Major Gay Rights Issue Before the Supreme Court
Kristen Hays, Associated Press- 3/23/2003

HOUSTON -- John Lawrence and Tyron Garner could be called accidental activists. More than four years ago, police burst into Lawrence's apartment sent there by a bogus report of an armed intruder to find the two men engaged in consensual sex. The pair were jailed overnight and charged with breaking Texas' Homosexual Conduct Law, which bans oral and anal sex between people of the same gender. These days Lawrence and Garner keep a low profile, but their case challenging the Texas statute and by extension, sodomy laws in 12 other states has made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
    Gay-rights activists regard Wednesday's arguments as one of the most important legal challenges for decades: In 1986, the high court upheld a now-defunct sodomy law in Georgia. To the Texas government and its allies, the case is about the right of states to promote the moral standards of their communities. ''It's one more battle, one more step,'' said Annise Parker, the only openly gay member of the Houston City Council. ''I think there will be a huge celebration if we win it.''
    The men's arrest in September 1998 attracted relatively little attention, and they declined through attorneys to be interviewed. But from the start, they felt their arrest was unfair. Garner said in court in 1998 that he hoped the law would change and, ''I feel like my civil rights were violated and I wasn't doing anything wrong.'' Lawrence called his arrest ''sort of Gestapo.'' But once they pleaded no contest and each paid $200 fines, Lawrence and Garner faded out of public view.
    ''These are people who were arrested in their bedroom,'' said Patricia Logue, an attorney with the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, which has handled the case since early on. ''They never chose to have that invasion of privacy. This is something they believe in, of course, but it's not a battle they chose.'' Logue and the men's other attorneys contend the Texas law is unconstitutional for two reasons: it authorizes impermissible intrusion into citizens' private lives and violates the Equal Protection Clause by criminalizing certain behavior only for same-sex couples, not for heterosexuals.
    But William Delmore III, an assistant district attorney in Harris County, said the high court should leave it to Texas lawmakers and other state legislatures to tackle the issue. ''We feel pretty comfortable that while legislatures are free to repeal statutes of this kind and that's a completely appropriate exercise of democracy legislatures should remain free to act on principles of morality and retain statutes that are intended to public morality,'' Delmore said. He contends the Texas sodomy law doesn't target gays and lesbians the way segregation laws targeted minorities before the high court intervened in 1954 to strike down the ''separate but equal'' precedent. ''As long as we continue to believe that gambling, prostitution and private drug use should remain subject to governmental regulation and prohibition, I think we're still considering morality an appropriate basis for governmental action,'' he said.
    But many gays and lesbians feel they are singled out for discrimination in employment, custody and adoption when sodomy laws allow them to be labeled habitual criminals. Texan Connie Moore, a lesbian who runs a small law practice with her partner, is outraged by the statute. The idea that she could be considered a criminal ''because I loved a 'her' instead of 'him''' just doesn't cut it, she said.
    As recently as 1960, every state had a sodomy law. In 37 states, the statutes have been repealed by lawmakers or blocked by state courts. Of the 13 states with sodomy laws, four Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri prohibit ''deviate sexual intercourse,'' or oral and anal sex, between same-sex couples. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
    Various groups have filed briefs with the high court either supporting or opposing the Texas law. Supporters include several states with sodomy laws on the books and conservative groups, including the American Center for Law and Justice, which is affiliated with the Rev. Pat Robertson; Focus on the Family; and the Family Research Council. ''For homosexual activists, this case is their Supreme Court Super Bowl the next step in their pursuit of same-sex marriage,'' said Jan LaRue of Concerned Women for America, which joined those filing briefs supporting the Texas law. Opponents include the American Bar Association, historians, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund and libertarian organizations, such as the Cato Institute and the Institute of Justice.
    A brief filed by the Human Rights Campaign and other gay-rights groups evoked Mark Bingham, a gay man believed to have been among passengers who fought terrorists aboard United Flight 93 before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001. ''To his country, Mark Bingham is a hero; in Texas, he is a criminal,'' the brief said.

Vaccines and Autism, Beyond the Fear Factors
Jane E. Brody, New York Times- 3/25/2003

Over the years, any number of coincidental findings have suggested that exposure to a particular substance may cause a certain illness. But under the critical eye of careful research, most of these apparent associations turn out to have no cause and effect relationship. The suspicion that vaccines given to infants and children can cause autism is one such association, with attention directed at the vaccines that use the preservative thimerosal, which contains mercury. Experts have poked many holes in this theory, which arose because of two facts: that mercury is a known neurotoxin and that symptoms of autism typically appeared soon after children were given vaccines containing thimerosal.
    While the final "i" has yet to be dotted on this question, overwhelming evidence so far suggests that thimerosal poses no significant threat to the developing brain. Erring on the side of caution three years ago, vaccine makers stopped using thimerosal to prevent microbial contamination of certain vaccines given to infants and small children, although none of the existing batches were recalled and remained in use until supplies ran out. Also, thimerosal is still used in flu vaccine, which is now recommended for otherwise healthy children ages 6 months to 2 years.

