I know this is old, but I was so horrified I needed to post it.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?n...d=422126&rfi=6
elly: Blame cuts wide in abuse case
By Christopher J. Kelly 09/28/2002
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Chester Lee Miller must have felt like he was invisible.
To his mother. To his father. To his stepfather, his half-siblings and his grandmother across the hall.
Could the neighbors see him? What about police, social services or school officials? Didn't anyone notice that he was wasting away, dying day by miserable day as his body consumed itself for the nourishment it had been so cruelly denied?
And if they did see, how could they look away? How could they know and not tell? How could anyone look on the forlorn shadow he had become and not extend a hand of help or at least ask if he needed any?
Maybe none of us will ever really understand what happened inside the Hazleton home where Chester -- who was 18 years old and weighed only 62 pounds when he died this week --was fed table scraps and made to stand in the corner for hours on end.
Paul Hoffman hasn't been convicted of abusing his stepson, but he has admitted to it. Chester's mother, Lyda Miller, hasn't been convicted, either, but she has admitted standing idly by while a life she was bound to nurture and protect was systematically and deliberately destroyed. The same can be said of Janet Meshach, Chester's grandmother.
It's easy to hate these people. It's easy to say they should rot in prison the way he rotted away. It seems likely Mr. Hoffman and Mrs. Miller will spend significant time behind bars, but the court of public opinion will have a hard time ruling any sentence sufficient.
Mrs. Meshach has not been charged with any crime, but there are few prisons more secure than a guilty conscience. She has said that she didn't know how dire Chester's situation was, that she was too old and frail to intervene and that she didn't have a telephone to call police. These excuses may play in the news media, but she will find them woefully soft against the hard truth that her grandson withered away while she did nothing.
What about the neighbors, the police, social services and school officials? It's easy to blame a neighborhood and the officials who serve it, but police can't come unless they're called and most people these days don't know their neighbors' names, let alone what's going on in their houses.
Luzerne County Children and Youth Services said it never received a complaint about Chester's home life. School officials said Mrs. Miller told them Chester would not return to school in the fall because he planned to move back to Florida.
Still, it's easy to say someone should have known. Why didn't they do something?
I'd like to ask the people Chester encountered on his 1,110-mile bus trip to the Florida Panhandle town his father had sent him away from about a year earlier. A Greyhound spokeswoman said that by the most direct route, Chester would have boarded four buses and had at least one three-hour layover on his way to Milton, Fla. Greyhound drivers remember seeing him, the spokeswoman said, "But at no time did he indicate he was in medical distress, or ask anyone for help."
Chester told Milton police a different story before he died. In town after town, Chester said he begged strangers for help, but none gave it.
His relatives were just as dismissive. Milton police say Chester's uncle turned him away, eventually dumping him at an apartment complex.
"He looked like a Holocaust victim," said Janice Goodman, who answered when Chester knocked on her door and pleaded for help. "I never would have thought something like this would be in Florida or the United States."
Ms. Goodman said Chester could barely stand when he asked if he could come in, take a shower and get some sleep.
"I said, 'Come on in,'" she said. "There was no way you could turn your back on him."
And so after countless potential Samaritans and 1,110 miles, Chester Lee Miller found an open door and a kind hand. Somebody finally saw him, but it was too late. He was too far gone. He died four days later, alone.
It's easy to say that's a shame, and surely, it is. But for once, let's resist what's easy. Let's do what's hard. Let's put ourselves in an invisible man's shoes.
Imagine your father sending you to live with people who abuse you and feed you table scraps or nothing at all. Imagine one of those people is your own mother. Your grandmother lives across the hall, but she just watches as you wither away.
Imagine being put on a bus headed back to the father who didn't want you. You're sick, weak and alone. You beg people for help, but they just turn away. When you get to the end of the line, your relatives shun you and abandon you in a strange town.
Imagine being so desperate that you knock on a stranger's door because you have nowhere else to go. Imagine the humiliation of explaining to the person inside that no one wants you, not even your family.
Chester Lee Miller must have felt like he was invisible. Turns out he was.
CHRIS KELLY, the SaturDay columnist, can be reached by e-mail at
loudmouth72@hotmail.com.
Follow up:
Fury fresh months after young man's death
OFF/BEATglidewell
GLIDEWELL E-mail:
Click here Archive
By JAN GLIDEWELL, Times Columnist
© St. Petersburg Times
published July 15, 2003
Let me, briefly, using accounts from Knight Ridder Newspapers and the Associated Press, reconstruct the sad end of Chester Lee Miller for you, and then tell you why I am outraged afresh at the 9-month-old story.
Chester Lee Miller was 18 in September when he knocked on the door of Janice Goodman's home in Milton begging for a place to sleep.
He was, again, 18 years old.
He weighed 63 pounds.
He was 5 feet 3 inches tall.
He had been systematically starved by his mother and her boyfriend who, tired of caring for the young man who suffered from attention deficit disorder, placed him on a bus after giving him sandwiches on which - depending on which of their stories you believe - they had or hadn't poured an overdose of his medication.
They told him to go find his father, whom they hadn't notified before sending Miller away from their, and allegedly his, home in Hazleton, Pa.
He had lived with his father until a year earlier but had been sent to live with his mother and her boyfriend, Paul Hoffman.
Before he was put on the bus by his mother and stepfather, according to police, he was beaten, confined to his room and wasn't allowed to eat anything except table scraps.
He was hospitalized.
He gained weight until he weighed 100 pounds a few days later, although a pathologist thought he might have gained the weight because his kidneys were not functioning properly, and he couldn't excrete urine.
His stomach ruptured, causing an infection to spread through his body. He died three days after asking a stranger, "Are you my new mommy?"
His mother, Lyda Miller, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the case, promising to testify against her former boyfriend, charged with third-degree murder and who she said beat and intimidated her as well as beat and starved her son. He is still awaiting trial.
There is some doubt about whether her boyfriend, Paul Hoffman, actually tried to poison Chester Miller with an overdose of the medication he was supposed to be taking for his attention deficit disorder, or whether he just lied about it, as he now says.
Either way, this woman sent her son off on a bus trip from Pennsylvania to Florida with what she thought were poisoned sandwiches but decided he was okay after he called from Washington and said he had been throwing up and felt better.
His mother spent 10 months behind bars and then, after entering her guilty plea to involuntary manslaughter and promising to testify against her boyfriend, was released last week.
You still with me?
Here's the thing.
We all know that there is no such thing as a bad person. Just misunderstood ones, right?
Everyone charged with a crime, especially if the criminal has just died, is described glowingly by family and friends as being at some milestone on the road to rehabilitation and righteousness.
He or she has always just started getting his or her life together or just turned his or her life around.
Mrs. Miller, 40, will have to wear an electronic monitor while she serves the rest of her one- to two-year sentence on house arrest for putting her dying son on a bus with what she thought were poisoned sandwiches, but she can petition for parole in about three months.
Then she can petition for custody of her other two children, who have been in foster care since her arrest and who were 12 and 13 when she was arrested.
"She's trying to get her life back together and trying to get her family back together," her lawyer said.
Just one big happy family.
Kinda warms your cockles, doesn't it?
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