Study Puts Abuse Rate at 7 Percent in Missions' Elementary Grades

Investigation Reveals Physical, Emotional and Sexual Abuse at School for Children of Missionaries in Africa

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Used with permission of The Plain Dealer.
Copyright 1998 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
October 25, 1998 Sunday, FINAL / ALL
SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 1A
BYLINE: By David Briggs, Report - Plain Dealer

The screams from the first- and second-grade classroom could be heard throughout Mamou Alliance Academy.

The teacher would fly into a rage - sometimes toppling desks and children - for infractions as small as a child not knowing how to pronounce the word vegetable. When Dorothy Wormley was really angry, her former pupils told a church commission, bathroom passes were withheld and 6- and 7-year-olds would spend the day sitting in their own feces and urine.

But who was going to report her in this school for missionaries' children nestled in the hills of Guinea, West Africa? Not the school nurse who was forcing boys to take part in secret post-bedtime shower sessions. Not the dorm parent who would beat children so bloody that in a playground game named after him and his wife, youngsters challenged each other to come up with the cruelest punishment imaginable, it was told years later to the church commission.

And not any of the other adults who feared their own expulsion in a system that could not comprehend "good Christians" committing such abuse.

In a watershed set of reports obtained by The Plain Dealer, an independent commission of inquiry appointed by the Christian and Missionary Alliance concluded that these abuses and scores of other acts of repeated sexual, physical and psychological abuse occurred at the school. In all, the school served about 200 children of missionaries from the U.S.-based Missionary Alliance, Gospel Missionary Union and other missionary organizations throughout West Africa between 1950 and 1971, when it closed.

The portrait that emerges from the independent inquiry, church disciplinary reports and dozens of interviews with Mamou alumni, their parents, church officials and former staff is of a missionary community so focused on saving the souls of Africans that it was unaware its own children were being forced to endure the kind of hell on Earth that would have challenged the imagination of Charles Dickens in 19th-century England.

What makes this story more remarkable is that the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the denomination that ran the boarding school, did not take legal advice to circle the wagons and treat victims as potential litigants. After years of lobbying by a group of Mamou alumni led by three brothers and a sister from Akron - and spurred on in church headquarters by a pastor from Vermilion who pleaded for a full investigation - the church convened the independent panel to launch a two-year inquiry.

The Independent Commission of Inquiry held 16 meetings in Minnesota, Florida, New York and over the telephone from February 1996 to November 1997, receiving written and personal testimony from more than 70 Mamou alumni as well as from several missionary parents and former Mamou staff.

The approximately 85 witnesses included former students with strong credibility in Christian circles: from the head of Compassion International, an international evangelical advocacy group for children, to theology professors and pastors. In general, the commission said, before documenting charges against an individual, the commission required multiple witnesses who were determined to have continuous memories of the abuses.

Seven former staff members and two former students were found to have physically, sexually or psychologically abused children at Mamou. In some cases, more than one kind of abuse was committed by the same person.

"Were children abused at Mamou? As this report will demonstrate, the answer is unequivocal," the commission of inquiry said in its final report released earlier this year. "Yes, a significant number of children were seriously abused at Mamou."

It is a historic turning point for a Christian community that has largely been content to dismiss child abuse in the church as "a Catholic problem," in reference to the well-publicized cases in recent years of pedophilia in the church.

"Mamou, when all is said and done, is going to be the Auschwitz of MK [missionary kids] boarding schools," said Dianne Darr Couts, a schoolteacher from Akron. She and her brothers, Richard, John and David, all Akron natives who attended Mamou, have played a critical role in breaking the wall of silence in evangelical circles concerning child abuse.

Twenty, 30, 40 years later, in broken marriages, addictions and attempted suicides, many former students of Mamou still struggle with what are believed to be the traumatic effects of a childhood spent in fear and trembling. And their parents, who only now are discovering the systematic abuses at the boarding school, are reliving the pain of leaving their young children while they went to preach the Gospel to the ends of the Earth. They now must face the new horror that their sons and daughters were betrayed.

Facing the truth, however, has enabled the victims to begin to rebuild their lives, said the Rev. Richard Darr, now a United Methodist pastor in Greenwood, Ill.

"I hand this shame back," he writes in his testimony to the church. "It is not mine now. It was not ours as little children. It is yours."

