 percent, did not receive payments.  About 42 percent, or 289,000 of the 674,000 fathers owed child support in 1997 from absentee mothers did not receive any payments. That was down from 353,000 deadbeat mothers, or 45 percent, in 1993, in the same category.  The Census survey, taken every two years, is the nation's only estimate of all child support paid and owed across the country, including private agreements between parents. The Department of Health and Human Services has more recent figures, but only tracks cases that go through government collections systems.
    "It's a pretty sad statement that nothing's improved much and kids are going without much needed support payments for food, clothing and shelter," said Geraldine Jensen, president of the Association for Children for Enforcement of Support. Child support enforcement was overhauled in 1996 as part of welfare reform. Since then there have been other new outreach initiatives -- such as helping fathers who cannot afford to pay child support find jobs -- that improved the situation, HHS spokesman Michael Kharfen said. The full effects of reform won't be seen until results from the 1999 survey come out next year since many states took years to make necessary changes, Kharfen said. "It shows early efforts to improving the child support system," he said. "But this is still very encouraging news which is consistent with what we're seeing."
    "How much time are we supposed to give it, though?" countered Bordy Brilling, of Phoenix, who has been divorced since 1992 and has custody of two teenage daughters. "It's been a constant battle through the years" getting child support from her husband in Georgia. He is now battling cancer. "We don't know how it all works, and that's part of our frustration," said Philene O'Keefe, of Indian Hills, Nev. Since divorcing in 1998 and gaining custody of her 3-year-old daughter, O'Keefe says she received a child support check this week, the first one since January.
    The report also said:
*45 percent of mothers living in poverty who were owed child support in 1997 received no payments, compared with 35 percent of impoverished mothers owed support in 1993.
*51.3 percent of all custodial parents had year-round, full-time jobs in 1997, up from 45.6 percent in 1993.
*The percentage of all custodial parents participating in at least one public assistance program such as food stamps or Medicaid fell to 34 percent in 1997, from 40.6 percent in 1993.
*The percentage of all custodial parents receiving all the payments they were due increased from 34.1 percent in 1993 to 40.8 percent in 1997.
    Sherry Steisel, human services director for the National Conference of State Legislatures, attributed the positive numbers to the good economy, and efforts to improve child support on the state level that began even before the 1996 reforms. "We see the participation in public programs declining, and an increase in the number of agreements which is the first step in getting child support acknowledged," she said.

Slain Child's Family Seeks to Reveal Juvenile Sex Offenders in Oklahoma
Kelly Kurt, Associated Press, 10/13/2000

OILTON, Okla.--Kristi Blevins' impish smile greets every customer at the grocery store across the street from the abandoned home where she died. The 7-year-old beams from a wallet-sized photograph taped to petitions at two registers. She smiles, too, at people getting fill-ups at gas stations down the road. Even in a grocery store in the next county, Kristi's wide-eyed grin stops customers who add their names to a growing list of signatures under her photo.
    Since last week, Rhonda Blevins has counted more than 2,000 signatures on petitions backing a law she thinks could have saved her youngest child. Blevins wants juvenile sex offenders included in an Oklahoma law that alerts the public to adult sex offenders in their midst. On a rented computer and the $50 printer she bought last week, she has cranked out more than 1,000 petitions and taped a photo of Kristi to each one. ''The kids come home, mom's sitting there working petitions. They go to bed, I'm working on petitions. If I didn't,'' says the 34-year-old mother of three other children, ''I would probably be crying all the time.''
    On Aug. 19, she and her husband discovered that Kristi and a 12-year-old friend, who had been playing outside, were missing from their Oilton home. Searchers found the two in an abandoned home. The 12-year-old had been raped. Kristi had been strangled. With them, police found Robert Rotramel, a 19-year-old with a juvenile record of detention for forcible sodomy. Rotramel faces murder, rape and kidnapping charges. A preliminary hearing is scheduled Monday. Others in Oilton say they knew about Rotramel's juvenile record but not Blevins. Her teen-age son worked at a bait shop owned by Rotramel's father. Sometimes Kristi and her other siblings visited the shop when Rotramel was there. ''If I would have known he was a sexual offender when he was a juvenile, my kids would not have had anything to do with him,'' Blevins said. At Ballard's, the grocery just across the street from the murder scene, owner Kathy Ballard signed her name. A regular customer Roy Rotramel said he signed it, too. ''He deserves whatever he gets,'' Roy Rotramel said of his son. ''I said he should never have been released.''
    State lawmakers say Blevins' petitions won't be the determining factor if juvenile violators are added to the state's Sex Offenders Registration Act. Rep. Larry Ferguson said House staff members have already begun to investigate such laws in other states and that legislation to change Oklahoma's law likely will be introduced. But the petitions add impetus to that effort, he said. Every state now has what is known as a Megan's Law, which requires convicted sex offenders to register with local police and community notification of their presence. The law extends to juveniles in 21 states. The laws are named for Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl was raped and murdered in 1994 by a convicted sex offender who lived across the street from her. Critics argue that applying Megan's Law to juveniles undermines the intent of juvenile court: to protect minors and rehabilitate delinquents. Ferguson doesn't think including juveniles would prompt much opposition in Oklahoma. ''I'm more interested in giving innocent people a first chance than I am in giving someone else a second chance,'' he said.