Keeping Open Minds
It is easy for parents to become convinced that thimerosal is the culprit in the current rise in autism rates if they consider only the arguments presented by those who believe in this association. So it is important to review the evidence that experts have marshaled against it, which is described in the current issue of the journal Pediatrics by two neuropathologists, Dr. Karin B. Nelson of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and Dr. Margaret L. Bauman of Harvard Medical School. In October 2001, a 15-member expert panel of the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that there was not enough evidence to prove or disprove a link between thimerosal and autism. Meanwhile, Dr. Marie C. McCormick, the Harvard professor of maternal and child health who led the panel, suggested that parents ask their doctors to use mercury-free vaccines. But, she said, even if they are not available, parents should still have their children vaccinated.
    The diseases that vaccines prevent can cause severe illness, brain damage and even death, and these real risks are far greater than anything that may be imagined to result from the vaccines themselves. To be sure, the numbers of reported cases of autism and its milder forms are alarming: an increase from about 1 child in 2,000 before 1970 to a prevalence today of 1 in 500,1 in 250 and possibly even 1 in 150, according to various estimates. What accounts for the change remains a mystery: some environmental agent may be acting on the brains of susceptible children, or the change may simply reflect better recognition and diagnosis.
    Thimerosal has been used to protect vaccines since the 1930's. But the change in diagnosis rates of autism has coincided with an in creased exposure of American infants to vaccines preserved with thimerosal, which have included Haemophilus influenzae (HiB), hepatitis B, diphtheria and tetanus. This preservative is also used in some immunoglobulins given to pregnant Rh-negative women and some over-the-counter eardrops and nasal sprays.

Claims vs. Facts
Typically, children who are found to be autistic appear normal for their first months or year, then they seem to lose natural developmental landmarks. Many parents of affected children have noted that this reversal occurs suddenly or gradually soon after the vaccinations received in the child's first 15 months. But Dr. Nelson and Dr. Bauman point out that "age of onset of symptoms can be highly misleading as an indicator that some environmental event has caused or precipitated a disorder." For example, in two disorders known to be caused solely by a defect in a single gene, a period of normal development occurs before symptoms appear -- about 18 months in Rett syndrome and 45 years in Huntington's chorea, the disease that killed the songwriter Woody Guthrie.
    Those who have focused on mercury as a cause of autism list nearly 100 clinical signs that they say are shared by autism and mercury poisoning. But Dr. Nelson and Dr. Bauman say this list does. not distinguish between "typical and characteristic manifestations" and those that are "rare, unusual and highly atypical." For example, the scientists said, in mercury poisoning, including the few cases of poisoning caused by ethyl mercury, the form in thimerosal, characteristic motor symptoms are lack of coordination, unsteadiness and difficulty speaking because of poor muscle control, along with tremors, muscle pains and weakness and, in severe cases, spasticity. But in autism, they said, the only common motor symptoms are "repetitive behaviors such as flapping, circling or rocking." As for sensory symptoms, mercury poisoning is associated with extreme sensitivity to touch, a function of peripheral nerve damage. But in autism a reduced sensitivity to pain accompanies a hypersensitivity to sound, suggesting involvement of the central nervous system, not peripheral nerves.
    There is even debate over ethyl mercury and whether it gets into the brain. Methyl mercury has an "active transport system" to carry it across the blood-brain barrier, but there is no such transport for ethyl mercury, which is further hindered from entering the brain by being a larger molecule that is rapidly decomposed once in the body. Also striking, the scientists report, are differences in the brains, including size and the kinds of cells and areas that are damaged in autism and mercury poisoning. Children with mercury poisoning experience a shrinkage of the brain; those with autism tend to have abnormally large brains, with an enlarged cortex and white matter and more nerve processes than normal.
    In an interview, Dr. Nelson suggested that the normal "pruning process" -- the loss of extraneous neurons and connections that occur as, children mature and gain experience -- fails to happen in autism, leading to an enlarged brain. More studies should be done, she said, to reveal why autistic children seem unable to focus and are overwhelmed by environmental stimuli. A further brain difference, she noted, lies in the brain cells: those that are relatively spared in mercury poisoning are damaged in autism, and vice versa.
    Autism is known to have hereditary influences, and Dr. Nelson, among others, says that it "probably begins in the womb," the result of abnormal brain development. Although the symptoms usually do not become apparent until months or longer after birth, some mothers of autistic children have reported noticing abnormalities in their newborns before any mercury-containing vaccine was administered.
    Through the years, several cases of serious mercury poisoning have occurred, including one involving a mercury-containing teething powder and another related to the contamination of fish consumed by millions of people in Japan. But still, no increase was seen in the incidence of autism or in behavior changes suggestive of autism.
    Millions of children get vaccines every year, but fewer than 1 percent end up with autism. If vaccines are a factor, why would so many be spared? The hypothesis put forth by Sallie Bernard and colleagues at the parent organization Safe Minds in Cranford, N.J., is that some children are either born sensitive to mercury or fail to eliminate mercury normally and thus accumulate large amounts that can damage the brain. Clearly, this matter deserves thorough scientific attention. Autism is a devastating condition that is very costly for child and family and, if cases can be prevented, they should be. If thimerosal is an important cause, the phasing out of its use, in vaccines that is now occurring should result in *a significant decline in cases in the next few years.

