Trials and Punishments

Georgia political ped fest at Anneewakee and beyond

Political Ties - Anneewakee officials, Louis Poetter, Jim Parham and Jimmy Webb, were adept at making friends with Business and political leaders in Georgia and Florida.

But it certainly is unique to have a major political candidate trying to attract votes by highlighting support from a sex offender who needed a presidential pardon to restore his own voting rights.

n n David Kline on Jimmy Carter

n n

Senator Zell Miller

For more on Zell see: Zell protects an alleged serial child molester.

Zell appoints D.A., J. Tom Morgan, to chair newly created Statewide Child-Abuse Prevention Panel,
and Leah Sears as Georgia Supreme Court Justice and they all protect above alleged serial child molester.

Zell, a close friend, named Jarvis [subject of several grand jury investigations] in late 1995 to head the Criminal Justice Coordinating Counci and later named Jarvis director of the state Peace Officers Standard and Training Council. Jarvis his girlfriend, Judge Flake, also appointed by Zell to two judicial seats, also protected above alleged serial child molester.

Just to cover his backside, Zell appointed Thurbert Baker as State Attorney General after his buddy, "Honest" Mike Bowers announced his gubernatorial candicy and 10-year affair with Griffen Bell's secretary, a former PlayBoy bunny. Baker then represented Flake in two separate suits and refused to allow a GBI investigation on the above and below mentioned cases.

Good Old Boy Injustice At Its Best
http://web.cln.com/archives/atlanta/newsstand/101098/anews.htm

[also worked for Governor Jimmy Carter and the notorious racist, Lester Maddox]

Zell helps himself to lottery lobby funds and hosts fundraiser for Clinton.

A Brick Wall, By Stan DeCoster - More Articles, Published on 10/1/2000, Jacquie Glassenberg/The Day, Jeffrey Rubenstein's son, Randy, was abducted by his wife and Faye Yager into the Children of the Underground three years ago. Yager fabricated allegations of abuse by sending Bonnie to a hired-gun psychologist. Despite federal and private investigations, and Faye's enormous political clout with The Clinton Administration and Sen. Zell Miller, no solid leads have emerged on the boy's whereabouts.

A Platform for Pedophiles, 10/30/2000 -- By Judith Reisman, WorldNet Daily

"I'm a warrior in an ancient battle. This campaign is straight out of the Bhagavad-Gita -- the classic battle between materialism and illusion against truth and light." Jeff Gates, Green Party Candidate for U.S. Senate, Creative Loafing 10/28/2000

Former President Jimmy Carter

http://www.metnews.com/articles/affairs091902.htm

Luckily for the folk singer, he had a friend in a very high place. President Jimmy Carter pardoned Yarrow the day before leaving office, thereby protecting the singer from ever having to register as a sex offender.

When Poetter was removed as executive director, then Governor Jimmy Carter reorganized the Department of Children and Youth and appointed Jim Parham , a powerful state official, to head the state of Georgia Department of Human Resources in 1971 and who placed in charge of agencies that were supposed to regulate Anneewakee. He was also placed in charge with Anneewakee's day-to-day operations overseeing Poetter. In 1972 Parham revamped DHR and the charges dismissed.

According to Douglas County Sheriff Earl Lee, Parham did not cooperate with the criminal investigation of Poetter by denying access to witnesses and documents and refusing to share information with law enforcement.

Parham knew about the allegations as early as 1970 when he testified on Poetter's behalf at a hearing of the State Board for Children and Youth investigating molestation accusations by some patients and counselors. Parham testified that he had known Poetter for 20 years, beginning when they worked together in the Fulton County Juvenil Court. Later they often took boys to Mexico on "camping" trips.

The hearing resulted in an agreement that Poertter would be replaced as director and have no direct contact with patienets. In July 1972 Poetter was again investigated by the newly revamped DFACS of violating the 1970 order. In 1973 Parham, as Director DHR, helped Poetter get licensed as a medical hospital enabling him to recieve medical insurance payments and transferring Anneewake from DFACS to a different state agency.

