Noteworthy News Articles on Mental Health Topics, January
15-16, 2006
Becoming Jane Addams
Alan Wolfe, New York Times Book Review- 1/15/2006
Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy.
By Louise W. Knight. Illustrated. 582 pp. The University of Chicago Press. $35.
In 1894, the Pullman Car Works, a paternalistic Chicago firm, announced a wage cut and its workers went on strike. Jane Addams, who had founded Hull House in Chicago five years earlier as a place of refuge and support for the poor, was stunned by the class antagonism that followed. "Nothing in my experience," she wrote many years later, had prepared her for "that distinct cleavage of society which a general strike at least momentarily affords." Unsure what to make of it all, Addams walked four and a half miles to the new statue of Abraham Lincoln created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, where she brooded over the inscription, a reiteration of the Emancipator's call for charity to all, and then walked back to Hull House.
Did Jane Addams approach Lincoln as an equal? Or course not, for no one in American history rivals Lincoln's stature. Yet Addams would go on to become one of the greatest of Americans, and the pilgrimage she made to Lincoln Park, as Louise W. Knight relates in "Citizen," was a key stop along the way. Before the Pullman strike - and the simultaneous death of her sister Mary - Addams was a product of the small-town Midwest in which she was raised. Strongly shaped by the evangelical convictions of her father, she was as paternalistic, if in her own way, as George Pullman. Poor people lacked refinement; her task was to bring them culture. Sympathy, not solidarity, motivated her. She would teach the poor of Chicago Shakespeare and Goethe, and along the way, she would impress upon them the importance of virtue and the evils of vice.
The experience of the Pullman strike - indeed, experience itself - changed Jane Addams. She had developed a friendship with the University of Chicago philosopher John Dewey, and Dewey's pragmatism opened her to the idea that conflict was a fact of social life, even a sign of progress, not some deviation from an idealistic yearning for harmony. Examining with fresh eyes the realities of fin-de-siècle Chicago, Addams came to understand the role that powerful financial and political interests played in maintaining systems of social stratification. Devastating economic depressions and bitter class conflict, along with the insights of her Hull House colleague Florence Kelley, forced Addams to confront her belief in benevolence, which she increasingly saw as "self-righteous" and "egotistical." By the last years of the 19th century, the modern Jane Addams had been born, a determined social reformer, advocate of women's suffrage, opponent of the Spanish-American War, and powerful writer and political thinker.
Oddly, Knight stops her book at precisely the moment when the greatness of Jane Addams begins to emerge; "Citizen" ends in 1899, even though Addams, who would win the Nobel Prize in 1931, died in 1935. A half-life does not a biography make, but Knight is not really writing a biography; her book is what the Germans call a bildung, an account of how a person's character is formed. As it happens, Knight's decision to focus on Addams's early years is a stroke of genius. We know a great deal about Jane Addams the public figure. We know relatively little about how she made the transition from the 19th century to the 20th. In Knight's book, Jane Addams comes to life.
Addams was raised by three women; her mother died when she was 2-1/2, after which her older sister Mary and her eventual stepmother played major roles in her upbringing. But it was her father who dominated Jane's childhood. A successful businessman and devout Christian, John Addams corresponded with Abraham Lincoln and was an avid supporter of the Italian republican Giuseppe Mazzini. A man of his times, he wanted Jane close to home and constantly thwarted her dream of attending Smith College. But he was the kind of Christian who, believing that individuals ought to find their own path to God, never joined a church or subscribed to a creed. His daughter inherited much of the same disposition. Although under pressure from neighbors and teachers to convert, she resisted, and while her ideas would be shaped by Christianity, Jane Addams would never become a conventionally religious person.
Addams was an outstanding student at Rockford Seminary, where she met Ellen Gates Starr, with whom she would found Hull House. (Addams and Starr were a couple; whether they were celibate is known only to them.) For a woman expected eventually to settle into domesticity, Addams's early life brought her unusually close to public events. The son of a close family friend was the immortal disappointed office seeker who assassinated President Garfield. When a senior at Rockford, she participated in a debate dominated by men and placed fifth of nine; in second place stood an Illinois College student named William Jennings Bryan. Addams traveled extensively in Europe, where she met the leaders of Toynbee Hall in London, the inspiration for her efforts in Chicago.
After a personal crisis brought on by the descent of her brother into mental illness, Addams moved to Chicago, using her family inheritance to rent a large house on Halsted Street, in the heart of the immigrant world that Chicago had become. Knight's book is filled with fascinating detail about everyday life at Hull House, from the way residents were selected, to the fund-raising difficulties that emerged as Addams exhausted her personal wealth, to an absorbing account of Addams's life as a Chicago garbage inspector. Knight's extensive research and straightforward narrative allow readers to watch Addams gain self-confidence, survive a breakup with Starr and the formation of a new relationship with Mary Rozet Smith, wrestle with her desire to help immigrants even as she disdains much about their way of life, and try to establish democracy at Hull House while remaining reluctant to cede control of its destiny.
"Citizen" has a larger story to tell than that of Jane Addams's moral formation. Knight wants her readers to believe that the hardheaded and politically engaged Addams is preferable to the idealistic, Christian-influenced and morally absolutist one. Her argument on this point is not completely convincing. For one thing, Addams retained much of her early idealism later in life. She changed the world around her, not only because of her political activism but because of her moral persuasion. The reforms she helped midwife and the social justice she fostered came about because she, like Lincoln, appealed to the better angels of our nature.
More important, the progressive Jane Addams is familiar to us, and familiarity breeds complacency; we already know that privilege is unjust or that the powerful play unfairly. The thinkers who influenced the earlier Jane Addams - the British philosopher T. H. Green, the Social Christian economist Richard Ely, Samuel and Henrietta Barnett of Toynbee Hall - may be out-of-date, but in today's cynical political environment, their idealism is refreshing. Once, in 1895, a British couple visiting Hull House left their shoes outside their bedroom door, expecting that someone would polish them. Finding the shoes, Jane Addams did exactly that. Today's politically engaged leftist would be appalled. But for Addams, little acts of kindness led to large acts of compassion.
For all her identification with the mature Jane Addams, Knight, an independent scholar, has something in common with the woman who polished those shoes. "Citizen" is written neither to make money nor to gain academic tenure; it is a gift, meant to enlighten and improve. Jane Addams would have understood.
What Men Really Think About Marriage
Liz Cobbs, Ann Arbor News- 1/15/2006
Many books and discussions on marriage have been written from a woman's perspective, says author Neil Chethik, so he set out to approach the topic from the husband's point of view. Chethik, a journalist devoted to the psychology of men, surveyed nearly 360 married American men of all ages, classes, religions and ethnic backgrounds. The News spoke with Chethik about his new book.
Q. Why did you decide to take on this project?
A. I saw hundreds of other books about relationships but almost all of them were from the women's perspective. They were either explicitly for women, about being wives, or for women trying to understand their husbands. No one really asked the husband what's going on. So, I decided to write a "he said'' book as opposed to a "he said/she said'' book. It seemed to me it would be valuable to both men and women to make clear what men experience and what their marriage is all about.
