"....There is a saying, that we should do to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation descent, or colour they are. And those who steal or rob men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike? Here is liberty of conscience, which is right and reasonable; here ought to be likewise liberty of the body, except of evil-doers, which is another case. But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against. In Europe there are many oppressed for conscience-sake; and here there are those oppressed which are of a black colour. And we who know that men must not commit adultery—some do commit adultery in others, separating wives from their husbands, and giving them to others: and some sell the children of these poor creatures to other men. Ah! Do consider well this thing, you who do it, if you would be done at this manner—and if it is done according to Christianity! You surpass Holland and Germany in this thing. This makes an ill report in all those countries of Europe, where they hear of [it], that the Quakers do here handed men as they handel there the cattle. And for that reason some have no mind or inclination to come hither. And who shall maintain this your cause, or plead for it? Truly, we cannot do so, except you shall inform us better hereof, viz: that Christians have liberty to practice these things. Pray, what thing in the world can be done worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away, and sell us for slaves to strange countries; separating husbands from their wives and children. Being now this is no done in the manner we would be done at; therefore, we contradict, and are against this traffic of men-body...."

[Editorial—by Richard Lessner, Editor, Manchester, New Hampshire Union Leader, August 12, 1998.]

The majority of violent crimes are committed by young en between the ages of 15 and 25. Increasingly, however, we are seeing horrific crimes being committed by younger and younger boys.

In an Arkansas school yard, little-boy killers dressed in fatigues gun down their classmates. In Chicago, boys 7 and 8 are accused of murdering an 11-year-old girl for her bicycle. Teachers polled nationwide say that student violence is the worst problem facing the schools; 40 years ago, it was talking in the classroom.

Here in New Hampshire, we still are trying to make sense of the slaying of 14-year-old Robbie Mills of Laconia, who was murdered, police say, for his bicycle. An 18-year-old is accused of this senseless crime.

How do we account for the rising numbers of violent children? Doubtless many factors are at work, but one of the most important may be the crisis in manliness. Writing in the current issue of the Weekly Standard, Walter R. Newell, professor of political science at Carlton University in Ottawa, Canada, details the rising toll we are paying for our foolish experiment in gender leveling.

For more than 30 years, Professor Newell notes, we have pursued a prolonged effort at social engineering. The aim has been to eradicate any psychological or emotional difference between men and women. The rational for this vast social experiment has been the radical feminist notion that any concept of manliness inevitably leads to aggression and violence against women and rigid hierarchies of power that exclude and marginalize.

Baby Boomers were told not to be hung up on providing distinctly masculine role models for boys and to de-emphasize differences between the sexes. At the same time, we have endured the breakdown of the family, rising divorce rates and, thanks to the misguided sexual revolution, an explosion of out-of-wedlock births and single mothers.

Many of these un-fathered boys, model themselves not after loving, faithful, hard working bread winners, but after super-macho male sports figures fathering children willy-nilly like rooting boars or the violently misogynist rock stars of MTV.

Un-fathered young men are prone to identify their maleness with violence and aggression because they have no better models. "It seems plain enough," Professor Newell writes, "that we are missing the boat on manliness; for there are forms of pride and honor that would be good to impart to males. Indeed, many honor, and shame at failing to live up to it, are the surest means of promoting respect for women."

Though there are always exceptions, the single most powerful predictor of violent behavior among boys and young men is fatherlessness. Absentee fathers, researcher Barbara Dafoe Whitehead finds, is a more important factor in adolescent crime than poverty, lack of education or minority status.

Boys and girls are different—physically, hormonally, emotionally. We need to recover a sense that to be a man means to be "honorable, brave, self-restrained, zealous in behalf of a good cause, with feelings of delicacy and respect toward loved ones." So the first step is to recover a positive tradition of manliness from three decades of feminist stereotyping that identifies any expression of masculinity with violence, dominance and aggression.

According to prevailing orthodoxy, however, there are no differences between boys and girls; all have exactly the same capacities and ambitions. Yet as Prof. Newell asserts, asll that 30 years of such conditioning have done is to drive manliness underground and distort it by severing it from traditional sources of restraint and civility.

In our therapeutic society, moreover, we have psychologized normal male behavior, what once would have been regarded as boyish high-spiritedness. The object, however, should not be to suppress such normal male energies—or medicate them with powerful mood-altering drugs—but to channel them into the development of a mature masculine character.

Feminist will shriek, of course, that any effort to restore a traditional understanding of manliness would be to return to the era of patriarchy and the oppression of women. In this view, the lives of our parents and grandparents were hell holes of male aggression. Yet our 30-year social experiment has succeeded not only in liberating women, but in producing killer boys. This, it is said, is progress.

Our hubristic effort to undo biology is failing and the history of Western Civilization is not the long nightmare of male oppression of women that the feminist imagine. Perhaps a more traditional approach to our understanding what it means to be male would provide a better foundation of respect between men and women than the speculative fevers of feminism. And perhaps the best way to convince boys and young men to treat others with respect is to raise them in the traditional virtues of manliness.

[New York Post, Wednesday, December 9, 1998, by Dareh Gregorian, p. 3]

The custody battle between Ron Perelman and ex-wife Patricia Duff got even nastier yesterday, with the billionaire accusing the socialite of slapping him around.

His charge came one day after Duff’s lawyers claimed she had been physically abused by the Revlon head during their 700-day marriage.

The day of he-accused/she-accused attacks in the fight over 3-year-old Caleigh spilled out of the courtroom and into a corridor, where the two sides fought it out before an audience of reporters.

Perelman’s lawyer, Adria Hillman, told the Post that Duff attacked her client in the presence of a witness," Hillman said, charging that Duff also attacked a woman friend of the family and three of Caleigh’s nannies.

Hillman said she has an 1996 affidavit from Duff confirming that Perelman never abused her physically.

Duff lawyer Kenneth Warner angrily denied that her client ever hit Perelman, calling those charges "poppycock. My client weight 110 pounds—that’s hardly fighting weight.

"They love mud-slinging because it buries the facts we tried so hard to get across—that Patricia is the primary caretaker and a fabulous mom." Warner said.