Aggression in Genes? Those May Be Fighting Words
Margie Wylie, Newhouse News Service- 3/25/2003

When technology has made the world smaller than ever, why does mankind still resort to settling international differences with the blunt instrument of war? The clues may be in our genes. An emerging and controversial branch of science suggests that humans are, at least in part, hard-wired for aggression and other troublesome behaviors.
    Many modern problems are caused "simply by doing well what we have evolved to do: Garner, consume, be fertile, give to our children, and not look too far ahead," University of Michigan evolutionary ecologist Bobbi S. Low wrote in her book "Why Sex Matters: A Darwinian Look at Human Behavior." Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham fingers the Y chromosome as, the culprit in war. In his book "Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence," Wrangham argues that more aggressive men were the most successful breeders back in our evolutionary past. While females have evolved around the priority of protecting their young, and thus are more risk-averse, "sexual selection has favored male temperaments that are attracted to high-risk, high-gain ventures," Wrangham said. "That leads to ... wildness that hikes insurance rates for young men and a greater willingness to risk their lives and the lives of others," he said.
    Wrangham bases his work in part on observations of chimpanzees, one of humanity's closest evolutionary cousins. Male chimps fight one another directly for access to females, he says. But they also make group raids into neighboring clans, killing out-of-group males without provocation or apparent, immediate gain. In other words, they wage war.
    Of course, the reproductive advantage that conferred on human males thousands of years ago has disappeared in modern society. Why, then, does the behavior persist? Low explains that the behaviors evolution favored tended to offer "secondary rewards" -- that is, they felt good, and still do. This unties the impulse from its survival purpose. Young men, in other words, don't drive recklessly because it ensures more offspring; they do it because it feels good.
    Geneticists have just begun to link DNA sequences to certain behaviors. So far, it's been slow going. "Behaviors are at least 50 percent or so non-genetic, and of the genetic contribution, it's probably spread between many, many different genes," Dean H. Hamer, a behavioral geneticist and chief of the Gene Structure Regulation Section of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., told Time magazine's recent Future of Life Conference.
    Critics, meanwhile, say these scientists vastly overestimate the pull of genes on behavior. "The whole idea that aggression is somehow ingrained in our genes is pure hogwash," said Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, who wrote the book "Human Natures: Genes, Cultures and the Human Prospect" as a counterpoint to the growing chorus of voices supporting genetic theories.
    "There's absolutely no data to indicate that more aggressive people have more offspring than others," Ehrlich said. In primates, "sneaky males" who skirt confrontations to mate with females surreptitiously "do just as good or better than the aggressive ones," he said. Ehrlich, a biologist best known for his late 1960s book "The Population Bomb," which warned about the effects of looming overpopulation, favors an environmental explanation of behavior.
    Others worry that genetic theories offer a convenient excuse to give in to badness. Why try to find answers to war or even crime, if our genes make us do it? Harvard economist Terry Burnham, co-author of "Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food, Taming Our Primal Instincts," argues that the influence of those genes is strong enough that we can't hope to overcome it by willpower alone. Instead, the answer is to create structures that channel our tendencies in ways that benefit us. "Humans are built to kill each other in certain settings," Burnham said. "If you want to prevent killing, as I do, then you need to engineer a world that doesn't lead people to murder and war." Wrangham agreed. In Bonbono monkeys, he said, females keep male aggression in check by traveling in packs and defending one another. While he doesn't suggest women do the same, he thinks they could use the ballot box to shift foreign policy. But waiting for evolution to breed out our bad traits can take a long time. Bonbono monkeys, famous for their loving societies, split off from chimpanzees some 2.5 million years ago, Wrangham said; biologists guess they evolved their peaceful leanings only about 10,000 years ago.
    So, if evolution is dealing its hand too slowly, why not speed things up, by engineering out warlike tendencies? Not likely, said the National Cancer Institute's Hamer. For one thing, "gene therapy has not yet worked in the simplest case of replacing a gene in an adult individual," he remarked at the Monterey conference. Even if we had the technology, genes that affect behavior tend to affect multiple behaviors at once. For example, "The same gene that causes some people to be anxious and depressed and moody is also a gene that, if you take it away, makes people much less interested in having sex," Hamer said.
    But there is some hope. Wrangham argues in an upcoming book that humans have already made evolutionary strides toward being less aggressive, at least inside groups. Domesticated animals, bred for docility, have as much as a quarter less brain mass than their wild cousins, he said. And the peaceful Bonbonos have brains about 10 percent smaller than chimps. Not coincidentally, Wrangham said, modern humans have lost about 10 percent of their brain mass in the last 28,000 to 30,000 years. While most biologists explain the difference by body size, Wrangham thinks we're simply in the process of domesticating ourselves. "We couldn't possibly live in big cities if we were chimps. We'd attack each other all the time," he said. "We are species that are learning to control our violent behavior, at least inside groups."

