Noteworthy News Articles on Mental Health Topics, August 27-31, 2000

Acupuncture Tests Positive in Addiction Therapy Study
Bob Condor, Chicago Tribune- 8/27/2000

    In the coming decade, the federal government's financial commitment to exploring the value of alternative medicine is bound to pay many dividends--including validating its effectiveness or documenting its failure. One early return is a study published in the August issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine that shows acupuncture can help a significant number of cocaine addicts to free themselves of drug addiction. Although previous studies have linked acupuncture therapy with alleviating alcohol addiction, this study, by Yale Medical School researchers, addressed one of the more difficult drug dependencies to treat. Of the 82 patients in the eight-week study, 53.8 percent of those addicts receiving acupuncture five times weekly tested negative for cocaine during the last week of treatment. That compared to 23.5 percent for a group treated with "sham" needles placed in non-therapeutic locations and 9.1 percent for a third group that watched relaxation videos only. Plus, the patients treated with acupuncture averaged longer periods of abstinence than did members of the other two groups. All subjects received individual and group counseling as part of the study, which was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
    The particular technique used by the Yale researchers is called auricular acupuncture. Needles are inserted at four zones in the outer ear associated with addiction by acupuncturists and Chinese medicine practitioners. Yale University scientist and lead author Dr. Arthur Margolin says the benefits of acupuncture for addiction include relatively low cost and lack of side effects. While Margolin called for more controlled studies about acupuncture, Daniel Iead, clinical coordinator for the Grant Street Partnership, a New Haven addiction services agency, says acupuncture can serve as a valuable tool for people with urgent challenges to become drug-free. "We've been doing it here for years and it works," says Iead. "The results are fantastic. Some of our most difficult cases have turned their lives around because of it."

In Maryland, a Murder In the Making
Donna St. George, Washington Post- 8/27/2000

On a Wednesday afternoon, in a quiet moment between cases, Judge Gary Gasparovic sat at his well-polished desk and read through a court motion, dense legal words on crisp white paper. In the small Southern Maryland city of La Plata, Gasparovic had been a judge for 11 years, a towering, bespectacled man with salt-and-pepper hair and a reputation for being tough. He had, in his time on the bench, overseen hundreds of sad and contentious cases of domestic turmoil. This one did not strike him as extraordinary. A woman named Janice Lancaster said her husband had struck her and threatened to kill her. She had given the court a letter he left on her dresser: "Time is running short for me and you. . . . I'm ready to go any time to lay my body to rest and [I am] not going to be the only one."
    The judge reached for his pen and signed an order authorizing the husband's arrest. It was but one decision--made in less than five minutes--for a judge who, on any given day, might hear 30 or 40 cases. It was a fitting decision under the circumstances, but it was not enough. A day passed, and the paperwork lay untended in the court clerk's office. The bench warrant for the arrest was never prepared. Then the courthouse closed for a long New Year's weekend. By the time the courthouse reopened on Monday morning, it was too late. When her case reached the judge last Dec. 29, Janice Lancaster had long been a prisoner of her fear. She had bought a gun and taken to sleeping in a toolshed beside the house she shared with her husband and two children. At 33, she had selected a dress for her funeral. Her terror was not a secret. In one turbulent year, she had let a remarkable number of people inside her personal crisis: police, counselors, judges, lawyers, friends, relatives and co-workers. But her story came out to them in small and fleeting pieces--one night's ordeal, one ominous letter, one violent admonishment.
    Never seeing the entire picture, never understanding the full gravity of events, people made decisions or gave advice: the judge in his chambers, the friend who gave her haven in a spare bedroom, the police officer who walked down her driveway, the lawyer who took on her case for divorce. Her problems appeared as a jumble of disturbing snapshots that gave too little sense of the growing threat. On the clear, cool morning of Jan. 3, James Steven Lancaster Sr. strode purposefully past the Christmas decorations and into their four-room home. He confronted Janice with a shotgun in the kitchen. They struggled. Their teenage daughter yelled that she was going to call 911. "I love you," Janice Lancaster pleaded. He choked her. Then he pulled the trigger.
    Twenty-five years after domestic violence emerged from the shadows of public discussion as a visible and vexing American pathology, the bodies of women like Janice Lancaster still are scattered in graveyards across the nation. It remains the prevailing reason women are murdered in the United States. While the homicide rate is down overall, government experts say that one-third to one-half of slain women are victims of an intimate partner, about the same as in 1976, when the first wave of shelters opened for battered wives and girlfriends. The primary reason is this: An array of new laws and programs developed during the last two decades has yet to overcome two obstacles. Those who most need help often feel conflicted about asking--ashamed, torn and frightened. And the system intended to protect them remains fragmented and uneven--almost impossible to comprehend and negotiate without an aggressive lawyer or advocate, which many women still do not have. Janice Lancaster's case offers startling proof of both. At times she was set back by her own ambivalence. She wanted to believe in the man she fell in love with as a teenager. "Stevie" was a brawny, soft-spoken man with roots in the rugged waterman's life in Southern Maryland. He was the father of their children, a boy now 13 and a girl 17.
    Also, at its best, the system may not have been enough to save Janice Lancaster. But that's hard to know--the system was not at its best. She willed, quite vividly, to help herself, engaging the system on so many levels. She took her husband to counseling. When he refused to continue, she went by herself. In hard times, she moved into friends' houses. At several junctures, she called on police. In court, she agreed to testify. At wit's end, she hired a private divorce lawyer. In desperation, she learned to fire a .38. As the violence escalated, she resolved to end the relationship. But he vowed to kill her--if she left him, if she got a protective order, if he faced time in jail. Yet, somehow, her death still was widely unforeseen. In the anguish of the aftermath, many who had glimpses of her struggle recalled what they had seen. Taken together, these moments show a woman who understood the danger but not how to survive it. Much of the story already existed in her own words. She took notes. She kept a journal. She recorded her husband's comings and goings. Janice Lancaster, it should be said, wanted someone to know what had happened.
Nov. 14, 1998: He started swinging at me. . . . My daughter hollered, "Leave my mother alone. I'm going to call the police." . . . He went for her. . . . I jumped on his back. . . . He pushed me. He rammed my head into a picture. The glass cut me in my head.

CLOSE FRIEND TRACY DAWSON- February 1999
Tracy Dawson found it hard to imagine Steve Lancaster had grown menacing. She had gone to La Plata High School with the Lancasters. They seemed lucky at love--together 17 years, two good children; good to each other, too. She remembered cookouts when Janice cuddled on his lap, like the teenage sweethearts they once were. Steve Lancaster seemed good-natured, well-mannered, an involved father. Dawson used to call him "Mr. Mom." He took his children crabbing, to watch basketball, to the racetrack. Every year, the family vacationed at Kings Dominion--rides, hotel rooms, dinners out.
    Then again, Dawson thought, who knew what went on behind closed doors? Janice said Steve had changed. She said he was having an affair with a teenage girl, a girl younger than the couple's daughter. Steve insisted the relationship was not sexual, though he was at the girl's home day after day, often until 2 or 3 a.m. At one point, the friends tried to convince themselves that Steve Lancaster, 36, was having an early midlife crisis. Dawson tried to be supportive when Janice lamented: "He's just not my Steve anymore." It was harder, however, when Janice asked her what to do. Dawson begged off. "I don't live in your shoes," Dawson said. "You know more about the way he is than I do." But when Janice phoned in early February to say Steve had threatened her life in a letter, Dawson thought: This is serious. Keep the letter, she advised. And this time Dawson needed to do more than offer support. "You've got to tell someone," she insisted.
Feb. 5, 1999: He said if I leave I won't ever live in another home. Because he would kill me and him.

JUDGE RICHARD ALAN COOPER- Feb. 9, 1999
Judge Cooper sat in his high-back chair, overlooking the narrow courtroom where he had presided for three years. He was white-haired at 58, more stern in manner than in fact--the kind of judge, said one lawyer, "you would want as your grandfather." Today, Cooper had a full load, and in addition to his scheduled cases was this one: 0402SP77, Janice Michelle Lancaster v. James Steven Lancaster. He did not know the couple, and he did not know it was Janice's first time in court, the beginning of what would become 11 months in the judicial system.
    In Maryland, many domestic crises play out before a cast of judges. There is civil court, province of protection orders and divorce. There is criminal court, for assaults and other crimes. Adding to the complexity, some cases end up in District Court and some go to Circuit Court. Each has its own files. Computer systems are not linked. For Cooper, domestic turmoil was familiar territory. There were 262 domestic violence cases filed in Charles County District Court last year, in a state that recorded 17,489. Like many other women Cooper dealt with, the one before him wanted a protection order to forbid her husband to call or come near.
    "Would you tell me what happened?" the judge asked. Janice Lancaster began in a nervous rush of words: She was driving down the street when her husband sped up beside her and tried to cut her off. She managed to elude him for a time but finally made a panicked dash to the police station. He pursued her at top speed, stopping only when police officers surrounded him in the station parking lot. "He left a note," she told Judge Cooper. " . . . I was scared that he would kill me because he had said he would do it if I leave him, and I left him." "Are you and he living together at the present time?" the judge asked. "We are, but I packed up and left Sunday." "You want me to order him to leave the home?" he asked. "Yes." Cooper signed the papers. He did not ask to see the threatening note, the first public sign of what was on Steve Lancaster's mind.
    Normally, more details would have emerged at a second hearing a week later. But Janice Lancaster, like nearly 50 percent of abused women in Maryland, changed her mind before the case returned to the courtroom. "Are you ready to go forward on this case, ma'am?" a different judge asked when the day for the formal hearing came on Feb. 16. This time, her husband was in the courtroom. "No, I would like to drop it," Janice Lancaster said. "Can you tell me why you would like to do that?" the judge asked. "We'd like to work out our differences," she said. "And you do not feel you're in any danger?" "No." In her journal that day, Janice was more wary. Her husband, she said, had assured her "he wasn't trying to hurt me. He just wanted to talk. . . . But I didn't trust him."