Q. Generally, wives say that husbands don't tell them what they think about marriage or almost anything else. Yet, husbands told you. How did you accomplish that?
A. There were several things I found. One, I didn't ask them about their emotions and feelings first. And in fact, I rarely had to ask them about their emotions and feelings. What I did was ask them what they think, what they do and how they react. I used words that were comfortable for men to hear and respond to. I asked them to tell me the story of the first time you set eyes on the woman you're married to. Then they told me the story. But, I first had to gain their trust and I did that by speaking their language.
Q. What's been the reaction so far from those who've read your book or talked with you about the study?
A. I have been literally overwhelmed in a positive way. When you put something like this out there, you hold your breath because you don't know what to expect. Both men and women seem to be happy to see it. Women are very interested in the details. Men give me a soft fist on the shoulder to say, "Someone's finally telling our story.''
Q. Since the book is finally telling the husband's story, how can husbands use the book to tell their stories to their own wives?
A. This book is one of the few marriage books accessible to men and women. I think it's easier for women to use the book as a platform with her husband. For instance, you can go to a chapter and read a piece about what couples say about raising kids or what husbands are saying about money.
Men can see that they have someone to back them up. They can say, "This guy (in the book) is saying what I think.'' Men often feel intimidated by having heart-to-heart conversations with their wives about their marriage because they feel they're going to be backed up into a corner by their wives who will ask a question they can't answer. Men don't have these conversations with their wives because we don't grow up in an environment where those conversations are practiced. This is a way men can get some grounding by being able to hear what other men are saying.
Q. One stereotype is that men either don't want children or don't want to take responsibility for them. Yet, the men you surveyed had much to say about having children of their own and those from their wives' previous marriage. So, men really do want the family?
A. One of the reasons men currently married say they stay married and enjoy family life is that they really do like kids. Men like to play and so do kids and you see a lot of men find almost their greatest satisfaction in coming home and hanging out with their kids, taking them places and teaching them things. Certainly, there are men who don't fit that, but I think the great majority of married men who are fathers find it, right up there with their marriages, as being the most rewarding part of their lives.
Q. One of the findings of your survey was the couples who work out a fair division of household duties are less likely to consider getting a divorce, more likely to be sexually satisfied and more likely to be happily married overall. Was this finding a surprise to you?
A. The statistical confirmation of it was a little bit of a surprise. I had been hearing that from my wife and others, for years. The men I spoke to said, "My wife always cared about how clean the house is.'' A woman would say, "I don't know why I care so much, but I care.'' If a man will take action to do something he knows his wife will appreciate, that contributes to her attraction to him.
Husbands told me when they did this, their wives changed their attitudes, they felt relieved. The other part was women who work come home at the end of the day to clean, cook, do laundry and take care of the kids. That's tiring and a lot of work. If the husband contributes a fair share, she is going to have a lot more energy at the end of the day for activities that he might find more important than housework.
Q. What did you personally learn from your research?
A. Since my wife and I work full-time, I agreed for the first time in my marriage to pay for somebody to come in and clean the house. The biggest thing is a real sense of hope and optimism that my marriage is going to make it to the end of my life and that's because I've heard so many other stories, particularly from men who have been through long marriages and have had their ups and downs, losses, changes and difficulties like I have been through. People are out there looking for a soul mate, but the reality is that you don't find a soul mate, you create one over the course of 10, 20 or 50 years together.
It's the optimism that the good times and the hard times I've been through are working in favor of my marriage and in favor of my connection to my wife. We're still building dreams for our future and trying to reach them together. I'm at the point of feeling pretty confident in my marriage, even after 19 years.
The Stress of Guarding the Couch
Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times- 1/15/2006
Greg Papadatos, a 42-year-old, 148-pound Army medic, looked around. The walls of his apartment were full of holes. The bathroom did not have any toilet paper. The floors were fuzzy with dust. He had just returned from a year in Iraq, but no one had bothered to pick him up at the bus station or clean his apartment. "I knew coming home was going to be anticlimactic," he said. "But I didn't think this anticlimactic." He took off his camouflage cap, ran his finger around its rim and inspected the puffy knuckles of his right hand, which, in a fit of frustration, he smashed into a street sign a few days before. "It was either punch a sign or punch a captain," he said. Sergeant Papadatos admitted he had some adjusting to do.
Every soldier, it seems, comes home from war looking for something. For Sergeant Papadatos, it was getting help. For Dan McFadden, it was reconnecting with his son. For Leo Uribe, it was settling down. These three National Guard soldiers, all sergeants, all deployed with the First Battalion, 69th Infantry, of the New York National Guard, were part of a wave of roughly 700 guardsmen who landed at Fort Dix in New Jersey in early September for several days of reorientation before dispersing across the region. They have spent the past four months trying to retrofit their old lives and step away from their military personas, though after a year of power, aggression, uncertainty and fear, it is not always easy to fold up these feelings like a set of fatigues and store them neatly on a shelf.
Reservists and soldiers in the Guard, who constantly toggle between the civilian and military worlds, seem to have the hardest transition. At the beginning of the war, they were sent to Iraq to play supporting roles, like running the supply shop and rebuilding schools, but their mission has shifted so that many are now heavily involved in combat, largely indistinguishable from their active-duty comrades, except for a few more gray hairs. Around 35 percent of the troops in Iraq are part-time soldiers. More than 100,000 have returned so far.
But unlike active duty troops, who come home to a base together, the part-time soldiers come home alone. Their arrival is usually quiet, like Sergeant Papadatos's first lonely steps in his apartment-for-one in Astoria, Queens, or Sergeant McFadden's trip back at the end of a road in upstate New York. They do not have the built-in support of peers or chaplains or mental health professionals who are all part of base life. Meanwhile, a lot changed while they were away, including levels of public support for the war they fought.
Military studies already indicate that nearly one in five returning soldiers struggle with depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. Many veterans suspect the numbers are much higher. Military officials said they were especially concerned about National Guard soldiers and reservists who, according to a recent Army Medical Department study, have higher rates of post-deployment stress. "I tell my friends in civilian practice that over the next 10 years, you need to be aware what's coming through your door," said Capt. Robert Sidell, an Army psychologist at the United States Military Academy at West Point. "You're going to be seeing a lot of these guys."
The White Suburban
Take the shot, take the shot. Why didn't you take that shot? Staff Sergeant McFadden keeps asking himself that. He had the insurgent cleanly in his sights, a man who had been driving back and forth on the airport road, near where the 69th Infantry Battalion was stationed, in a white Chevy Suburban, spraying machine-gun fire at his squad. But for some reason, with the gun stock up to his face, fingertip on the trigger, he paused. Now he wishes that he could just go back in time and squeeze. Because a few months later, his buddy, Anthony Kalladeen, was killed by insurgents, and Sergeant McFadden keeps wondering, knowing it is not rational, but doing it all the same: If he had shot that guy on the road, would his friend still be alive? Would he be wearing some other bracelet around his wrist, not one with "Sgt. Anthony Kalladeen, 7 August 2005," etched into it?
