Front page portion of article is missing, but appears to be about Denny's battle with the Temple. He apparently would not allow kids to be placed with the Temple.
page 2 Ukiah Daily Journal, Ukiah, Calif, Friday March 9, 1979
Temple
Cont from page 1
Said Denny, "We do not believe that any children were placed from this county in (Temple) foster homes here. But we're waiting to substantiate that. Our best evidence over the last two years is zero."
A "few" children placed here by other counties, he added, may have died in Jonestown.
Denny said his department didn't place children in temple foster homes because it believed they would not have "freedom of choice" in "religious training."
"We can't even count on one hand - over ten years - where we placed a kid in one of these licensed homes of theirs," said the welfare director. "Maybe we might have put one in for a day or two until we could find a place - because we had to put a kid where there was a bed - but we here didn't place them."
Asked what the department's policy was, Denny replied, "I'm saying our referral procedure was never to use any of their homes."
Because the department kept a close watch on foster children placed in homes it licensed temple members increasingly opted for legal guardianship, a tactic which removed them from social services jurisdiction. (Meaning the county welfare dept. was circumvented & the kids became wards of the state thereby eliminating local scrutiny.)
Denny said temple members became legal guardians to 25 children in Mendocino, San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa and Los Angeles Counties.
Four of the seven children in Mendocino County guardianships died at Jonestown, according to Denny, who said three children from Bay Area guardianships also died there.
Dewy said the four dead youngsters from local guardianships did not come from here originally, but just where they came from remains a mystery.
He would not release the names of children involved in temple guardianships, saying they were confidential on orders from Mendocino County District Attorney Joe Allen and the U.S. General Accounting Office, which is investigating foster child placement and the temple.
Former Mendocino County Assistant District Attorney Tim Stoen said temple attorney Eugene Chaikin did the legal work for temple guardianships in Mendocino County, according to Denny, who mentioned but didn't reveal "documentation" supporting his assertion.
Denny also said Jones brought or had placed here approximately 150 foster children who were "in and out" of licensed and unlicensed homes between 1966 and 1977?
More than 100? of the imported youngsters were from the Bay Area and Los Angeles, living illegally with temple families not licensed to have them, alleged Denny who recalled, "We then were asking those jurisdictions in the Bay Area what was going on and why they were placing those kids here without our authority."
When social services discovered children in unlicensed temple homes, it forced Jones to send them back to where they had come from, he said.
Denny declined to name Bay Area probation officers and social workers who were sending foster youngsters to licensed or unlicensed temple homes here.
Although People's Temple didn't include child abuse in the repertoire of twisted behavior that led to Jones town, some of its members allegedly practiced it at home in ways ranging from beatings to sexual molestation, according to the social services director.
Denny, who could not "hazard a guess" as to the total number of Child Protective Service cases involving temple adults, said that in five of the cases, Jones or his aides intervened on behalf of the accused and hired the "best" attorneys for them.
The cases are not public record, said Dewey, declining to name the "best" attorneys.
Nevertheless, parents who were temple members committed no more child abuse than members of any other...
article clipping ends there
continues...
...religious group, said Denny whose department monitored the temple very closely for violations against children.
Neither informants nor anyone else, said Denny, reported child abuse or batterings at temple meetings. "We never," he said. "went to the temple and saw a kid that had been beaten in the temple - never happened, never happened."
Relying on reports from ex-members and informants, Denny said that what took place at the temple was "at least" paddling and usually the paddling of adults.
Even though social services didn't make life easy for Jones in Mendocino County, Denny said Jones left the area mostly because of the income, power and ego, rewards big cities offered.
"I think he had to broaden his base, he had to get to San Francisco, and set up a base there where he could control the political environment..."
"I don't think he did that up here, I didn't see it then, and I'm not seeing it in retrospect now."
According to Denny, controlling the political environment largely manipulating politicians by showing an ability to produce =votes for or against them, and "in the arena down south that's an acceptable practice."
Outside Tim Stoen, Denny didn't think Jones controlled powerful people in Mendocino County, nor did Denny have any evidence to show Jones controlled public agencies like the Ukiah Police Department or the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office.
Were Denny's efforts to stop Jones from breaking welfare law in Mendocino a success?
"He survived," said Denny, "I'm questioning the success. You can always do better. We did as good a job as we could at the time - I'm convinced of that, yes."
Life seems quaint now at the Mendocino County Social Services Department.
Welfare applicants sit in a tiny waiting area with a soda machine.
Venetian blinds cleave the sunlight of a winter afternoon.
Behind a tall partition shutting out the waiting area, department staffers go about their well-oiled business in the systems and procedures labyrinth.
Dennis Denny is working another endless day.
He has a lot to do this month, sending the Mendocino County Grand Jury information about the man who again permeates his life, about the war that was hot and cold, the success of internal security, the way he could admire Jones' charisma and detest his duplicity.
Denny may one day testify before the grand jurors, who no doubt will listen to his story of his war against apocalypse with a measure of awe, humility and gratitude - and perhaps with some perplexity over what measures government should take to curb a religion's abuse of freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment