10-22-97 - Speech by Attorney General Janet Reno at the National Sheriff's Association Meeting
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3 NATIONAL SHERIFF'S ASSOCIATION MEETING
4 ATTORNEY GENERAL JANET RENO
5 AT EMORY UNIVERSITY
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20 Thursday, October 23, 1997
21 Emory University
22 Atlanta, Georgia
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1 (8:10 p.m.)
2 ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: Thank you
3 so very much, Ms. Carter. You and President Carter are
4 to me what public service is all about, whether be in
5 an official position or in your life, and you have
6 inspired me.
7 And I'd like to share a moment with
8 you, particularly the students, some of whom I've had a
9 chance to talk with today. There is no calling more
10 rewarding than public service. You may do it as a
11 volunteer, you may do it as a career employee or an
12 elected official. There is nothing quite so wonderful
13 as trying to help other people. Now, sometimes we will
14 get cussed at, fussed at. But there is nothing more
15 wonderful than to walk up a platform with the
16 dedication of the church rebuilt after an arson in a
17 small South Carolina town, and to have a lady break
18 through the rope lines and say, "Janet, you got me
19 child support when you were in Miami." And I go up to
20 her and she gives me a big hug and she says, "And these
21 are the two young men you got child support for."
22 So I urge you, whatever you do,
23 pursue public service as a volunteer or in some part of
24 your life. You will find it so extraordinarily
25 rewarding. But as you do, I offer some words of
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1 advice: Don't get focused too narrowly. Sometimes the
2 lawyers go down their little pink trail and the
3 teachers down their little trail and somebody else down
4 their path. Reach out to disciplines and bring them
5 together and pursue your objectives in public service
6 across a gardening of human endeavor.
7 Don't forget the funding. There
8 are so many people that pursue public service in
9 concept but forget about how to pay for it. And it's
10 often very helpful to learn how to pay for it.
11 Use common sense, use logic, and
12 rely on research. Rely on the hard data. Too often we
13 make public policy decisions without really knowing
14 what we're talking about. But there is something so
15 important in being able to motivate and inspire
16 somebody and bring out the best in people and make them
17 understand that every single one of us can make a
18 difference for the better and the life of another if we
19 only try hard enough.
20 Finally, don't give up. There are
21 things that I tried to change ever since I graduated
22 from law school. And I sometimes think I'll never
23 change it. But there are other things that I started
24 changing slowly. I'd like it to go faster, but they're
25 changing. Don't give up. Believe in people and never
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1 forget to laugh at yourself.
2 And that's what I've tried to do in
3 the twenty years, almost twenty years, that I've either
4 been a local prosecutor or the attorney general. And
5 there is one issue among others that has been of vital
6 concern to me and that I feel very deeply about, and
7 that is the issue of domestic violence.
8 I have never been confronted by
9 domestic violence until I became prosecutor in 1978.
10 The medical examiner in Miami said, "Come look at our
11 records for the last twenty years. Use research. See
12 how you can devote your attentions." And we had some
13 interns from the university go research the records,
14 and we found that forty percent of the people killed in
15 the previous period had been killed as a result of
16 domestic violence.
17 We developed a grant during that
18 time and developed a domestic intervention program. At
19 first it was very frustrating. The judges said but
20 it's a domestic. Police officers said but it's a
21 domestic. The victims would come in and say, "But I
22 love him and I depend on him and I don't want to
23 prosecute him." And we would only see them back a year
24 or two or else she would be one of the victims who case
25 was studied.
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1 But times began to change. And as
2 I left Miami, we had a domestic violence court. And
3 people considered domestic violence a crime and not
4 just a private matter. And police officers were
5 beginning to take the matter seriously. And it was
6 exciting. And part of it was because women were coming
7 to the bench and women were becoming police officers
8 and women were becoming prosecutors and women were
9 impacting on public policy.
10 And yet today, with all these
11 advances, too many Americans still live in fear of the
12 people on who they depend for love and for protection.
13 Instead of providing refuge, the walls of the home have
14 served for too many as prison bars, isolating battered
15 women from help and trafficking in violent
16 relationships.