The memory hounds him. A few weeks ago, Sergeant McFadden was driving down the highway the way he always does now, Iraqi-style, scanning the shoulder, glancing at the trash, looking for something unusual, when two white Suburbans suddenly appeared in his rearview mirror. He swerved off the road, his heart pounding. He squeezed the steering wheel so hard that he is convinced his fingerprints are pressed into the plastic. "Man," he said a few days later, "it's a good thing I don't carry a gun."
When Sergeant McFadden, 42, stepped off the plane at Fort Dix on Sept. 9 and gave an interview shortly afterward, he did not seem like a textbook example of post-traumatic stress. He chatted easily about his son, Jay, 21, and his plans to take him on vacation. "Maybe we'll go to Cancun," he said. "Dad," Jay told him when he got home, "you're too old for Cancun." They ended up not going anywhere, but those first weeks back home were good, anyway. Sergeant McFadden took time off from his civilian job in the maintenance department at Fort Drum, N.Y., bought a new pickup (a Dodge Ram 1500), laid a new kitchen floor and spent his nights watching Pittsburgh Steelers games with Jay and polishing off ham-and-pineapple pizza. Sergeant McFadden divorced three years ago and lives with his son in a tidy house on the edge of the woods outside of Watertown, about five hours north of New York City.
He told Jay that, no matter what, he was done with Iraq. "People don't realize that when you go to war, you know you're going to lose friends," he said. Nineteen soldiers who served with the 69th Battalion were killed in Iraq, and the sound of taps still makes him sick. He remembered sitting through memorial services in a makeshift chapel and then heading back on patrol, tears still in his eyes. "I can't do that again," he said.
Like many other soldiers who went from running combat missions in 115-degree heat to guarding a couch, Sergeant McFadden started putting on weight. When he applied for additional sergeant training in early October, part of his continuing National Guard obligation, they ran a tape around his gut and told him he was too fat. "Before, I would have been humiliated," he said. "Now, I just don't care." Sergeant McFadden decided it was time to leave the military. He was so worried about being sent back to Iraq that he told Jay he wanted to be a mailman.
Military doctors say combat-related problems do not always show up right away. So the Pentagon is mandating, for the first time, that all deployed soldiers fill out psychological surveys three to six months after they get home. For Sergeant McFadden, the joys of a cold drink and a warm bed eventually wore off. Relaxation turned to boredom, boredom turned to disillusionment, and disillusionment turned into a blank feeling in his gut that, at first, he could not identify. In December, it hit him: He wanted to go back. "Things here are just too, too -- " He finally found the word. "Dull."
He started visiting a Halliburton Web site, looking for security or maintenance jobs in Iraq that pay as much as $150,000. He needs the money. After getting home, he lost his combat bonuses and tax-free status, and his take-home pay from the Guard dropped to $1,800 a month from $3,000. At first he tried to persuade Jay to go with him. "To be honest, Jay didn't like the sound of being in Baghdad for a year," he said in early December. "But he liked the sound of the money." For Christmas, he bought Jay a shot glass checker set and new brake pads for his car. Jay gave him a Kohl's gift certificate to buy some new clothes. They talked more about Iraq. But eventually Jay said no. Now Sergeant McFadden is not sure what to do. "I'm just taking it day by day," he said. "A good day means I haven't been thinking about it too much."
Raise Your Tray Table
While other soldiers rubbed their wallet-size pictures to get them through rough patches in Iraq, Sergeant Uribe polished his plans. Coming home meant he could see his girlfriend, Mary. The two met online while he was in Baghdad, then spent two whirlwind weeks together during his furlough in February. "I had New Year's in Paris planned with her," he said. "A trip to L.A., a trip to San Fran, this whole homecoming fantasy." I nstead, as soon as he got off the plane from Kuwait, he got ambushed. "I was waiting until he was safe, but I'd been feeling this way for a while," said Mary Filocamo, who broke up with him over the phone. "He just wasn't the same." She said he seemed distant. He said he felt stronger. Iraq, he said, actually made him feel like a superhero. "It's crazy, man," he said. "For a brief moment in your life, you have all these powers and you can do whatever you need to do. You might as well be wearing a Bat suit."
For many soldiers, the breakup could have been devastating. But Sergeant Uribe seems to be one soldier who returned from war not so much drained but energized. Then again, Sergeant Uribe is relentlessly sunny. He was a cheerleader in college, his favorite movie is "It's a Wonderful Life" and in the civilian world, he is a flight attendant for Song airlines, the Delta division known for its cheerful service. For him, Iraq was simply another adventure. "Iraq was great, Iraq was horrible," he said. "It was the best time of my life, it was the worst time of my life, it was terrifying, it was boring."
He quickly returned to work and logged back on to Match.com. Kristin, Emily, Andrea, Jane. More than 30 dates in two months, nearly a different woman every night clutching his waist as he zoomed through Little Italy or Times Square on his new BMW K1200, a rocket of a motorcycle that made him feel almost as invincible as he did in Baghdad. Some dates end in his apartment, a crash pad in Kew Gardens, Queens, that he shares with a group of rotating flight attendants who sleep in bunk beds. At the critical close of one date, he showed a woman a stack of photographs from Iraq, including one of a shirtless man lying face down in a gallon of blood. "Bad call," he said. "I was just thinking it's a picture of another dead guy. But she totally shut down."
Sergeant Uribe admitted that after being around all men for a year, he is "starving for female attention." He is 34 years old and wants to marry and have children. He grew up on Long Island, the son of Latin American immigrants, always wanted to be a soldier and was the type of boy who built Uzis out of Legos. He joined the National Guard at age 20, did his six years and then re-enlisted after Sept. 11. In Iraq, he had a close call with a roadside bomb, though he never fired his gun. But he says he does not think that much about his time over there.
The other day Sergeant Uribe was mixing drinks at 30,000 feet on a J.F.K.-to-Tampa flight and pushing a 300-pound cart loaded with Twizzlers, Mrs. Fields cookies, Pringles, peanut M&Ms, cheese plates, fruit plates and chicken salad with Paul Newman's dressing. The job is a little like being in the Army - eating meals out of a box, barking instructions, wearing a uniform and obeying rank. But the superhero days are over. "I mean, come on," Sergeant Uribe said, laughing. "How do you compare, 'Put your hands up and drop your weapon,' to 'Put your seat belt on and raise your tray table?' "
'Nasty? I'll Show You Nasty'
Sergeant Papadatos was taking it easy. Real easy. No rush back to work. Or to pick up his car. Or to take his stuff out of storage. "I'm not doing much," he said in early October, over a cup of coffee around the corner from his apartment in Astoria. "Am I relaxing? Or am I depressed? Hard to tell." His routine was waking up at noon, reading books like "The Great Ignored Byzantine Empire: The Medieval History of Hellenism and Orthodoxy," doing the dishes, reading some more, eating heaping bowls of Mueslix and scrambled egg sandwiches, and then going back to sleep, though often it was broken up by dreams that ended in explosions.