In the third grade math class, we were taught how to average. The most frequently occurring event in my life was being spanked with a truck-tire sandal or belt, so I kept records for several weeks. Then I worked out the most difficult math problem of my life - I discovered that I averaged 17 spankings per week. We received such severe beatings that we had to help each other back to our rooms.

Former student's testimony in Final Report of Commission of Inquiry

School was isolated
 
Mamou was chosen as the site of the boarding school for the children of missionaries serving in the West African countries of Mali, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Liberia and Sierra Leone in part because of its temperate climate and fertile soil.
Set in a mountainous region of Guinea, the academy offered students in grades one through 10 both physical beauty and an oasis from the oppressive heat and the heightened exposure to disease at the mission stations where many of their parents toiled.

However, the very isolation of this African paradise - days' travel from the mission field of most parents and in a place where the exchange of telegrams could take weeks - also allowed widespread physical and sexual abuse to persist for decades, investigators said.

The six-member commission of inquiry of attorneys, therapists and lay people documented horrific acts of abuse against scores of students. Among the acts reported by the commission:

Floyd Bowman, houseparent during the late 1940s and early 1950s, forced children to eat their own vomit. Among the incidents, the commission said, he punched a child in the first- and second-grade class in the face, leaving a black eye. Bowman was deceased at the time of the inquiry.

The Rev. Dellmer Smith, the housefather at Mamou from 1955 to 1957, sexually abused at least five girls during post-bedtime "tummy rubs" in the girls' dormitory, the commission of inquiry reported.

Based on witness testimony, the panel also concluded he used part of a heavy rubber tire to inflict regular, frequent and bloody beatings - as many as 48 swats at one time - on 13 reported victims.

The commission reported Smith "categorically" denied the charges. He refused to comment to The Plain Dealer.
Dorothy Wormley Bortel, the first- and second-grade teacher from 1958 through 1966, was found by the independent panel to have engaged in an "ongoing reign of terror and sadistic behavior." The abuses included throwing over desks with students in them, and shaking, slapping, hitting and pulling them from the desks by their hair.
In a letter from her attorney, Wormley said she had "a clear conscience" about her work at Mamou Academy. She did not respond to a request for an interview made through her attorney.

Dorothy Adam, school nurse from 1951 to 1963, was found to have watched boys during forced post-bedtime secret shower sessions and touched girls' breasts during showering. She also, the commission found, beat a child bloody for getting his Sunday shoes wet and threatened children with fire-and-brimstone tales of hell before bedtime.

When confronted with the charges, Adam "was cooperative, and appreciative of the opportunity to make amends to students whom she had harmed in one way or another," the commission reported. The commission said she helped make a video that extended apologies and regrets for actions for which she accepted responsibility.

The nurse agreed to undergo a church-supervised psychological evaluation, according to the Missionary Alliance.

Grace Wright, a houseparent from 1949 to 1951, in 1957 and again from 1959 to 1961, beat students black and blue and bloody, escalating the punishment when the child was brave, the commission reported.

Wright told The Plain Dealer she was shocked by the charges, and denied abusing children.

Overall, what the report makes clear and what former students most vividly remember is that Mamou children - already traumatized by being taken away from their parents for nine months at a time when they were as young as 5 - were forced to live in a constant state of terror.

Using a regimented system of bells that began ringing at 6:15 a.m. and kept ringing in intervals as short as five to 15 minutes until bedtime, Mamou school officials had children follow a labyrinthine set of rules for everything from folding their napkins to the amount of toilet paper they were permitted to use, former students said.

Children were punished for using more than four sheets of toilet paper at one time and punished if their underwear was soiled. They were punished if they got up during rest time to go to the bathroom, and if they wet their beds, they were publicly humiliated - even forced to wear a diaper on the playground.

The commission of inquiry's report is full of testimony about regularly sustained beatings that left bruises that remained for weeks, and often did not end until blood was drawn or the child was barely able to walk.

Judy Darr, the wife of Akron native David Darr, John's brother, and herself a Mamou alumnus from Charleston, W.Va., remembers one day folding her clothes neatly on top of the bureau but forgetting to put them away. For such an act, she was beaten with part of a truck tire for every piece of clothing left out.

One child "threw up his oatmeal every day, and they made sure they gave him plenty of oatmeal," she said. "If you had a problem, they doubled it."

Not even the classroom offered any respite, particularly for the youngest children.

Every day, her former students remember, Wormley would fly into a rage.