17 In 1995, four million American
18 women were victims of violent crimes generally.
19 Two-thirds of these women were victimized by someone
20 they knew. In 1996, thirty percent of female murder
21 victims were killed by their current or former husband
22 or boyfriend. Seventeen percent of victims were women
23 who were admitted to emergency room for injuries by
24 somebody with whom they had an intimate relationship.
25 We also know that domestic violence
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1 is an under reported crime. Almost six times as many
2 women victimized, they don't report. That's an
3 estimate. But it tells you the magnitude of the
4 problem. These figures are unacceptable. I call on
5 everyone to review our efforts against domestic
6 violence. This is a crime that can be prevented. This
7 is a crime for which we have warning signals. There
8 are too many crimes that are random in nature and could
9 not possibly be prevented except by the most remotest
10 of chances. But these are crimes that can be prevented
11 if we intervene the cycle of violence and take steps to
12 resolve the conflicts.
13 We must review our efforts against
14 domestic violence for another reason. That child who
15 watches his father beat his mother comes to accept
16 violence as a way of life. He will become the
17 perpetrator or he will be become the violent youngster
18 on the streets of this nation. We will never end
19 violence in America unless we begin within the home.
20 So much as been accomplished, yes. But we have so
21 much, much more to do.
22 President Clinton has made the
23 fight against domestic violence a top priority. The
24 Violence Against Women Act is a landmark piece of
25 legislation in its scope and in its mission. The Act
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1 which was passed with the bipartition support of
2 congress in 1994 is a crucial turning point in our
3 national efforts to break the cycle of domestic
4 violence and sexual assault.
5 The Act's approach is very simple.
6 It challenges us to build an integrated partnership
7 among federal, state and local entities, the private
8 sector and the public sector, and to work together with
9 victims' advocates to make a difference in the lives of
10 women and their families. In addition, the Act
11 establishes grant programs that are forges unique
12 partnerships between the federal and our state
13 governments and between the criminal justice system and
14 the different advocates.
15 Through its simple grant program,
16 the Stop Program, a total of one hundred and thirty
17 million dollars was awarded in the fiscal year of 1996
18 to the states and territories. In fiscal year 1997,
19 congress appropriated all of the authorized money, over
20 one hundred and forty-five million dollars for the Stop
21 Program, indicating the strength of the national
22 commitment to fight this problem. But we've got to
23 make sure these monies are used for the right way, in
24 the states and localities, in rural areas across this
25 nation.
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1 By design the Stop grant program
2 promotes a coordinated approach. It provides
3 incentives for states to pool the expertise and
4 resources of law enforcement, prosecutors, courts and
5 victims advocates. Here in Georgia, the Stop Program
6 funded fifty-six projects utilizing over two million
7 dollars of federal funding to train local law
8 enforcement on domestic violence and sexual assault
9 cases, and to hire new prosecutors and investigators
10 devoted specifically to domestic violence and sexual
11 assault cases. Stop grants funded rape crisis centers,
12 domestic violence stalkers and projects that help
13 undeserved victims, including minorities and
14 non-English speaking women.
15 We must, if we care about our
16 communities, make sure that we see these funds used in
17 the best way possible to ensure that every police
18 department has police officers trained in how to handle
19 a domestic violence case, that prosecutors are trained
20 in how important it is to sensitively handle these
21 cases and to work with these victims as they proceed
22 through the criminal justice system so they're not
23 re-victimized once again by the system, to make sure
24 that we have judges on the bench that know how
25 important it is to see that these cases are handled
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1 fairly and objectively with appropriate disposition and
2 that probation officers are prepared and ready to help
3 intervene and to help provide crisis counseling during
4 the course of the probation.
5 Community policing is a remarkable
6 tool. In Florida we developed at team, a community
7 resource team, composed of the community friendly
8 community police officer, public governors and a local
9 youth counselor, focusing on one housing project. They
10 solved many of their problems within the first six
11 months or year. But the problems that persisted were
12 the problems of family violence and the conflicts of
13 family violence. And again, community police officers
14 can make such a difference.
