'Abuse' matter of opinion, founder of Miss. home says

Adam Nossiter

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution

The Rev. Herman Fountain, fast-talking founder of the church and the Bethel Home for Children, lashed out at a "conspiracy" perpetrated by Mississippi welfare officials who have charged him with abuse, saying they were intent on proving him to be wrong. Chancery Judge Robert Oswald will conduct hearings today to determine the future of 45 children taken from the home and placed in state custody by court order Friday. About 15 or 20 other children have been released to their parents on the condition they not be sent back to Bethel. As many as 60 are still unaccounted for, Welfare Commissioner Thomas Brittain said.

LUCEDALE, Miss. - The words on the sign outside Bethel Baptist Church come from the Bible: "If God be for us, who can be against us?"

The Rev. Herman Fountain, fast-talking founder of the church and the Bethel Home for Children, is not as serene about his future as that question suggests.

Intently leaning forward in the girl's dormitory Saturday night, he lashed out at a "conspiracy" perpetrated by Mississippi welfare officials, saying they were intent on proving him to be wrong.

Have youths at the Christian boarding school for troubled children been physically abused, as a juvenile court judge charges? "It all depends on who's looking at it," Fountain said.

Chancery Judge Robert Oswald will conduct hearings today to determine the future of 45 children taken from the home and placed in state custody by court order Friday. About 15 or 20 other children have been released to their parents on the condition they not be sent back to Bethel. As many as 60 are still unaccounted for, Welfare Commissioner Thomas Brittain said.

"There are still a whole lot of kids out there wandering around somewhere that were released through a totally inappropriate manner," Brittain said at a news conference Sunday.

Most of the students, ages 8 to 17, are from out of state. Mississippi offici als are unsure how many boarders lived at the school because Fountain has refused to release enrollment figures.

On Friday, state social workers descended on the 28-acre school and church grounds in this southeast Mississippi town. Armed with Oswald's order giving the state temporary custody of most of the 120 to 160 students, the social workers loaded 64 of them onto chartered Greyhound and Trailways buses and drove them 120 miles north to the state mental hospital in Whitfield, outside Jackson.

All last week, the judge had heard complaints of abuse from a 19-year-old runaway who said he was "tired of getting licks." On Friday, the judge said children at the home had been subjected to "physical abuse, medical neglect and detention amounting to imprisonment" and that he wanted them out.

The state was unable to remove all the children. Many fled before officials arrived, perhaps encouraged by Fountain, authorities claim. Some of those who fled were picked up wandering the streets of Lucedale or in restaurants.

Fountain denied encouraging the children to flee, but admitted warning them they were being taken to the state mental hospital. This produced panic, he said.

"They freaked. One girl went into convulsions. They started going out the doors. I had no control over them," Fountain said. "I might if I had got me a switch."

This is not the first time Fountain, 38, a former heroin addict, has been accused of abuse. In the past 10 months, Brittain said, state welfare officials have received at least one complaint a month about conditions at the home. Perhaps as many as 150 children have fled since it opened, state officials say. In March 1980, the state Welfare Department removed 38 children.

Religious schools such as Bethel are unregulated and unlicensed in Mississippi. It and Missouri are the only states that allow such schools to operate without controls.

There are perhaps as many as a dozen such schools in Mississippi. In 1986, the state took emergency custody of 117 girls at one school, the Bethesda Home for Girls near Hattiesburg, after similar tales of harsh discipline. That school now is closed.

Bethel combines ultrastrict discipline - its primary attraction for some parents - with heavy measures of daily biblical instruction. Some of its students are juvenile delinquents, Fountain said.

"Some are into drugs, some are into prostitution," he said. "These kids, they're hustlers. You're talking about professional cons."

Fountain, an articulate man with a shock of black hair, earnestly defended his school Saturday night. "They say we abused and neglected kids, but we feel we haven't. I spank kids, I make 'em run laps. I make 'em be men, I make 'em be ladies. I show 'em how to be Christians."

Fountain said authorities have no physical evidence of abuse at the school. Brittain declined Sunday to discuss results of medical examinations performed on children taken to the state mental hospital.

Fountain bitterly denounced the 19-year-old runaway whose story led to the judge's order. "He was a brat, a liar and a thief," Fountain said. "He had a lot of perverted ways about him."

While he spoke Saturday night, "Brother Fountain," as he is called, was surrounded by a ring of "workers" - boarders at the school who had been promoted to help maintain discipline and give instruction. The workers said they were 18 or older, so they had not been removed by the state.

Some of those who remained on the darkened grounds of the school Saturday night, including the "workers," said they were devoted to the school and to Fountain. "My parents didn't want me," said one girl, who would not give her name. "He took me in, same as his own child." Another called the state officials "liars."

One "worker," Ward Greer, 19, explained the discipline policy at the heart of the state action against Fountain.

"Licks" are administered to the backsides of children with a long, thin tree limb, he said. Licks are given to those guilty of cheating, stealing and disrespect, like "smart-mouthing a worker," he said.

Sometimes the "licks" draw blood, said another worker, Todd Orr, 19, but most often just welts.

The school is "based on true Christian standards," Greer said.

The school appears to be unpopular with many townspeople. Students regularly preached on the street, said Vergie Holland, a waitress at the Coffee Pot Restaurant. She said they would stand outside the video game hall in downtown Lucedale and warn local youths who headed inside that they are going to hell.

Fountain expressed little hope for accommodation from state officials. "They ain't going to give me anything," he said. But he vowed a "fight to the bitter end."

The Associated Press contributed to this article.