He claimed the court psychiatrist was "co-opted" by the 55-year-old Perelman’s corporate takeover expertise."

He said the makeup mogul took Kaplan out to his "East Hampton estate in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes" to have lunch with rock star Bon Jovi and "A League of their Own" director Penny Marshall.

Hillman also charged Duff, 44, with being a maniac mom, firing over 18 nannies and 25 housekeepers over the past two years.

Duff’s lawyers countered that Perelman is an absentee dad who’s gone through dozens of nannies.

Hillman said he’s "a nurturing father" and has had only two nannies, one for Caleigh and another for her 8-year-old sister.

Earlier, the two sides squared off in front of Appellate Division Justice Joseph Sullivan to argue a ruling—requested by Duff—that opened the proceedings to the public.

Then the two sides faced off in the hallway battle.

As Hillman discussed one psychologist’s findings, Warner cut in, asking, "Is this the same psychologist who found your client to be socially inept?"

Hillman replied, "This is the clinical psychologist who found your client paranoid and narcissistic."

[New York Post, Wednesday, December 9, 1998, by Murray Weiss, Kieran Crowley and Tracy Connor, p. 3]

Amy Fisher is trying to get out of prison by claiming she had a steamy relationship with her former lawyer that included "intense" fondling sessions and lurid sex fantasies.

A motion filed yesterday in Nassau County Court accuses lawyer Eric Naibeurg of lying to get Fisher to cop a plea so he could avoid a trial where the trysts would be revealed.

"What took place is sad and despicable." Said lawyer Bruce Barket, who is representing Fisher in her bid to set aside her 1992 guilty plea, which landed her a five-to 15-year sentence.

Naiburg, a married father of two, angrily denied the charges.

"I think it’s a desperate attempt by a desperate young woman to gain her freedom. I am angry, I am hurt, I am offended," he said. "I treated that girl like my daughters—and nothing different."

Fisher, who admitted shooting Mary Jo Buttafuoco after an affair with her auto-mechanic hubby, Joey Buttafuoco, said the relationship with Naiburg began as soon as she was sprung from bail on bond.

"Our relationship quickly became very intense," she said in an affidavit. "We began to share fantasies and often talked our way through varous ‘role playing’ games as I sat on his lap or straddled him as he sat on the chair.

"We would kiss on the mouth as we talked about acting out our sexual fantasies. The fantasies are extremely embarrassing.

"The often involved one of us being tied up..."

Fisher said she believed Naiburg had orgasms during the S&M fantasies, but he refused to have sexual intercourse with her.

"He said he did not want to do me what Joey did to me," she said.

"He was like my father, savior, lover and best friend in one person."

The exhibits in the 75-page motion include letters signed with the numbers 125/93.

Fischer claims that was a code in which the lawyer was affectionately dismissing their age difference.

Naiburg claims it’s a joking reference to an innocent conversation about their ages.

Barket claims that because Naiburg was involved with Fisher, he misrepresented her and pushed her into a plea deal he knew was a sham.

Raven-haired Amy, who is now 23, insists Naiburg told her a secret agreement with prosecutors would get her out of jail in three years with early parole.

Prosecutors have denied any such deal—and were tight-lipped yesterday about the latest twist in the Amy Fisher saga.

"We think the plea should stand." Said Ed Grilli, a spokesman for the Nassau County DA. "We leave it at that."

[New York Daily News, Monday, January 25, 1999, by Pete Donohue, Alice McQuillan and Bill Hutchinson, pp. 4-5]

The grisly slayings of two young brothers whose bodies were found hidden in a Chelsea building took an even ghastlier turn yesterday as autopsied showed one was chopped to death while the other’s head was crushed.

The boys’ father, Ronald Short—whom one investigator described as a "cold, strange guy" –was held on $10 million bail yesterday after being charged with child endangerment. The case is still under investigation.

Law enforcement sources said Short’s bizarre behavior helped lead detectives to the bodies of this sons, who were reported missing by their mother on Jan. 13.

In the days before the decomposed bodies of Richard, 7 and John, 3, were found, Short was seen sitting outside the chamber that hid his dead children, crying and disoriented, sources said.

Short, a real estate manager who sources said takes the anti-depressant Prozac, has remained silent. Detectives said they are building a case against the 49-year-old that includes alleged murderous threats made to his wife.

Jolanta Short, 38, confided to a friend early Friday morning that her husband vowed to kill the children after she told him she was leaving him.

"She was hysterical," said the friend, Anna Acosta. "She kept saying, "He’s going to kill them. I know he’s going to kill them.’"

Acosta said she tried to comfort Short, asking why she felt Richard and John were in danger.

The terrified mother gave Acosta a chilling answer, saying, "Because he told me he’s going to kill them. I have to find them first."

But police said the boys were already dead.

Their decomposing bodies were found Saturday night hidden in a secret basement chamber of a building at 36 W. 25^th St., a property their father manages.

Autopsies showed young Richard suffered at least seven blows to the head and neck with a sharp object, including one to the back of the head, that nearly severed his spinal cord.

He was found stuffed in a plastic bag with his legs tied with a telephone cord, sources said.

His little brother, John, was bashed in the head so hard he suffered brain damage, authorities said. His body, dressed in blue-jean overalls, was found on a drop cloth with his Green Bay Packers Jacket next to him.

Homicide detectives discovered the bodies by retracing Ronald Short’s tracks over the past two weeks. They learned that on Jan. 10, Short got a parking ticket on W. 21^st st., sources said.

They discovered Short managed the W.25^th St. Building . A first search yielded nothing.

Queens homicide squad Detectives Louis Pia and Brian Quinn returned to the building after maintenance men remembered cleaning up drops of blood in the boiler room around Jan. 11, sources said.

Pia and Quinn noticed a small door behind some junk, and became aware of the smell of leaning solvent, sources said. The detectives entered the dark room. They found the bodies on a shelf 10 feet up.

"It’s so terribly sad that two young lives would be snuffed out in this fashion." Said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Short, who was on suicide watch last night, apparently began unraveling when his wile of nine years threatened to leave him and take the kids, law enforcement sources said.

In the following days, Ronald refused to tell Jolanta where her children were.