Former Anneewake board member Bete Advani said she reported Poetter's sexual abuse to Parham before and after he bacame chairman in 1986, but he did not report it to the police.

Parham was named as a defendant in two of six lawsuits that were filed against Anneewake and various individuals on behalf of more than 100 former patients.

Parham went to Washington as Carter's personal assistant in 1977 and remained there until 1979, when he accepted a full professorship at the University of Georgia. Poetter called him again that year and aked him to join the Anneewake Board of Trustees. Parham accepted, joined the Anneewake bord of directors in 1979 and became chairman of Anneewakee's board of trustees in July, 1986. See Poetter's letter to Carter, page 2.

http://www.rootsweb.com/~gadekalb/parhamtm.txt -- Carter & Anneewakee

Governor Roy Barnes

Excerpts from: Troubles at Anneewakee: Mental facility for youths faces its adversaries

"the land of the friendly people," as the name translates from Cherokee, is not without adversaries.

Anneewakee and the Douglas County government are fighting in court over whether the facility is the non-profit, charitable hospital it claims to be, and whether it should be exempt from paying property taxes.

Insurance companies have refused to pay on patient policies because they question whether living at campsites in the woods constitutes hospital care. They also say some youths are kept at Anneewakee - which can cost an average of $33,000 a year per patient - longer than is medically necessary.

In addition, some county residents were concerned for their safety after a 13-year-old Florida boy, who had been evaluated but not accepted at Anneewakee, escaped from his Florida caseworker and days later was charged in the March 30 slaying of Douglasville businessman J.D. Hall.

In a presentment last month, a Douglas County grand jury said for the protection of citizens, Anneewakee should find out all information about prospective patients before they come to the county. The grand jury also said Anneewakee authorities should cooperate with the Sheriff' s Department when they know potentially dangerous youths have run away in the county.

In 1982 the Douglas County board of tax assessors revoked the facility's property tax exemption, and Anneewakee has gone to court to get it back.

Anneewakee's attorney, state Sen. Roy Barnes, not only believes the hospital should be exempt from property taxes, but he also is seeking an exemption for a profit-making corporation held by Poetter' s three daughters, two of whom work at the hospital.

The corporation, called Anneewakee Estates Inc., leases hundreds of acres of land to the hospital. Court documents show the hospital paid the Estates some $144,000 in rent in 1982.

In the same year, the hospital paid about $230,000 in salaries to Poetter, his wife, two daughters and two sons-in-law, and the hospital had a surplus of about $2.9 million at year's end, court records show.

O'Neal Dettmering Jr., an attorney for Douglas County, says money Anneewakee makes in donations and by charging an average $92 a day per patient is not used for charity cases, and therefore the hospital should pay taxes.

Anneewakee's articles of incorporation state that "both charity and pay students shall be received, the income from the pay students to be used to extend the charity work." However, court documents indicate that youths who have no funds generally are not admitted.

In his 1983 deposition in the tax case, Oliver Pedigo - Poetter' s son-in-law who does accounting at Anneewakee - answered questions about the hospital's charity:

Dettmering: Do you ever take a patient in that is not able to pay you?

Pedigo: Totally?

Dettmering: Totally. Nothing. You can't get funds for him from anywhere.

Pedigo: No, we've never taken one like that.

'Smoke screen' charged

Pedigo added that about 25 patients received financial aid from the hospital and about 12 were supported by the state at a fee of $74 a day.

Anneewakee attorney Barnes said questions of public charity are "a smoke screen" thrown up by the county to cloud the appeal.

"Public charity has nothing to do with this," he says, adding that Anneewakee should be exempt from paying taxes because it is a non-profit hospital. "We never have said we met the charity" standard for property tax exemption, he says.