Suicide Rate in Rural Areas Soars
Angie Wagner, Associated Press- 10/14/2000

PAHRUMP, Nev.-- The black smudges around David Jennings' mouth were a hint of how much he wanted to leave a painful life. He told his wife he had wrapped his mouth around his car's exhaust pipe. Another time, Jennings poured gasoline over his body, intending to set himself on fire. So, when she found a note stuck in the family's front door -- ''Kandi, hope you like the change. David.'' -- Kandi Jennings knew. Jennings was missing for eight weeks until authorities found his body lying against a tree in a field. He had shot himself under the chin. Jennings' death in rural Nye County contributed to a puzzling national statistic -- rural residents kill themselves at a higher rate than those in urban areas. And the West leads the nation. But why?
    In Nevada, home of the nation's highest suicide rate, most people live in the Las Vegas or Reno areas. Beyond that, lonely highways lead to isolated towns surrounded by desert dotted with sagebrush and an occasional brothel.  Minus the brothels, the scene is similar in many Western states. That's part of the appeal of the West and, at the same time, perhaps part of the reason for suicide. ''It has a lot to do with how isolated everything is,'' said Stacy Holybee of Nevada's Crisis Call Center, a suicide prevention agency in Reno. ''There's not a lot of community resources available. It's hard to reach out because it's harder to keep anonymous. If you have any kind of problem that you're facing, you have to go and face people that you see in the grocery store.''
    Nye County, where Jennings died, has only 30,000 residents but covers 11.6 million acres of central Nevada, the third-largest county in the nation. In the past two years, 19 residents committed suicide. Nationally, the adult suicide rate in rural areas was 17.94 per 100,000 people in 1995, the most recent numbers available from the National Center for Health Statistics. In urban areas, the rate was 14.91. Nevada's overall rate last year was 20.18 per 100,000, almost double the national rate of 11.31 in 1998, the most recent figure available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rural rate was 25.63, compared to 18.91 in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and has two-thirds of the state's population. The West as a whole had 12.95 suicides per 100,000 people in 1998. The South was second with a rate of 12.12, followed by the Midwest with 10.51 and the Northeast with 8.89.
    Researchers are just beginning to explore the reasons for the West's high rate. ''There is a thought that the frontier personality may be more accepting of suicide,'' said Dr. John Fildes, one of the leaders of Nevada's suicide prevention effort. Factors might include easy access to firearms and a preference for privacy. Two years ago, the CDC set up the Suicide Prevention and Research Center at the University of Nevada School of Medicine in Las Vegas, where Fildes and other researchers have been concentrating on the high suicide rate in the West. So far, answers are few. ''We really just don't know,'' said University of Nevada-Reno associate professor Bill Evans, who teaches human development and family studies.
    Among those who helped establish the suicide center was Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who grew up in Searchlight, a town of about 200 people southeast of Las Vegas. His father killed himself almost 30 years ago. ''Obviously the facts are pointing toward this rural living not being all it's cracked up to be,'' said Reid. The region's isolated nature brings more problems -- setting up clinics in rural areas, attracting counselors to lonely towns and getting enough money to keep the clinics running. ''We have difficulty recruiting and retaining qualified staff ... it can be isolated because of the nature of rural Nevada,'' said Dr. Larry Buel, director of the state's rural mental health clinics. Four of Nevada's 17 counties don't even have mental health clinics and residents who want help must drive to an adjacent county, a trip that can take more than 2 hours.
    William Crider spent only a year as director of the Pahrump Mental Health Center in Nye County. He left in August, saying he didn't have enough money to operate effectively. ''Nye County is larger than most states. The funding is lacking,'' he said. David Jennings, 42, never went to that clinic. He never told anyone of his thoughts of suicide. A failed business, a lost job and bankruptcy proved to be too much. He killed himself in January, leaving a wife and three young daughters. Kandi Jennings, 30, realized there were signs of troubles in their 13-year marriage, but she didn't know how to handle them. ''He came out to Pahrump to get away,'' Kandi said, running her fingers across a quilt that read ''Families are Forever.''