TRACY DAWSON- Feb. 24, 1999
About the time she decided to give her husband another chance, Janice Lancaster went to Tracy Dawson to ask for help writing a will. "Do you really think you need this?" Dawson asked her normally buoyant friend. "The way he is," Janice replied, "I've got to be prepared." Steve Lancaster had guns. He was a hunter--squirrels, rabbits, deer. Janice called the police the day of her first court appearance to ask that they take his guns away, but the officers got no answer when they came knocking at her home shortly afterward. So the guns remained. And Steve Lancaster grew up under the influence of a violent father, a man who spent almost seven years in prison for assaulting his wife when Steve was 15 years old. After his release from prison, Steve's father shot a man near a tavern. Now Janice worried that Steve might repeat his father's violence. He really might try to kill her.
    The detailed list of her belongings that Janice gave Dawson included family dishes, a crab cooker, a Dirt Devil upright, an armoire, a four-slice toaster, her class ring, her anniversary band, her 1990 Chevy Corsica, 24 folding chairs. It was 79 lines long, three pages, her dearest possessions at 33 years old. Janice mailed the will to her oldest brother, Joseph L. Tolson Jr., marked with the words "Open upon my death." He honored her wishes.
April 20, 1999: He paged me. I wouldn't answer him because I was mad. So when I came home from work that evening, he was pushing me and he choked me because I wouldn't answer when he paged.

POLICE CALL- May 8, 1999
The emergency call came at 5:56 a.m. The voice on the cellular phone was breathless: "Hi, my name is Janice Lancaster and I live on Popes Creek Road and right now I'm in the woods. My husband . . . he beat me up. . . . Oh." Her voice broke. She was hiding in the thickets off the road where she lived. Her husband was driving the streets, searching for her. "Okay, where are you at right now?" the dispatcher asked. "I'm in the woods, beside Popes Creek Road, right beside a blue house. . . . Please hurry up." "Okay, Janice. What is your home address?" "Popes Creek Road, it's 10320. . . . But he's driving in the road." "Okay, what is he driving, do you know?" "It's a 280Z, it's gray. . . . But I'm in the woods. Please hurry." "Hold on the phone with me a second." She pleaded: "Please come and get me." At 6:06 a.m., she waved down Officer Keith Moody. Police had gotten to Steve Lancaster at 6:04 a.m.
    In Charles County, police handled 4,888 domestic service calls in 1999. In Maryland, family violence calls have been the primary reason people dial 911, state officials say--and when police show up, they generally know only what the radio dispatcher's computer can tell them. Janice Lancaster told the officers she had been out in the shed, gathering her things to flee, when Steve Lancaster confronted her. They argued. He punched her in the head and face. Janice had tried to run to her car to escape, she noted in her journal. But her husband reached under the hood to yank something and said, "You won't drive this." She ran to her daughter's car. He followed her. Frantic, she fled into the woods. Janice's lip was swollen, slightly bloody. That was enough for the police. Her husband was arrested at 6:20 a.m. on a charge of second-degree assault.
NOTE PINNED ON A DRESS: When I die bury me in my long white dress. I want a pretty blue coffin. Please put socks on my feet because they are always cold. Put gloves on my hands too, white. I'm not a witch, I'm not a witch. I'm writing this because someone keeps saying they're going to kill me.

CLOSE FRIEND KIM CLEMENTS- June 12, 1999
Janice was having a yard sale, and she asked Kim Clements to come help. Clements was there at 8 a.m., working beneath the tall oaks in Janice's front yard. Later, in the lull of the warm June day, Janice led Clements and a few relatives into her 8-by-12 toolshed. A pressed white dress, with big white buttons, hung off to the side in a plastic dry-cleaning bag. "When I die," Janice said, "I want to be buried in this." Clements and the other women gasped. "Oh, Janice, no," Clements said. But Janice was adamant. "You have to listen to me. You've got to be my voice." The women quieted. "I have a note attached," Janice went on, pointing to a small white paper pinned to the dress. Janice read aloud the alarming words about how to dress her for her funeral. It was almost impossible to absorb.
    Kim Clements had long been worried about her friend. The two women had been close for seven years, both residents of a rural crossroads called Faulkner, friends of the same age with the same girlish humor. On several occasions during the late winter and spring, Janice had shown up at Clements's house with her children to seek refuge from her husband. Clements invited them to stay as long as they wished. But Janice always went back. Clements finally urged her friend to move out for good. "You move into a shelter, and what happens after that?" Janice had asked her. "You're homeless." The nearest shelter, almost 20 miles away, served primarily homeless women and children.
    Janice said she wanted more for her children, not less. She was about to be promoted to assistant kitchen manager at a nearby Catholic retreat where she worked as a cook. She had lived in her rented house 15 years. For her children, it was home. It had a tin roof and an outhouse, but Janice made it sweet-looking, with her bright flower beds, her lace-trimmed curtains, her matching country furniture. There were patio tables in the yard, tucked at the edge of the woods. Besides, Janice had argued to her friend, why should she be the one to move? The lease was in her name. She paid the rent. It was Steve who created the havoc. And how far could she ever get from him, anyhow--without large sums of money and given his connection to their children? It seemed that he always would know where she was.
Aug. 3, 1999: He told the kids that he was going to kill your mother stone dead. They told this on 8-3-99.

LAWYER HOWARD M. SCHEMLER- Aug. 6, 1999
Howard M. Schemler was not alarmed by Janice Lancaster's story. It was another tale of marital infidelity, and he was a lawyer who'd carved out a niche in divorce. Schemler worked in a solo practice in Fort Washington, a beefy man with a bristly mustache and a blunt manner. He did not have a secretary. His office was a cluttered three-room suite with paint the color of weak lemonade, file drawers ajar, dogeared folders cascading across his desk. Janice poured out the details of her husband's affair, and they agreed she would file for divorce on grounds of adultery. Adultery provided grounds for a speedier divorce, without the one-year separation required in more routine cases. So did filing on grounds of domestic violence, but that option did not come up.
    On Aug. 6, Schemler was ready to file the paperwork. He met with Janice at 10 a.m., and as far as he could tell, she wasn't fearful. In cases where he noted a potential for violence, Schemler could combine divorce filings with requests for protection orders. Today was different. Schemler walked into the red-brick courthouse in La Plata, unaware that court records in the very same building contained critical facts about his client: Her husband had beaten her and tried to run her off the road on occasions when she tried to leave him. The lawyer did not know violence was an issue.
Aug. 19, 1999: I came home from work. He said I was going to sleep with him tonight. And make love. He don't care what the lawyer said. If not, he will kill both of us. Later he left.

OFFICER WILLIAM R. JACKSON JR.- Sept. 19, 1999
The emergency call came at 11:43 p.m. Officer William R. Jackson Jr. steered his marked police cruiser down darkened Popes Creek Road, a well-traveled rural thoroughfare that led toward two of the area's fabled crab houses. His sirens silent and flashers off, he slowed at a mailbox numbered 10320 and pulled onto a rutted dirt pathway, past two creaky barn stalls that looked abandoned. The house to his left was tiny, with a sloping foundation, a sagging porch, a nearby shed. Jackson approached cautiously. Domestic calls, he knew, are hard to predict--charged and volatile and sometimes dangerous. He had been an officer for two years, and it was a rare night when he did not go out on one.
    Now, pulling up, he saw Janice Lancaster: 5-foot-7, standing in the yard in a nightgown, alone and calm. She did not rush toward him. When Jackson approached, she answered each question. Quiet, he thought. Pleasant. As they talked, Jackson recalled that this was the same woman he had met in February, when her husband had tried to run her off the road. He remembered she had been worried that her husband had a gun in his car. Now, Janice told the officer that she had been sleeping in the shed when Steve came home and grabbed her by the chest. She resisted. He dragged her across the yard, back into the house. They continued to argue. Her daughter called police. Jackson asked if she had been hurt. She showed him scratches on her neck and breast.
    Then Steve Lancaster emerged from the house and told Jackson the same story. But he said he did not recall scratching his wife. Steve Lancaster was courteous, not the kind of mouthy, cursing offender he often confronted. Steve Lancaster asked one question: "Who made the call?" Jackson did not answer. The arrest was an easy decision for Jackson: With a minor but discernible injury, this was second-degree assault. He led Steve Lancaster to his police car. "Look, he might be out in a couple of hours," the police officer told Janice Lancaster before he left. "You might want to get a [protective order] or pack up and go someplace else." "I don't want to leave my kids," she said.

