Emergency custody of Bethel Home children
LYNN WATKINS
USA TODAY
LUCEDALE, Miss. - Residents of the Bethel Home for Children are subjected "to physical abuse, medical neglect and detention amounting to imprisonment," a judge ruled Friday as he gave the state custody of more than 60 youngsters.
The state Department of Public Welfare, backed by more than a dozen state Mississippi Highway Patrol troopers, assumed emergency custody of the children.
Sixty-one, ranging in age from 8 to 17 and mostly from other states, were escorted onto Trailways and Greyhound buses by social workers and state troopers and whisked to the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield.
Many of the youngsters fled the complex when authorities came for them, but most were rounded up within hours. They said they were told by Bethel officials to run when buses arrived, Welfare Commissioner Thomas Brittain said.
"Every action we're taking now is to safeguard the health and interests of the children," said Brittain, who helped supervise the removal.
The order placing the children in Welfare Department custody was issued by Chancery Judge Robert Oswald of Pascagoula, who also serves as Youth Court judge. He also declared the home a detention facility.
Oswald said he'll begin hearings here at 9:30 a.m. Monday to decide where the children will be taken until parents or guardians assume custody.
Oswald's order was issued during the fourth day of hearings on the legal status of a child known in court records as S.D.L., who ran away from the fundamentalist-run home May 8.
Testimony by a local physician in the case showed that during the child's 19-month stay at the home, he failed to get treatment for an eye condition that eventually would render him blind, the judge said.
Oswald's ruling was in response to a request by George County Attorney Mark A. Maples after the Rev. Herman Fountain, Bethel's operator, refused to answer Maples' questions about the home.
"What it boils down to is, his silence was his only message to the court," Oswald said. "Rev. Fountain decided to keep the court in the dark by refusing to answer questions which might have significantly altered the proceedings here."
Fountain's attorney, Bill Bailey of Lucedale, challenged Oswald's authority to remove the children and maintained there was no evidence to prove Fountain abused or neglected them.
"Where does the state get its authority?" Bailey asked. "There's no tax money that goes out there. This man's mission is to help children. When these children leave there, they may not be able to operate a computer or fly a plane, but they'll have the word of the Lord in them."
Maples disagreed.
"I'm not a Bible scholar," he said. "But I don't ever remember finding anywhere in the Bible that God ever approved of Bethel or any place like it.
"It's been said that the children learn the Bible, but it's also been said that they learn to get beat, how to run laps at 4 in the morning, how to censor their mail."
Over the past 10 years, authorities have handled more than 150 runaways from Bethel, according to a George County Youth Services worker who estimated there have been more than a half-dozen runaways during the past month.
Allegations against the home by former residents range from severe beatings to forced labor.
In March 1980, George County authorities removed 33 children from Bethel and charged Fountain and a Bethel worker with misdemeanor assault. The charges, based on information from a Bethel runaway, were later dropped and the children were allowed to return to the home.
Oswald's order also noted Fountain refused to provide George County Youth Court authorities a list of its residents or their parents' names, addresses and phone numbers as required by the judge.
Friday, Fountain vowed to fight the order.
"I'll never give up," said Fountain, 38, and the father of eight children. "The state didn't call me to do this; the Lord Jesus Christ did."