School Shooters Hint at Rage
ABC News, 10/15/2000

After taking an in-depth look at school shootings, the Secret Service has found that most kids don’t "just snap," but rather leave a string of hints to their coming rage. The report, released on Saturday, examined 37 cases since 1974 in which 41 boys and young men came to school with plans to kill someone. In many cases students told other kids about their plans, aired their grievances and left hints that could have been used to prevent the attacks, the report says.
    In one case, a student told 24 classmates and friends of his interest in killing other kids and making bombs. In another case, rumors of a planned shooting drew more than 20 onlookers to a school hallway before the attacker opened fire. One student had brought a video camera, but forgot to record the event in all the excitement. Secret Service officials said the report shows listening to students is more important than looking at what they’re wearing or who their friends are.  "This is not about personality," said Randy Borum, a forensic psychologist and mental health law expert who worked as a consultant for the Secret Service on the schools study, and on its earlier looks at assassins. "This is about behavior. This is about asking whether this kid is on a pathway to a violent act, and if so, where is he on that path and how quickly is he moving."

Dose of Reality
In a departure from its usual duties that include protecting the president and catching counterfeiters, the Secret Service is now the second federal law enforcement agency to weigh in on an issue that has vexed educators and school officials for years. Last month, the FBI issued a guide on how to size up student threats. The guide worried some school officials who feared the list of character traits could make targets of troubled students. However, concern over school violence remains high even though school killings dropped to 13 last year, from a peak of 52 eight years earlier.
    Education Department officials accepted an offer of help from the Secret Service — which is under the auspices Treasury Department— a year ago. Officials sat in on agents’ investigations and said Saturday the newest study offers a dose of reality for schools fighting violence. "Young people who need help do not keep it a secret," said Education Secretary Richard Riley. "But adults … are often the last ones to know." Riley’s school safety chief, William Modzeleski, said the report proves schools will have to be more vigilant in following up on student threats. "This is a clear message that we have to change the climate and culture of schools. It’s going to be important that students don’t see speaking up as squealing."

Secret Service Techniques
The study was modeled in part on the same analysis techniques the Secret Service uses for adults who have threatened to hurt public officials. It’s the first time the agency has taken a look at schools. Agency officials said the analysis and resources of the Secret Service could also be used to address other problems such as workplace violence and cases of personal stalking. They added that schools could collaborate with students, parents and others to prevent Columbine-style violence the same the Secret Service communicates with mental health experts, local police and other agencies to thwart potential assassins. But the report warned against profiling students or treating them as "budding assassins."
    Bryan Vossekuil, executive director of the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, who co-wrote the study said there was no clear profile among the school shooters examined. He said some were popular, others were not. Some made good grades; others were failing. Some were in foster care, while some came from intact families considered pillars of their community. Rather than building a profile of an attacker with a set of personality traits, the Secret Service focuses on behavior and motives, tracing the shooter’s thoughts and actions from the day of the attack back to when the perpetrator first developed a notion to make the attack, he said. The nine-page interim report offered few other details on the cases studied, or the attackers interviewed. Vossekuil said details on the cases were unavailable; some of the cases are still in the courts, and records won’t be released until those cases are resolved.