DISTRICT COURT JUDGE RICHARD ALAN COOPER- Oct. 26, 1999
Judge Richard Alan Cooper was looking down from the bench at a man who--according to the paperwork before him--had punched his wife in the face and head one May evening. Today he was contrite and pleading guilty to second-degree assault. Cooper did not remember the Lancasters from their protection order case nine months earlier. More significant, he did not know that Steve Lancaster had been arrested a second time for attacking his wife. He also did not know that Steve Lancaster had been ordered to stay away from Janice until that second case went to trial. Nor did he know that Janice Lancaster had called police again Oct. 13, 1999--when no arrest was made. That night, she had pleaded to a dispatcher in a halting, fearful voice: "I need the police. . . . I think my husband's going to go get a gun. . . . Please hurry." The prosecutor, Daniel Ginsburg, could not tell him. Ginsburg had not discerned the details, either. Instead, Ginsburg told the judge: "This was a genuine incident of domestic violence, and too often victims aren't prepared to testify and she was prepared to do so today. She did sustain some injury. The state would recommend an active period of incarceration, perhaps weekends."
    Then her husband's attorney, Frank Jenkins, made the other case. "My client is 36 years of age. . . . He was having problems in his relationship; he simply overreacted. He realizes now that their marriage is in its final stages. He's very sorry, very embarrassed, about what has happened. It is out of character for him." The judge inquired: "Mr. Lancaster, is there anything you want to say before I impose the sentence?" "I'm sorry for what I've done," he said softly. The judge asked about Lancaster's job on the water, and then went on: "You and your wife are no longer together?" "We've seen each other once in a while," Steve Lancaster said. "You don't live together?" the judge asked. "Right." This was a lie. Steve Lancaster had been living with his wife, in spite of her attempts to force him to leave, in spite of still spending many hours at his girlfriend's home. "Well, Mr. Lancaster," the judge said, "these domestic violence incidents are taken seriously. . . . You're looking at up to 10 years on this particular charge." The judge inquired: "Are there any domestic violence orders in effect? Are there protective orders in effect? A divorce case has been filed?" "Oh, I don't know," Steve Lancaster said.
    The judge made his decision without knowing that the trouble was escalating because no one involved--not the prosecutor, not police, not Janice Lancaster's attorney--had assembled all the incidents into a report or a file or a courtroom argument. By the judge's calculations, the case looked like this: The injury meant he would give jail time. But because the injury was minor and this was a first-time domestic offender, the sentence would be minimal.
    Steve Lancaster got five days behind bars. Eighty-five days of jail time would be suspended, the judge said, and probation would last 18 months. The judge ordered Lancaster to have no "harassing contact" with his wife and said probation would be unsupervised. This meant no one would keep tabs on Steve Lancaster. From start to finish, the sentencing took seven minutes. Janice Lancaster sat confused and alone in the back of the courtroom. Why hadn't anyone called on her to speak? Why had her husband been allowed to lie? Why would he still be entitled to live in their house?

Letter to Janice, Nov. 1, 1999
Steve Lancaster served three days in jail, getting out two days early for good behavior. A few days later, he left a letter on Janice's dresser. It asked whether Janice still wanted him in her life. Would she shun him after the divorce? And would she help get his assault case dropped? He wrote: "I told you that I won't hit you know more. I can't touch you anymore because I got 18 months probation, that's that." Then the tone shifted. "Janice, I don't have anything left, so don't keep pushing me to the limit. …Be very careful with me. I'm right on the edge. …I know what I got to do to settle all of this…one way only and you know what I'm talking about." He warned: "I'm ready to go any time to lay my body to rest and [I am] not going to be the only one."

First Cousin Margaret Landry, Nov. 27, 1999
Janice's family was throwing a big party: a baby shower for one relative and birthday celebration for another. They had rented a party hall in St. Mary's County. Janice was among the first to arrive. Margaret Landry, who had lived in Texas for a few years, was excited to see her first cousin again. They had grown up together, with Landry living next door much of Janice's childhood, something of a big sister. Janice had family living nearby in Charles County, but she was reluctant to draw them deeply into her volatile marriage. Today, however, she confided in Landry. Her cousin was shocked when they stepped away from the festivities and Janice revealed that she had almost been stopped from coming. She said Steve had insisted that she stay home. She had refused. So he forced her pants off and dropped them into a puddle. To get away, she grabbed her pants and jumped into her car. "Huh? He did that?" Landry asked, stunned. "You all just don't know," Janice said. "That fool is getting crazy." Landry was blunt. "You need to get out of there," she said. "I am, I am," Janice replied. "I'm getting a house. I just need to wait until I get divorced."

Fern Brown, Court Coordinator For Domestic Relations, Dec. 20, 1999
Fern Brown is a calm and soothing personality, a retired computer analyst who, at 59, now passed her days explaining the forbidding language of the law to women who needed to use it to protect themselves. Most people came to her courthouse office without a lawyer or money to spend on one. Brown explained the first step: how to fill out the form asking a judge for a temporary order of protection. Brown did not follow their cases through the system, but she did what she could. Sometimes that meant walking someone into the courtroom. Sometimes it meant listening to a story for an hour or calling on a counselor.
    The woman before Brown on Dec. 20, 1999, was wearing a Santa Claus hat with the name Janice written in glitter on the trim. Fern Brown smiled. She had never met Janice Lancaster before but liked the woman in her office—bright dark eyes, a generous humor. On this quiet afternoon, five days before Christmas, Janice mentioned that she had just come from the prosecutor's office. There they were working to get her husband arrested for violating the order to stay away from her before trial. The order had been issued by a court commissioner at a bail hearing in the criminal case, and no one had told Janice it existed. She had found out today. Now, she decided, she would push for as much protection as possible and seek a civil protective order, too. A civil order was more potent because it had criminal penalties and violators could be arrested without a warrant.
    Her breaking point had come the night before. Steve had struck and threatened her because she attended a religious retreat that weekend. She seemed to realize that another court order now might incense him. And, in fact, experts have concluded that this time of separating is highly charged and dangerous, with many a violent reprisal. Brown took Janice upstairs to see a judge for a protective order that would last until Dec. 28, 1999, when her husband would come to court for a hearing. When they said goodbye, Brown noticed an edgy expression on the face beneath the Santa's cap. Fear, Brown thought to herself. It gave her pause, and yet she saw it often in the women she helped. Probably one of four said her life had been threatened. Brown never knew what became of most of them.

Circuit Court Judge Steven G. Chappelle, Dec. 28, 1999
The proceeding before Judge Steven G. Chappelle the next week looked straightforward. It was the request for a civil protection order. Often, these hearings are heated and hard to sort out. But this time, the lawyers came in having already agreed to terms. With no disputes before him, Chappelle asked few questions. He did not have all the couple's court files. Sometimes he got them, sometimes not. So the judge heard nothing about the threatening letter, the nights in the toolshed, the wish for a pretty blue coffin. The way he saw it, his role was to make sure both sides understood the agreement they reached, then give it the court's blessing. "The terms of this order will be that it will remain in effect until one year from today," the judge said. "…That until that period of time Mr. Lancaster will not abuse or threaten to abuse Mrs. Lancaster. That he will not contact [her] in person, by phone, in writing." The judge asked the lawyers to review the order with their clients before the court. "Is it your agreement not to have any type of contact with your wife whatsoever?" Steve Lancaster's attorney asked him. "Yes," he said. "You will leave the house on Popes Creek Road?" "Yes." "And the agreement is effective until the end of the year 2000, correct?" "Yes."
    No one asked about guns—though the question is posed on the protective order—and no one mentioned the violence counseling Janice had requested for her husband a week earlier. Her attorney, Howard Schemler, was on vacation. The lawyer who stepped in to help, as a favor to her employer, met her for the first time only the day before the proceeding. In this critical moment, no one put the pieces together. No one saw the larger picture. Elsewhere in the same small courthouse lay Janice's motion for Steve's arrest. It had been waiting seven days for a response from the other side. No one had remembered to alert the court clerk that the motion had urgency. The motion for his arrest showed that Steve repeatedly had violated the only condition of his most recent bail: to stay away from his wife. It showed he had gone so far as to strike her and threaten her life in a handwritten letter, which was included for the court to see. This meant he had violated not only his bail but also his probation.