Detectives say the last person other than Short to see the boys alive was his sister, to whose Brooklyn home he took the children after the Jan. 9 argument.

Short left his sister’s house at 11:30 p.m. Police believe the boys were slain in Chelsea soon after.

In the days that followed, co-workers said they noticed Short was depressed, sources said.

When asked what was bothering him, Short told a colleague he feared his wife was going to take his sons to live in her native Poland.

At 3:30 a.m. Friday, Short stumbled into the St. Vincent’s Medical Center emergency room. He told doctors he was suicidal and that his wife was attempting to get him in trouble with the police.

Hospital officials called Jolanta Short, the sources added. She called police, who went to the hospital and arrested her husband on a warrant for failing to show at a court hearing Friday on child endangerment charges.

The charges stemmed from his refusing to answer questions from police about the whereabouts of his kids.

[The New York Daily News, Friday, January 29, 1999—Reported by: Virginia Breen, Henri Cauvin, Bill Egbert, Austin Fenner, Michele Mcphee, Patrice O’Shaugnnessy, and Tom Raftery, pp. 1and 5.]

When her studious, polite son failed to come home by 10p.m. from a basketball game, Rosemary Bennett followed her motherly instincts and walked a dread-filled mile looking for him.

She found her "good as gold" son, Michael Bennett, had been stabbed to death by a gang of kids outraged over a basketball scoring dispute.

Police yesterday were questioning several teenage suspects and dozens of witnesses and conducting lineups at the 71^st Precinct in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

By last evening, no suspects had been charged in the senseless slaying of Michael, a promising 14-year-old who emigrated from Jamaica, quietly excelled in school and had dreams of flying an Air Force Jet.

Police said at least eight teens set upon Michael and a 15-year-old friend about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday as the two left a game held at Jackie Robinson School (Intermediate School 320) on McKeever Place.

They grabbed Michael and stabbed him twice in the chest, through his heart and lungs. They chased his 15-year-old pal for one block and bashed him in the head with an aluminum baseball bat.

"It was just a ballgame. He didn’t have to die like that over a stupid ballgame," said the surviving teen, whose name is being withheld by the Daily News, as he nursed a large bruise under his right eye.

"If I didn’t run fast they would have killed me, too." He said.

The survivor said he and Michael were playing on a team of Walt Whitman Junior High School kids against a team of Jackie Robinson kids as part of a community organization league. With a minute left in the game, a kid on his team accused the scorekeeper, a cousin of a player on the opposing team, of "bouncing the numbers."

The game resumed, and the Whitman team won, 51-48. Everyone shook hands and went to the locker room, the teen said.

"We left, and when we got a block away, they pounced," he continued. "The were saying ‘Who was dissing my cousin,’ and one kid pointed at Michael and they were beating on him."

Police said the assailants stabbed Michael on Franklin Ave. Near Sullivan Place near Prospect Park. He went into cardiac arrest, and an Emergency Medical Service crew worked on him for 15 minutes. He was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital.

Meanwhile, a bunch of teens chased Michael’s pal into an Exxon gas station on Empire Blvd.

"The guys chasing him had a gray baseball bat and a switch-blade about 8 inches long," said a worker Serac Kulus, 25.

Kulus and his fellow workers hustled the victim behind the counter, "but three of them came in right along with him and one guy grabbed a Snapple bottle and threw it at him," Kulus said. "Then the guy with the bat swung the bat and hit the [victim] in the forehead. There was blood all over."

Yesterday, Michael’s mother, a 48-year-old home care attendant who came here for a better education for her children, wailed in the hallway of her Ocean Ave. Building as her daughters, Orna 23, and Meshauna, 8, mourned for their only brother.

"Oh God, please God, not my son...He’s so nice, he’s so quiet, he’s good as gold," Bennet said, her eyes red and swollen from a night of tears.

At Lafayette High School in Bensonhurst, Michael’s English teacher, Kathleen Mulgrew, broke into tears as she spoke of her student.

"He was a vital part of the classroom, extremely pleasant, a nice kid with a good sense of humor, and a good student," Mulgrew said. "He was a kid worried about his grades, so polite...I really expected a lot from him.

"He was genuine."

Lafayette Principal Robert Haberski said Michael had virtually perfect attendance and had grades well over 80.

"A loss like this can’t be remedied," Haberski said. "We have to find other ways for young people to settle their differences without this mindless violence."

Michael, a 5-foot-8, 145-pound youth who worked out and won awards for karate and long-distance running, loved dancing and reggae music, and kidding around with his sisters.

He accompanied his mother to a supermarket Wednesday afternoon, and spontaneouly kissed her, saying, "Mommy you’re sweet. I love you."

Minutes before he left for the game he posed near a mirror, showing off muscles, telling Orna, "I’m the man."

When he did not return home by 10:04 p.m., Bennett felt a twinge of panic and walked to Jackie Robinson School.

"I saw a policeman, and I told him my son’s name, and he told me to get in the police car," she said.

"I said, why, why...but then, I just knew."

[The New York Daily News, Friday, January 29, 1999, by Tracey Tully; p. 6]

ALBANY – Lt. Gov. Mary Donohue yesterday announced she and her husband of 14 years have separated following a "domestic incident" that took place two weeks ago at their upstate home. "We are in the process of resolving this matter," Donohue, 51, said in a prepared statement. "My husband and I share a particular concern for the privacy and well-being of the children."

On Jan. 10, State Police responded to a 911 call of an "active domestic dispute" at the couple’s home outside Albany, cops said.

State Police spokeswoman Lt. Jamie Mills said the incident "was resolved prior to patrol’s arrival

After interviewing family members, troopers left the Brunswick home. There were no arrests, and the case is considered closed, Mills said.

Donohue, a former prosecutor and Supreme Court justice declined comment on details of the incident.

She acknowledges that the domestic incident in question did, in fact happen. This is a painful statement for her to make," her spokeswoman Eileen Long said.

Brian Donohue, a Troy attorney, said the incident involved "no violence, nothing physical."

"Imagine yourself in a nightmarish situation where you have an argument and police show up," he said. "Nothing happened other than we had an argument where voices were raised."