He used to think of himself as a go-getter. He was a sharpshooting infantryman in the Army in the 1980's, he has run marathons and he once raced up 85 flights at the Empire State Building in 15 minutes, 59 seconds. Though he never graduated from college, he was always trying to plug the gaps in his education, reading sometimes for 12 hours at a stretch. He worked as a paramedic for Medical Express Ambulance, a private ambulance company in New York. His boss, Mike Collins, said Sergeant Papadatos "lives to be a paramedic." Or used to. Four months after arriving home, he still has not returned to a full-time schedule. He has worked exactly two ambulance shifts because he was running out of money.
"People don't understand P.T.S.D.," he said. "They used to call it shell shock. Then it was combat fatigue. But you know what? You know what the most common symptoms are? It's not going out and doing something violent and acting all crazy. It's depression."His living situation does not help. He lives alone. Holly, whom he described as his potential girlfriend, is also in the Army and just deployed to Korea. His mother works at a school in Astoria, a few blocks away, but they do not talk much. "Whatever you've been through, she's been through worse," he said. "Whatever you know, she knows more."
A recent Army study indicated that more than half of the soldiers returning from Iraq who showed signs of psychological problems were not getting treatment, many because they fear being seen as weak. But Sergeant Papadatos says he has repeatedly tried to get help since April, while he was still in Iraq. Over there, he was overwhelmed, trying to patch bullet wounds that would not close, trying to find heartbeats he could not hear. Some nights, when his shift was over, he would sit on the floor of the shower stall fully dressed, pink water swirling down the drain, and wash and wash until his fatigues did not bleed anymore.
Unlike many other soldiers, who said they still believe in the mission, Sergeant Papadatos said the mission was failing. He also felt he was being lied to. He recalled standing in a battalion formation and listening to a general link Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks. "How stupid do they think we are?" he said. He said needless deaths were caused every day by everything from a failure to coordinate with Iraqi paramedics to insurgents' slipping through coalition fingers. "I could get harassed for saying this, I could get teased, but they can't really punish me," said Sergeant Papadatos, who is still in the National Guard.
As soon as he arrived at Fort Dix, Sergeant Papadatos told a social worker he thought he had P.T.S.D. The social worker handed him a multiple-choice survey: Have you ever had any experience that was so frightening, horrible, or upsetting that, in the past month, you were constantly on guard; had nightmares; or thought about it when you did not want to? For Sergeant Papadatos, it was all of the above. A few days later, he slugged the street sign, breaking a bone in his hand. "They won't give me the slightest bit of thought unless I kill somebody," he said, "and maybe not even then."
Military officials say they are determined not to repeat the aftermath of Vietnam, when thousands of traumatized veterans ended up dysfunctional, homeless and suicidal. Officials point to expanded mental health programs in the field, such as mobile combat stress teams, and more services back home, such as free counseling, frequent psychological assessments and group therapy.
Dr. Jonathan B. Perlin, under secretary for health at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said this fiscal year his agency has spent more than $50 million on post-traumatic stress programs. "We're robustly funded and we're able to keep up with the demand," Dr. Perlin said. But some veterans advocates question that. Representative Robert Filner, a Democrat from California who sits on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, said he believed that as many as a third of Iraq veterans come home with post-traumatic stress disorder. "This is a bureaucracy that always denies there is something wrong," Mr. Filner said. Mr. Filner said all returning soldiers should get mandatory counseling, but Dr. Perlin rejected that as too intrusive.
Paul Rieckhoff, a National Guard infantry officer who served in Iraq and now leads the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, an organization based in New York, said there was too much red tape for reservists and Guard soldiers seeking help. "Everything's on the vet," Mr. Rieckhoff said. "It's on you to come forward, you to push the paper, you to seek the treatment." He said the most common mental disorder among Iraq veterans is a hyper-vigilant state of mind. "It comes from being in a fishbowl over there," he explained. "The threat's in front of you, behind you, above you, beneath you."
In December, Sergeant Papadatos asked for help again. He went to the veterans' hospital in Manhattan and was told to complete another survey - his fourth. He had questions about the questions, but the secretary administering the test could not answer them and he got frustrated. She said that he was acting "nasty." "That's when I exploded," he said. "I started yelling, 'Nasty? Nasty? I'll show you nasty. You stupid desk bound slug!' " Several men escorted him out. When he got home a few hours later, he crawled into bed. "I felt like I had accomplished nothing for the day," he said. "Except making a fool of myself."
Since then, he has had surgery on a knee injured in a fall in Iraq. And he has managed to see a psychiatrist and was encouraged by the idea of group therapy, which he may begin soon. "Did you know they have a group just for medics?" he said, a trace of enthusiasm sneaking into his voice. But the enthusiasm can disappear as quickly as it comes. During a snowfall last month, he watched the snowflakes sink past his windows. He did not leave his apartment for three days. "It's unfortunate that I live alone," he said. "Because on a day like that, I needed someone to grab me by the scruff of my neck and take me outside and say, 'Go on, Greg, just play in the snow, you'll feel better if you play in the snow.' "
A Tough Road for Siblings Who Survived Abuse
Nina Bernstein, New York Times- 1/15/2006
In death, they have become indelible symbols of the city's failures to protect the weak from the cruel: Five-year-old Adam Mann, killed by parents for eating a piece of cake in 1990. Six-year-old Elisa Izquierdo, battered and burned by her mother in 1995. And now, 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown, who the authorities say was tortured over time and finally beaten to death by her stepfather for taking a container of yogurt.
In life, the dead children's surviving siblings are often forgotten. Yet in many ways, their hard journey toward adulthood may show more about the day-to-day problems and progress of the city's child welfare system than the fatalities that capture so much public outrage. Will the survivors find safe, permanent homes, or be bounced from one foster care placement to the next? Will they be kept together, or scattered far apart?
Sometimes, children taken from the most notoriously abusive homes have, years later, come full circle: In the Mann case, the oldest surviving sibling returned by choice to live with his mother, who had served prison time in the death of his abused brother. For Nixzmary's two surviving half sisters and three half brothers, aged 9 months to 9 years, the journey began Wednesday after their sister's battered body was discovered in their mother's apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. For now, said Sharman Stein, a spokeswoman for the Administration for Children's Services, all five of Nixzmary's siblings are in a home in Brooklyn with Spanish-speaking foster parents specially trained to deal with psychologically fragile children.
That they are together reflects an achievement. A decade ago, siblings were as likely as not to be separated. In 2004, sibling groups entering foster care were placed together almost 90 percent of the time. But the road ahead is long. The plan is to avoid the black holes of the old foster care system, in which damaged children cycled through temporary placements heedlessly - in the case of the surviving Mann siblings, the city eventually paid thousands of dollars in damages in a lawsuit brought on their behalf.
The challenge of healing the shattered lives of Nixzmary's brothers and sisters underscores some of the unmet goals of the new system, which is still struggling to reduce the time that children in foster care wait for permanent homes. Though details of Nixzmary's ordeal are still emerging, her younger sisters, in kindergarten and first grade, and her older brother, a third grader, have traumas of their own to overcome. The authorities said the girls had been sexually abused by their stepfather, Cesar Rodriguez, and that he punished them in one of the ways he punished Nixzmary, by plunging their heads under water. The youngest boys, Mr. Rodriguez's sons, apparently escaped abuse - part of a pattern of scapegoating that is familiar to experts on child maltreatment. "It's likely that these children have been terribly damaged," said Marcia Robinson Lowry, the executive director of Children's Rights, an advocacy group. "They now face a foster care system in which the average length of care is four years. So having faced one terrible situation, they may wind up in another."