Arkansas School Is Accused Of Harassing a Gay Student
Tamar Lewin, New York Times- 3/25/2003

As Thomas McLaughlin tells it, the trouble began when his eighth-grade science teacher overheard him refusing to deny to another boy that he was gay. It got worse that afternoon, when his guidance counselor called his mother at work to tell her he was homosexual., "The assistant principal called me out of seventh period, asked if my parents knew I was gay, and when I said no, she said I had till 3:40 to tell them or the school would," said Thomas, a 14-year old student at Jacksonville Junior High School in Arkansas. "I was too upset to sit through eighth period, so I went to the guidance counselor, and she made the call. Later, the science teacher wrote me a four-page handwritten letter about the Bible's teachings on homosexuality, telling me I would be condemned to hell. I threw it out."
    That was a more than a year ago. Since then, the McLaughlin family says, the school has continued to harass Thomas because of his homosexuality. The teachers and administrators who outed Thomas last year now want to silence him, the McLaughlins say, by telling him not to discuss homosexuality in school and disciplining him for doing so. They also say that a different assistant principal called Thomas to his office this year and made him read aloud a Bible passage condemning homosexuality.
    The McLaughlins' account is the only one made public so far. The school district, citing student privacy rights, has not provided any details of its actions. The superintendent, Don Henderson, said that he could not respond to the accusations because the facts had not yet been established. Jay Bequette, the lawyer for the district, said he had no comment on the case.
    Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union, representing the McLaughlins, wrote to Dr. Henderson, accusing the school of violating Thomas's rights to free speech, equal protection and privacy, and asking for, assurances by last Friday that there would be no further violations of Thomas's rights. "Students should not be punished for being honest about their sexual orientation," Leslie Cooper, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U.'s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, said. "Jacksonville Junior High School has trampled on Thomas McLaughlin's constitutional rights."
    On Friday, the A.C.L.U. deadline, the district released a brief statement on the case, saying: "Based on the information the district has received, the district is unable to substantiate, and therefore denies, the specific allegations set forth in the letter. The district denies that it intentionally violated the student's constitutional rights, and no disciplinary action has been taken because of the student's sexual orientation." The statement went on to say that if school personnel had "advocated religious beliefs," as the A.C.L.U. asserted, "such action was not appropriate and is not condoned by the district." " The district said it could not comment on a student's confidential disciplinary record without permission from the student and his parents, so without that permission, there would be no further comment.
    Ms. Cooper said the A.C.L.U. would take. the matter to court, if the school did not provide further assurances about protecting Thomas's rights. "Obviously, they have failed to meet our demands," she said. "We're pleased that they agree that religious preaching is not acceptable in school, but they failed to say that Thomas can speak about being gay."
    Thomas said the issue of his sexual orientation first arose when a classmate asked if he liked a certain girl, and he responded that there was a reason he was not attracted to that girl or any other in the school. The other boy then asked if he was gay. "I said, if I am, I am, and if I'm not, I'm not," Thomas said. "The science teacher overheard us. He told me to stop talking about that stuff. The next thing I know, the assistant principal calls me out of class."
    His mother, Delia McLaughlin, said she was shocked that afternoon to get a telephone call from the guidance counselor about her son's sexuality. "I remember she said he was having feelings for other males," Ms. McLaughlin said. "Those were the words she used. I was upset in the first place that I'm finding out my son's gay, but that it was a school administrator who told me, that was beyond my reasoning. Thomas didn't tell me about the Bible preaching until recently. That's what made me call the A.C.L.U. We're Christians, but this isn't the school's business. It's something for us, the parents, to talk about."

Supreme Court Begins Hearing Houston Gay-Rights Case
Associated Press, 3/26/2003

WASHINGTON - Houston police arrested two gay men after bursting in on a bedroom scene that would have been legal for a heterosexual couple, setting in motion an emotional debate over gay rights that landed at the Supreme Court today. The court appeared deeply divided over a Texas law against "deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex." Justices framed the argument in moral and historical terms as a clash over equality, privacy and government's role in upholding traditional values. Texas said the law promotes the institutions of marriage and family, and communities have the right to choose their own standards.
    "I don't see what it has to do with marriage, since marriage has nothing to do with the conduct," said Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the court's more liberal members. "I don't see what it has to do with children, since gay people can certainly adopt children, and they do." Houston District Attorney Charles Rosenthal replied: "Texas can set bright-line moral standards for its people."
    Laws forbidding homosexual sex, once universal, now are rare. Those on the books are rarely enforced but underpin other kinds of discrimination, lawyer Paul Smith argued to the court. It is fundamentally unfair for a state to outlaw sex acts for a minority group but permit the majority to engage in the same acts, with no more justification than to say, "we want it that way, we want them to be unequal in their choices and their freedoms," Smith said.
    That was the cue for Justice Antonin Scalia, a stalwart of the court's conservative wing. "You can put it that way, but society in a lot of its laws makes these moral judgments," Scalia said. "You can make it sound very puritanical," but government may have good reasons to say some kinds of sexual conduct are off limits, he said. What about laws against adultery or rape? And what about bigamy, Scalia asked. "I mean, who are you to tell me that I can have only one wife, you blue-nosed bigot?" he said, joking. "These are laws dealing with public morality, they've always been on the books and no one has ever thought they are unconstitutional simply because there are moral perceptions behind them."
    As recently as 1960, every state had an anti-sodomy law. In 37 states, the statutes have been repealed by lawmakers or blocked by state courts. Of the 13 states with sodomy laws, four -- Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri -- prohibit oral and anal sex between same-sex couples. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
    The Supreme Court was widely criticized 17 years ago when it upheld an antisodomy law similar to Texas'. The ruling became a touchstone for gay activists. Of the nine justices who ruled on the 1986 case, only three remain on the court. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was in the majority in the case, Bowers v. Hardwick, as was Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Justice John Paul Stevens dissented. "Almost all laws are based on disapproval of some people or conduct. That's why people regulate," Rehnquist told Smith.
    The two men at the heart of the case, John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner, have retreated from public view. They were each fined $200 and spent a night in jail for the misdemeanor sex charge in 1998. The case began when a neighbor with a grudge faked a distress call to police, telling them that a man was "going crazy" in Lawrence's apartment. Police went to the apartment, pushed open the door and found the two men having anal sex.
    A long list of legal and medical groups joined gay rights and human rights supporters in backing the Texas men. Many friend-of-the-court briefs argued that times have changed since 1986, and that the court should catch up. The case drew an overflow crowd of lawyers, gay rights activists and spectators. Outside the court, a knot of protesters carried placards that read, "AIDS is God's Revenge," and other messages. The case is Lawrence v. Texas, 02-102.