A source familiar with the incident said the couple’s 10-year-old son, Justin, placed the 911 call.

Mills said State Police did not have access to a copy of the 911 tape.

The couple is expected to file for divorce. Mary Donohue also has a 20-year-old daughter, Sara, from a previous marriage. She is a senior at Fordham University and no longer lives at home.

The marriage has been troubled for some time, sources said. The governor was not told of the Donohues’ marital trouble before choosing her as his Republican running mate, another source said.

Donohue was selected to replace former Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey Ross, who became a Democrat after a series of public feuds with Pataki.

McCaughey Ross ran against Pataki on the Liberal Party line in November. McCaughey Ross’ banker husband, Wilbur Ross, filed for divorce a day after she lost.

[The New York Post, Monday, February 1, 1999, Jack Newfield Exclusive, pp. 1 and 3]

MARGERET LYONS has just lived through every parent’s worst nightmare.

Last weekend, her son, Jimmy, went "into the city" to celebrate his 18^th birthday with three friends.

When Jimmy didn’t come home, Margaret, his single mother, began to feel a sense of dread. Jimmy always come home on time.

Margaret Lyons couldn’t sleep, even though she had to be at her job as a waitress at Friendly’s at 8:30 a.m.

She kept beeping her son and getting no response. This never happened before.

At 10 the next morning, while she was at work, she was told her son was dead.

The police told Margaret her son died from an overdose of drugs—ketamine and ecstasy—inside the Tunnel disco, owned by Peter Gatien, a convicted felon.

Yesterday, Margaret sat in The Post’s newsroom, telling me her story through tears, comforted by her sister, Kathleen Veit, who lived with her and Jimmy on Long Island.

"I want the world to know who my son was," Margaret began.

"He wasn’t a drug addict. He went to school and worked at two part-time jobs. You can’t work at Mather Hospital and at Friendly’s if you’re taking drugs.

"Jimmy was happy and popular. He wasn’t alienated," she said.

"He never went to clubs. The Tunnel was the first one. All his friends told me at the wake that they wished they had the relationship with their parents that Jimmy had with me."

After her son died, Margaret Lyons needed answers and spoke to Joe Grasi, one of her son’s oldest friends, who accompanied him to the club.

"Joe told me they had no drugs with them when they went into the Tunnel," she said.

"Joe saw Jimmy buy two ecstasy pills from a dealer as soon as they got inside. He told me they sell the drugs from a serving tray.

"He told me kids were laying on the floor unconscious from those drugs all over the place.

"He told me these kids get dehydrated from all the drugs and dancing, and they sell them water for $5 a bottle. If they don’t have the $5, they pass out.

"When I turned 18," mother recalled, "I went to a bar to celebrate. But Jimmy went to a place that served drugs instead of drinks."

Gatien’s criminal lawyer, Ben Brafman, told me yesterday, "Peter Gatien has a ‘zero tolerance’ policy for drugs. There is no proof this kid’s death was connected to any drugs purchased or used at the Tunnel."

Jimmy’s aunt, Kathleen, told me "We are definitely going to sue Gatien. I’ve already talked to a lawyer...We will ask the SLA [State Liquor Authority] to allow the family to testify against his liquor license.

"If we can save one kid from dying at the Tunnel, the way Jimmy died, that will mean Jimmy didn’t die in vain," his aunt said.

Margaret Lyons is upset that the only person who had interviewed her about Jimmy’s life was a girl on his high-school paper, who is also my baby sitter.

"The day after Jimmy died," she said, "Newsday had a story about Jimmy that quoted a representative of Gatien, but they never even called me. Gatien never called me to offer his condolences. But he got his side into Newsday right away."

Jimmy Lyons was your typical teen-ager. He wanted to be an auto mechanic. He worked out at the gym, trying to build up his 100-pound 5-5 frame. He had a nice girlfriend his mother approved of.

Even though his parents separated when he was 14, and even though he was not a good student, he was a positive, optimistic kid.

An overdoes of drugs at a disco is not a fair sum-up of his short life, but it is the only reference that exists now in the media.

Jimmy worked had at two part-time jobs to help make ends meet.

Jimmy was never arrested.

Jimmy helped care for his younger sister and brother.

A hundred of his high school classmates came to his wake, and five of them got tattoos with his name the next day.

He had close relationships with all his family members.

When a neighbor felt threatened by an abusive ex-boyfriend, Jimmy volunteered to stay with her.

Jimmy, according to his mom, "lectured other kids not to do drugs, to stay in school, not to mess up their lives."

At the end of the interview, Margaret Lyons dried her eyes and put on her coat to leave. Then she said:

"If this could happen to a kid like Jimmy, this can happen to anyone’s child."

[SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, Tuesday, December 3, 1996, by Erin McCormick]

SAN FRANCISCO – He was a "normal 15-year-old kid," with all the usual teenage passions.

She was his neighbor – a 34-year-old mom, later convicted of statutory rape for engaging him in a romantic tryst that resulted in her getting pregnant.

However, in a case that turns the term "deadbeat dad" squarely on its ear, a California appeals court has ruled the young man from San Luis Obispo, identified only as "Nathaniel J." In court records, is responsible for paying child support for the baby born of the illegal union.

The Nov. 6 ruling by the 2^nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles – the first decision of its kind in California – opens a Pandora’s box of sticky societal questions, ranging from whether girls and boys should be treated differently in cases of statutory rape to the fairness of government’s increasingly aggressive pursuit of child support payments.

"This is a really bizarre case," said University of California Berkley social welfare Professor Mary Ann Mason, who specializes in societal legal issues. "It seems unfair that he was taken advantage of, and then he gets prosecuted for child support. He’s considered a victim on one hand and a perpetrator on the other."

County and state authorities, rather than the mother, have pursued the case, seeking compensation for welfare payments the infant girl has been receiving since her birth in January 1995.

Attorneys from the state Attorney General’s Office, which represented the state in the appeal, say the teen-ager should be responsible for the child because he indicated he was a willing sexual partner.

"Our point of view is that the newborn is the victim in these matters," said Carol Ann White, a lawyer who heads the attorney general’s child support enforcement unit. "No matter what the circumstances of their conception, babies deserve to have two parents."