At stake in the appeal, which is scheduled to go to trial in August, is at least $275,000 in property taxes from 1982 through 1984, according to Douglas County Tax Commissioner Ann Jones.

The county also wants Anneewakee to pay taxes for seven years prior to 1982, which could add up to another $400,000, said Dettmering.

Aside from the tax case, Anneewakee has wrangled with insurance companies which have refused to pay patient claims.

Last week, Aetna Life Insurance Co. reached an out-of-court settlement with Anneewakee attorney Baxter Davis [see AAML] won four claims - totaling more than $260,000 -that the company had declined to pay.

A main issue in those cases was whether Anneewakee's complete program constitutes hospital treatment, says Aetna attorney Tommy Holland.

"Hospital insurance is designed to cover acute care," he says. "It's hard to understand how (the youths) can be in a hospital when they live in teepees."

Counters Davis, "`Our position is the entire program is a hospital because it is licensed as a hospital. It isn't your traditional hospital where people run around in starched white uniforms, but it works."

In the recent cases, Aetna argued some youths were kept at Anneewakee longer than medically necessary, and the firm supported its contention with an affidavit from a former Anneewakee psychologist, J. Stephen Ziegler.

Ziegler said that Anneewakee's staff members were encouraged to diagnose patients inaccurately to keep them at the facility longer, and were told "the insurance boys need a picture of doom and gloom if we are going to be permitted to keep our patients hospitalized for any length of time."

Davis says he "vehemently disagrees" with Ziegler's statements. "We've got no business having a well kid out there. We've got a waiting list," he says.

Finally, Aetna questioned whether some of Anneewakee's fees are reasonable.

"One of the problems we've discovered is what Anneewakee calls vocational therapy. We think it is also free labor," Holland says, adding that youths who do construction, maintenance and housekeeping at the facility should be paid minimum wage rather than billed for therapy.

Barnes, divorce attorney in Faye Yager's first divorce, the custody case of the century, precurser to the
Children of the Underground, an extortionist ring which profits from the sale and capture of small children.

Fulton County Solicitor Jimmy Webb

Poetter OK'd illicit sex, 1970 witness said
BYLINE: By David Corvette Staff Writer
DATE: 10-09-1986
PUBLICATION: The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
EDITION:
SECTION: Newspapers_&_Newswires
PAGE: A/01

Anneewakee founder Louis J. Poetter encouraged sexual relations between staff members and the patients because he believed it was good for the boys, according to a witness in a state hearing 16 years ago.

The testimony was contained in an 800-page transcript of a September 1970 hearing into charges of sexual misconduct at the Douglasville psychiatric facility by a three-member panel of the state Department of Family and Children Services. The transcript was released Wednesday by the state Department of Human Resources.

Among the charges aired during the hearing were allegations by patients and staff members that Poetter engaged in frequent homosexual relations with boys who were patients at the residential facility.

No formal charges were lodged against Poetter as a result of the departmental hearing. But, under an agreement with the state, he was removed as administrator, a job that had placed him in daily contact with the boys, and named executive director.

Poetter, 67, was charged last week with five counts of sexual and physical abuse of former student-patients at Anneewakee. He remained in the Douglas County Jail late Wednesday after waiving a bond hearing earlier in the day.

Poetter testified during the 1970 hearing and called the charges of homosexuality a "damn lie." He said the patients accusing him were the guilty ones.

"I deal with psychotic people," Poetter testified. "I deal with women and girls in my offices, as well as boys, and they do nearly anything when they're working through their problems to try to seduce you into whatever they're doing."

Two students who testified during the hearing first accused Poetter of taking advantage of them sexually but later recanted.

One of the students, who left Anneewakee at the age of 20 in 1966, testified he was hypnotized by Poetter because "this would make it easy for me to relate and what I needed was a homosexual experience with him."

The witness, whose name was blacked out of the transcript along with those of other alleged victims, said he had sex with Poetter once a week for about three years.

