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COUPLE CLEARED OF NEGLECT, ABUSE CHARGES; PARENTS TO 84 ADOPTED CHILDREN LOSE LESSER COUNTS

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Author: BYLINE: Jeff Barnard, Associated Press

Dateline: BEND, Ore.

A couple who won accolades for adopting dozens of handicapped children were acquitted Wednesday of charges they let three youngsters die of neglect and abused others with cattle prods and beatings. They were convicted, however, of racketeering and forgery.

The split verdict came after seven days of jury deliberation at the end of the yearlong trial of Dennis and Diane Nason. The couple had adopted 84 children in addition to their six biological children and raised them in a 33-room farmhouse.

The Nasons remain free pending sentencing Feb. 6; each could get a sentence ranging from probation to 20 years.

Diane Nason said she felt vindicated because the manslaughter and child abuse charges were the most important. She said she and her husband simply adopted too many children.

``My heart was bigger than it should have been. I don't think I was wrong. ... I don't know anything about racketeering. All we had was a mob of kids.''

Prosecutors accused the couple of allowing three small children to die of neglect in their beds - an infant girl who died of starvation in 1988, and a boy of about 2 and a girl of about 4 who died only days apart in 1985 from of a form of dysentery called shigella.

Dennis Nason was acquitted of manslaughter in the children's deaths. Diane Nason was acquitted on two of three manslaughter charges; thejury was deadlocked on a third count against her.

The Nasons also were acquitted of using a cattle prod and other forms of abuse to discipline children and of siphoning off $10,000 in contributions from their Great Expectations school.

Their forgery conviction involved falsifying records to adopt more children.

The racketeering charge alleged that the Nasons ran their family as a criminal enterprise, adopting more and more children to keep money coming in from contributors.

The couple relied on donations to give a home to abandoned children from around the world, many with severe physical and mental disabilities.

The Nasons countered that they were victims of a witch hunt by state child welfare workers who did nothing to help them care for children no one else wanted. They said that the children were in poor health when they arrived and that the couple did their best to care for them.

The jury seemed to go along with District Attorney Michael Dugan's post-trial assessment that the Nasons began their mission with good intentions, but it became too much for them to handle alone.

The couple, married in high school, moved in 1977 to the farmhouse near Sisters, Ore., with a spectacular view of the Cascade Range. Nason was postmaster in the central Oregon town.

They were showered with accolades and awards for adopting children from India, Mexico, El Salvador and the United States.

1995 Nov 23