15 The justice department's COPS
16 Program, Community Oriented Policing Services
17 represents the administrations commitment to put more
18 community-friendly police officers on the streets of
19 this nation. Through our experience, we have learned
20 that community policing needs to be a part of the
21 community-wide response to domestic violence.
22 It's the police officer who is so
23 often on the front line and he gets the call to
24 respond. And too often that is a very dangerous call
25 to make. The COPS domestic violence program fosters
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1 partnerships between law enforcement and victims
2 advocates at the community level. Through this program
3 we allocated over forty-six million dollars to fund
4 innovative domestic violence services in more than
5 three hundred police departments and sheriff's offices
6 around the country.
7 In Atlanta, Fulton County, and
8 other communities throughout Georgia, COPS domestic
9 violence grants are providing in depth training to
10 police officers and 911 personnel and improving
11 coordination between law enforcement and victim service
12 providers.
13 We have got to make sure that these
14 are not isolated areas of expertise, but that every
15 police station in this country has the capacity to
16 respond and interrupt that cycle of violence before it
17 is handed down to another generation.
18 Another recent innovation in the
19 fight against domestic violence is specialized domestic
20 violence courts. These courts involve coordination for
21 various court actions in which a battered woman
22 frequently is involved in. Often she must go to the
23 one court for a protection order, another to begin
24 permanent custody or divorce proceedings and yet
25 another to testify in the criminal prosecution of her
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1 abuser. With all of these matters -- While all of
2 these matters stem from the same incident or incidents
3 of abuse, each case is often heard by a different
4 judge, which in turn can result in orders with
5 conflicting provisions. To enable courts to improve
6 coordination and to provide streamline assistance of
7 battered woman, a number of court systems throughout
8 the country have developed specialized domestic
9 violence courts that integrate the functions.
10 Victims are also better served by
11 the intake centers of these courts, which provide
12 one-stop problems for information regarding protection
13 orders, child support, custody, divorce and criminal
14 prosecution as well as referable shelters, counseling
15 program and for legal services.
16 I was asked today by a student,
17 "Why do you think we don't have confidence in our
18 government?" One of the reasons is that government
19 doesn't set itself up very well. You have to go one
20 place for information about restraining orders to be
21 told you have to go another place to apply for the
22 order to be told you have to go to another court to
23 actually have the case heard can get frustrated. And
24 in that time, as I have too tragically seen, it can
25 produce the ultimate tragedy of all. We have got to
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1 use this example as an example of how all of who care
2 about public service can try to work together to
3 structure the government so it serves the people who
4 are the government.
5 We must not forget the rural areas
6 of this nation. I've had the chance now to see a large
7 part of this country. There are a lot of vast open
8 spaces with people who deserve representation just like
9 everybody else. And there is innovative programs under
10 way. New Mexico's second judicial court has developed
11 a program that provides emergency restraining orders
12 for victims of domestic violence during off hours,
13 evenings, holidays and weekends in an effort to reach
14 undeserved victims. A very rural region in North Idaho
15 is opening a fifteen-day shelter. In the City of
16 Philadelphia, in an urban area, has formed a peer
17 counseling service. We have got to reach out to
18 everyone who represents what this nation is all about.
19 Finally, the Act has established a
20 national toll free hot line that provides a lifeline of
21 victims of domestic violence across the country. The
22 number is 1-800-799-SICK or TDD 1-800-787-3224. The
23 small bilingual hot line is run by the Department of
24 Health and Human Services. It operates twenty-four
25 hours a day throughout the fifty states and the
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1 territories. Since it began operating in February of
2 1996, it has received over one hundred thousand calls
3 from victims, family members, service providers and
4 others in all fifty states.
5 Yes, we have come some distance in
6 our efforts to hold the criminal justice system
7 accountable for violence against women. Tougher laws,
8 however, will not by themselves put an end to domestic
9 violence. We must, as entire communities, work
10 together to respond to the problem in a far more
11 integrated and effective way. If we are to create an
12 America in which girls will grow up without fear of
13 being abused by an intimate partner and boys will grow
14 into men who believe that violence is never acceptable,
15 then we must move beyond the traditional paragons of
16 fighting crime.