Questions Raised on Seattle Drug Courts
Tracy Johnson, Seattle Post-Intelligencer- 3/26/2003

A study of drug courts in six Washington counties found that all have successfully decreased the number of drug offenders who commit new crimes except the busiest drug court -- King County's. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that in the other counties, offenders who opted for treatment-based drug court rather than criminal prosecution were about 13 percent less likely to end up committing another crime. Drug-court programs across the nation have shown a similar 13 percent drop.
    But the study, released this week, found that King County's widely acclaimed drug court reduced recidivism by only 4 percent. That's not a "statistically significant" figure, according to the institute's associate director, Steve Aos. The institute, which the Legislature created, carries out non-partisan research. The study did not seek to explain why King County's drug court had such little effect on reducing the number of repeat offenders. But researchers did suggest it may have something to do with the court's failure rate. The study found that a larger percentage of people failed or dropped out of King County's program during the years it looked at, 1998 and 1999, than in any other county. Seventy percent didn't make it, compared with 38 percent to 64 percent elsewhere.
    The findings didn't sit well with authorities in King County yesterday, but they didn't appear to sway anyone's confidence in the program. Prosecutors, defense lawyers, police officials, politicians -- and, especially, addicts who cleaned up their lives -- have proudly praised the program for years. "We have witnessed drug court achieve some amazing results," Prosecutor Norm Maleng said yesterday. "It saves lives, one at a time." Attorney Victoria Foedisch, felony supervisor for The Defender Association, said drug court "is extremely valuable. It's something we definitely have to keep in the community." Beatrice Komotios said it helped her take control of her heroin addiction two years ago. She remembers too well losing all contact with her children, getting arrested for crimes such as theft and living in a car for three long years. Drug court "has given me a life," the 43-year-old Seattle woman said yesterday. "I'm so thankful I got the opportunity."
    Drug courts have been part of a nationwide trend to treat low-level drug offenders rather than lock them up. For many people arrested on drug charges in Washington, it is an appealing alternative. Those who complete it successfully -- abiding by strict conditions, getting court-ordered treatment and submitting to drug tests -- get the charges against them dismissed. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy began studying drug courts at the request of the Legislature, which changed drug laws last year to put more emphasis on treatment. It looked at nearly 1,500 offenders who participated in drug court in 1998 and 1999 -- including a sizable number who failed or dropped out. Researchers checked who committed new crimes during the next two years and then estimated how many would in eight years. The institute concluded that overall, drug courts are a cost-effective part of the state's criminal justice system -- mainly because participants in Pierce, Spokane, Thurston, Skagit and Kitsap counties proved less likely to commit more crimes.
    Researchers found that putting someone through drug court in those counties costs more than prosecuting offenders the usual way -- $11,227 per person instead of $7,335. But Aos said that the savings of having to push fewer of them through the court system after they commit new crimes and then sending them to prison more than makes up for it.
    Researchers didn't crunch cost figures for King County's program because it didn't appear to have much effect on whether offenders would end up back in jail. But Mary Taylor, program manager for King County drug court, said the study didn't take into account many factors that may make King County's participants different -- and perhaps less likely to complete drug court. She said more than a third have some form of mental problem, an automatic disqualifier in some counties. Many are homeless. Many have prior felony convictions. Some have been addicted to cocaine or heroin for decades. "We do not screen out defendants on the basis of any of these characteristics," Taylor said. "We have structured our court to enable most everyone the opportunity to try." She also said the program has changed since 1999. Back then, people who would have been able to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge were eligible, and many dropped out when they realized that drug court is a tougher option. Taylor said 50 percent of offenders now graduate from the county's drug court, and only 10 percent of them commit other crimes. She contends that further studies are needed to determine who is most likely to complete the program, and what treatment programs are the most successful.
    Superior Court Judge Laura Inveen agrees. Since she began presiding over drug court in November, she has met recovering addicts who finally landed full-time jobs, got their children back or gave birth to drug-free babies. "I would look forward to continued evaluations," she said, "because we're only going to continue to improve."