Ex-Husband's Rage Had Women Cornered: Murder-Suicide Claims Two in N.H.
Rick Klein, Boston Globe-10/15/2000

DERRY, N.H. - Despite restraining orders and two pending criminal charges that he faced for violating them, Eduino Sampaio went to his estranged wife's home early Friday intending to inflict serious harm, investigators said yesterday. Sampaio, 39, parked his Ford pickup about a quarter-mile from the home that Jacqueline Sampaio shared with her 3-year-old daughter. He trudged through a swampy area to reach the house, where he cut the cable and telephone lines. Then he smashed through a basement window and confronted his wife at about 1 a.m., authorities said. Jacqueline Sampaio, who had long been a victim of domestic abuse, fled through the front door. Her husband chased her outside and shot her six times before turning his semiautomatic handgun on himself, police said. Their bodies were found in a neighbor's yard.
    ''This was a man who was certainly committed to his task,'' said Captain Malcolm MacIver of the Derry Police Department. ''This is a very tragic incident.'' For months, Jacqueline Sampaio, 37, had been warning friends, relatives, and the police that Eduino Sampaio might try to kill her. ''That girl was peeking through the blinds,'' said a friend and co-worker who did not want her name published. ''She would look you in the face and say, `I'm going to die, and if I die, Eddie killed me.''' Jacqueline Sampaio obtained a permanent protective order against her husband on Sept. 5 - four days after Eduino Sampaio was arrested and charged with violating a temporary order. He was arrested again on Sept. 27 after his wife told police that he tried to contact her through a mutual acquaintance, authorities said. Eduino Sampaio posted bond after both charges were filed. He was scheduled to appear in court for a hearing on one of the cases next week. The protective order required Eduino Sampaio to turn over his firearms to authorities. He violated that order by even possessing the handgun he used to take two lives, said Simon Brown, a New Hampshire assistant attorney general.
    ''Jacqueline Sampaio took all appropriate measures under the system to be protected from this man,'' he said. ''In this case, her husband took extra measures and violated court orders to cause her harm.'' Brown said there was nothing else that authorities could have done to protect her. ''Domestic violence is an endemic problem in our society,'' he said. ''The police can't be everywhere all the time.'' The friend and co-worker said that despite the threats on her life, Jacqueline Sampaio was a bubbly and outgoing woman with enormous devotion to her daughter. But her former husband, who reportedly suffered from a mental disorder, should not have been on the streets, the friend said.  ''She did everything she was supposed to do,'' she said. ''He slipped through the system.'' Police believe the 3-year-old was inside the house when her father broke in. She may have walked out the front door when she saw her parents run outside. The girl is now with her mother's relatives in Methuen, Mass. ''She was crying for her mother on the front lawn,'' said Sergeant Keith Marshall, the first officer to arrive on the scene.

Two Experimental Therapies Show Promise in Severe Depression
Sue Ellen Christian, Chicago Tribune- 10/15/2000