17 I see two areas that are
18 particularly crucial: first, broad-based community
19 response systems; and secondly, innovative prevention
20 and early intervention strategies.
21 One of the most enduring features
22 in the battered women's movement has been the
23 involvement of women's groups in bringing about change
24 in the legal system. Shelter workers, victims'
25 advocates and survivors of domestic violence are
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1 marvelous advocates. If you have ever seen a victim
2 turn with all her grieve objectivity on the issue,
3 there is no force that can stop them. And I have
4 watched them in action put pressure on law enforcement,
5 prosecutors and courts to treat domestic violence as a
6 crime, not merely as a private personal matter. But in
7 so doing, they have created effective partnerships with
8 police officers, prosecutors and the courts in many
9 communities throughout the country. Today we can point
10 to numerous models of successful collaborations between
11 victim advocates and police and prosecutors and judges:
12 a police officer arrests a perpetrator of domestic
13 violence and then goes back and picks up the victim and
14 her children and takes them to the local shelter, or
15 prosecutors request the staff of the crisis counseling
16 program to help a victim come forward and have the
17 strength and endurance to tell her story to the court,
18 a family court judge can make sure that a victim
19 advocate is present to speak for a battered women who
20 cannot afford a lawyer.
21 Yes, there are gaps in the system
22 still and there is much more to be done. But the
23 crucial role of victims and victim service providers in
24 the criminal justice system as a response to domestic
25 violence is beyond question and we must build on what
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1 these courageous people do.
2 Collaboration works, but it does
3 not yet go far enough if we are to reach the many women
4 who continue to live in fear. Women too scared to call
5 the police, women who fear retaliation if they take
6 their abuser to court, women who suffer in silence
7 hoping that the man they love or used to love will
8 somehow stop hurting them. The simple truth is that
9 not all battered women seek help from the legal system,
10 at least not at first. They may not be ready to take
11 the legal action against their abuser, but they
12 desperately, desperately need help, help in assessing
13 resources and legal advice and formulating options and
14 relocation and finding the way to support their
15 children on their own. Although they do not state that
16 they are victims of abuse, battered women often seek
17 assistance from government offices and community groups
18 that must become part of our collaborative effort to
19 end domestic violence.
20 We must widen the circle and build
21 broad-based community response systems that recognize
22 the problem and can reach out and make that victim
23 comfortable enough to come forward and start to
24 interrupt the cycle.
25 We see the problem and how we need
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1 to reach beyond the criminal justice system. The
2 justice department's bureau of statistics, as I've
3 pointed out, climbed seventeen percent of all persons
4 treated for violence-related injuries in hospital
5 emergency rooms were injured by an intimate partner.
6 It is clearly a public health issue. We, therefore,
7 must build links between the criminal justice system
8 and health care professionals and recognize this is not
9 just as a law enforcement problem, but as a public
10 health problem. Health care workers can help battered
11 women learn about their options, how to get legal
12 services and find shelter and support. Even for a
13 women who is not yet ready to press charges against her
14 batterer, a doctor who is sensitized to the domestic
15 violence program, to the problems of domestic violence,
16 can take simple steps like making detailed notes of the
17 injuries and statements, or keeping a camera handy so
18 that photographs of her injuries can be kept in medical
19 records. These simple steps can make all the
20 difference in the future prosecution or in a petition
21 for a protection order.
22 The past president of the American
23 Medical Association, Dr. Robert McAfee has also called
24 upon the medical community to show its commitment in
25 ending the cycle of violence. Dr. McAfee has stated
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1 that during the past four years the American Medical
2 Association has made the diagnosis of and prevention of
3 family violence one of its top public health
4 priorities. He has referred to family violence as a
5 major public health problem and asserts that the true
6 success of our commitment will come when we as
7 physicians treating patients one at a time make a
8 difference by breaking that cycle of violence.