"And this was a consensual relationship," she added.

The youth, now 18, won’t be required to pay until he has some kind of income, said Deputy Attorney General Mary Roth, who handled the case. "Say he makes $800 a moth working at Burger Kind," Roth said. "He’ll probably be expected to pay $200 a month to reimburse Aid to Families with Dependant Children."

Under state law, the boy’s parents aren’t’ responsible for child support for their granddaughter.

The case began in 1994, with a 2 week-long affair between the young boy and the unmarried woman, listed in court records as Ricci Jones.

According to court records, Jones and the teen-ager discussed having sex in advance and made a clear discussion to do it. The had intercourse approximately five times, in what the boy later told police investigators was "a mutually agreeable act."

The teenagers attorney, Pat Perry of San Luis Obispo, didn’t return calls. Neither Jones nor the teen-age could be reached for comment. The case didn’t become a court matter until after the pair’s daughter was born on Jan. 20, 1995, and Jones began receiving welfare on the daughter’s behalf.

Under federal guidelines, counties must make an effort to determine the identity of the father of any child on welfare and collect child support from him to offset the welfare payments.

That’s exactly what San Luis Obispo County did.

As soon as county officials realized the baby’s father was a minor, they filed statutory rape charges against Jones, which resulted in a conviction but no jail time. Almost simultaneously, they sought to have the young father registered as being responsible for child support.

After being ordered to pay by Superior Court, "Nathaniel J." And his parents appealed the decision, arguing that a child who was the victim of sexual exploitation by an adult shouldn’t be penalized for the consequences of the exploitation.

But the court of appeals disagreed.

"Victims have rights. Here, the victim also has responsibilities," said the opinion, written by Judge Arthur Gilbert. He cited cases from other states in which minors were deemed responsible for child support if they had consented to sex with an adult.

"We concluded he is liable for child support."

Clearly, said attorney Roth, if a teen-age boy got a teen-age girl pregnant, no one would question the state for holding him responsible. She said the teen-ager’s testimony made it clear that he had known what he was doing and agreed to it.

"I guess he thought he was a man then," she said. "Now, he prefers to be considered a child."

But Fred Hayward, founder of the Sacramento-based group Men’s Rights Inc., said the court was setting a horrible standard.

"This is victimizing the victim," he said. "The law is based on the premise that a 15-year-old is too young to give his consent to anything. Yet he gets a 34-year-old woman pregnant, and suddenly he’s old enough to be responsible.

[THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Friday, October 30, 1998]

WALNUT CREEK, CA –

A woman accused of giving a 16-year-old drugs and then having sex with him is now suing the boy for child support.

State law entitles the child to support from both parents, even though the boy is considered the victim of statutory rape. Contra Costa district attorney’s officials said.

But the mother of the Pacheco boy called the support "ridiculous," saying her son was plied with methamphetamine for a week before the two had sex.

[THE VILLAGE VOICE, Tuesday, January 26, 1999, by Nat Hentoff, p. 30]

Participating in December’s Emergency Speakout Against Impeachment at NYU were some of this area’s prominent intellectuals and moral philosophers—among them, Arthur Schlesigner Jr., Toni Morrison, Eli Wiesel, Gloria Steinem, and Jerold Nadler who, alas, is my congressman. There were spiraling cries of "sexual McCarthyism" and "coup d’etat!"

And in the January 10 New York Times, Gerold Lefcourt, a Clinton advocate, states baldly that Clinton’s defense witnesses have been intimidated. Let’s see who has been intimidated.

Lefcourt, a prominent attorney, ignores the issues of women who have been threatened by Clinton and his agents to keep their silence about his exercising his droit du seigneur on their bodies.

It is this relentless obstruction of justice that I began to detail last week. Also on the list of Clinton’s throwaway women who should have been placed in the federal Witness Protection Program is Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Arkansas’s former Miss America, who had a brief bout of intimacy with Clinton in 1983. During the 1992 presidential campaign she received calls to keep quiet about it—or else.

But just in case she faltered—as the Wall Street Journal Europe (October 27, 1998) reported—her agent met with Clinton buddy Harry Tomason and Clinton advisor Mickey Kantor and "worked out some kind of deal." She would deny any relationship with Clinton and her career would benefit.

She obeyed, but when she was subpoenaed in the Paula Jones case, the threatening calls resumed. She has told The Toronto Sun, according to The Washington Times: "I think Clinton is a very dangerous manipulative man. There was a lot of pressure on my family and friends, people who were being staked out."

Moving on, the Wall Street Journal Europe reveals the post-60 Minutes ordeal of Kathleen Willey.

Two days before she was scheduled to testify in the Paula Jones case, "A man in a jogging suit approached her while she was out for a walk near her Virginia home. He asked about a missing family pet [her cat]. The jogger mentioned Willey’s children by name. ‘Don’t you get the message?" he asked her.

Dolly Kyle Browning, another former Clinton bonbon, and now a Texas real estate attorney, has filed a defamation suit against William Jefferson Clinton and, among his retainers, Bruce Lindsey.

In her court papers, Browning tells of an extramarital sexual relationship with Clinton from the mid 1970’s to "sometime before January 1992," when Clinton was eyeing the prize of the presidency.

In January of that year, The Star, a tabloid weekly, was about to print a story about that idyll. Browning refused to be interviewed, but Clinton was taking no chances.

In her complain in the lawsuit, she says that her own brother, Walter Kyle, acting on behalf of—or at the direction of—Clinton, warned her that "if you cooperate with the media, we will destroy you." At the time, her solicitous brother was working in the Clinton campaign in New Hampshire.

Two years later, according to the court papers, she and Clinton made a deal—using Clinton’s confidential aide, Bruce Lindsey, as an intermediary. She would not tell the truth about their relationship if he promised not to tell any lies about her.

But when Browning decided to write a romance novel, a clef about their intimacy, and word got out in Publishers Weekly, Clinton "acting individually and through various agents...conspired to prevent the publication of her manuscript." (Browning court papers.)