In his own case, Paul Friesen remembers Wormley becoming furious when he couldn't spell the word "lion." She threw everything off his desk, gave him the impossible command to do his homework while his books were scattered around the classroom, then yelled at him for not doing his homework, he said.

"It was a hell of a class, literally," recalled Friesen, a Mamou alumnus from Hepburn, Saskatchewan, in Canada.

Sheryl Ajas, another alumnus from Canada, testified that she remembered the fear welling up within her and other kids when a first-grader repeatedly mispronounced the word vegetable.

"Suddenly Miss Wormley began screaming and grabbed the edge of the table, upending it and sending children and books flying. She then fled to her desk and, weeping bitterly, called on us to clean up 'our mess.'

In the final scene of these almost daily dramas, the children would be ordered to line up at her desk, apologize and hug and kiss her.

At mealtimes, few people could eat because punishments for the days' offenses were announced.

"On good days, I was merely beaten at the end of the meal," one student said in the final report of the independent commission. "Most days, I endured a barrage of insults, slaps and public humiliation. If my terrified little stomach threw up, I cleaned it up myself, gagging and retching - and then came the beating."

Even after bedtime, the children were not safe. That's when the sexual abuse would occur, former students told the commission.

The Rev. Richard Darr, the youngest of the Darr siblings, still finds it difficult to transport himself in his mind back to Mamou. With a counselor at his side and in the pastoral setting of his parsonage in Greenwood, Ill., it takes him several minutes to choke back his emotions long enough to speak of what happened at the missionary school.

Added to all the physical and emotional abuse in his case were visits at night from a junior high school boy who would reach under the covers and force the frightened first-grader to touch the older boy's penis. In one incident, Richard Darr was dragged into the older boy's closet and forced to perform oral sex.

In this Lord of the Flies environment, where the strong preyed on the weak and children were left to fend for themselves, there were no adults to whom the children could turn. Richard Darr had to get help from his older brothers and their friends to stop the attacks.

Parents who were commanded by mission agencies to send their children away were told to focus on the biblical story of Abraham, who stood ready to sacrifice his son Isaac at God's command on top of Mount Moriah.

But in the biblical account, God stays Abraham's hand. At Mamou, there was no such protection.

"Was Mamou Alliance Academy worth the price I paid?" Richard Darr wrote the investigative panel. "No! A thousand times no. You see, I've been through my Mount Moriah experience. I've been to that lovely hillside.  And I was sacrificed there."

"Keith said tonight - 'I don't want to go back to Mamou - do I have to go back. WHY?'

The tears kept back an adequate explanation . . .We were asked before coming to the field - Do you think it is right for you to take your children to the mission field? It is your life if that's what you want, but should you subject your children to it? The question rings in my ears, 'Mommie, do I have to go back?'

From the Jan. 8, 1958, entry - in the diary of Ann Beardslee, - a missionary in Mali
Separation was wrenching

Talk to the parents, who today are in their 60s, 70s and even 80s, and they can still remember the day they sent their children to missionary school. In a series of sacrifices that involved giving up friends, family and the comforts of home to work in remote villages lacking electricity and running water, the most painful sacrifice was leaving their children at boarding school at ages as young as 5.

The Rev. Dick Darr had to physically pry his youngest son, Richard, kicking and screaming with gravel flying, from the ankles of his mother on the day other missionaries came to take the child to Mamou. The plaintive cry of "Goodbye, Mommy and Daddy" were the last words they heard from their 5-year-old son for the next nine months.

Five hundred miles away, they would walk along the road into the bush past the mission compound and cry for their children. Every night.

"We just walked up and down the road and we would weep," Darr said. Thirty-six years later, in their modest home in Akron, Anne Darr still wipes away tears as she remembers those "hard days."

Today, many parents wonder how they ever could have sent their children away so young. But back then they believed that their work of saving Africans from eternal damnation warranted even the sacrifice of their children.

They felt confident other people who shared their extraordinary calling from God would give their kids loving care. And the letters they got regularly talked in general terms of hikes and outings and the fun their children were having at school.

What they did not know... was that the kids' letters were censored, the independent commission reported.

Children expressing concerns were told they would worry their parents and endanger the eternal souls of the Africans if they interfered with their parents' work. Such letters were rewritten, or the offending paragraphs were erased. Often, Mamou staff wrote in the margins dismissing even the slightest complaints, former students and their parents said.