Some child welfare experts consider the city's child welfare system - overhauled since Elisa Izquierdo's death more than 10 years ago - close to a national model. And even veteran critics like Ms. Lowry, who called the current commissioner of children's services, John B. Mattingly, "the best ever," acknowledge that the system has vastly improved. But the average length of time it takes for children either to be safely returned to their parents, or to be successfully adopted, Ms. Lowry said, is much longer in New York than in many cities.
Ms. Stein, the spokeswoman for the children's services agency, said the cases of siblings who survived some of the city's worst child abuse fatalities are among the system's greatest challenges. "What is the future for kids whose own parents have shown in the worst possible way that they are not viable?" Ms. Stein asked. The system has to go step by step, she said: "First, trying to see if there's a good family member to take them, trying to keep siblings together, trying to get them help, and, once parental rights are terminated, trying to get them in a permanent placement."
The story of the Izquierdo siblings, now 12 to 19 years old, illustrates how the bad old days of a chaotic, overwhelmed system can still haunt the lives of children and parents today. About a month before Elisa's birth on Feb. 11, 1989, child-protection workers found her half sister and half brother neglected and took them from their mother, who was using crack cocaine. Elisa was lucky at first. She went from the hospital to the custody of her father, Gustavo Izquierdo. But after his death, she was sent to the home of her mother, Awilda Lopez, joining older siblings who had also been returned after Ms. Lopez had drug treatment and settled into an apparently steady relationship with a new man, Carlos Lopez. Eventually, five siblings would watch helplessly as their parents targeted Elisa, sexually abusing her, beating her and at one point forcing her to eat her own feces. Ms. Lopez was sentenced to 15 years to life for her role in Elisa's beating death and is still in prison. Mr. Lopez, who pleaded guilty to attempted assault of his stepdaughter, was sentenced to one and a half to three years.
Fewer than 10 percent of foster care cases involve abuse, not neglect, and child homicides are extremely rare. The instability the Izquierdo siblings experienced in foster care is all too common, however. Three years after Elisa's death, the four youngest had moved through four different homes, as ill-prepared foster parents gave up on them. But now, said Ms. Stein, the spokeswoman for the agency, two of Elisa's siblings have been adopted and are living with a family on Long Island. A third, who does not want to be adopted, lives with them. A fourth sibling is in a separate foster home. In late 2002, Ms. Stein said, after seven years in foster care, the oldest boy, now 19, went to live with his biological father, who was not involved in Elisa's life or death. Such an outcome after years in care is far more common than the public imagines, experts say, especially when adolescents leave foster care with no other family to call their own.
In the Mann case, too, the oldest surviving son returned to live with a parent, his mother, Michelle Mann, who served time for assault in Adam's death and was released from prison in 1994, according to Ms. Lowry, of Children's Rights. She and his father, Rufus Chisolm, who pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, subjected all the siblings to terrible beatings that culminated in Adam's death. The case was the focus of a celebrated "Frontline" documentary detailing how the city had failed to properly investigate earlier reports of abuse and neglect. But years later, as the parents were nearing the end of their prison terms, all but the youngest, the only girl, were still being shuttled from foster home to foster home. Ms. Lowry filed a wrongful-death suit against the city on behalf of the estate of Adam Mann, and won $183,000 for the survivors.
"These are the cases in which intense public scrutiny is focused on child welfare agencies," said Richard Wexler, the executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, which supports programs to keep children safe in their own homes whenever possible. "If those agencies can't even do well by these children, imagine what happens to the hundreds of thousands of children, almost all of them anonymous, taken each year and thrown into foster care."
Elephant in the Living Room
Eileen McNamara, Boston Globe- 1/15/2006
He was on his way to the Patriots game when he got the message that he had been half expecting for 38 years. Joseph Magno had been arrested in the rape and indecent assault of a child. ''I felt relieved to tell the truth. I think I always knew he hadn't stopped," said the 52-year-old Maynard native who said the popular teacher molested him when he was in junior high school. ''I didn't want to be the one back then to tell. I was embarrassed. I figured no one would believe me. But I always told myself if anyone ever does come forward, I am going to back him up."
It was the comments of Magno's attorney, Donald F. DeMayo of Lexington, that sealed his decision to go to the Maynard police, though. DeMayo had called the 17-year-old accuser a ''pathological liar" whose charges against his client, a teacher for 43 years in the Maynard school system, were fueling ''hysteria" and a ''witch hunt" against a ''good man." DeMayo reiterated that charge on Friday in Concord District Court, where bail was set at $50,000 after prosecutors revealed that several former students of the 65-year-old man known at Maynard High School as ''Mags" had come forward to accuse him of sexual abuse.
''He picked kids who were somewhat troubled. By the time I figured out what it was he did, I was in therapy and it was 25 years later," said one of Magno's former students. ''I will absolutely testify. I don't want anything from Magno, either. I just want to say, 'This isn't OK. You can't do this to me or any other throw-away kid.' He picked on me because he knew he could. I was nobody. I wasn't going to amount to anything anyway. You can't do that to a kid, to say, 'You don't count.' " At first, he said, he had been flattered by Magno's attention, his invitation to join an audio-visual club and to work on special projects after school. But almost immediately his teacher maneuvered to get him alone. Magno urged him, he said, to talk about his sexual fantasies and to masturbate in front of him. ''He kept telling me it was normal, that other kids did it with him," he said. ''I don't think I understood what he was up to but I knew it felt wrong."
He has been clean for 19 years now after a long, destructive relationship with cocaine that cost him a great deal, including his marriage. ''I don't say Magno did that to me, but I don't think it helped me much. I'm in recovery now and I want to stand up with [the 17-year-old accuser]," he said. In the last few days, he has been in touch with two other Maynard men, now in their 40s and 50s, who also have gone to police to complain of abuse at Magno's hands. ''People who believe in Mr. Magno are sincere in that belief. The guy did a lot of good for the town. They don't want to see the dark side. They want to give him the benefit of the doubt. It's like wanting to believe in Santa Claus. Well, what about us? Why shouldn't they believe we are telling the truth?" School officials have a lot to answer for, he said. ''There is no way they didn't know unless they didn't want to know. It was the elephant in the room. They didn't think it was inappropriate that he was giving cars to kids? Or taking them out to dinner?"
Warnings to stay clear of Magno passed from from one generation to the next for four decades, he said. ''I told my friends' kids myself never to be alone with him, don't get in a car with him," he said of the faculty adviser to the high school's highly regarded radio station. ''A lot of people told their own kids the same thing. Why it took this long to come out, I don't know. I guess other guys felt the same embarrassment or doubt about what happened to them that I did. No one talked about sexual abuse in the '60s and '70s."
