Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Character transcends ugly, crude stereotypes

By MARY JO MELONE
Published July 28, 2004

Let's look at what we have here.

Case No. 1:

The state of Florida puts two children, a girl now 10, and her half-brother, now 14, with two grownups who are supposed to love and care for them. Four years go by. One day in May, the boy is found wandering the streets with a horrific story to tell. His sister has been locked in a room, he says. The grownups made her use a paint bucket for a toilet. She was permitted scant spoonfuls of food, except when her brother sneaked her more. By the time investigators arrived, the girl weighed 29 pounds.

Case No. 2:

The state puts two little girls, now 5 and 6, in a home with two adults who are supposed to love and care for them. The kids thrive. Then, bam! Suddenly, the Department of Children and Families questions the placement of these two girls. It's worth noting that the Pinellas couple who signed on to love and care for the kids are two gay men.

You tell me which is worse: the first case, in which a good-old-fashioned heterosexual couple may have pushed a child to the brink of death, or the second, in which a homosexual couple successfully raises two children, until somebody complains and the state decides to take a second look?

I confess I'm nuts for this story. It challenges assumptions about gays.

We all know people who giggle and snicker, who use words like "disgusting" to describe gay. Some people regard them - simply and wrongly - as sickos who prey on children.

Ordinarily, the state of Florida does not see things that way, or else it's so desperate for foster parents, anyone will do. Gays can at least be foster parents. They just can't adopt.

Having foster kids in your home can be a thankless job. Yes, you get paid for it, but the children often come to you so emotionally damaged they are all but impossible to raise. Nevertheless, people like Curtis Watson, one of the men at the center of this case, tries. (His partner has asked not to be identified.)

Watson, who lives in Seminole, already had experience as a foster parent, according to his lawyer. Watson helps manage an agency that works with the mentally handicapped. He is studying to get a master's degree. He wants to be a mental health counselor.

Does that sound like a man who threatens all things good and moral?

Now, let's check out the backgrounds of Lori Allain, and her husband, Arthur Thomas Allain Jr., the Hernando couple who allegedly pushed that little girl to the edge of death.

Lori Allain was convicted in 1987 of trafficking in narcotics.

The arrest record for her husband goes back to 1978. He was convicted in 1990 of fleeing and eluding police and obstructing justice. In 1997, he was convicted of driving with a suspended license.

So, with whom would you trust your children: the Allains or Curtis Watson?

And whom, among these adults, would you want for a neighbor?

To me, the answer is a no-brainer. I'm only confused why the state treated the Allains and Curtis Watson the same way. Never mind the Allains' criminal pasts. Like Curtis Watson, they were awarded what the state calls "long-term non-relative placement" of that poor girl and her brother. The term means the Allains were given custody that was just short of adoption.

The Allain case is under investigation by a most embarrassed Department of Children and Families. The future of the children who now call Curtis Watson Dad is being reviewed in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court.

I'm not optimistic Watson will get to hold onto his children. Despite all the contradictory evidence in the world, ugly ideas - like the one about gays preying on kids - die hard.

You want ugly? A charge has been made in the Allain case that Arthur Allain and one of his sons sexually abused that starved little girl.

Now, that's ugly, heterosexual style.

-Mary Jo Melone can be reached at 813 226-3402 or e-mail her at mjmelone@sptimes.com

[Last modified July 28, 2004, 01:00:38]