Supervisor and Friend Freda Wells, Jan. 1, 2000
Freda Wells felt Janice was in danger, but how much, she could not be sure. She was the manager in the kitchen of the Loyola Retreat House, a lush, rolling 240-acre preserve on the banks of the Potomac. The kitchen crew was like family, and after Janice's troubles became clear, Wells reminded her staff day after day: No one was to be left alone in the kitchen, and no one was to leave the wooded property without an escort. It seemed one thing she could do to help.
    Freda saw Steve Lancaster as "a walking time bomb." She had heard about his threats, his guns, his possessiveness, about nights when Janice fled him and he rousted his children out of bed to help him find her. She remembered the warm autumn day when Janice told her Steve had showed the children a loaded shotgun and said: "This is for your mother. If you're not careful, it could be for you, too." Sometimes, Janice got frustrated. Her stays at friends' houses could not go on forever. She wanted Steve locked up. She told Freda's sister-in-law Mary Wells that after being arrested and quickly released, Steve Lancaster had told her: "See, I'm back. They didn't keep me."
    About Christmas time, Janice felt a new sense of hope. She told Freda that Steve was about to be arrested. Anyway, he had been barred from their home by a judge. "I'm finally going to get my life together," she enthused. "I just want peace." Now, on Jan. 1, Freda and Janice were at the home of Mary Wells. The three friends turned on "The Bodyguard." They had seen the movie before, a Whitney Houston blockbuster in which the star is saved from an obsessed man. Janice wanted to see it again. Then, during a lull in the action, Janice brought up a curious telephone call she had had that day, from her estranged husband's sister. Janice had once been close to Joan V. Swann. "No matter what happens, Janice, I'll always love you," Swann had blurted out. "What is this?" Janice had demanded. "A warning?" The sister-in-law had hung up quickly. Now the words nagged at Janice. Freda Wells was definite. "She's trying to tell you something," Freda said.
    On Jan. 2, Janice Lancaster and Freda Wells worked much of the day at the Loyola Retreat House, baking crab cakes for visitors from a Catholic college. Janice mentioned that it had been two weeks and Steve hadn't been arrested. "I wonder why it's taking so long," she said. She worked until 8 that night, then drove home to her tiny frame house, a third of a mile away. Janice passed the evening with her two children, joking with them, laughing, ironing her work uniforms and their school clothes. They all went to bed. Before dawn, Steve Lancaster parked his Datsun at the home of his father, about a mile from his wife's house. Wearing dark clothes and a stocking cap, he set out on foot to see Janice, carrying a 12-gauge shotgun close against his side. At 6:15 a.m., he barged in as his son was leaving to catch a school bus and his daughter was letting the dog out. He sent his son to the bus stop. He followed Janice, dressed in a white nightgown and blue slippers, into the bedroom. They struggled, and they argued. Steve Lancaster wrested away her .38 revolver. His daughter threatened to dial 911. "Go on and call them," he said.
    With one blast of the shotgun at 6:30 a.m., Janice's life ended. She collapsed in the kitchen. Steve Lancaster walked to the front porch, pressed the shotgun muzzle to his chest and fired a second fatal shot. His son heard the shots as his school bus rumbled down the road. He looked out the window and said, "I think that came from my house."

Potent Pot Rolling Up Sales
Serge F. Kovaleski, Washington Post -8/28/2000

A more potent marijuana now rivals and in some cases has surpassed crack as the drug of choice among users and dealers in Washington neighborhoods once dominated and devastated by the highly addictive form of cocaine.  The pot phenomenon has been attracting a new, younger generation of users, many of whom saw older siblings, parents and friends ravaged by the crack epidemic that besieged neighborhoods beginning in the late 1980s and extended through much of the last decade.
    Interviews with law enforcement authorities, substance abuse counselors, community activists and drug dealers, along with a review of drug-testing records from the D.C. Pretrial Services Agency, reveal that the consumption and distribution of cannabis in Washington has significantly increased as the crack market has contracted. One of the most troubling aspects of the shift toward marijuana is that – unlike the crack scourge – marijuana is popular with youths, including some in their early teens, according to police and drug counselors.
    Violence, largely fueled by turf feuds between young and armed dealers, is also a part of the marijuana market. Though less intense than the running gun battles that regularly erupted between street crews during the peak of the crack epidemic, when the District's homicide rate hit an all-time high, police say marijuana-related violence is a significant contributor to the city's persistent crime problem. Marijuana is in such demand that on various occasions, D.C. police have had to curtail undercover sales operations aimed at busting buyers because officers quickly ran out of the drug or were overwhelmed by the number of potential arrests. The customers regularly include residents from surrounding jurisdictions and occasionally buyers from Delaware, Richmond and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In some instances, these police operations have pulled in more than $800 in sales in less than a half-hour, investigators said.
    During one police raid on an open-air marijuana market along the unit block of Forrester Street SW, officers from the 7th District were forced to close off surrounding streets while making arrests because people continued to stream into the area to make buys despite the law enforcement presence. The Forrester Street market at one point was listed on a marijuana Web site as a place to find powerful strains of cannabis from Canada and Mexico and from labs in the United States where marijuana is cultivated hydroponically – in liquid concentrations of chemicals – to enhance its potency. Users are not only smoking a heavier duty variety of the herb, which has earned the street moniker "hydro"; they are also ingesting greater quantities of it, often by lighting up so-called blunts – cigars that have been emptied of tobacco and filled with the drug.
    At times, the availability of marijuana has reached absurd proportions. Until about 18 months ago, one of the largest open-air marijuana markets in the city operated on Orleans Place, just six blocks or so from the headquarters of the police department's major narcotics unit in Northeast Washington. Authorities were able to crack down on the market, but dealers moved their operation and now operate in smaller pockets throughout the area. "In the last three or four years, marijuana has become the main staple of drug use and sales in the District of Columbia. . .‚. When we do reversals [sting operations], we now take into consideration that there is an unlimited amount of buyers, especially near the Virginia and Maryland lines, where there are easy ins and easy outs," said Cathy L. Lanier, who until last week was the commanding officer of the major narcotics and gang crime unit and is now the commander of the 4th District. "Marijuana has always been there," Lanier said, "but it has become much more popular to sell and is much less vilified by society and users, whether they are on the street or being more discreet in the privacy of their own homes."
    To be sure, crack sales remain brisk in many Washington neighborhoods. Also, the use of higher-purity, inexpensive heroin that can be snorted or even smoked with marijuana has been on the rise. And there has also been a sizable jump in the prevalence of methamphetamines and Ecstasy, the rave party and dance club drug. But the growth in marijuana usage in Washington has outpaced that of any other drug in the city – a trend counter to that seen nationwide, where demand for pot among youths is decreasing.
    The ascendancy of marijuana in the city is due to a complex confluence of social, economic and legal factors extending back more than a decade. One of the predominant factors is that crack, the pellet of cooked cocaine, is viewed with contempt by a generation traumatized by the violence associated with the trade and by the effect on elders who would stop at nothing for another fix. "They saw the destruction from crack all over their streets and in their households; it was part of everyday life. They watched how it robbed them of their fathers, mothers and brothers," said Gerard Austin, an addiction counselor and member of the Alliance of Concerned Men, a group that helps at-risk youths. "Now the crack head is considered the worst of the worst. At least a junkie has some principles. But with a crack head, there is no cut card. Everything goes out the window." Austin said that nearly three-fourths of the juveniles and adults he is counseling use or have used marijuana as a primary drug – double the number five years ago. He noted that among users, rationales for smoking marijuana include the belief that "the good Lord left weed here as a way of expressing themselves naturally without getting addicted. They view it as socially accepted, more like alcohol, and they further justify it by saying it has medicinal uses."
    The escalating demand for marijuana has given rise to open-air markets like the one in the 1300 block of Valley Avenue in Southeast Washington, where dealers for the most part sell only cannabis. That is a departure from the past, when that and other drug markets hawked crack, hemp, heroin and LSD. Police have identified at least seven major marijuana centers in the District – one- to two-block areas where the drug is peddled outdoors – as well as a number of smaller markets that also are fertile ground for sales. A 20-year-old dealer, who would identify himself only as Leroy, said: "We beat the rap every day out here. . .‚. We can check out the unmarked cop cars coming from a mile away. By the time they park, we are gone, and besides, I don't carry enough of the weed on me to get busted for selling or anything like that." Leroy, one of about a half-dozen dealers near an apartment building that serves as the unofficial base of the marijuana market on Valley Avenue, said he can make upward of $500 in an evening selling $10 bags of marijuana. "I like the lifestyle and I like the money – it's big," he said. "The weed is where it's at right now. But I wouldn't sell crack anyway. Rock is for dying men and whores."
    Edward Harris, 21, who grew up in the East Capitol Dwellings public housing development in Southeast Washington and is now a peace adviser in the neighborhood, said: "It was cooler to smoke marijuana, because you saw how crack tore up whole cities and people and broke down families. Weed just lays you back. The word, the whole aspect of crack, is a turnoff." Law enforcement officials say many dealers have opted to sell marijuana partly because penalties can be much stiffer for someone caught distributing crack. Depending on the amount of the cocaine seized, the discretion of the courts and whether violence was involved, offenders can be charged with a felony and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. People convicted of selling marijuana, regardless of the quantity, would face a misdemeanor charge and a one-year sentence. In all, experts point out, it comes down to business savvy: A dealer can make a good deal of money in cannabis with a minimal risk of serving time if busted. Authorities pointed out that a dealer who purchases a kilogram of marijuana for $2,000 stands to make a profit of at least $10,500 by selling it in $10 ("dime") bags.
    Those involved in the fight against drugs hope legislation approved by the D.C. Council last month – which toughens the maximum penalties and makes distribution or intent to distribute more than a half-pound of marijuana a felony punishable by up to five years in prison – will send a stern message to dealers and help curb related violence. Others, however, question the impact of the legislation, which Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) has signed. Laws aside, communities have been showing less of a tolerance for the crack culture by pressuring dealers and users to give up the drug or get out. But marijuana's foothold in the city is also due to the quality of the product itself. "The boom in marijuana usage is largely explained by the fact that the drug has increased in potency over the years and is more powerful now," said Detective Mark Stone, of the major narcotics branch. "This is reflected in the language out on the streets," he said, noting that the term now is 'hydro.'‚"
    According to the D.C. Pretrial Services Agency, nearly 64 percent of the juveniles arrested in the first six months of the year tested positive for marijuana at the time they were booked, compared with 58 percent who did so in 1995. The proportion of juvenile arrestees who have tested positive for cocaine, the records show, has hovered between 4 percent and 7 percent over the same period. Users also have increasingly been mixing marijuana with other drugs. According to a drug abuse database set up by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the number of people in the District who went to hospital emergency rooms for drug episodes and reported that they also had smoked marijuana or hashish soared from 27 per 100,000 in 1991 to 62 per 100,000 in 1998.
    Investigators said that much of the marijuana arriving in the District is brought by New York City-based Dominican gangs and by others who import it from Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, where it is grown. Earlier this month, a task force of D.C. and Prince George's County police made a large marijuana bust, seizing 38 pounds apparently headed for the streets of Southeast Washington and arresting two District women. But the seizure was small when compared with the amount that moves through the District. At open-air markets, traffic can be thick, particularly on weekends, as drivers make buys from dealers who often aggressively solicit. The purchasing is not limited to Washingtonians. "If you go to one of these open-air markets you will see priests, orthopedic surgeons, students and others driving in with Maryland and Virginia plates," said Barry R. McCaffrey, the national drug control policy director. Overall, he added, "this is not just a poor or a black or a brown issue."
    While the marijuana markets attract violence, they also bring in prostitution, crap games, pit bull fights and a variety of other illegal activities – including the sale of fraudulent immigration documents. For these reasons, D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) said he voted in favor of the legislation stiffening penalties for the sale of marijuana. His ward is home to two large marijuana markets: One runs along the 500 and 600 blocks of Hobart Place NW, and the other extends across the 1600 and 1700 blocks of Columbia Road NW. "To be quite frank, there are enough black men in jail in the District of Columbia, and I do not see the penitentiary as the solution," Graham said. "I voted yes because of the markets. Neighborhoods are suffering as a result of the secondary issues they inflict. One elderly woman [in the ward] is too terrified to put her trash out even at 7 a.m. That is no way to live."