After he got the news of Magno's arrest, he met half a dozen friends in Foxborough to watch the Pats defeat the Jacksonville Jaguars. He told the five who had grown up with him in Maynard about the allegations against their old teacher. ''Nobody said, 'I don't believe that.' It was more like, 'yeah, well, it's about time.' "
`A Million Little Pieces' Shatters Trust
James Janega, Chicago Tribune- 1/15/2006
Jari Kral's youngest daughter, addicted to heroin since she was a teen, lived three months in a car during the winter of 2002. Kral, a longtime Chicago-area resident, filled years of calendars with scrawled notations about her daughter's descent into street drugs, rehab, theft, assault and drug arrests. The daughter, now 22, was locked in Cook County Jail last fall on charges of trying to hijack a car and vowing to kill the woman inside if she didn't get out. The daughter's addiction to drugs was as real and overwhelming as the calendars and copies of police reports stacked on Kral's desk--as anguished as a mother's love, and as unrelenting. It is that very world of drugs, violence and desperation that author James Frey claimed to inhabit in his embellished best-selling memoir, "A Million Little Pieces."
Evoking emotions
As the book's story has evoked powerful emotions, so have reports that parts of it never happened. Kral and many like her are angry that Frey lied about what they have suffered for real. Other readers have embraced the work regardless, saying it sheds light on a dim existence little understood by those who haven't lived it. Supporters say it is a best seller because it is a story of redemption and hope, not because it is accurate. "This has been my life," Kral said. "I think people who really have not been in the drug world or exposed to it maybe really don't believe it."
Last week, Frey defended the book as typical of the not-quite-faithful memoir genre. Oprah Winfrey, whose book club helped slingshot the memoir up the non-fiction best-seller lists, likewise said that it--completely true or not--had touched an uncounted number of lives. "That underlying message of the redemption of James Frey still resonates with me, and I know that it resonates with millions of other people who have read the book," Winfrey said in an on-air telephone call to CNN's "Larry King Live," on which Frey was a guest Wednesday.
That's easy for Winfrey to say, Kral said. "It resonated with me," she said, emphasizing the past tense. "Now I look at it as a story, not a documentary. I doubt everything in the book. I question him as a person. Is he a stand-up guy or not?"
Police reports compared
The controversy over "A Million Little Pieces" began a week ago when the Smoking Gun Web site compared actual police reports with key moments Frey recounted in his book. They matched in only the most cursory ways, Web site researchers said. A Chicago woman, Pilar More, filed a class-action lawsuit against Frey and the book's publishers last week in Cook County. Book club members, readers and students across the Chicago area and the nation have expressed misgivings about Frey's admitted fabrications. "My kids are not happy," said Andy Jones, an English teacher at Hinsdale Central High School whose students chose the book for a class project. "The general sentiment is, yes, there is still a message here and, yes, it is powerful. But to call it fiction [and not memoir]."
Still, the tale Frey spun and the reaction after it became the subject of scrutiny are only part of the story. It is on this March's book club list of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration office staff, noted administration spokeswoman Leah Young.
At St. Joseph High School in Michigan, Frey's alma mater, students have carried copies of "A Million Little Pieces" in the halls and chatter about it before class bells ring, said English teacher Donna Dumke.
And although the book challenges the worth of 12-step programs, it has been embraced by recovering addicts and their families, said Melanie Jordan, inquiries and admissions coordinator at Sunshine Coast Health Centre, a rehab clinic in Powell River, British Columbia. "Whether he embellished or whatever, you would find lots of people who could relate," she said.
The book has been a topic in online chat-room conversations among recovering addicts and their families, with feelings ranging from cautious acceptance to outright betrayal, said Chy King of El Paso, Texas, who owns Sober Teens, a peer support Web site for recovering teen addicts. And the arc of the story in "A Million Little Pieces"--an addict hits bottom, finds something more important than drugs and moves on despite agonizing difficulty--is cautionary and uplifting enough, say readers intimately familiar with addiction.
Making a connection
"It was like, `Wow, somebody finally wrote about it. Somebody else finally expressed what I already know in a way so others can understand it,'" said Patty, 43, a biochemist who met her former husband in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. A pharmacist from Alton, Ill., he committed suicide in 2003 after relapsing into drug use, she said. She said she thinks Frey's book and others like it are worth reading. "It's the stuff that nobody ever talks about," Patty said of addiction recovery. "People don't talk about the cancer that they've had, but if they wanted to, they could. This is just not treated the same."
But the credence placed in Frey and the slim hope to which many clung after reading his book are now more tenuous. "I thought it was just an incredible story. I liked his bluntness," said Kral, a former Flossmoor, Ill., resident who now lives in Michigan. "But I would rather have known that there were embellishments. I would have liked to have known that."
Power of addiction
The following are excerpted from e-mails to the Tribune:
"When I read James Frey's book I was astounded that someone could write so well and have lived it. I have a daughter who is in Cook Cty [County] jail, 22 years old, heroin addict . . . My husband and I have gotten her every kind of help imaginable . . . She's also a sociopath, thief, liar and like James Frey a writer and poet. The audacity of this man to write such a `story' and not have lived it makes me sick. I sent his book to my daughter in jail. I even said we should see if he could help her in some way . . . "
--Jari Kral, South Haven, Mich.
"At last, a book that tells the blatant reality of the risks of alcohol and drug addition, the treacherous road to recovery and its inherent pitfalls . . . In 1989 I married a recovering alcoholic and addict who was also a pharmacist, and came to know his story and the story of other recovering alcoholics/addicts as well . . . Well known around `the tables' (i.e., 12-step programs and recovery centers) are the brutal statistics of the natural course of addiction: Of those who become addicts/alcoholics, few ever seek help, of those who seek help about 10% find help and attempt recover, and of those who enter into a recovery program of any kind, only 10% experience long-term sobriety. My former husband committed suicide after 15 years of recovery. He had relapsed, couldn't scramble back to safety, and killed himself."
-- Patty, 43, Wheaton, Ill.
Family Members Say Tasered Man Had Bipolar Illness
Monica Guzman, Houston Chronicle- 1/15/2006
The man who died Friday two hours after being shocked by a Taser in a Harris County jail suffered from a bipolar disorder, family members said. Daryl Dwayne Kelley, 29, collapsed in a cell at the 1200 Baker St. facility 40 minutes after a member of an Emergency Response Team used a Taser to subdue him so he could be moved to a second-floor mental health unit. Kelley was taken to Christus St. Joseph Hospital, where he died at 4:20 p.m. "He had a mental problem and they Tasered him," said his mother, Pearline Kelley. "He's schizophrenic and he was on medication. They should have put him somewhere where they could've helped him."
Harris County Sheriff's Department Maj. Don McWilliams said that's exactly what officers were trying to do. Kelley had refused to take his medications and reacted violently toward the response team, he said. "Everything was done in accordance with our training protocols," McWilliams said. "It is fully routine to use Tasers to move large, violent inmates." The 6-foot, 300-pound Kelley had transferred from the jail at 701 N. San Jacinto on Thursday after an incident in which he was "loud and disruptive" among other inmates, McWilliams said.