While the three Darr boys said they were frightened into silence about physical - and in the case of Richard, sexual - abuse, the school nurse wrote home to the boys' mother: "Just a note to let you know your children are having the time of their lives."
Retired missionary Ralph Shellrude of Bremerton, Wash., who sent a son and two daughters to the missionary school, said he had no idea Mamou was not a safe, healthy place.

"This is unbelievable, I realize," he said. "The letters home revealed nothing, absolutely nothing."

Parents thought signs of unhappiness they picked up in their children were the parents' fault.

"For years, we were made to feel we were failures as parents," said Hazel and Henry Neudorf in a letter to the board of directors of the Gospel Missionary Union. "We did not know that our children had been brutalized physically, mentally and spiritually. We were so convinced our children were in the best of care that we never entertained the idea that the opposite could be true."

The most painful part lay ahead: facing their adult children whose long-suppressed anger often overflowed when their parents now said they were unaware of the abuse.
For some, the horror is too much to bear. The independent panel said some parents had chosen to cling to their own assumptions and discredit their children's stories, while others had advised their children to "buck up" and seek spiritual remedies.
Where parents have allowed their children to express their anger and shared the children's grief and sadness, many have rebuilt honest and supportive relationships.
And now they have become advocates for their children.

"The wonder of the grace of God, and the grace of my children, is that they have accepted our apology, our love," Shellrude said.

Parents such as the Darrs and Howard and Ann Beardslee have asked forgiveness of their children, apologized for sending them away, and are now asking the missionary groups to recognize the hurt inflicted on their children and to atone for it.

"We were all one large family in the GMU [Gospel Missionary Union]. What we expect of them is that they would repent of this policy of sending young children away, that they would apologize to each of the MKs [missionary kids] ," Neudorf said. "We feel that the price the mission asked us to pay was too high. The price that God asked us to pay was not too high, but the price the mission asked us to pay was too high."

"How did the abuse happen at Mamou? Our compelling answer: The abuse at Mamou occurred because none of the adults were accountable or took the responsibility which belonged to them and, as a consequence, the children suffered."

Concluding statement of Independent Commission of Inquiry
 
Reports met with disbelief

Mamou alumnus David Kennedy, sitting in his office at the new Missionary Alliance headquarters looking over the majestic mountains surrounding Colorado Springs, says that when he would tell stories about what went on at boarding school, "people brushed it aside. Nobody took it seriously."

The idea of missionaries, revered in Christian circles for their extraordinary commitment, inflicting such physical and sexual abuse on children was unthinkable.
"When I first heard this, I couldn't believe it," admits the Rev. Francis Grubbs, a pastor from Vermilion who served on the denomination's board of managers. "Early on, no one understood it because it couldn't have happened at our school."

The first reports started coming into denomination headquarters in the late '80s. By the mid-'90s, Akron natives Richard, John and David Darr and their sister, Dianne Couts, had begun working with other alumni to bring pressure on the missionary groups to investigate Mamou.

In 1995, the group staged a public protest at the Alliance's annual meeting in Pittsburgh. The Alliance has more than 300,000 members in some 2,000 U.S. churches, and more than 1,100 overseas missionaries from the United States.

Kennedy, an Alliance assistant vice president, said the organization was warned off by its lawyers from getting involved because of the potential for lawsuits and liability.
Then a remarkable thing happened. The church decided to go beyond the legal cautions "and do the right thing," Grubbs said.

"In the evangelical camp, we're probably plowing new ground," said Grubbs, appointed by the church to head an internal committee investigating Mamou.
In consultation with Mamou alumni, the church appointed an independent five-member investigative panel led by Geoffrey Stearns, a California attorney experienced in issues of child abuse and religious misconduct. Also on the committee were two psychologists, a pastoral care worker experienced in the treatment of sexual offenders and a lone Missionary Alliance member, a laywoman from New York.

The commission noted the staff at Mamou had Herculean job descriptions to keep the school running and little respite. "The picture we have is one of days full of multiple tasks in a hardship situation, with significant isolation and loneliness, without helpful support," the commission said.

By the time the investigative panel's report came out, some people cited for abuse, such as Floyd Bowman, had died. Others, such as Dorothy Wormley Bortel, had long ago left the Missionary Alliance, the commission said.

She refused to meet with the investigative panel, but her attorney said in a letter to the panel that she "has searched her memory and cannot recall any instance where she acted inappropriately to a student, either emotionally or physically."

