Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Are Allains or DCF at fault for underweight girl?

The girl, 10, weighed only 29 pounds. The pressing question at the trial starting Wednesday is how did a child in foster care get that way?

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published March 12, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - The Allains' child abuse trial promises to get at what has given this story a deeper resonance than simple outrage and start to answer the questions that go beyond whether they did what the state says they did.

How does a girl weigh 29 pounds when she's 10 years old?

Who let her get that way?

Why?

What's the difference between couldn't and wouldn't?

And what's the difference between incompetence and malicious unwillingness to help a kid who couldn't help herself?

Guilty or not guilty is the only question that ultimately matters in court. In this case, though, it's also the least interesting.

It's been almost two years since Lori Allain, 49, and Arthur "Tommy" Allain, 48, were arrested and charged with child abuse and neglect, more than 41/2 months since they skipped their original trial date and eight weeks since they were caught and rearrested at a Quality Inn on the Jersey Shore - and now, again, their trial is set to start Wednesday in the Hernando County courtroom of Circuit Judge Jack Springstead.

The Allains are accused of starving the girl and keeping her behind a locked door in a room in the rear of their double-wide mobile home north of Weeki Wachee. They were the girl's long-term, nonrelative, state-approved caregivers.

The State Attorney's Office filed two charges against them. The more serious is aggravated abuse: "knowingly or willfully" abusing a child and causing "great bodily harm, permanent disability, or permanent disfigurement . . . ." The lesser charge, neglect: "willfully" or "by culpable negligence" causing that same sort of harm, disability or disfigurement.

The court-appointed attorneys for Tommy Allain and Lori Allain, Elliott Ambrose of Brooksville and Robert Christensen of Homosassa Springs, respectively, were tight-lipped last week - at least when discussing anything on the record - but longtime local lawyers say there are only a few viable lines of defense:

1. Put as much blame as possible on as many other people as possible.

2. Show that Lori Allain was overwhelmed more than she was outright abusive.

3. Make sure the jury understands that the cases of Lori Allain and Tommy Allain are not the same - and could end in different levels of culpability.

An official from the state Department of Children and Families admitted in 2004 that the agency's work on the Allains case was "not up to standard." An independent review panel said DCF had missed many "red flags." The girl had been with the Allains for more than two years.

"I guess what you do is put DCF on trial," private attorney and former county Judge Peyton Hyslop said last week.

And the biological mother of the girl: Before the Allains became the girl's permanent caregivers, her abusive, alcoholic mother allegedly touched her "privates," made her drink beer when she was 4 and beat her with a belt, a spatula and spoons. The woman was arraigned last Wednesday in county court on a charge of driving drunk.

"They may have exacerbated it, but they also inherited it," veteran Brooksville attorney Chip Harp said of the Allains and the girl's problems. "That has to be part of the defense. It's got to be."

DCF is going to look bad.

The girl's mother is going to look bad.

The girl's brother is going to look bad.

Only two people, though, will come into the courtroom facing up to 45 years in prison.

The Allains were arrested in June 2004. They skipped their trial last October and then changed their looks when they were on the run.

All of this started, though, in May 2004, when the girl's brother - 14 then, 16 now - ran away and told authorities about his sister not getting enough food. The boy had made allegations against the Allains before - allegations of verbal, physical and sexual abuse - but none of them checked out. He has a history of lying, stealing and starting fires.

But in this case, authorities say, the girl was malnourished, dehydrated and at the risk of death - about 60 pounds under the norm for her age.

She is expected to testify during the trial.

She turns 12 next week.

She is in a therapeutic foster home and apparently is doing well.

A doctor said this in a deposition in March 2005: "I believe she is at a high risk - certainly at risk for permanent problems, permanent personality problems, permanent intellectual problems. But I am not - I cannot say who did that."

That, of course, is what the trial is for.

The abuse trial starts Wednesday with jury selection. Both of them also have pretrial hearings that day on their failure to appear charges.

The state says the Allains kept the girl behind a door with a double-key deadbolt in a room with no bed and nothing to do where she was forced to go to the bathroom in a paint bucket. Sheriff's Office records show the Allains as mostly foul-mouthed, argumentative and uncooperative, and describe the mobile home as smelly, cluttered and overrun by roaches.

"We are very, very limited in what we can discuss about a pending case, and that is even more true when you're dealing with a child victim," Assistant State Attorney Sherry Byerly said last week.

The Allains, meanwhile, have talked to the St. Petersburg Times, and talked, and talked - back when they were first charged, then when they were on the lam and since they've been in the Hernando County Jail.

They say the girl had an eating disorder that made her binge and vomit. They say that was because of the prior abuse and neglect. They say they asked and asked for help and never got it.

"We didn't do nothing," Tommy Allain said last week in an interview at the jail.

"Why do you think I'm fighting this?" Lori Allain said. "I didn't do a damn thing wrong."

The Allains and other family members say the girl was "doted on" and never went without.

"Yes, she was treated differently," said Kristen Staab, 23, one of the Allains' two grown daughters who live on their own in Spring Hill. "She was treated better by my parents than she's been treated her whole life."

Lori Allain said last week she felt overwhelmed. "That's why I was asking for help," she said. "Because I didn't know what to do."

"It's like the system abandoned them children when they were in our care," Tommy Allain said. "You know whose fault this is? It's the state's fault.

"It's into this mess because we didn't know how to take care of these children."

All that said, though, there are only two unavoidable, indisputable pieces of evidence. They are red-letter numbers that aren't going away:

10.

29.

The girl's age and weight.

And there are photos.

Photos of the girl almost chubby-cheeked in 2002 and then so slight and gaunt two years later. Photos a detective took of a bony-legged girl making funny faces for the camera. Photos taken just recently in which she's practically pudgy.

Staab is going to get some clothes together for the week for her parents - some blouses for her mother, some button-up shirts for her father, jeans for both of them. Tommy Allain was worried last week about the jail getting him razors in the mornings. "So I look presentable," he said.

The jury will decide on the question of guilt.

In the end, though, the questions the Allains are going to have to answer might be the hardest questions of all.

For Lori Allain- a mother on disability because of a motorcycle accident she had in 1977 who didn't work and lived in a filthy trailer, had very little except her family and took pride in trying to provide for all of them - her best defense is to admit that she couldn't.

And how can a woman do that?

For Tommy Allain - who worked 12 to 14 hours a day six days a week driving a truck and was almost never home - his best defense is to let the woman he loves take the brunt of the guilt.

And how can a man do that?

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified March 12, 2006, 01:18:21]