'Episodes' since April
Officials informed Kelley's family of his death about 6 p.m. His sister, Shirley, 40, said Kelley suffered from a bipolar disorder and had been seeing a psychiatrist. "He was a good person and a hard worker," she said. "It was a wrongful death the way that it happened." Family members said Kelley had been having "episodes" since April, the month he was charged with felony auto theft after taking off in a Houston police officer's patrol car when the officer tried to apprehend him. According to county records of the April 13 incident, Kelley's girlfriend flagged down the officer and told him Kelley had assaulted her and had told her "the devil was inside" her. The officer approached Kelley and "noticed him to be in an irate, incoherent state. "Kelley then laid back on the sidewalk and started mumbling statements about the 'devil being inside' of him," the county document reads. McWilliams said Kelley had made similar statements to jail staff. "He was making allegations about the staff being devils and stuff like that," McWilliams said.
Was being transferred
On Friday, after Kelley spent a restless night in a "very violent and agitated state" under observation in a padded cell, jail officials decided to transfer Kelley to the Mental Health and Mental Retardation Authority unit on the second floor. "Because of Mr. Kelley's size and mental state, because he was very violent, a six-member Emergency Response Team responded to the scene" about 2:20 p.m., he said. McWilliams said the team did not engage in a struggle with Kelley before using the Taser because "we really don't want to have to fight someone that big" and risk serious injury.
When Kelley violently "rushed" the team, one of the men, who is certified to teach the use of Tasers, shocked Kelley on his lower hip and other team members got Kelley to the ground and handcuffed him, McWilliams said. "When they used the Taser, the prongs didn't fully connect, they caught in his clothing," so he didn't get the full force of the stun, McWilliams said.
Other than a small cut on Kelley's eyebrow from hitting his head, no injuries were sustained when he was subdued. Medical staff gave him a psychotropic drug to subdue him and placed him on a gurney. Kelley was conscious, "communicable and medically stable" when he arrived at the MHMRA unit about 10 minutes later, McWilliams said. But shortly after 3 p.m., he collapsed.
Tasers, or stun guns, shoot tiny darts attached to wires that carry a 50,000-volt electrical charge. McWilliams said this is the first time a county inmate has died from an incident involving the use of a Taser. Thursday's disturbance was not the first time Kelley had been out of line. "There were lesser instances of unusual behavior," he said, "but nothing that approached this level of violent agitation."
Autopsy to be performed
McWilliams said Saturday that he was not aware of Kelley's mental health history but that "nothing remarkable" had surfaced about his condition when he was first booked into system.
The exact cause of death will be determined after an autopsy by the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office.
An investigation has been opened into the incident and the six-member Emergency Response Unit has been put on stand-down, which is standard procedure after such incidents, McWilliams said.
Similar case last year
A 52-year-old mental patient died last February in Houston after Harris County Precinct 1 constable's deputies used a Taser on him. Though the incident was ruled a homicide, the autopsy report said Joel Casey, who had a history of heart problems, died as a result of psychotic delirium with associated hypertensive disease and did not directly cite the Taser as a factor in his death.
Illinois Prisons to Treat Meth Addicts
Christi Parsons, Chicago Tribune- 1/16/2006
The state will open two 200-bed prison units devoted entirely to treating methamphetamine addicts over the next two years, aides to Gov. Rod Blagojevich said last week . One unit will open this year at Southwestern Illinois Correctional Center in East St. Louis, which Blagojevich also plans to turn into a center dedicated to drug treatment. The other unit will open next year at the Sheridan Correctional Center in Sheridan, a drug-treatment prison that the governor plans to expand to its full capacity of 1,300 next year. That will make it the largest inmate drug-treatment program of its kind in the nation, according to Blagojevich's office.
State prison officials said the governor's plan, to be announced in his State of the State address on Wednesday, will help stem a growing tide of meth-related crimes and the criminals who flood the Illinois penal system each year. By offering treatment, they hope to discourage the use and manufacture of meth by inmates after their release.
Some treatment experts say methamphetamine addicts have unique needs that require special attention, though the use of segregation as a treatment approach is so new that the Illinois prisons would be among the first to test it. "All drugs affect your brain chemistry in some way, but meth is more dramatic," said Deanne Benos, assistant director of the Illinois Department of Corrections. "Because of the impact on the cognitive skills of these individuals and their attention deficits, one thing we're looking at doing is creating very small treatment groups."
Meth-related crimes are growing in Illinois, with incarcerations rising from 6 in 1996 to 541 last year, according to state figures. Although meth has been considered a mostly rural problem, law enforcement officials in Cook County report a significant increase in the amount of the drug seized since 1999. Administration officials have already stepped up treatment in Illinois prisons in an attempt to deter drug-related crimes in general. Prisons in Indiana and Montana recently began experimenting with the idea of segregating meth users for treatment, but there is little data available to attest to the impact of the programs.
Because of the drug's effects on addicts, dedicated treatment is beneficial, some experts say. "You need to approach the meth addict a little differently," said John Pugliese, head of program initiatives for Gateway Foundation, the country's largest provider of prison drug treatment services. "It's difficult initially for a person whose primary drug is meth to settle down and even begin to participate in treatment."
Gambling Seen as No-Win Situation for Some Asians
John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times- 1/16/2006
Bill Lee's father was sold as a boy to cover a gambling debt. In the early 1900s, Lee's grandfather lost a wager during a gambling binge in China. With no money to settle up, his only son had to go. The failed bet unloosed a legacy of problem gambling for Lee's family. His father became an obsessive gambler who never mentioned being raised by a man who won him in a card game. "I saw how gambling destroyed my dad," Lee said. "Part of me also learned, 'Oh, that's how you deal with conflict; that's how you escape.' "
For years, gambling also ruled Lee's life. His 2005 book "Born to Lose: Memoirs of a Compulsive Gambler" dissects the cultural attitudes that he contends make many Asian immigrants susceptible to problem gambling. In recovery, the 51-year-old high-tech recruiter is on the forefront of a battle by Asian Americans in California against out-of-control gambling. In Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean and Cambodian communities, social workers and leaders are pressuring gaming officials and state legislators to recognize a hidden epidemic. "This isn't a special-interest group overblowing a problem," said Timothy Fong, co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, which is conducting an Asian gambling study. "We think this is real."
Nobody really knows how deeply problem gambling reaches into Asian communities because Asians have not been broken out as a group in national or California studies on the issue. But a 1999 poll in San Francisco's Chinatown, commissioned by a social services agency, found that 70% of 1,808 respondents ranked gambling as their community's No. 1 problem. In a follow-up poll, 21% of respondents considered themselves pathological gamblers and 16% more called themselves problem gamblers — rates significantly higher than in the overall population. Current data suggest that 1.6% of Americans can be classified as pathological gamblers, a condition recognized as a psychiatric disorder. About 3% more are considered problem gamblers.
Gambling has become America's adult pastime of choice. Each year, more money is spent in the nation's $75-billion gaming industry than on movies, concerts, sporting events and amusement parks combined. And nowhere is gambling on a bigger roll than in California, with nearly 60 Indian casinos, scores of card rooms, racetracks and Internet gambling sites as well as one of the nation's most lucrative state lotteries. By 2010, annual gaming proceeds will top $10 billion dollars, carrying California past Nevada as the No. 1 gambling destination in the world, gaming experts say.