Two treatments for severe depression that fails to respond to drugs--among the few promising therapies to emerge since psychiatrists began using shock therapy in the late 1930s--are being tested in clinical trials under way in Chicago. The research, which in one case involves using an implanted device to stimulate the brain and in the other relies on external magnetic impulses to do the same, holds possibility in an area painfully short on options, experts say.
    Of the more than 9 million Americans with major depression, an estimated 1.2 million suffer from treatment-resistant depression that even today's advanced medicine doesn't relieve. For such people, life can be a debilitating cycle of hope and disappointment. A new anti-depressant drug might improve a patient's condition for a few weeks or months--but, inevitably, the drug quits working or the side effects are severe enough to put the patient back in the hospital. Then the search for another solution begins. "These people suffer terribly. They are at risk of dying of suicide," said Dr. Jerrold Rosenbaum, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "Everybody in their life suffers with them, children and parents and spouses, and there is cost involved in disability associated with depression. I can't think of another illness I'd rather get rid of."
    The two projects face a common hurdle in that any attempts to treat depression are hindered by scientists' limited, albeit expanding, knowledge of the brain's complex circuitry. Though researchers involved in the clinical trials have a reasonable basis for thinking their therapies will succeed, there is in both studies an element of the unknown about precisely why they might work. Both new avenues of treatment involve stimulation of areas of the brain implicated in depression. In vagus nerve stimulation, a generator is placed in the chest, under the skin, that conveys electrical impulses via a connecting wire to the vagus nerve. The nerve is a leading provider of information from the heart and other organs to the brain; it also affects areas of the brain involved with mood. The treatment is being tested at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center and up to 20 other sites across the country.  The other ongoing study, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, involves transcranial magnetic stimulation. The treatment sends an intense series of magnetic pulses through a coil that is placed externally over a patient's prefrontal cortex. The magnetic impulses pass unimpeded through the skull and muscles to the brain tissue.
    The two projects each aim to replace or provide an alternative to electroconvulsive, or shock, therapy, which has proved effective and safe in its modern form but does not always succeed in treating depressed patients. Shock therapy also carries a potent social stigma, requires anesthesia and is costly and not fully covered by many insurance providers.  "I think [both projects] are promising," said Dr. Richard Weiner, a professor of psychiatry at Duke Medical Center and chairman of the committee on electroconvulsive therapy for the American Psychiatric Association, "but they are not a widespread clinical answer right now. We just don't know enough. We have to wait to see and see what role they will have, if any." Another drawback to shock therapy is that it produces short-term memory loss--or, in the case of Palatine resident Tom Ricke after more than 200 treatments, what he describes as permanent memory loss.
    "I hate getting the shock treatments," said Ricke, 53. After nine years of fighting severe depression, Ricke has found some stability through a combination of medications and a history of shock treatments. But with his condition, he never knows how long the stability will last. As for the two experimental therapies being tested in Chicago, Ricke said that if he takes a downturn again, "I'll try whatever works. I'll consider anything if it will help me."
    The research at UIC, the only such trial under way in the U.S., will compare the effectiveness of transcranial magnetic stimulation to that of electroconvulsive therapy and is expected to conclude in the spring.  Though the concept of electromagnetism has been around since 1831, the technology to deliver magnetic pulses in a restricted area only came about in the last decade. The stimulation has been shown in numerous studies to be effective in improving the mood of depressed people, said Dr. Philip Janicak, medical director of the Psychiatric Clinical Research Center at UIC and head of the clinical trial. Among the 21 patients who have enrolled in the 44-person UIC trial so far, both transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroconvulsive therapy have produced a 65 percent reduction in depression based on a rating scale, Janicak said. The results are encouraging enough, he said, to go forward with a federal grant proposal for a much larger study that would follow stimulation patients for six months.  In the current trial, the procedure lasts 15 minutes, during which 1,000 magnetic pulses are delivered to the front left side of the brain. Unlike shock therapy, the procedure doesn't require sedation, and it is cheaper at an estimated $1,500 for 10 to 20 sessions, compared with an estimated $10,000 for 6 to 12 electroconvulsive therapy treatments. There is, however, a slight chance that the procedure will cause a seizure.
    Dr. John Zajecka, who is heading the vagus nerve stimulator study at Rush, the only Illinois site participating in nationwide trials, said there is no shortage of patients willing to participate. In a pilot study involving 43 patients, "40 percent of the people showed improvement and 25 percent of them went on to full remission--in this kind of population, that is very impressive," said Zajecka, clinical director of the depression treatment center at Rush.  On the heels of the pilot study, Cyberonics, the Texas-based company that makes the stimulator, has launched a study involving 210 patients for 12 weeks plus long-term follow-up that it hopes to complete by the end of next year.
    Vagus nerve stimulation could replace taking daily medication for some patients; it provides continuous therapy for 8 to 12 years, which is the life of the implant's battery. However, it involves surgery and costs an average of $20,000 for the device and implantation. (Anti-depressant medications can cost patients $1,000 a month or more.) The stimulator already has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat epilepsy. Cyberonics got the idea to test it on depressed people after use of the device improved the moods of epileptic patients, even those whose seizures showed little or no response. Also, many anti-convulsant medications improve mood, providing a further rationale to consider the device in treating mood disorders. The company is studying use of the stimulator to treat Alzheimer's disease and obesity as well.
    For Tucker Davis, 48, the device has made it possible for him to get a job as a part-time manager of a not-for-profit foundation and get back to his hobbies of karate and classical guitar. A resident of suburban Ft. Worth, Davis had a history of depression and had cycled through nine anti-depressants, which either didn't work or had side effects he could not tolerate, such as chronic insomnia. Doctors implanted the vagus nerve stimulator in Davis in February 1999 as part of the pilot study, and within five months, Davis said, he saw improvement. His appetite was back, he was sleeping more, and since the surgery he hasn't had a panic attack. But, Davis cautioned, "I'd like to see three years go by without any relapse before I would say this thing is a cure for clinical depression. The jury is still out. But it definitely feels like a viable option."

Missing Dad: Lack of Father Affects Self-Esteem of Black Youths, Study Finds
Julia McNamee Neenan, New York Times- 10/15/2000

Living in a fatherless family damages a black boy's self-esteem, according to a new study. "In the black community, there's a slogan, `Black mothers raise their daughters and love their sons,'" says one of the study's authors, Carolyn B. Murray, an associate professor at the University of California at Riverside. "It's the father who holds that boy accountable. He has that boy toe the line; he holds the rules and responsibilities." But when fathers aren't present in black families, regardless of such things as family income and education, young boys' self-esteem drops, the study says. That doesn't appear to happen with young girls in these families, it says. What this means for the boys, experts say, can range from their having problems in school to participating in gangs as part of their search for male role models.
    It's a "real crisis," Murray says. Just 25 percent of black children were raised in homes in which only the mother was present in 1960, she says, but that number had climbed to 54 percent by 1993. In addition, she says, 78 percent of all black families were headed by married couples in 1950, down to 34 percent by 1996. The children's scores on the study's tests reflect these statistics. Measuring general self-esteem, for instance, boys from families headed by married couples scored higher than boys from families headed solely by a mother, the researchers say.  Girls scored similarly, but with much less difference between the two groups.
    Scores on specific self-esteem issues paint an even darker picture, Murray says, citing the question of how a boy sees his body, or how macho he feels. Boys coming from families with a father scored higher -- meaning they felt stronger, more competitive -- than did boys from families without fathers, the study says. The findings, based on a study of 116 African-American 15-year-olds from Southern California, appear in the September issue of the Journal of Family Psychology. The dangers this poses for young black boys can be serious, Murray says, though she cautions that it's important not to generalize. "They're at risk for joining gangs because they're looking for a male influence, for direction, for a male model," she says. "And they're also at risk for not doing as well at school."
    The absence of a father seems to lead to lower self-esteem because fathers expect more from their sons than mothers do, Murray says. Where a mother might expect a daughter to do homework, get dinner ready and clean the house after school, she says, the mother might expect little from a son. And expectations that are met yield higher self-esteem, she says. "Mothers hold girls accountable; fathers hold boys accountable," Murray says. "Two parents are better than one."
    George Garrow, executive director of the National Organization of Concerned Black Men, says boys growing up in fatherless families seem to do well until around the 3rd grade, when they begin to need focus. Lacking a father's influence, he says, they begin to seek male role models elsewhere. "Then they get their role model experience from other young boys, who are equally clueless," Garrow says. If the father role is never filled, he says, the boys may join gangs or find unhealthy mentors. "The young man is going to play out what he thinks this image is, to be a man," Garrow says. In the end, he says, it's not just the self-esteem that's damaged by the absence of a father. "It impacts the psychological, social and emotional development of young boys," Garrow says.
    The California study shows family income playing a small part in boys' self-esteem, as does how the family is organized. Boys probably feel more responsible for a family's income and how power is divided in the family, Murray speculates. How well a family actually functions, however, had a much greater effect on girls than boys, she says, probably because girls take responsibility for relationships. Marriage counseling and jobs programs that would help black men remain at home could help the situation portrayed in the study, Murray says.

Vanity and a Small Voice Made Him Do It
David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times- 10/15/2000

On December 6, 1980, Mark David Chapman boarded a plane in Hawaii for New York City, where he planned to win infamy by murdering a Beatle.  He had a .38 calaber revolver tucked in his luggage and, by his own account, "a small voice" in his head telling him to kill.  Two days later, John Lennon was shot dead.  On October 3, Mr. Chapman had his first parole hearing at the Attica state prison, where he is serving 20 years to life.  He told the three parole commissioners in a 50-minute interview that he had no expectation of going free and had even considered not submitting the paperwork requesting a hearing.
    "I filled it out to follow procedure because you have a right to talk to me," he said.  "You have a right to know what happened.  We're accountable to the people, to talk.  So that's why I'm here."  But the transcript suggests many motivations: to explain, to show off his newfound religion, to address his portrayal by the new media, to apologize and, perhaps, to briefly recapture the spotlight he so desperately craved.  Excerpts follow.

The commisssioners began by recounting the circumstances leading up to the murder.
Q.  Can you please tell us what you were thinking about at the time and why you would do something so horrible?
A.  I, um, flew to New York a few months before that to do that crime with full meditation in my heart.  I then was able to somehow turn myself around and came back to Hawaii, and I told my wife that all was fine.  And then the urges started building in me again to do this crime, and I flew back to New York on December 6th and checked into a hotel, and then on the day of December 8th, stayed outside the Dakota waiting for him with intent to shoot and kill him . . .
Q.  Mr. Chapman, have you given thought . . . as to what's behind all of this and why you were so possessed with doing such harm to this person?
A. I was feeling like I was worthless, and maybe the root of it is a self-esteem issue.   I felt like nothing, and I felt if I shot him, I would become something, which is not true at all.
Q.  Mmm. hmm.
A.  But that's why I shot Mr. Lennon.
Q.  And him in particular because he was someone that you admired or you looked at him and his stature and you thought this would have some impact on your life, sir?
A.  I was in the library . . . and I came across a book called "One Day at a Time," and I saw him there with photographs in front of his residence, the Dakota, and I was full of anger and resentment.  I took it upon myself to judge him falsely for--for, you know, being something other than, you know, in a lotus position with a flower . . .  So it started with anger, but I wasn't angry the night I shot him.

At another point, Mr. Chapman was asked about the details of the murder and how he financed the trip to New York.
Q.  Har far away were you when you fired the shots?
A.  Ten, fifteen feet.
Q.  You knew the devastation?
A.  Um, I knew death would occur.  I knew that I was probably not going to be killed.  Did I see the whole range of consequences?  No . . .
Q.  Where did you get the money?  You mentioned selling a painting for all this.
A.  I had a Norman Rockwell lithograph that I sold.

Mr. Chapman, who acknowledged having a list of other celebrities he thought of killing (the names were blacked out in the transcript), was asked whether he heard voices.
A. Probably right toward the end, I head a small voice, but I wasn't hearing voices.
Q.  What small voice did you hear?
A.  Just do it.
Q.  Who was that voice do you think?
A.  Probably something very evil, but I did it.
Q.  We understand that you did it.
A.  I didn't do it because voices told me to do it.  That was a misunderstanding from the very beginning, and that's not true.