`The conspiracy involved "threatening and intimidating Mrs. Browning and potential publishers...and defaming Mrs. Browning."

In a March 6, 1998, affidavit, Browning testified that she and her former lover met in the summer of 1994 at their 30^th high school reunion in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

"I reminded Billy," Browning said in the affidavit, "that he had threatened to destroy me and he said he was sorry." She was pleased to get, at last, his apology.

Then there is Linda Tripp. The Wall Street Journal Europe reports: "Mrs. Tripp says that Bruce Lindsey told her she wold be ‘destroyed’ if she went public with criticism of the White House. Mr. Lindsey’s lawyer denies this was a threat. However, Monica Lewinsky, conveying what Ms. Tripp took to be a message from the White House, told Tripp that she had ‘two children to think about’ and that talking to the press was ‘a dangerous thing to do.’"

Juanita Broaddrick is another woman whom feminist Gloria Steinem, Patricia Ireland, and Betty Friedan have somehow forgotten to tell us about. Lisa Myers, who has broken a number of stories for NBC, reported on March 28, 1998, that Paula Jones lawyer had filed court papers saying that Clinton in 1978, while attorney general of Arkansas, had "forcibly raped and assaulted" Broaddrick in a Little Rock hotel room, and then ""bribed and intimidated her" to keep that indelible experience to herself.

Myers added: "NBC News has talked to four people Arkansas who say Broaddrick told them of such an assault years ago." According to one source, Clinton "ripped her clothes and bit her lip."

The White House says that Broaddrick has denied under oath that she was ever raped by Clinton, but the story will not die. On CNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews asked Congresswoman Tillie Fowler (Republican, Florida), if members of the Republican caucus were willing to read material (in files not open to the public) that accuses the president of rape almost 20 years ago. And, Matthews added, "the have got some documentation." (The reference was to Jane Doe No. 5, Juanita Broaddrick.)

Broaddrick’s lawyer, Bill Walters, says, "We’re not confirming or denying anything."

According to the Starr Reports when Broaddrick was interviewed by BFI investigators, she admitted that he affidavit denying the rape was false. (See page 58, Jane Doe No. 5, footnote 203.)

Hail to the Chief! With credit to John Gotti.

(Do not miss Frontline’s "The Triumph of Evil" next Tuesday, January 19, Channel 13 at 9p.m. Its about American complicity in the genocide in Rwanda.)

[NEW YORK POST, Thursday, January 21, 1999, by David Gelernter; p. 25]

‘A RETURN to Modesty" is an important new book by Wendy Shalit. Everyone ought to read it; conservative males have a special duty to respond to it. Miss Shalit argues thoughtfully and with passion that feminine modesty was a female-protection device and that our relentless anti-modesty campaign has hurt women badly.

In pre-feminist, pre-1965 America, men had fairly narrow sexual access to women, but wide responsibilities. A man couldn’t count on his girlfriend’s sleeping with him, but a wife could count on her husband’s support if she devoted her life (to their mutual benefit) to making a home and rearing children. Feminism set out to overturn this arrangement.

Today men have all sorts of sexual access to women, and no responsibilities to speak of. When a man wants to sleep with his girlfriend, "she has no social support," Miss Shalit writes, "in her decisions to say no." Men are no longer expected to support their wives. And if a man tires of his spouse, it is easier to delete her than to rid the family computer of her e-mail. Feminism has achieved all this and more. No wonder such men as Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton are its biggest fans.

But a question arises for conservative males. Miss Shalit argues that women must be allowed, without harassment or social ostracism, to remain chaste until they marry. It’s easy for conservatives to agree. But how many conservative men honestly wish that all their girlfriends had insisted on chastity until marriage? Did they pine for chaste women?

Not on the whole. Not so you’d notice. But they can still endorse Miss Shalit’s thesis unhypocritically, if they proceed with care. The problem hinges on one of the central pathologies of modern life, the ruin we have visited on all sorts of delicate social ecosystems. It’s easy (or used to be) to destroy a neighborhood by putting a superhighway through, but not so easy to create a neighborhood whatever you do. The sexual eco-balance was easily overturned but won’t be easy to re-create.

I can’t see that it’s wrong for a man to try to seduce his girlfriend, if he makes the attempt in gentlemanly fashion. And the world would be even sadder than it is today if such attempts never succeeded. But it is wrong for men to treat the issue as settled in advance, to imply that a woman who values modesty and chastity is defective and ought to be sent back for repairs, to approach the topic as if male and female viewpoints were the same.

And I don’t think it’s quite sufficient for conservative males of my own, post-World War II generation to endorse Miss Shalit’s book while insisting that they have nothing to regret. Today’s unhappy society didn’t happen by accident. We made it. Our generation grew up in a culture that was based from the late ‘60’s forward on the relentless exploitation of women, and precious few males haven’t gained in one way or other; precious few can claim to have fought that culture instead of accepting it. There is more than enough guilt to go around.

Today many young men want to be gentlemen but don’t know how, because they have never been taught. To reconstruct a civilized society is a painful process, step by step. Most Americans are satisfied even if they aren’t happy—too satisfied, at any rate, to entertain Miss Shalit’s radical proposal that men try to be manly and women, womanly. But there is an American sub-society-in-waiting, made up of (maybe) a third of the population—an incipient society of dissenters. Members of this dissenters’ society believe, among other things, that a woman who values modesty and chastity, or home and children, is no worse for her exotic tastes and might easily be better.

Miss Shalit’s book reminds me of the one by Katie Roiphe, "Last Night in Paradise." Like Miss Shalit’s, "Last Night" is a book about sadness. The sexual revolution came barreling through like a tornado, festooning the landscape with the dumped contents of slit-open lives, exposing to daylight all sorts of stuff that modesty would have concealed, leaving bleakness behind, and a pervasive sense of violation.

Both books are moving and sometimes painful. The difference is that Roiphe (who is a liberal) leaves us mourning amid the ruins, but Miss Shalit (being a conservative and therefore a reformer and progressive) wants to change things, and arrives with proposals in hand. So naturally Roiphe attacked Miss Shalit’s book, in this month’s Harper’s Bazaar. It’s hard to be a conservative, and Wendy Shalit deserves credit not only for an important piece of writing but for courage in the line of duty.

Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal underlined one of her points—that we are eager to bring out a girl’s masculine urges (such as they are), and contemptuous of gentlemen. Nowadays a 6-year-old boy can be brought up on charges for kissing a classmate—but girls may fight boys in high-school wrestling matches. Only a smattering of girls want to, but these athletic heroines are mad much of. (Do they know what the boys really think of them? It’s a sad story all around.) The unlucky boy in a co-ed match "can’t win," the Journal notes coolly; "If he beats her, he beats a girl. And if she beats him, how will he face his friends?"

Just another amusing little anecdote, decline-of-Rome department. But where are the parents? How could they permit such stuff? When my boys get to high school they are welcome to go out for wrestling, but their parents would sooner pull them out of sports altogether (and out of school, if it came to that) than allow them to wrestle against girls. The Journal located a wrestling expert to explain why certain people might regard such match-ups as "improper." Members of the incipient Society of Dissenters probably grasped this point all by themselves.

[Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 11, 1998, by Chris Burritt, Journal-Constitution Staff Writer]

By Chris Burritt, Journal Constitution Staff Writer

Union, S.C.-- Linda Russell cannot reach into her daughter’s mind to understand why she drove her little boys to the top of a boat ramp, released the emergency brake and sent them to their deaths strapped in the back seat of her car.

So she drives the roads that Susan Smith drive that October night in 1994 trying to fathom a depression so bottomless that it could lead to murder.

"Put her in a dark car, on a dark road for mile after mile after mile," Russell said driving the desolate highway one recent evening. "The longer she drove, the more lonely she felt. She lost touch with reality."

Russell knew her daughter was upset that day. She was distraught over her broken marriage and her recently dashed romance with a wealthy lover. Smith’s life had always been a highway of heartache, from her father’s suicide to her twisted relationship with her stepfather, Russell’s then-husband, Beverly...

For the first time since a jury convicted her daughter of murder, Russell is talking publicly about the ghastly textile-town tragedy that sent chills down America’s spine. Divorced now and selling the brick ranch house where Smith grew up, the 54-year-old grandmother who has been portrayed as cold, controlling and hard-edged is showing her emotional scars, sharing her pain and trying to move on.

She recently began attending meetings to organize the Union Country chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, a group the helps families deal with mental illness.

Her 27-year old daughter is mentally ill, Russell said, and belongs in a hospital, not in the Women’s Correctional Institution in Columbia where she is serving a life sentence. She will e eligible for parole on Nov. 3, 2024, 30 years after she was charged in the deaths of Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months....

If Smith’s depression had been diagnosed and she had been taking Prozac, Russell said, her daughter never would have killed her sons.

"She’s not a bad person. She loved her children," Russell said. "Something as simple as a pill could have made so much of a difference in so many lives."

"Do you know what Susan told me? That she though the Lord had lifted that car and put it somewhere. And (the children) were somewhere and they were safe and if they could just find where he had put it, she could have her children back."

State prosecutor Tommy Pope tried to convince the jury that Smith drowned her sons in hopes of winning back Tom Findlay, who had said in a letter to her [that] he wasn’t interested in a ready-made family. Russell said her daughter knew that Findlay was not interested in marriage. Instead, Russell blames her daughter’s despair in part of her troubled marriage to [ex-husband] David Smith.

"Susan had filed for divorce on the ground of adultery, and he was trying to get her back," Russell said. "He played mind games with her. I do not thing he realized how far he was pushing her.

David Smith, who worked recently for Winn-Dixie in Spartanburg, could not be reached for comment....

"In his 1995 book, "Beyond All Reason – My Life With Susan Smith," David Smith admitted to cheating on his wife, while accusing her of cheating on him. His portrayal of his mother-in-law was unflattering, accusing Russell of interfering with the marriage. After his wife had filed for divorce, Smith wrote, he arranged for his girlfriend, Tiffany Moss, to follow Susan Smith around in hopes of catching her with another man.

"Could it be that somehow what Susan did was a product of all that catting around and foolishness and lying?" Smith wrote. "People all over the world sneak around of each other, lie to each other, and do each other dirt. But no one kills their children. No one murders their babies."

"....Russell believes she intended to kill herself and her boys. But she got out and released the emergency brake.

The car hit the water, floated for an estimated six minutes, and sank.

For the next nine days, Smith lied, playing the part of the stricken mother. She told police, her family and the nation that a black gunman had stolen her car. She painted a pitiful portrait of herself, stranded and screaming, "I love y’all" as her sons disappeared down the dark road.

Russell said she never suspected that her daughter was lying, or that she might have killed the boys. "You know, I don’t even like that word," Russell said. Later the truth came out, people recoiled at Smith’s lying. Russell said, "If you go back and look at those interviews, everyone of them says, "I love you," Everyone of them.

"Susan was the only daughter I had," Russell said. "And I didn’t have another daughter to compare. You live with things as the come along. It’s like dealing with one thing, and by the time you think things are all right, here comes something else."

In one of the trial’s most sensational revelations, Russell’s second husband, Beverly, took the stand and apologized for having sexual relations with his stepdaughter until three months before she drowned her sons.

Their relations had begun when Smith was 15. The family got counseling, but the inappropriate relations resumed after Smith had turned 16. A counselor told Linda Russell, "Susan’s in love with Bev."

"What do you do when you have a 16 ½-year-old who thinks she is in love with your husband?" Russell said...

The Russell’s called off an investigation by the sheriff’s office, whch had been contacted by the local social services agency.

"I mean if Susan had been 4 or 5, I probably would have killed him," Russell said. "I did what I felt like was the best thing to do...by no allowing it to be beyond my control."

Linda Russell said she separated from her husband in early 1995, after she learned about the extent of his relations with her daughter. Their divorce became final in September...

She has put a few special things—some toys, a pear of shoes, a baby book—in an antique cedar chest. She’s also tucked in some of her daughter’s memorabilia, including her childhood ballet slippers.

"It’s a chest full of remembrances of three lives," Russell said softly as the porch swing creaked in a sad rhythm. "That’s her chest."