Seeger to Do Benefit for Embattled Therapist
Associated Press, 8/28/2000

AMHERST, Mass.--Some other therapist accused of sexual advances toward a teen-age client might have quietly left town, whether guilty or not. Eduardo Bustamante has stayed. Many of his supporters and clients have stayed too fiercely defending the Amherst child therapist in both court and public. Now, just as his license is set to be revoked, folk singer and activist Pete Seeger is turning Bustamante into his latest cause in a musical benefit.
    ''He works with kids that very few psychologists would work with very, very troubled kids,'' said Tao Rodriguez, Seeger's grandson who spurred his interest in Bustamante's case. ''If Eduardo loses his license ... these kids are going to be left hanging out to dry.'' Rodriguez, 28, a guitarist who sometimes performs with his grandfather, lives in the western Massachusetts town of Southampton and knows Bustamante as a friend. Rodriguez and Seeger will be raising money for Bustamante's legal defenses at their joint show at Northampton's Calvin Theater on Sept. 9.  Seeger, who has contracted Lyme disease, was resting at his home in Beacon, N.Y., and was not available Monday for comment.
    Bustamante's legal problems grew out of family and individual therapy in 1997 with Jessica McVey, a Belchertown girl who was then 18. She, her mother, Linda, and brother, Gregory, sued him in 1999 in Hampshire Superior Court, claiming ''improper advances'' toward the girl and negligence. A trial date has not yet been set in the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages. The girl, who was receiving therapy for post-traumatic stress syndrome, has also challenged his license. She told the state Board of Registration of Psychology, which oversees licensing, that 49-year-old Bustamante had made sexual advances toward her during therapy when she spoke of feeling attracted to him. In its April decision, the board agreed that he told her he wanted to have sex with her. The board said he appeared to carry on a personal relationship with her beyond any conceivable needs of therapy. The board ordered his license revoked for at least three years. ''The man is a rogue,'' McVey's lawyer, Stanley Spero, said Monday. ''He has no sense of limits or boundaries.'' Both Bustamante and his supporters have separately appealed the revocation of his license, which runs out Thursday. He said he has kept up his practice with child and adolescents as long as possible instead of giving up the fight for their benefit.
    Bustamante, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology and has written about handling difficult children, acknowledges that his methods sometimes challenge the boundaries of conventional psychology. Lori Steiner, a member of a group of supporters known as People for At-risk Kids, said these methods have been misconstrued in the lawsuit. Her son took therapy from Bustamante. ''We are trying to preserve a methodology that has pulled our kids back and made normal lives again possible for them,'' she said. ''Dr. Bustamante connects with his clients. He determines what they need by talking their language, whether that is sports ... fears and dreams.'' Bustamante has emphatically denied an inappropriate relationship with McVey. ''The allegations against me are full of distortions and lies,'' he said Monday. His office manager, Pat O'Connell, said he has been busy with clients, despite the impending license revocation. ''His schedule has been full. We still have people trying to get to see him before the deadline,'' she said. Bustamante said he has begun work at a marketing consultant for an Internet company in Miami. He said he will continue that line of work if he loses his license.

New Suicide Prevention Office Was Years in the Making
Bill Briggs, Denver Post- 8/29/2000