When the hearing resumed a few days later, however, he recanted his earlier accusation, saying Poetter had never tried to hypnotize him and "has never done anything against my will."

Psychologists and other staff who worked with Poetter at Anneewakee testified that Poetter encouraged sex between staff members and the boys, as well as participating himself.

Roger Rinn, a counselor and psychology trainee at Anneewakee in the late 1960s, testified Poetter told him that homosexuality was good for the boys, "in particular, homosexuality with staff members, because it got a good relationship with an adult going." When Rinn disagreed with Poetter, "he smiled," Rinn testified.

Poetter said he would hate to forbid sexual relations between staff members and the boys because "it feels so good," Rinn testified.

Roger Rozelle, who was a staff leader at Anneewakee in 1967, testified that Poetter once "tried to kiss me, but I turned my head." Rozelle said Poetter subscribed to a theory that boys "had to have a homosexual experience in order to work through their homosexual fear."

Rozelle said he became involved as a witness in a $1 million civil suit Rinn filed against Poetter and Anneewakee because he was upset by Poetter's treatment of the emotionally disturbed patients there. The suit never came to trial and now is on the dead docket in Douglas County Superior Court.

"They were being entrusted to the care of someone who was entrusted to take care of them. And I felt that there were things that were illegal, immoral and irresponsible going on there," Rozelle testified.

An Anneewakee student identified only as "Buddy" testified that Poetter lured him into a sexual liaison at Poetter's house by promising to set him up with a date with a girl there. Buddy, who was 19 at the time of the hearing, said Poetter fondled him in the shower at Poetter's house.

"So while I was in there taking a shower . . . I was kind of played around with," he testified.

However, Buddy later changed his testimony saying, "I stretched the truth to a great extent there." Buddy told the hearing panel his charges against Poetter were false and said he had been pressured by Rinn to make the accusations.

Other witnesses at the hearing testified that they saw no evidence of improper sexual activity involving Poetter or other members of the staff.

James L. Webb, currently Fulton County solicitor and an assistant solicitor at the time, testified he made an unofficial investigation into the validity of the sex charges and found "absolutely none, or else I am a poor investigator." Webb also said he had been an Anneewakee trustee for several years.

Dr. Juan A. Mascourt, a staff psychiatrist, testified that he "worked closely" with Poetter for six years and that he never had seen anything to indicate any abnormal sexual behavior or other misconduct on his part.

Claude Abercrombie, who was Douglas County sheriff at the time, testified that he had talked to several boys at Anneewakee and "none have ever reported any sexual activityto me or any of my staff that I know of."

John J. Perpall Jr., an Atlanta dentist who said he had known Poetter since 1941, testified Poetter's character was "above reproach," and added that he would have no qualms about sending his own son to Anneewakee.

Fulton County Solicitor, James "Jimmy" L. Webb, a long-time trustee on the board of Anneewake testified as to the validity of the sex hcarges that he found "abolutely none, or else I am a poor investigator."

Jimmy Webb was instrumental in indicting Wayne Williams as the murderer of Atlanta's Missing & Murdered Children

Former Georgia Congressman Elliot Hagan

Robert D'Agostino, Dean of John Marshall School of Law, was a counseler at Anneewakee, who sued Poetter, and tried to expose abuse at Anneewakee in 1969, but Poetter was too rich and powerful to convict.

James McKnight, Anneewakee's Carrabelle, Florida adminstrator since 198 told police, and HRS that he and other Anneewakee officials intentionally did not report suspected cases of abuse.

In 1985, A grand jury in Douglas County accused Anneewake of not screening patients well enough, and of failing to protect local residents from potentially dangerous yous. The findings were precipitated by a slaying on March 30, 1985 of a Douglasville businessman by a 13-year-old Florida boy who had been under Anneewakee's care and was charged with committing the crime.