9 Lawyers and doctors sometimes don't
10 get along very well together, but on this issue they
11 are united and we must reach out to those lawyers and
12 those doctors who have not heard the message to make
13 sure that we are united in our police force.
14 Here in Georgia, the health care
15 community is taking action. At the urging of the
16 Georgia Commission on Family Violence, medical
17 professionals, including facility of Emory's medical
18 school, has developed a statewide protocol for domestic
19 violence incidents and have recently begun to train
20 health care workers to identify abuse, assess their
21 safety and provide appropriate referrals.
22 Schools are also key players in a
23 wider community response to violence against women.
24 Teachers, nurses and school counselors often learn
25 about domestic violence through the children who
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1 witness it or at times through their mother who reveals
2 the abuse during a private meeting at school.
3 Students' schools can help battered women connect with
4 community resources and seek protection.
5 And we must involve other agencies
6 in the community and community groups and other groups
7 of victims of domestic violence such as welfare case
8 workers, housing agencies, places that have head start
9 programs and child support agencies, in our efforts to
10 identify and provide early assistance to victims of
11 domestic violence.
12 And employers must also become
13 partners of the community-based efforts to fight
14 domestic violence. Whether one harvests vegetables or
15 carries a briefcase to work, a women who is being
16 abused will suffer, suffer absenteeism, decreased
17 productivity and lower recourse for participation. If
18 employers don't care about it just on the basis of
19 common humanity, they must care about it in terms of
20 their work force. And all too often, that woman's
21 batterer will make it too difficult or too dangerous
22 for her to continue working. Employers must work
23 together with advocates, law enforcement, employee
24 assistance professionals and other service providers to
25 ensure that battered women can work without fear of
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1 harassment and violence and without fear that their
2 jobs can be in jeopardy if they do not hide the fact
3 that they are abused.
4 Already business leaders across the
5 country are developing employee assistance programs
6 that respond to the needs of battered women. These
7 model programs educate management and employees,
8 provide information on where to seek help and train
9 security guards in the manner of the safety needs of
10 battered women who are being stalked at work. I
11 challenge those of you who are in that position as
12 employers to do all you can to increase safety in the
13 workplace for victims of domestic violence. Employers
14 must also support their employees who suffer and need
15 time off from work to attend court hearings.
16 But even if we work all this out,
17 even if we identify domestic violence early on, even if
18 we have court system personnel who are ready to do
19 something about it, what do we do when we get a
20 conviction? What is the best way to intervene with the
21 batterer to make sure that it's never done again? And
22 what is the cause of domestic violence and what are we
23 doing to eliminate the cause before we have to suffer
24 the tragedy of it?
25 This great university and other
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1 universities across this country can play -- And Emory
2 has indeed played a critical role in our local and
3 national efforts to end domestic violence. We need
4 good solid research. And universities as leaders in
5 research need to bring together experts across the
6 disciplines to help us learn more about the causes and
7 the consequences and what we can do to intervene.
8 Through research universities can also help evaluate
9 the effectiveness of our current programs and policies.
10 You can tell us if it's working or not working. Here
11 at Emory, in the Atlanta area, researchers are hard at
12 work with funding from the Centers for Disease Control
13 and Emory's research have documented the length between
14 suicide attempts and violence between intimate
15 partners. Much more research is needed to help us
16 understand how to prevent violence from occurring, how
17 to intervene effectively with batterers and how to
18 assist women and children in their efforts to deal with
19 the consequences of domestic violence in their lives.
20 And we need research in another
21 area. Too often, as I sat there in my office in Miami
22 and tried to persuade a woman to go forward with the
23 prosecution, she would say "But he needs help. He's an
24 alcoholic and I don't know what to do. Well, he needs
25 help. He's got a real drug problem." Up till about
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1 ten years ago, there was no major medical school in
2 this country that had course work in addictionology.
3 That's changed now. But if this nation can send a man
4 to the moon, this nation can do far more in unlocking
5 the secrets of what causes people to abuse alcohol and
6 to abuse drugs. And when we start down that road to a
7 solution, we will be finding a solution to a lot of
8 other problems such as domestic violence.