The commissioners wanted Mr. Chapman to describe his two decades in prison, including his apparent mental breakdowns and episodes in which he refused to eat for days at a time.
Q.  How do you think you have improved yourself in the prison setting, sir? . . .
A.  I, over the years . . . have gotten relatively slowly but surely on a more even keel mentally.  I attribute that to God, and I atribute that to being by myself for a number of years and just having time probably alone and to think this out.  And up.   I had a clear mind.  I didn't feel I was schizophrenic, and I put down for the family reunion program, and people started coming to see me on a regular basis.  I became, if you will, more religious.  And in the 90's, I kept on getting better and better and clearer and clearer . . .

Mr. Chapman, when asked about his future if released, talked of possibly working on a farm.
Q.  Where are you planning to live if you are paroled . . .?
A.  Well, I wrote down there that I would immediately try to find a job, and I really want to go from place to place, at least in the state, church to church, and tell people what happened to me and point them the way to Christ.
Q.  Have you given thought to your own safety?
A.  I feel like God would protect me . . . I would still be practical.  I wouldn't work at McDonald's. 

At several points the commissioners focused on Mr. Chapman's desire for notoriety.
Q.  Society tends to acknowledge people and recognize people through their accomplishments. . . Apparently you had a very skewed thought in terms of how you would be acknowledged.
A.  Yes, sir, it was skewed.  It was wrong.
Q.  So it was a vanity for you as well?
A.  Absolutely.
Q.  You wanted attention?
A. Sure.
Q.  Widespread attention?
A. Yes, sir.

Later, Mr. Chapman expressed regret for giving a 1987 interview to People magazine and insisted that despite speaking with Barbara Walters and Larry King, he has denied most requests.  He complained about being quoted out of context.
Q.  Are there any other areas you feel you should straighten out, as you put it, any false perceptions that you feel?
A.  Yes, sir.  I don't think I'm a celebrity.  A chimpanzee could have done what I did.
Q.  Being a chimpanzee--that doesn't mean you are a chimpanzee or not a chimpanzee.
A.  What I mean is there was no skill in what I did, and anyone coulld have done this.  Anyone could have pulled the trigger, and I'm nobody special, and I just wish it was that way.  Unfortunately it's not, but I do wish I was a big nobody again . . . I wish this had never happened.

Given the chance to make a closing statement, Mr. Chapman apologized.
What I did was despicable . . . I don't feel it's up to me to ask to be let out.   Again, I believe that once you take a person's life, that's it . . .  I'd like to take the opportunity to apologize to Ms. Lennon.  I've thought about what it's like in her mind to be there that night, to see the blood, hear the screams, to be up all night with the Beatle music playing through her apartment window . . .  I feel that I see John Lennon now not as a celebrity.  I did then.  I saw him as a cardboard cutout on an album cover.  I was very young and stupid, and you get caught up in the media and the records and the music.  And now I--I've come to grips with the fact that John Lennon was a person.  This has nothing to do with being a Beatle or a celebrity or famous.  He was breathing, and I knocked him right off his feet . . .   I don't have a leg to stand on because I took his right out from under him, and he bled to death.  And I'm sorry that occurred.
    And I want to talk about Ms. Lennon again.  I can't imagine her pain.  I can't feel it . . .I saw an article in Newsweek about three months ago . . . She said on that night that she was shaking uncontrollably.  And I think for the first time I really realized, you know, the pain that I caused.  I mean, here's a person that can't control her body, and that really hit home . . . I originally wasn't going to come here after that article I read, because of the shaking uncontrollably.   That bothered me.  And I think it really hit home.  Again, I'm not saying these things for--for you to give me any kind of consideration of letting me go.  I'm saying that because they are real, and it happened to me, and I didn't even want to feel it up until then.  It's a horrible thing to, you know, realize what you've done.

The parole board, which usually issues its decisions within a day or two, rejected Mr. Chapman's application a few hours later.  He becomes eligible for parole again in October 2002.