Asian gamblers play a key role in that success. Though few statistics on their contribution to the state's gambling pot exist, some casinos and card rooms near Los Angeles and San Francisco estimate that Asians often account for 80% of their customers. "Asians are a huge market," said Wendy Waldorf, a spokeswoman for the Cache Creek Casino north of San Francisco. "We cater to them." Each day in San Gabriel, Monterey Park and San Francisco's Chinatown, scores of buses collect Asian customers for free junkets to Indian casinos and to Reno and Las Vegas. Many Nevada casinos also maintain business offices in Monterey Park, where hosts keep in regular touch with Asian high rollers. To reach more run-of-the-mill gamblers, casinos run ads in Asian-language print and broadcast media and conduct direct-mailing campaigns to ZIP Codes with high numbers of Asian residents. Most gambling venues celebrate Asian holidays, hire bilingual staffers and feature the latest nightclub acts from Shanghai, Seoul and Manila. Cache Creek Casino has a tank featuring a popular 2-foot-long dragon fish named Mr. Lucky. Dragon fish are considered good fortune by many Chinese gamblers, who often rub the tank for luck.
Culture is a recurring theme in Lee's book, which describes how many Asians — especially Chinese — consider gambling an accepted practice at home and at social events, even among the young. Chinese youths often gamble for money with aunts, uncles and grandparents. While growing up in San Francisco's Chinatown, Lee took betting to absurd levels — wagering on whether the teacher would assign homework. On rainy days, he bet on which drop would first reach the bottom of the classroom window.
Many Chinese are fascinated by the mystical qualities of luck, fate and chance. The Chinese New Year — this year Jan. 29 — is a time of heightened wagering, when bad luck of the old year is ushered out by the good luck of the new. Numerology also plays a crucial role in many Asian cultures. The number 8, for example, is considered extremely lucky by many Chinese, while 4, when spoken in Mandarin and Cantonese, sounds like the word for death and is avoided. Though Chinese believe most strongly in such concepts, other Asian cultures, including Vietnamese, Korean and Filipino, hold similar beliefs — depending on China's political influence in their history or the extent of Chinese immigration there.
Experts believe that recent Asian immigrants — risk-takers willing to leave the familiarity of their homelands — develop more aggressive gambling strategies than their U.S.-born counterparts. Often lacking language skills and advanced education, some gravitate to casinos, where waitresses dote on gamblers with free drinks and cigarettes. "They're treated as honored guests even though they work dead-end, minimum-wage jobs," said Tina Shum, a social worker in San Francisco's Chinatown. "That's what they long for." Some eventually engage in "attack" gambling: wagering sums beyond their means in a reckless grab at the American dream. "The immigrant experience is often demeaning," Shum said. "Many get blinded by the neon lights."
But such gaming habits come at a cost. Shum estimates that one-fourth of her 150 annual spousal abuse cases are tied to problem gambling. "An astronomical amount of money leaves the Asian community for gambling industry coffers," said Paul Osaki, a member of a gambling task force created last year by the state Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs. "It's not all discretionary money. It's quality-of-life money, food-on-the-table money, college education money."
Osaki and other activists want more research and culturally sensitive gambling treatment programs for often-reserved Asians with gambling problems — for whom Western strategies like Gamblers Anonymous rarely work. The task force also is urging prosecutors to explore possible connections between compulsive gambling and such crimes as fraud and spousal abuse. They've met with casino owners, asking them to support research and treatment programs. California's 4 million Asian residents — 13% of the population — also should be broken out as a category in gambling prevalence studies, activists say.
Kent Woo, executive director of a Chinatown-based health coalition that conducted the gambling polls, said the biggest challenge is to convince the community that it has a problem. "Breaking through the denial is the hard part," he said. "For the community to simply accept that someone has lost their apartment building or their business to gambling — there's something terribly wrong with that." Still, activists say, California's Office of Problem Gambling is under-funded and disorganized. The agency's $3-million budget is derived from contributions from 26 Native American-run casinos. Thirty other tribal casinos do not contribute. Nor do card rooms, race tracks or the state lottery.
In 2003 the office left its entire budget unspent. "That first year we had no staff; you need people to run programs," said agency director Steve Hedrick. He said his office is spending $1.6 million for a new problem gambling prevalence study to be completed this year. The office has contacted Asian American leaders for guidance on programs. Diane Ujiiye, who heads the problem gambling task force, said $3 million wasn't nearly enough to deal with the issue. "It's unacceptable," she said. "What can you do with $3 million? Publish a couple of brochures and run a hotline?"
Leo Chu, owner of the Hollywood Park Casino, said he would not object to contributing to the state's problem gambling fund. Chu says casinos sponsor self-exclusion programs in which problem gamblers can ask that casinos refuse to admit them. Though Chu does not gamble, he acknowledges that many Asians develop problems. "I wish customers would recognize a responsibility to their families as much as their desire for a good time," he said. "But you can't legislate common sense."
When Bill Lee was on a roll, nothing mattered but the gambling, not even family. He fell for the VIP treatment that came with betting thousands of dollars at a casino: free hotel suites and concert tickets, having casino managers know his name. "I was a big shot," Lee said, "as long as the money lasted."
Angela, 52, a San Gabriel Valley tour guide who often accompanied Asian customers on Las Vegas gambling junkets, said that on most trips, she ended up losing her own money and began playing with the company's funds. Angela, who is in treatment and asked that her last name not be used, said she once lost $23,000 in a single day. She said she tried to tame her zealous gambling. On one Vegas trip, she gave all her credit cards to a friend and begged her not to return them, no matter what she said. Later, after losing all her cash, Angela threatened to slap her friend unless she returned the cards. "She threw the cards on the floor and I got down onto my hands and knees without shame to pick them up." Angela met a reporter at the Commerce Casino, where she spent numerous nights before she quit gambling in April 2000. "Ohhh, I love it," she whispered, looking away from the pai gow poker tables. "You can feel that old passion. The money is there for the taking."
Angela helped start one of the state's few Mandarin Chinese gambling treatment programs. But she soon realized a hard fact: Admitting an addiction is difficult in any culture. But many Asians find it particularly hard, especially men. "It's shameful to be emotionally weak," Lee said. "It's not acceptable. So you certainly don't get up and bare your soul before a room full of strangers." To save face among neighbors, many families will bail out an addicted gambler, paying off casinos and loan sharks, rather than seek help.
Asian American advocates are urging casinos to distribute brochures in Asian languages offering help to problem gamblers. More ambitiously, they want ATMs in casinos closed and overnight hours curtailed to discourage problem gamblers. They also would like the state to require gaming venues to contribute to treatment programs. Yet casino owner Chu warned that "too many restrictions will kill business."
Lee's family has broken gambling's grip. He's continuing his treatment, and his only son doesn't gamble. But Lee can still taste the shame his father felt at being sold like a commodity. It was Lee's mother who told him of his father's tragic childhood. And he knows that gambling almost brought him the same fate. For years, his parents struggled to cope with the effects of what Lee now recognizes as his father's habit. When Lee was only 3, they considered selling him to an elderly Chinatown couple, planning to disguise the transaction as an adoption. Lee's father finally decided that he loved his son too much to part with him.
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