Wormley Bortel also said through her attorney that "she understands how some of the former students of Mamou Academy could certainly have emotional problems that they are still dealing with as a result of long periods of separation from their parents."

Some surviving members cited in the report, such as Dorothy Adam, have agreed to undergo counseling, and have apologized, the commission said.

In a videotape statement, the commission said, Adam "responded specifically to each of the reports of misconduct, and extended apologies and regrets for those actions for which she acknowledged responsibility."

However, Grace Wright and Dellmer Smith, now retired and living in church housing in Bradenton, Fla., denied the charges.

In a recent telephone interview, Wright said she was shocked by the charges. She remembered Mamou as "just a big, happy home" where she made special efforts to care for the children, including letting them plan their own birthday meals.

"I love these people," she said.

If she had to do it over again, "I would probably discipline like I did before," she said.
Smith said, "I am making no comment." The commission's report said Smith "completely and categorically denied any wrongdoing. He indicated a belief that the alleged incidents of abuse had been fabricated and reported by certain former students who desired to injure his reputation."

The independent commission referred the cases of Wright and Smith to a separate committee on discipline appointed by the church to hear the cases of retired workers who denied the charges of abuse reported by the commission of inquiry. The discipline committee unanimously found Wright and Smith did commit the acts of abuse set forth by the commission.

Among actions taken by the Alliance, church officials said they are developing independent means of investigating future charges of abuse, they have apologized for the abuses committed there and they are planning a reunion of Mamou alumni next spring to help the victims heal.

"We started out by begging you to do the right thing, and I think we've done the right thing," Grubbs said he told the board of managers at its fall meeting. "I hope it sets a model and a pattern others can use."

But other missionary groups have reacted differently.

The Gospel Missionary Union, which required many parents to send their kids to Mamou, has not formulated "an official response," said Jerome Youdarian, a member of the board.

In a 1995 letter, Michael Whitehead, an attorney for the Gospel Missionary Union, said "GMU officials are very sorry for the pain Mr. Darr and others have suffered but they cannot and should not assume responsibility for the wrongdoing of others."

Carl McMindes, Gospel Missionary Union president, said that was the legal advice his group received at the time. Since then, the group has met with some Mamou alumni and is evaluating its own procedures for reporting and addressing allegations of abuse.

Does the Gospel Missionary Union bear any responsibility to the former students who were abused at Mamou and the parents who were required to send their children to Mamou, McMindes was asked.

"I think, at this point, I could not answer personally. I would have to have any formal answer come from our total board," he said.

Unlike the Missionary Alliance, the Kansas City-based Gospel Missionary Union is not a denomination of churches, but is solely a mission agency. The union currently has 340 overseas missionaries from the United States, who receive funding from individuals and independent churches.

The passage of time and the fact the abuses occurred in Guinea make civil or criminal suits nearly impossible, say advocates for Mamou alumni. What they want from mission agencies is to admit the abuses occurred, say they are sorry and to take action to prevent future abuses.

Mamou alumni and their parents say the church's failure to acknowledge responsibility makes them feel as if they are sacrificed again on the altar of ecclesial expediency.

"That's an awful thing to live with. To sit there and blame the victims. There's no words to describe it," said Mamou alumnus Howard Beardslee, now living in Westfield, Mass. His brother, Keith, also attended Mamou.

"You can't say there was no Holocaust. It was there. It was by intent. It was by design. Whether you want to hear it or not, you inflicted a great deal of pain on a lot of people."

The Rev. Dick Darr grew up in Akron and was motivated to go into mission work at Goss Memorial Church. He rose through the ranks of the Gospel Missionary Union from field work to become the president of the organization from 1978 to 1990. He still attends Goss Memorial, and is an advisory board member of the missionary union.
As much as he believes in it, the missionary group has to own up to its mistakes, Darr said. Slowed by heart and respiratory problems, the elder Darr speaks deliberately of his commitment to seeking justice for missionary kids.

"I don't think it's necessary to sacrifice the children to evangelize the world," he said.

"There are dozens and dozens, maybe even hundreds, of MKs that are hurting."

At that hour, the disciples came to Jesus, saying, 'Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?' So Jesus called a child, had him stand in front of them, and said ... 'The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven is the one who humbles himself and becomes like this child. And whoever welcomes in my name one such child as this, welcomes me. If anyone should cause one of these little ones to lose his faith in me, it would be better for that person to have a large millstone tied around his neck and be drowned in the deep sea.'