Sift through the fallout from just about any suicide, psychologists say, and you'll uncover such immediate human carnage as devastated spouses, dazed parents or even "copy cat" cases. Dig deep enough, and you may see how a single suicide can rumble inside a family for generations, breeding relationships ravaged by guilt and blame.
    This is the tale of one suicide, then another, and of their lingering impact upon dozens of other lives. It begins on Clint Bean's last day, Nov. 18, 1996. For now, no one knows where the echoes from Clint's death will ultimately end. But they escalated, oddly enough, with a scratched family car and his failure to score some concert tickets.  Such tiny details. Just kid stuff really. To Clint, however, they were everything - representing two more unforgivable sins. "I guess he felt he failed one last time," says his mother, Kathy Bean. "He didn't see any other way out."
    At 16, Clint seemed set up for a pretty nice ride. He was an "A" student with a bevy of friends and an impressive knack for creating his own computer games, a talent that could open lucrative doors after college. He lived in the safe, quiet Carmacar subdivision within the small town of Erie, 25 miles north of Denver. It's a place that still feels like a community, residents say, an old coal mining village filled with "nuts-and-bolts kind of people," by one description. With just 550 students, the combined Erie Middle/Senior High School is cozy enough that just about everyone knows your name. It's a place where you don't need to be a superstar to try out or play for the sports teams.
    "Most of the kids in this community have been here since they were in diapers," says Cammi Arneson, the school secretary. Yet within that snug environment, Clint struggled privately to weather what seemed like typical teenage bumps and bruises, Kathy Bean says. Rugged enough to help restore a rickety Mexican church along with other American kids, he was deeply bothered when other students made fun of his name. "They called him "Jelly Bean' and "Frijole' and "Bean Hole.' And it hurt him," his mother says. "Kids can be so cruel, and they don't mean to be. But if they're dealing with a sensitive person, they can really do damage." Within a month of his death, Clint broke up with a girlfriend and had two fender-bender auto accidents. Typical teen stuff.
    On the morning of Nov. 18, he accidentally scratched a family car while driving with two friends. Later that day, he and his pals excused themselves from school and came to the Bean house to try and buy concert tickets over the phone. Clint had permission to use his parents' credit card, but he couldn't get past a busy signal at the ticket office.  He put down the phone and told his friends to head back to school. He promised to see them there shortly. After the boys left, Clint returned the credit card to its proper place. Then he hanged himself. "I knew he was sad for some of those things, but I had no idea it was that bad," his mother says. "It seemed like things we all had gone through as teenagers. Clint was such a good kid. And, in his eyes, he thought he was a failure. He was very hard on himself."
    Six doors down, 12-year-old Robby Van Zuiden heard the sickening news and began peppering his mother with blunt questions: "What do you think hanging feels like? How long do you think it would take?" Robby never knew Clint, who was four grades ahead. And while Clint loved computers and church missions, Robby's heart was planted in motocross. Every weekend, he and his parents traveled around the state where Robby raced his Honda against other kids on the circuit. But now, along with dirt bikes, Robby was enamored with suicide. "He became obsessed," recalls his mother, Barb Van Zuiden. "In the first few days after Clint did it, he asked me all those questions and I told him, "I'm sure it's a horrible, painful thing." "But then, a few months later, he asked again. And I remember getting a terrible knot in my stomach. I thought, why is he still asking this question? I said, "This isn't something that you need to try." Barb made her lone child promise never to hurt himself. He promised. She sat him down and explained how such an act would devastate Robby's father and her. He listened.
    Unknown to his mother, however, Robby was telling friends at school that he was going to try it. No one believed him, students later told Barb. A "joker" who was about to earn his best report card ever (3.75 out of 4.0 GPA), Robby didn't seem sad about anything, his mother recalls. In hindsight, he just seemed infatuated with the sudden death of a boy he never knew. "It's like he had a fascination with hanging, but he didn't seem to associate it with dying," Barb says. "I've had different people, especially teachers, use the phrase "magical thinking,' that at that age, kids don't have a grasp of reality, don't see it as final. "My intuition was telling me this was very wrong, that I should take him to see somebody. But I believed him when he promised." On a Wednesday afternoon, about five months after Clint Bean died, Robby told school friends, "Today's the day." He took the bus home and walked in the door between 3 and 3:15 p.m. Barb's pattern was to run errands on Wednesdays, typically coming home at 3:30.
    At about 3:30, she pulled into the driveway, went inside and noticed how quiet the house was. Robby was not in his usual spot: parked in front of the TV with a can of Mountain Dew. She walked out to the garage to see if his bicycle was there. It was. She walked toward the back deck. She stopped cold when she saw Robby's feet dangling inches above the ground. "Get down right now!" she shouted. "That's not funny!" But Robby didn't flinch. He had hanged himself on a railing. In a panic, Barb lowered him and tried to help him breathe. The boy's eyelids fluttered, but he was gone, without a note or even a hastily scrawled goodbye to his parents. And that makes Barb think that Robby was experimenting, that he expected his mother to come home and find him in time. "You know how you get a song stuck in your head? Ever since that day, I have a song that says: "Why did you do it? Why did you do it? Why did you do it? Every waking moment," Barb says.
    "The healing (from Clint's suicide) still wasn't there when it happened again," Arneson says of the school. "It was almost like, "This is not happening again to us! What is going on?!" As they did in November, Erie school officials brought in a small army of mental health professionals to help the students grieve and talk. "One of the things that hit me," recalls Erie principal Bill Davis, "was that the kids were really angry. They were saying, "Why would you do this to your self and your family?" While lending a sympathetic ear, counselors also were on the lookout for any kids who, like Robby, were mulling "copy cat" suicides.
    So-called suicide "clusters" account for 1 to 5 percent of all teen suicides in the United States, or 100 to 200 deaths a year, studies show. That number is believed to be on the rise. The "copycat" syndrome is more common with teens than adults, says Bill Porter, a child psychologist with Cherry Creek schools. That's because adolescents are more prone to "environmental" issues, like a romantic breakup, he explains. Suicidal adults, meanwhile, typically are grappling with long-term depression or other mental illnesses. Media coverage can play a role too, experts say. If suicides are reported in glorifying terms - without also revealing the collateral pain they cause - teenagers may be enthralled by all the adoration heaped on the victim. Following Clint's suicide, Erie teachers announced the news in their classrooms but otherwise kept it "low key," parents recall.
    And not long after Robby did it, Kathy Bean heard that Barb Van Zuiden wanted to talk. "That was frightening to me," Kathy says, "because I thought, Does she think my son caused her son to die? My feeling was, Oh God, are they going to blame us for Robby's death?" But Barb never blamed the Beans. She really did just need to talk.  "I invited her to (my suicide) support group and tried to take care of her the way I would have wanted to be taken care of after Clint died," Kathy says. "We're really close friends today." Three years removed from Robby's suicide, Barb says thoughts about her son are still painful for her and for her husband, Bill, a driver for a local grocery chain. The mental ache will be there forever, she figures, like that song in her head. That's because suicide is so hard to come to terms with, Barb says. It cuts against the grain of human nature, unlike other tragedies. It makes no sense.  "I know a lady who came to our survivors group, and she had like 15 kids," says Barb. "She lost a son to suicide, another child to a car accident, another to cancer. The suicide was 20 years ago, but she said it haunts her (more than the other deaths). "And that's the perfect word, "haunt.' I lost my brother in a car accident in '83. He was 32. We were real close. It took a long time, and eventually I got over it. I'll never get over this."  But Barb Van Zuiden is fighting back, and that's where the trail from Clint's 1996 suicide has led for the moment.
    A church secretary by trade, Barb formed the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Erie in her spare time. Each week, she spends about 20 hours doing what she can to save lives. She has written mounds of letters to Colorado lawmakers and suicide survivors, lobbying them to get behind the idea of a statewide suicide prevention office (which Gov. Bill Owens ultimately approved this summer). She and Kathy also host anti suicide dances at the Erie school. When the music stops, they hold prize drawings and ask the teenagers to check the cards they received when they arrived. In addition to prize numbers, the cards are filled with the phone numbers of area mental health clinics. The two moms use that as a segue to talk about something uncomfortable, about the sons they lost. "We let them know that you can talk about this, that it's OK to ask for help," Barb says. It's a lot of work, but it lets Barb heal. And her husband, Bill, helps Barb in his own way. "He works all he can now," Barb says. Bill once drove Robby all over Colorado for his motocross meets. These days, he drives about 60 hours a week for the grocery chain. "I feel like that's the payoff. He works all these hours, and I only work a part-time job. That's his way of supporting my suicide prevention work." Quiet by nature, Barb also has been speaking at the Erie school, carrying her simple message to the kids. Kathy Bean speaks as well, sometimes in tears.
    "We've heard from the police and counselors at school that we've prevented somewhere in the neighborhood of eight other suicides," Barb says. That estimate is based on "kids coming to them and saying, "I need help."   All that from one suicide. Meanwhile, those tired lyrics about Robby still churn inside Barb's head, playing to the same, sad beat: "Why did you do it? Why did you do it? Why did you do it?" But maybe because of all those young lives saved, there is something different now. The song is still there, she says, but the volume is softer.

Playground Killer Was Ill, Jury Is Told
Stuart Pfeifer, Los Angeles Times- 8/29/2000

SANTA ANA--A man convicted last week of intentionally killing two children and injuring five others on a Costa Mesa playground had struggled for years with mental illness, his attorney told jurors Monday. At the start of a sentencing hearing to determine if Steven Allen Abrams should be found not guilty because of insanity, Deputy Public Defender Denise Gragg said Abrams was diagnosed with psychotic delusions six years ago, and was never able to control thoughts that someone was tampering with his mind. "Schizophrenia is a physical problem with the brain. It's not something that can be willed away," Gragg told the jury in Orange County Superior Court.
    But Deputy Dist. Atty. Debora Lloyd retorted in her opening statement that Abrams' mind was damaged only by years of drug abuse. During interviews with psychiatrists after he drove through the playground in May 1999, Abrams, 40, admitted abusing cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and other drugs most of his life.   "This defendant has used so many drugs during his life . . . that it's no wonder his brain has malfunctioned," Lloyd said.  If found insane, Abrams would be sentenced to a state psychiatric hospital and held until doctors conclude that he is safe for release, if ever. If he's not found insane, another hearing would be held to determine whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole. The sanity hearing could last a month, more than twice as long as the trial that led to his conviction.
    The children were killed or injured when Abrams drove his Cadillac through a chain-link fence and onto a busy playground at the Southcoast Early Childhood Learning Center. He later told psychiatrists that he attacked the children because they were innocent and such an attack might silence the "brain wave police" who were instructing him to kill. The delusions Abrams described were the byproduct of schizophrenia, Gragg said. The illness, which the lawyer said is hereditary, ran through his mother's family, the lawyer said. Abrams' maternal aunt spent most of her life at a psychiatric hospital in Italy after being diagnosed with the illness, Gragg said.
    Schizophrenia sometimes is not seen until adulthood, the lawyer said. With Abrams, the first signs came about 1994, when he was 34, she said. Abrams would dress in combat boots and military fatigues, then patrol the streets around his neighborhood looking for the people he said were beaming signals into his brain. On another occasion he was seen standing on a corner with his arms out, a table before him covered with water glasses and a sign saying "Holy Water." "He began to have the belief that maybe he was the Messiah," Gragg said. Drugs, his lawyer said, have nothing to do with his illness. "He is still to this day telling us about the brain wave people," she said. "The odds are great that for the rest of his life he will remain ill."