[The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, by Lydia Longa, February, 23, 1999]

Atlanta police are trying to determine how an 11-year-old boy was really injured after his friend claimed Friday he was beaten by five other youngsters for not wanting to join a gang.

Investigators, however, now think that the boy, Avery Royster, was not beaten up by classmates at Stanton Elementary School, but are puzzled about how he ended up in the intensive care unit of Hughes Spalding Hospital on Friday night. He is listed in stable condition.

"I knocked on their door, I tried to talk to them, they slammed the door in my face, and they told me to call their attorney," Sgt. Keith Meadows said.

A 17-year-old sister, Renithya Howell, said Avery had not said a word to the family about being beaten up by a gang.

Earlier Monday, Stanton Elementary Principal Carolyn Jackson said Avery’s friend had told her and police that Avery had asked him to make up the gang beating story.

Hospital official told Meadows that Avery’s mother called an ambulance Friday afternoon after she tried to awaken the boy while he slept on the sofa in their southeast Atlanta home. "The said the boy’s eyes rolled back, and the mother called an ambulance," Meadows said. "The doctors told me he had a seizure when he aarrived at the hospital."

The Department of Family and Children Services visited Howell at teh hospital Monday. DFACS had opened a file on the family in 1995 and closed it the next year, said Sherekaa Osorio, spokeswomen for DFACS. Osorio said a caseworker would interview Avery in the hospital.

Howell told WSB-TV she feared this incident would cause her to lose custody of her son.

"Why would they think I am child abusing my own son? They keep saying it must have happened at home. I am sick of it." She said.

[San Diego Union-Tribune, by Karen Rouse and Gordon Dicson—from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 26, 1998]

Jonesboro, Ark.-- One "beet red" and appearing upset, the other stoic and unflinching, the two boys accused of executing four classmates and a teacher sat in silence yesterday as a judge ordered them detained while authorities decide how to prosecute them.

The boys, clad in orange jail jumpers, said nothing at the brief hearing and replied only "yes’ when asked in their names were Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11.

(Although it is the policy of the San Diego Union-Tribune not to publish the name of juveniles suspected of crimes, given the extraordinary circumstances of the crime and the release of the boy’s names worldwide we have decided to identify the suspects.)

Last night, Golden’s grandfather told The Associated Press that his grandson admitted stealing seven guns from him but didn’t remember much about the shootings.

"He told me he fired some shots," Doug Golden said. "He said he shot at a car on the parking lot, but, "I don’t remember anything after that.’ "

After prosecutors at yesterday’s hearing cited evidence implicating the boys in the Tuesday afternoon carnage outside Westside Middle School, Juvenile Court Judge Ralph Wilson ordered that boys remain in custody until another hearing April 29.

The youngsters did not enter a plea as they sat, wearing neither handcuffs nor shackles, beside their attorneys. Their visibly upset parents were among the spectators and the few reporters allowed to witness the proceeding.

One of the reporters allowed inside, Sandy Davis of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, said the boys were ushered into the courtroom, through a side door with blankets covereing their heads.

Mitchell, she said, was "beet red...and very upset. His mother was very upset. Andrew was very stoic. He just sat there. He looks like he’s just a very little boy."

Prosecuting attorney Brent Wilson earlier indicated he would seek to charge each with five counts of capital murder, plus 10 counts of attempted murder in the wounding’s of nine other students and a teacher.

No decision however, had been made on whether to try one or both as adults or as juveniles.

Golden’s grandfather said that the boy admitted stealing three rifles, four handguns and several boxes of ammunition from his house...

As the boy’s legal status remained in limbo, families of the five slaying victims began making funeral arrangements. Of the surviving victims, one remained in critical condition and five others were in stable condition. The other four wounded had been released by yesterday.

Killed were Natalie Brooks, Paige Ann Herring and Stephanie Johnson, all 12, and Brittany R. Varner, 11.

Shannon Wright, 32, an English teacher, died Tuesday night after surgery for wounds to her chest and abdomen. Witnesses said she was shot when she stepped in front of a sixth-grader as the gunman took aim at the student. \. The student was not hurt.

By dawn yesterday, a large wreath, two bouquets and a candle had been placed on the sidewalk in front of the school. Classes were not conducted but were scheduled to resume this morning.

No one had an answer for why Johnson and Golden decked themselves in camouflage clothing, allegedly sounded a fire alarm and then ambushed the students and teachers as they evacuated the school. The boys were captured as they ran toward the Johnson family’s van they had parked nearby after taking it from home without permission.

There’s no explanation, in my opinion, why an 11-year-old or 13-year-old would do something like this," said Craighead County Sheriff Dale Haas.

Classmates said Johnson was upset over a breakup with his girlfriend and had made numerous threats in the days before the shootings.

"He said he was definitely going to shoot Candace because she had broken up with him," sixth grader Kara Tate, 11, was quoted as telling the Jonesboro Sun....

A friend of the Golden family said Andrew’s father, Dennis, recently had been training the youngster to "practical shooting," a handgun competition with moving and pop-up targets.

The friend, Terry Crider, said he and the elder Golden were members of the Jonesboro Practical Pistol Shooters club and that Golden and his wife, Pat, both were postmasters in nearby towns.

One of Andrew Golden’s classmates, Erica Swindle, said the boy sometimes talked about shooting people who made him angry.

"He’ll sit there and say, ‘Man, he’s making me so mad I should just take my gun and start blasting him in the butt for it,’ " Erica said. "you know he don’t act like he’s mad, but you really don’t know about him. He’s 11."

One neighbor, Lloyd Brooks, described Golden as "evil-acting" and said he had warned his 12-year-old daughter, Jeanna, to stay away from the boy.

On Tuesday, Jeanna was one of the shooting victims, wounded in the thigh but not seriously injured.

"I wouldn’t let her play with this kid because—it’s mean to say—he was so demented," Books said of Golden. "He was always threatening people."

Johnson, on the other hand, had become more of an enigma in recent weeks, friends said.

Once a choirboy who went to church when his parents did not, he stopped going two weeks ago and recently donned red clothing or camouflage outfits, boasted of gang membership and cropped his dark brown hair boot-camp short.