Gospel of Matthew 18: 1-6

Trauma below the surface

Until they turned 40, the lives of David and Judy Darr, who met while schoolchildren at Mamou, seemed fine on the surface. A churchgoing couple with four children, no one would suspect the troubles that were eating away at their souls.

Sometimes, the only thing that kept the Darrs' marriage together was the shared fear of abandonment he and his wife both had from being left on their own at boarding school at an early age, Judy Darr said.

Not wanting to replicate their harshly regimented childhoods, the Darrs found themselves unable to set boundaries for their own children, her husband said.

One child ran away from home.

"You still have people who want to pretend there is no effect, minimizing the effect," Darr said. "My whole point is, 'C'mon people, let's wake up and do something about it.'
The commission of inquiry reported negative experiences in later life relate to a variety of painful experiences, but noted former students' testimony told of many negative events that the Mamou alumni felt had roots at the boarding school.

The independent commission received reports of two suicides and several attempted suicides.

Mamou alumni spoke of suffering from depression and six reported substance and behavioral addictions. There were 16 divorces and numerous struggling marriages, the commission reported.

In both conscious and subconscious ways, the effects of Mamou, particularly the sense of abandonment as children, would intrude in their lives.

Howard Beardslee was married at age 21, but would not consider having children for nearly two decades.

"The experience of childhood was so absolutely horrific for me that I never wanted to take the chance of putting another human being through it," he said.

What helped many of them through years of pain was to return to their childhoods and to acknowledge the suffering they had kept buried inside. Allowing the anger to come out helped them express pain that often surfaced in self-destructive ways.

And as one church, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, took responsibility for documenting the abuses and helping victims recover, many have been able to break the irrational cycle faced by many abuse victims - that of blaming themselves for the suffering inflicted upon them by others.

Perhaps most amazing, considering the violence they experienced as children, is how many Mamou alumni kept a strong faith.

God did not abuse the children. And God is not present in church officials who would abandon victims of religious abuse in their hour of need, they say.

Wesley Stafford, a former Mamou student who encouraged others to cooperate with the commisson of inquiry, is now president of the Colorado Springs-based Compassion International, an international evangelical advocacy group for children.

Of the Darr children today, John Darr is a professor of theology at Boston University, David Darr is a music minister at a United Methodist Church and Richard Darr is getting his doctorate in mission studies from Boston University while pastoring two United Methodist Churches in northern Illinois. Their sister, Dianne, was a missionary in the Bahamas and is active in the Akron church pastored by her husband.

Awareness of the problem

What they and other Mamou alumni have achieved with the help of Missionary Alliance officials who chose "to do the right thing" is a groundbreaking recognition in evangelical circles that child abuse occurs everywhere.

In a 1995 article, the Journal of Psychology and Theology reported sexual abuse can be found in almost every country where missionaries are working.

However, the journal stated, in part because of fears mission sponsors might withdraw funds, "the tendency is either to deny the possibility or to bury the problem through exercise of various administrative strategies . . . We must rely almost entirely on anecdotal data."

The Alliance report documenting widespread abuse changes that climate

Advocates say much work remains to be done in encouraging missionary agencies to investigate past abuses at other missionary schools. They also encourage church groups to follow the independent panel's recommendations to make it easier and safer for children and adults to report abuse and to quickly and decisively investigate any charges of child abuse.

In the meantime, many of the children of Mamou have begun the slow process of rebuilding their lives.

Howard Beardslee, who for 17 years vowed never to have children, believes it was divine intervention that brought him and his wife to the point where he could embrace the "rich and rewarding" mantle of fatherhood with adopted daughters from Korea and China.

"In those ways, I'm still a religious person and have a strong faith in God," he said.
Judy Darr, who for most of her life believed the humiliating putdowns of her intelligence in first and second grade, went back to college and got her degree.

And the nightmares about Dellmer Smith and Wormley that plagued her for years finally stopped earlier this year, Darr said. They stopped the night she was having a dream about being back in Miss Wormley's class while the teacher was abusing someone.

Only this time in her dream, Judy Darr stood up to Miss Wormley: "I told her to stop treating us like that.

"I told her," Darr remembers, "she couldn't hurt us any more and we weren't going to take that."

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