Groups Recommend Screening for Autism
Detroit Free Press, 8/29/2000

The first official guidelines for diagnosing autism are in the new issue of the American Academy of Neurology's journal, Neurology. Autism is a neurological and developmental disorder that affects between 60,000 and 115,000 children in the United States. The guidelines recommend all children be screened for autism and developmental delays, starting in infancy. Autistic children often don't respond to their name or have problems making eye contact before they reach 1.
    Two levels of screening are recommended. The first is routine developmental screening, which should occur at all well-child visits. According to the guidelines, less than 30 percent of well-child visits include age-appropriate screening. The second level of screening is specifically for the diagnosis of autism in a child who has shown developmental delays and other behaviors that suggest autism.
    Certain behaviors or delays mean a child should be immediately evaluated. These milestones include: no babbling by 12 months, no single words by 16 months and no spontaneous two-word phrases by 24 months. Twelve organizations helped develop the guidelines and also recommended areas that need more research.

Governors Look To Fight Meth
Susan Skiles Luke, Associated Press- 8/30/2000

COLLINSVILLE, Ill.-- Gov. George Ryan and Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan joined dozens of Midwestern law enforcement officials Tuesday to discuss ways to work together to fight methamphetamine, a stimulant easily made from common chemicals. ''As a society, we weren't tracking it as an illegal, noxious drug until the 1990s,'' Carnahan said. ''Today, we recognize it as the serious drug it is -- as serious as crack cocaine was in the 1980s.'' Production of the drug -- often made in small laboratories, apartments and motel rooms -- has soared in the Midwest since the mid-1990s, making the region the fastest growing in terms of meth production and consumption, said Kurt Schmid, who coordinates nationwide law enforcement efforts for the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington. So prevalent is the drug, said U.S. Attorney Stephen Hill, that when he is on the road, he carries two toothbrushes.  ''If I drop one in the sink, I don't use it again ... I assume meth cooks had been there before,'' he said.
    Consistent nationwide meth statistics are hard to find. Data collection across state lines is spotty, and states keep track of meth production differently. Still, Hill said Missouri ranks among the top meth-producing states in the country, with nearly 1,000 meth labs seized in 1999, up from 121 in 1996. California is the top producer, with more than 2,000 meth labs seized last year, said Kirk Meyers, a clandestine-lab analyst with the California Department of Justice. That's up from 559 in 1995. Kansas and Iowa each had around 500 labs shut down last year. Kansas had four in 1994; Iowa had 31 labs seized in 1997. In Illinois, officials expect to seize more than 400 meth labs in 2000, nearly twice the number shut down last year, said Sam V. Nolen, director of the Illinois State Police.
    The drug is highly flammable and toxic, making it necessary to have environmental experts on hand to clear the toxic residue. That means authorities need to work together across state and agency boundaries. In the West, large-scale labs controlled by Mexican drug cartels pump out hundreds of pounds of the drug at one time, Hill said. But in the Midwest, small, hard-to-spot labs in inconspicuous places -- like suburban neighborhoods and rural areas -- produce far less at one time, mainly for local users. And in some cases, there's a hidden danger. Some of the meth chemicals explode upon contact with water; a particular problem for firefighters who respond to fires at meth labs, officials said. ''That's why the collaboration and training is so important'' among agencies in different states, Schmid said. ''We've got to have a strategy,'' he said. ''We cannot be fragmented.''

Reading, Writing and Ritalin?
ABC News, 8/31/2000

As millions of children head back to school, concern is rising over whether too many students without severe disabilities are taking Ritalin, a psychotropic drug used to treat hyperactivity. In a new book called Running on Ritalin, Dr. Lawrence Diller looks at some of the disturbing trends he has seen with Ritalin, including increasing concerns that teachers, school administrators, state agencies and even courts are pushing parents to put their children on Ritalin. Use of the drug is up 700 percent since 1990. Though he prescribes Ritalin in hundreds of cases, and believes in its effectiveness, Diller questions whether teachers are diagnosing children without first using their teaching skills, and whether parents are helping their children enough at home.

How Ritalin Use Grew
Ritalin is a stimulant used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in children. Figures from the American Psychiatric Association indicate that anywhere from 4 to 12 percent of all American children — some 2.5 million — suffer from ADHD. Coupled with that came a rise in the number of Ritalin prescriptions. Scientific research has found that Ritalin does work, with hundreds of studies indicating that it is effective in the short term for improving focus, performance and behavior of children with ADHD, and that it is safe. In fact, the drug was found to be more effective than behavior modification therapy in treating children with ADHD, according to a study coordinated last year by the National Institutes of Health. But Diller contends that there is not enough research about whether Ritalin can help ADHD children over the long term.

Are Schools Promoting Ritalin?
At the same time, there are fears that schools are pushing parents into putting children on Ritalin when there might be less intrusive alternatives. That concern prompted the Colorado Board of Education to vote to discourage teachers from recommending behavioral drugs like Ritalin and urge school personnel to use discipline and instruction instead to overcome problem behavior in the classroom. The courts are also getting involved. In Albany, N.Y., a couple put their 7-year-old son back on Ritalin after a family court ruled that they must continue medicating him for ADHD. There are also reports of teens using illegal Ritalin, which acts as a stimulant, often securing it from friends with prescriptions. In his book, Diller concludes that widespread use of Ritalin is a "canary in the coal mine" of our times, and its increasing use points toward the failure of helping children and families by other means. Non-drug interventions may take longer to work, and may cost more money, but in the end these parenting and classroom strategies could be the wiser route. One alternative to Ritalin that has been suggested is more school choice, with parents finding schools better suited to their children’s temperaments.

Ex-Drunken Drivers Are Ordered to Report
Matt Helms, Detroit Free Press- 8/31/2000

Five judges say a crackdown last New Year's Eve that tested whether Oakland County drunken drivers were violating probation by consuming alcohol worked so well that they're making it permanent and including four more holiday periods. So Friday night, roughly 1,000 drunken drivers ordered not to imbibe as part of their probation will have to report between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. for a breath test. This test is the first of seven such exams they must undergo by the weekend's end Monday night.
    Judge Brian MacKenzie of Novi District Court said Wednesday that he and district court colleagues in Pontiac, Ferndale, Troy, Southfield and Rochester Hills are expanding the testing into a program called CATCH, for Courts Acting Together for the Community at the Holidays. Besides New Year's Eve and Labor Day, the program will be in effect during the Thanksgiving, Memorial Day and Fourth of July holiday periods, which combined saw more than 1,000 alcohol-related traffic deaths on the nation's roads in 1998, MacKenzie said. There were 201 during the Labor Day holiday alone.
    "We're watching them closer when there's a greater temptation to drink because we know this is one of the five most dangerous times of year to be on the highway," MacKenzie said. The program is designed to increase scrutiny on people likely to be behind the wheel while impaired or drunk. McKenzie said about 70 percent of those convicted of drunken driving have alcohol-dependency problems. Anyone on record with the court systems involved in CATCH is mailed a notice about the testing. It doesn't cost courts anything beyond mailing the initial notice to probationers. Each probationer must pay as much as $10 per day for the testing, offered at five sites in Oakland County and two others in Dearborn and Eastpointe. Most of the people in the program are from Oakland County.  Rochester Hills District Judge Ralph Nelson said the courts already have to mail notices to probationers for testing, so the cost is negligible. "Even if it did cost us something, I think it would be worth it in protecting us from recidivist drunken drivers," Nelson said. "It gives them a reason not to relapse through the holiday times."
    The first time around, the program was called Y2Care. MacKenzie said it involved more than 1,300 convicted drunken drivers; 1,214 showed for testing, and only 8 tested positive for alcohol. He said the testing helped ensure that more than 90 percent of the people involved stayed sober over the New Year's holiday. Those who drank or didn't show faced jail sentences of 90 days to a year for violating probation, depending on their initial conviction.
    The program expansion is being done in cooperation with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other groups. Michele Compton, director of the Oakland County MADD chapter, said Wednesday that the program is helpful in targeting repeat offenders. They make up a third of all drunken driving arrests and are responsible for as much as 20 percent of alcohol-related traffic fatalities, MADD estimates. Compton called CATCH a proactive approach. "Unfortunately the majority of holidays in this country are drinking holidays," she said. "You're really getting in these folks' faces and letting them know they have to abide by their probation." That didn't make some of the participants happy last New Year's Eve. A few indicated it spoiled their holiday, but "when the judge says random testing -- that can be at any time -- and that weekend was the time," said Larry Davis, the Pontiac District Court's chief probation officer. The ACLU of Michigan doesn't consider the tests an unreasonable intrusion as long as they're limited to a person's probationary period. But the group's executive director, Kary Moss, said it will keep an eye on the expansion.

