ADOPTED KIDS TAKEN AWAY FROM DAD

ADOPTED KIDS TAKEN AWAY FROM DAD

Columbus Dispatch, The (OH) - Saturday, August 3, 1991

Author: From staff and wire reports

NEW YORK - Ten of the adopted children of Kodzo Dobosu, a man who won prominence as an exemplary father willing to take on troubled children, were taken away from him yesterday. Dobosu formerly lived in Columbus.

A Family Court judge in Manhattan issued the order after a two-day hearing in which Dobosu was accused of sexually molesting his adopted sons and overseeing harsh beatings of his children with a wooden plank or switch.

As he left the courthouse, Dobosu called the charges against him lies.

The judge ruled the 10 children, among them the youngest and the most mentally limited, be placed in foster care by Monday morning.

Dobosu, a bachelor, lived in Columbus from 1984 until he resigned as administrator of special adoptions for the state of Ohio in September 1988.

Franklin County records show Dobosu, under the name Kojo-Mbogba Odo , has owned a 10-bedroom, six-bathroom house on Woodland Avenue since January 1985. The house has been leased since February to WAIT, a private, non-profit women's substance abuse intervention group, a group official said in May.

When Dobosu came to Columbus seven years ago to take a $30,000-a-year job with the Ohio Department of Human Services, he brought 28 adopted children with him.

He adopted at least four more children while in Columbus.

In 1983, PBS broadcast a laudatory documentary about Dobosu and his family on its Frontline program. The same year, the National Father's Day Committee honored him with a father of the year award.

In Family Court, Detective Tony Petrak of the Manhattan Sex Crimes Squad testified one of Dobosu's sons, Kekeletso, 20, now in prison in Ohio for armed robbery, had reported his father had sexually molested him and several of his brothers.

Edition: Home Final

Section: NEWS

Page: 03A

Index Terms: SEX ABUSE VIOLENCE KODZO DOBOSU CHILDREN MULTIPLE ADOPTION ; RULING END

Record Number: 9108030003

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Copyright (c) 1991 The Dispatch Printing Co.