Bethel Home children flee

LYNN WATKINS

USA TODAY

LUCEDALE, Ms. - The Rev. Herman Fountain said Saturday he is sheltering four or five youngsters who fled the Bethel Home for Children near here shortly before state welfare workers arrived Friday to take them into custody.

"I've still got a few soldiers left," said Fountain, 38, who established the fundamentalist home 10 years ago. "And I'm trying to work back to what it was before."

The news provoked a tight-lipped response from the judge who ordered the state Department of Public Welfare to remove children from the southeast Mississippi home.

"I'll deal with it," Chancery Judge Robert Oswald of Pascagoula said in a telephone interview from his home. "But I'll deal with it Monday."

Oswald ruled Friday that children at Bethel, who range in age from 10 to 17 and are mostly from other states, were abused and neglected. He ordered their immediate removal.

An unknown number of children ran from Bethel Baptist Church on the grounds of the facility shortly before Welfare Department social workers arrived to take them into custody Friday. They were rounded up by police and sheriff's deputies in local restaurants, on city streets and in the woods surrounding the 28-acre campus.

Friday night and early Saturday, four buses carried a total of 64 children to the State Hospital at Whitfield, near Jackson, where they'll be kept until court hearings next week determine where they should be placed.

Welfare Commissioner Thomas Brittain, who supervised the children's removal from the home, said Saturday that medical examinations of some showed excessive use of corporal punishment. All 64 had physical examinations and were interviewed by Welfare Department workers.

"We're also investigating additional reports of abuse to the children," Brittain said.

Seven of the 64 youngsters taken to the state hospital were released to their parents Saturday after signing agreements that bar them from returning the children to Bethel, he said.

Since about noon Friday, the hand-operated switchboard at the state hospital has been flooded with calls from parents in Pennsylvania, California, New Hampshire, Arizona, Louisiana, Georgia and Alabama to determine if their children are among those in Welfare Department custody.

"We have also had reports that parents have been calling for children that we do not have," Brittain said. "Since we have no idea how many children were there because the operator refused to tell us, we don't know how many children may have had those difficulties or who may be missing."

As to children who have returned to Bethel since Friday, Brittain said, "We'll work with the court on that and follow the court's direction on that."

Fountain refused to honor a court order to provide a list with names and addresses of the children and their parents, but he insisted he's not hiding any children.

He also denied Brittain's contention that he encouraged the youngsters to run before Welfare Department workers arrived Friday and that the children were abused.

"If he's found anything, he'll have to back it up," Fountain said. "If he's found anything, it's beyond my knowledge."

At least one parent, Marcus Daniels of Albany, Ga., is supportive of the home where he placed his son, 16, and daughter, 14.

"I don't want my children removed from there," Daniels, 36, said Friday night in Lucedale.

"If they had called me, I would have come and gotten them and taken them home," he said. "But this, this is Nazi, it's communist, it's not even logical."

Brittain said most parents have been "cooperative and appreciative of the action we took, while some have been both angry and appreciative. Angry about the situation and appreciative of the action we took."

On Sunday, children will be allowed to pick between Catholic and Protestant religious services. They spent Saturday talking with social workers or in organized recreational activities, said hospital spokesman Wynona Winfield.

Fountain vowed Saturday to continue to keep Bethel's doors open and said he had taken in another resident, a teen-aged boy, despite the judge's Friday order.

"To tell you the truth, I don't know how that court order reads," Fountain said. "But I'll tell you that next time, I'm not going to stand by and let them do this again. Next time, they'll have to take me on."

Hearings to decide where the 64 children removed from Bethel will be placed are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Monday.