Art Therapy Class Draws on Common Ground
Julie Davidow, Seattle Post-Intelligencer- 3/28/2003

Ask Liberty Telmo about her hero and her answer won't dazzle you. His name is Wayne Shiota and he gives Telmo the fork she likes when he sets the table for lunch. The two attend a day program four days a week for the mentally ill at Asian Counseling and Referral Service in the International District. But Telmo's portrait of Shiota reveals a more insightful assessment of her classmate, a former Boeing computer analyst diagnosed with schizophrenia in the late 1980s. Sketched in colored pencil, Shiota emerges as a broad-shouldered, steady fellow with strong eyebrows and a humble, downward gaze. This is clearly a guy she can depend on. "He's nice to me," said Telmo, a girlish 43-year-old with salt-and-pepper hair held back on one side with a barrette. Telmo moved to Seattle from the Philippines in 1979. Telmo crafted her drawing during an art therapy class added to the day program's curriculum 14 months ago when one of the state's few certified art therapists joined the agency's staff.
    Yesterday, the group of 40 put their artwork on display, holding an exhibit for employees and board members at the referral service, a non-profit organization that provides a variety of counseling programs for low-income clients. Art therapy's aims leap beyond merely passing time with arts and crafts, said Rebecca Felsenfeld, a certified art therapist and day activities coordinator. It offers an alternate outlet for expression and an added venue for bolstering self-esteem and social skills. Art therapy is especially effective for Asian clients, who are limited by cultural taboos and language barriers from verbalizing their feelings, program organizers say.
    Coaxing those with mental illness out of their isolation means building on skills they already have and unearthing conversation starters rather than dredging up past traumas, Felsenfeld said. "I would never ask someone to draw what happened before they had their first psychotic break," Felsenfeld said. Instead, Felsenfeld searches for points of commonality, asking participants to imagine their dream job, reveal their heroes or paint their favorite things.
    Day program regulars range in age from 24 to 70 and speak eight languages among them, including Mien, Lao, Vietnamese and Cantonese, leaving many participants unable to rely on language to communicate. Most are diagnosed with schizophrenia. Shiota, 48, is Japanese American and speaks only a few words of his parents' native language. Telmo's first language is Tagalog and her English is limited. "Artistry brings out the best in all of us," said Shiota, who left his job at Boeing after he was first hospitalized in 1988 and now lives with his mother in nearby Columbia City.
    Thuy Nguyen, 33, speaks only Vietnamese. She returned for the evening exhibit freshly dressed up in a green suit, her cheeks and lips painted in a complementary shade of bright pink. Nguyen said one classmate's shy personality and quiet demeanor didn't prepare her for brightly colored flowers and animals he created. "When I look at his picture over there, it just catches my eye," Nguyen said through a translator. "The color of it jumps out at you and it makes me happy."
    Tawn Saeteurn, 51, records his memories of Laos in a notebook he always carries with him. There he draws monkeys, elephants and homes built on stilts. The Space Needle, an icon from his new hometown, also makes repeated appearances. For Saeteurn, "everything's a magical, wonderful experience," said Felsenfeld, making the diminutive man with a face perpetually crinkled by smiles tough for others to relate to. "Doing any kind of creative arts activity," she said, "allows people who are pretty disconnected to totally connect with each other and enjoy other's company across language, across diagnosis and across age."

D.C. Mental Health Department Assailed
Sewell Chan & Yolanda Woodlee, Washington Post- 3/29/2003