Feds' Needless Pot War
Los Angeles Times- 8/31/2000

Medical experts have long recommended that the government move marijuana from its current, illogical status as a totally forbidden drug over to the category for potentially addictive drugs like morphine and cocaine that nevertheless have some accepted medical use. A confrontation has been escalating between the state of California and the federal government since the state legalized medicinal marijuana in 1996. The big artillery came into play Tuesday as the U.S. Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction barring distribution of marijuana in the state for any use, even for terminal cancer patients. It is an impasse that could have been predicted. It could also have been prevented if the Clinton administration had shown responsible leadership on the issue.
    Medical experts have long recommended that the government move marijuana from its current, illogical status as a Schedule 1 drug--with substances like heroin, deemed to have no possible medicinal value--over to Schedule 2, the category for potentially addictive drugs like morphine and cocaine that nevertheless have some accepted medical use. In 1988, after the federal Drug Enforcement Administration held hearings in response to a petition asking that marijuana be transferred to Schedule 2, the DEA's own administrative law judge recommended such a transfer. But top DEA officials declined to do so. More recently, a report by the federal Institute of Medicine last year concluded that marijuana is valuable for many patients for whom other medications do not work.
    The Clinton administration is obviously reluctant to be seen as sanctioning a drug that many Americans associate with the drug-abusing excesses of the 1960s, including those of the president who "never inhaled." In fact, moving marijuana to Schedule 2 would help rein in potential abuses by the ad hoc cannabis buyers' clubs that have formed in California and the states that joined in passing laws to sanction medical marijuana--Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon and Washington. There is little evidence that the clubs are distributing marijuana to those without legitimate medical needs, but there is little oversight now to prevent them from doing so. This laxity was a big factor in The Times' opposition to the 1996 legalization measure, Proposition 215. The measure also permits physicians to prescribe marijuana not just for serious conditions like cancer and AIDS, but for "any . . . illness for which marijuana provides relief."
    Short of moving marijuana off of Schedule 1, the Clinton administration could at least try toning down needlessly confrontational rhetoric of the sort seen in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge William Alsup earlier this month, when Justice Department lawyers argued that physicians who recommend marijuana as a medical treatment should be stripped of their licenses to prescribe drugs. California officials are doing the best they can to responsibly implement Proposition 215. On Tuesday, the University of California announced that it will open a new cannabis study center at UC San Diego to develop scientific data to help counties craft guidelines for the medical use of marijuana. Now it's Washington's turn. The administration should relax federal laws to allow physicians to administer marijuana under controlled circumstances. The alternative, as Proposition 215 showed, is to watch voters at the state level throw off almost all controls.

Assaulted Women Suffer Long-Term Health Consequences
Reuters, 8/31/2000

NEW YORK—Studies have shown that as many as 20% of all women are raped by the time they are 21 years old and that more women die from workplace violence than job-related accidents. Now, a survey on women who served in the military, where the risk of workplace violence appears to be higher, reveals that these experiences can have profound and long-lasting effects on the physical and mental health of women.
    "More than a decade after rape or physical assault during military service, women reported severely decreased health-related quality of life, with limitations of physical and emotional health, educational and financial attainment, and severe, recurrent problems with work and social activities," according to Dr. Anne G. Sadler from the Iowa City Veterans' Affairs Medical Center, and colleagues. The findings in the September issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology are based on telephone interviews with 537 women who served in Vietnam or other countries.
    Nearly half of all women experienced violence during their service. Thirty percent of these women were raped, 35 percent were physically assaulted and 16% were both raped and assaulted, results show. Women who were raped were more likely to report chronic health problems and use prescription drugs for emotional problems, researchers report. These women were also more likely to have dropped out of college and earn less than $25,000 a year. The authors write that their findings suggest "that the negative health consequences of rape and physical assault are severe and chronic," and illustrate the necessity of asking women about violence and support the need for early intervention with these women.

Zapping Depression
Robin Eisner, ABC News- 8/31/2000

NEW YORK--Each year as many as 2.5 million clinically depressed Americans don’t get relief from scores of prescription drugs, visits to the therapist, and even shock treatments, experts say. But doctors at 20 leading medical centers nationwide are now testing a pacemaker-like device that stimulates a nerve that runs down the side of the neck, hoping to find a treatment to ease symptoms of hard-to-shake depression. If the trials, on as many as 275 such patients, are successful, Cyberonics, Inc., the maker of the device, hopes to obtain Food and Drug Administration approval for the technology in depression treatment.

Clinical Trial Beginning
Cyberonics, a publicly traded company in Houston, Texas, is beginning to recruit patients for a clinical trial where patients are assigned either to a treatment or no-treatment group with neither the doctor nor patient knowing so any potential bias will not skew the results. After the surgical implantation of the device, the trial will last for 12 weeks with half receiving stimulation and the other half not, explains Cyberonics CEO Robert Cummins. The device stimulates the nerve for 30 seconds, stops for 5 minutes and starts again. Both groups will be monitored for longer-term follow up to see if any benefit lasts.

Epilepsy Work Led to Trial
The idea to test vagus nerve stimulation in depressed patients came from results with patients who have epilepsy. In 1997, FDA approved the use of the implantable stimulator for epileptics. But researchers found it helped improved the mood of these patients, even if it did not affect the frequency of seizures. To date, doctors have implanted approximately 7,500 epileptics with the vagus nerve stimulator, some for 10 years during pre-approval testing. Although physicians do not know precisely how vagus nerve stimulation helps mood, researchers explain it may help activate the emotional center of the brain called the limbic system. "The theoretical basis of how the stimulator works has lagged behind what was found empirically," says Dr. Keith Isinberg, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine, in St. Louis, Mo. "But it doesn’t seem implausible that the vagus nerve might play a role in depression. It is definitely worthy of further study."

Nerve Connects to Upper Torso Organs
The vagus nerve helps the brain communicate with the organs of the upper torso, such as the heart, lungs and gastrointestinal tract — and vice versa. The nerve also connects to a way station in the brain that "talks" to the limbic system, which controls sleep, appetite, mood, weight, concentration and memory, explains Dr. A. John Rush, professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwester Medical Center at Dallas, one of the pioneers in testing the device. He published a small study of 30 patients in the peer-reviewed journal Biological Psychiatry in February. At the time, he and colleagues found mood had improved by at least 50 percent in 40 percent of the patients. And of these, half no longer felt depressed. Side effects of the stimulation phase of the treatment included voice changes, a sense of something being caught in a patient’s mouth and difficulty breathing during vigorous activity, says Rush. Doctors are advising patients of these potential adverse reactions during this new trial, he says. Surgical complications could also ensue.

Cost-Effective Treatment?
Cyberonics’ Cummins says the cost of the device, at $11,450, and the surgery totals $20,000, depending on the hospital. But the price is cost-effective compared to current treatments, he says, because the battery lasts an average of 5 years, bringing the expense to $4,000 per year. The average antidepressant can cost $500 a year, he says, but many patients take more than one. And shock therapy costs $5,000 to $7, 500 a year. The company helps pay for the cost of the clinical trial. If approved by FDA, insurance companies would be apt to reimburse for the treatment, Cummins says, as they do for the epileptics. Doctors say patients should be careful about participating in the trial. "There is no guarantee the trial will be effective and there may be some period that you may not be getting the stimulation treatment, even though patients would still be on their antidepressants," says Dr. C. Edward Coffey, chair of the psychiatry department at the Henry Ford Health System, in Detroit, Mich., who is not involved in the study. "Patients could become quite ill during the course of the trial."

Protests Spur Washington State to Revise Rules for Sex Offender Housing
Rebecca Cook, Associated Press- 8/31/2000

OLYMPIA -- The next time the state Department of Social and Health Services wants to put released sex offenders in a residential neighborhood, families living nearby and area police will get a say in the matter. That's according to new sex offender housing criteria released yesterday by DSHS. Gov. Gary Locke ordered the agency to revise and report on its guidelines after outraged Thurston County residents protested DSHS plans to house sex offenders near a day-care center and a school bus stop. DSHS eventually backed away from the plan -- after a neighbor teamed up with an area developer to buy the property.
    The new criteria require that sex offender housing be at least a quarter mile from schools, day-care centers, parks, places of worship and school bus stops. The guidelines also call for more public input. Although Locke praised the new criteria, he acknowledged that it will never be easy to find homes for sex offenders who are released from the McNeil Island Special Commitment Center. "No community will welcome such new neighbors, but every community deserves to be consulted," Locke said. "This report lays out an effective process." DSHS will also consider police response time when choosing a home, although the report doesn't set any limits. Tim Brown, acting assistant secretary for health and rehabilitative services, said the agency didn't want to be too specific, because then the requirements might rule out every possible site.
    Keeping sex offenders locked up indefinitely is not an option for the state. The special commitment center was created after the Legislature passed the Community Protection Act of 1990, allowing courts to civilly commit some sex offenders for treatment after they complete their prison sentences. U.S. District Judge William Dwyer has threatened the state with big fines if treatment programs are not improved and residents of the center are not given a reasonable chance to win release. He has ordered the state to develop "less restrictive alternative" placements for offenders ready for release.
    DSHS estimates that six sex offenders will be released from the Special Commitment Center within the next nine months. The agency is now looking for two houses, which would house three inmates each under round-the-clock supervision. For a longer-term solution, DSHS wants the Legislature to pay for a 30-bed treatment center where the offenders could be sent after being released from the special commitment center. The treatment center would be less restrictive than the commitment center -- offenders could leave to go to jobs and other activities -- but residents would still be under constant surveillance. Brown said the agency does not yet know how much the treatment center would cost. DSHS will schedule public hearings in Spokane, Olympia and Yakima on the new sex offender housing criteria.