DHR, now known as DFACS, to this day dismisses child sexual abuse cases or does not investigate them at all.

*Information compiled from the Florida Democrat, Creative Loafing and Atlanta Journal/Constitution

Chronology of Anneewakee events, 1962-89
BYLINE:
DATE: 03-20-1990
PUBLICATION: The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
EDITION:
SECTION: Newspapers_&_Newswires
PAGE: A/12

- 1962: Louis J. Poetter founds Anneewakee as an adolescent psychiatric care institution specializing in wilderness therapy.

-1970: Poetter is removed as administrator of the facility following a state Department of Human Resources (DHR) investigation of alleged sexual misconduct with male patients. The investigation is not made public, and Poetter remains executive director.

-July 1, 1986: Poetter resigns as Anneewakee board chairman, remains executive director.

-Mid-August 1986: Douglas County Sheriff's Department and GBI begin examining allegations of patient abuse.

-Oct. 1, 1986: Poetter charged by Douglas Sheriff Earl Lee with three counts of sodomy, one count of cruelty to children and one count of simple battery. At the time, Poetter is believed to be in Mexico City. Carl Maxwell Moore, Poetter's chauffeur, is charged with sodomy.

-Oct. 5, 1986: Poetter surrenders to authorities.

-Oct. 6, 1986: DHR begins its Anneewakee investigation.

-Oct. 9, 1986: Six victims of alleged physical and sexual abuse file suit charging facility officials, including Poetter and Moore, with racketeering to defraud and abuse patients.

-Oct. 14, 1986: Douglas deputies arrest James C. Womack, co-director of therapeutic services, and charge him with "numerous counts of sodomy."

-Oct. 17, 1986: Daniel T. Herrera, an Anneewakee employee, charged with cruelty to children. Second group of alleged victims sues.

-Oct. 30, 1986: Poetter charged with stealing $29,500 in Anneewakee funds to buy land for personal use in Mexico.

-Nov. 3, 1986: Robert Lee Winebarger, former group leader, charged with sodomizing young male patient between January 1978 and January 1980.

-Nov. 7, 1986: Nine young women, ages 19 to 24, sue Anneewakee, charging the hospital with racketeering and conspiracy to abuse them sexually and physically, and defraud them financially. Poetter released after five weeks in the Douglas County Jail when friends and supporters raise his $1 million bond.

-Nov. 21, 1986: Twenty-two former Anneewakee patients sue the hospital, naming Poetter, board chairman Jim Parham and other current and former trustees as defendants. This is the fourth suit against the facility and the first to name Parham as a defendant.

-Jan. 25, 1987: Subsidiary of Hospital Corp. of America - HCA Psychiatric Co. -agrees to take over the day-to-day operations of the three Anneewakee facilities. Arrangement prevents the state Department of Human Resources from revoking the facility's license.

-Feb. 27, 1987: Poetter indicted in Douglas County on 22 more sodomy counts dating from 1971.

-March 6, 1987: Poetter, his wife, Mable, and his son-in-law, James Henry Evans, charged with failure to report child abuse. By now, there are 10 criminal defendants in the case.

-March 8, 1987: HCA Psychiatric Co. signs five-year agreement to manage the camps. That same week, the parents of a former patient sue in federal court in Atlanta over dispute in therapy time. Fifth civil action.

-April 8, 1988: Poetter pleads guilty to 19 counts of sodomy with former patients, sentenced to eight years in prison, 12 years probation.

-Oct. 10, 1989: First of six civil trials begins in Fulton County. To date, there are eight lawsuits, 131 plaintiffs and 31 defendants.

-Dec. 19, 1989: After 10-week trial, Fulton Superior Court jury awards $5.2 million to three young women made to work as construction laborers.

-May 24, 1999: Poetter Seeks to Overturn Sodomy Conviction in Anneewakee Attacks. Fulton County Daily Report

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Governor Roy E. Barnes