The D.C. Department of Mental Health is drawing criticism for spending millions of dollars on consultants at the same time it is laying off employees and cutting services at its inpatient and outpatient facilities. The consultants are being used to manage the agency's finances and billing, tasks that advocates and department workers say could be handled by staff members. The services have been obtained mostly through sole-source contracts and purchase orders, agency sources said. Such arrangements, while legal, bypass regular contracting rules that require work for the city to be competitively bid.
    The consulting contract that has attracted the most attention has been the $225-an-hour fee paid to Bradley N. King, an accountant based in Charlotte. In addition to the fee, King's airfare, lodging, meals, rental cars and telephone calls have been paid for by the department. King was brought on in July as the department's acting chief financial officer, after the resignation of Susan F. Provyn, now a top aide to the District's chief financial officer, Natwar M. Gandhi. King has been paid $216,000 since July, officials said.
"I think it's just outrageous," said council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large), who on Monday questioned the payments to King at a hearing on the department's proposed 2004 budget. She noted that the department recently cut 11 of the 18 positions for psychologists who provide therapy at the city's outpatient mental health clinics. "Maybe if the psychologists become contractors, they can get hired again by this government," she said. "I'm sure their salaries are nothing like Mr. King's."
    Yesterday, the department said it has appointed George Cato at $118,490 a year to be the department's chief financial officer. This week, D.C. Council members called for Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) to review the agency's spending practices. Martha B. Knisley, the department's director, said in an interview yesterday that outside help was needed because the agency's financial system was "broken." Soon after she became director in April 2001, Knisley said, she discovered a $61.8 million deficit because of problems with Medicaid and Medicare billing. Since 1992, the city had not adequately kept track of the services patients received. "There was no capacity within this organization for financial management and reporting," she said. "It did not exist."
    Knisley said the consultants were necessary to train staff members how to bill accurately. She said King was working at a discounted rate and brought the city $15.7 million in additional revenue by correcting old claims. He also cleared the way for the city to begin accurately billing Medicare and Medicaid for about $65 million a year, after Knisley had temporarily suspended the billing. A department spokeswoman said that $20.8 million has been spent on personal services contracts since fiscal 2001 and that the amount has dropped each year. Since Oct. 1, $2.3 million has been spent on personal services contracts, Linda P. Grant said.
    The Department of Mental Health was created in 2001 to return the mental health system to city control after a court-appointed receivership. In an interview yesterday, City Administrator John A. Koskinen defended the department's leadership. "The difference between how the department functions now and during the receivership is the difference between night and day," he said. Koskinen said King helped to put in order the department's chaotic Medicare and Medicaid billing. "He was a godsend," Koskinen said.
    Another consulting contract cited by critics involves a two-year, $642,000 agreement with Healthcare Provider Advocates Inc. of Amherst, Mass. The company was hired to help the department with claims processing and billing matters. More than 28 percent of the company's projected costs were for reimbursable expenses, such as airfare and meals, according to a copy of a September contract. Several city employees have complained that the company's project manager, Gretchen Westerhoff, has used limousines and car service companies to travel between the department's headquarters in Northeast Washington and St. Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast. Company officials, including chief executive Benjamin S. Lee, did not return calls seeking comment.
    Some of the consultants have moved from their contracted work to the city payroll. Irvin L. Dallas, a Boston-based consultant, charged the city $800 a day plus expenses for several days of consulting work and training in October 2001. This Jan. 7, he was hired as the department's fiscal policy director at a salary of $99,580.
    In several instances, critics have complained that outsiders are being hired for functions that are normally handled by staff members. The Washington law firm Venable Baetjer Howard & Civiletti is running labor negotiations for the department. Susan V. Curran, a consultant from Navarre, Fla., is helping the agency comply with court orders.
    "The mental health system is in crisis," Raymond J. Brown, clinical director of the department's Homeless Outreach Program and president of the psychiatrists union, said in a statement at a March 3 council hearing. Brown said staff restructuring begun a year ago has led to crowding at St. Elizabeths, the city-run psychiatric institution, and overwhelmed the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program, which cares for residents in immediate crisis. Brown added that 17 psychiatrists have resigned in the past year and that the department has regularly ignored doctors' suggestions for improvement. He said documented assaults at St. Elizabeths have increased in the past year because of staff shortages.
    Knisley said grumbling was to be expected as a "highly, highly dysfunctional system" is reformed. "In a tight budget time, what you're trying to do is make the decisions that you can with the resources that you have," she said. "I don't know if there's anybody I could please at the moment, do you?"

California Child-Abuse Case Goes to the Supreme Court
David Kravets, Associated Press, 3/30/2003

SAN FRANCISCO -- The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments on a challenge brought by a 72-year-old man accused of abusing his two daughters in California nearly 50 years ago. The case would affect child molestation prosecutions nationwide. Marion Stogner, a retired paper-plant worker who police say created a home life so dysfunctional that his two sons became molesters themselves, has long denied abusing his children. His lawyer, Elisa Stewart, says the accusations by his daughters are so old that she cannot mount a defense.
    In most states, statutes of limitations would keep Stogner out of criminal court. But in 1994, California allowed child molestation prosecutions to be brought years after legal deadlines to file charges had passed. Hundreds of people have been convicted under the law, which the Supreme Court justices are expected to review tomorrow.
    Statutes of limitations are a major principle in US jurisprudence. They tend to protect the accused from the consequences of charges grown stale with age, conceived from unreliable memories, or based on lost or dead witnesses. The Supreme Court has neither ruled on nor been asked whether states can retroactively nullify criminal statutes of limitations, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
    A ruling against Stogner, defense lawyers say, could prompt states to rewrite criminal laws to prosecute long-expired cases. The Justice Department has asked Congress to adopt rules retroactively nullifying statutes of limitations that govern not only child molestation cases, but child abductions and federal cases involving DNA evidence.
    The case has other ramifications. The Bush administration has urged the court to uphold the law, out of concern that a ruling absolving Stogner may weaken some provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which retroactively withdrew statutes of limitations in terrorism cases involving hijackings, kidnappings, bombings, and biological weapons.
    Stogner is accused of molesting his daughters from 1955 to 1964. The allegations came to light many years later, when police investigating his sons persuaded the women to talk. One daughter, now 42, says the assaults happened so routinely that she had no idea it was wrong until years later. ''I was like, `Huh, this doesn't happen in other families?' '' she said. ''We were brought up as if it was normal, like brushing your teeth, going to church.''
    Stogner's daughter, who agreed to an interview on the condition that her name and other personal information not be disclosed, said she and her sister were too afraid to speak up about the years of alleged abuse by her father and at least one brother. She said her father began molesting her when she was barely tall enough to see the top of his bed. When she became a teenager and gathered the courage to leave her home in Antioch, a San Francisco suburb, she said the last thing her father told her was ''I'm going to kill you.'' ''I believed him,'' she said. ''We lived in constant fear growing up.''
    State legislatures began increasing statutes of limitations for new molestation crimes in the 1990s, as research found that young victims often delay reporting sexual abuse because they are easily manipulated by offenders, are traumatized, or have difficulty remembering. California took the biggest step, allowing prosecutors to pursue ''significant'' molestation cases no matter how old, as long as there was evidence beyond the victim's word. Charges must be filed within a year after the victims -- in many cases now fully grown adults -- file a police report.
    A detective on the case, Chris Forsythe, said the Supreme Court has the perfect case to decide the issue. Cases like these, he said, are ''why the California Legislature enacted this law.'' Forsythe uncovered the allegations about Stogner in 1997 while investigating Stogner's son Randy, who was eventually convicted of molesting his two stepdaughters. Stogner's other son, John, has been convicted of molesting children at ''Randy's Ranch,'' his brother's day-care center. ''I created a flow chart just to keep track of it all,'' Forsythe said.
    A Los Angeles defense lawyer, Don Steier, who is representing California priests facing criminal charges in old molestation cases, said arguing against such charges is exceedingly difficult. ''How am I supposed to defend these cases or find witnesses that can recall that far back in time?'' Steier asked.

'Moderate' Drinking: An Epitaph
Beth Silver, Los Angeles Times- 3/31/2003

RANCHO BERNARDO, Calif. -- It took one drink to reverse countless hours in group therapy, months of rehabilitation in hospitals and group homes and even the will to help other alcoholics as a sponsor and a hotline volunteer -- in all, three years of sobriety. Just blocks from her parents' house, after a night of partying with friends, Lisa Stoefen plowed her Mazda Protege into a concrete pole. The car overturned and tumbled down an embankment, crushing the front seat into the back, leaving the remnants of a case of beer. The 21-year-old died instantly.
    In the nearly three months since that accident, her family has mounted a public-awareness campaign in her name. Her father, Gary, set up a Web site (www.lisastoefen.com) to alert people to Lisa's story, with poems and photographs. He has given countless speeches around the San Diego area, and he has appealed to Larry King, Oprah Winfrey and "Dr. Phil" in hopes of broadcasting Lisa's story to a national audience.
    Lisa's mother, Judy, is lobbying for a house-party ordinance in San Diego that would allow the city to jail or fine adults who allow minors to drink alcohol. And one of Lisa's sisters, Jennifer, works at the North Inland Regional Recovery Center in Escondido. They say they want as many people as possible to know that abstinence is the only true route to recovery for alcoholics. Gary Stoefen himself is a recovering alcoholic, sober for 23 years. "There's this myth that somehow we can go back out there and do it differently. It's that delusion that we can become normal drinkers again," he said.
    The early signs of Lisa's addiction might have gone unnoticed when she was about to finish the eighth grade. The mood swings, isolation and falling grades could have been attributed to the hormonal turbulence any teenager encounters. But the Stoefens were alert. Alcoholism hangs heavy on their family tree: In addition to Gary, his son from a previous marriage is in recovery, and Gary said both of his parents and an aunt died of alcoholism. Judy said her uncle also did.
    According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Md., about 13% of the adult U.S. population will have an alcohol-related disorder at some point. A person with a parent who is an alcoholic is four times more likely to become an alcoholic, no matter what that person's upbringing, said Dr. Marc Schuckit, a psychiatry professor at the San Diego Veterans Hospital and UC San Diego's medical school.
    But, like a tornado that hits one home and spares the next, alcoholism can afflict one child while missing the siblings. Schuckit said Lisa Stoefen's family history made her a likely candidate for the disease. But history didn't predetermine her problem. Schuckit's research, along with that of others who have studied alcoholism, has shown that genes explain a significant portion of the risk but that environment is also a major factor.
    From the day they first smelled alcohol on 14-year-old Lisa's breath, the Stoefens said, they took her addiction seriously. They confronted her, sent her to counselors, consulted psychiatrists, forced her to take random drug tests and eventually had her arrested and taken to treatment in Orange County. By her senior year of high school, seemingly out of options, they sent Lisa to a group home in Louisiana. They took out a second mortgage to pay for the six months of therapy -- well worth it, they said, to see their daughter return healthier than she had been in years. "When she came home, she was just transformed," Gary said. "She was glowing." Lisa attended 12-step meetings, including father-daughter sessions. She made new friends. Eventually, she became active in a national group of Alcoholics Anonymous for young people. "We were so proud of her," Gary said.
    Lisa's downfall started about six months before her death. She took a job selling cell phones at a nearby mall and started socializing with people she called "normies," or people who she thought could drink without becoming alcoholics. One of those friends apparently convinced her that drinking in moderation would work for her. "She said, 'You know Dad, I'm not an alcoholic, don't you?' " Gary recalled. "I knew she was in trouble."
    So-called moderation management has worked for fewer than 10% of alcoholics, said Ann Bradley, a spokeswoman at the national institute. They sustain some type of moderate drinking for a time, but even most of them, Bradley said, find abstinence easier. As her father predicted, Lisa relapsed, then picked up with the 12-step meetings again. Only this time, her father said, her commitment was half-hearted. Lisa relapsed again, for the final time, in January. Tests showed she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.22, or about three times California's legal limit. Methamphetamine was also found in her system.