9 What is making America so violent
10 in its home? Why are our young people so much more
11 violence in these last ten years? That brass is
12 beginning to reduce itself. I don't know the answer.
13 But I do know that there are Americans who know how to
14 resolve conflicts without knives and guns and fists. I
15 know that there are Americans, a number of Americans,
16 of teachers, of police officers, who know how to teach
17 children how to resolve conflicts without knives and
18 guns and fists. I believe with all my heart that if we
19 establish better training through conflict resolution,
20 not just around the World in the magnificent way the
21 Carters have done it, but here on our streets and our
22 schools and our homes, teaching people how to
23 communicate, how to talk to each other, how to use a
24 tone of voice that is respectful, not demeaning in
25 which puts one down, how to problem solve together
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1 rather than butting heads in stubborn opposition.
2 Again, if we can send a man to the
3 moon, we can teach people far better than we have how
4 to end violence in this country.
5 Some people say that this is a very
6 complex century to live in. I've just been reading
7 stories of women who moved West in covered wagons, and
8 to think of how difficult it must have been to live and
9 to brave the new world. But this is a brave new world
10 in its own.
11 Technology threatens some minds to
12 master us. We're going to have to master technology.
13 Technology causes a job that we thought we would have
14 for thirty years to suddenly become obsolete. And that
15 is creating pressures in the home and as the person
16 feels that they have no control, they lash out.
17 Let us develop mechanisms within
18 our community to help people solve their problems.
19 Lawyers are supposed to be problem solvers. But too
20 often the lawyers worry about their fees rather than
21 having their client's problem solved.
22 The legal profession, the medical
23 profession, all of us working together, have got to
24 develop capacities within our neighborhoods to get
25 people's problems solve in sensible ways. We're going
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1 to save lives. We're going to save sorrow. We're
2 going to save money if we do it up front.
3 But most of all, we've got to focus
4 on where violence comes from. I was telling Ms. Carter
5 earlier in the evening that I would pick up a
6 three-sentence investigation on a seventeen-year-old
7 who I had prosecuted for an armed robbery. I could see
8 points along the way where I could have intervened in
9 that child's life. I tried to find the causation. At
10 that point the crack had begin to hit Miami in 1985 and
11 doctors took it to the public hospitals to try to
12 figure out what to do about crack involved infants and
13 their mothers. And they taught me, those marvelous
14 child development experts, that the first three years
15 of life were the most formative in a person's
16 existence. That's the time you learn the concept of
17 reward and punishment. That's the time you develop a
18 conscious. Fifty percent of all learning through
19 response is learning your first year of life. What
20 good is what we do fifteen and twenty and thirty years
21 from now if that child didn't have a start that gave
22 him a conscious and helped him understand the
23 difference between right and wrong and understand what
24 punishment meant. This nation has for too long
25 forgotten and neglected its children. We have stood by
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1 those children who were witnesses to domestic violence
2 and other forms of violence and we have not provided
3 counseling. We have too often stood by as parents
4 neglected their children and let them grow without
5 proper supervision. We have too long stood by as
6 children have not had adequate medical care and have
7 supported their education in the early years.
8 If we are truly to address the
9 problem of violence in America, we have got to turn our
10 attention back to our children.
11 I shall recall words from the last
12 verse of the Old Testament from the book of Malachi,
13 "Behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah before
14 becoming the great and the dreadful day of the Lord.
15 And he shall return the heart of the fathers to the
16 children and the children's hearts to their father,
17 lest I shall come down and smite the earth with a
18 curse."
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2 C E R T I F I C A T E
3 (State of Georgia
4 County of Gwinnett)
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6 I, Mary Parham, being a Certified Court
7 Reporter in and for the State of Georgia at large,
8 certify that the foregoing transcript is a true record
9 of the proceedings; that I am neither a relative nor
10 employee nor attorney nor counsel of any of the
11 parties, nor a relative nor employee of such attorney
12 or counsel nor financially interested is the action.
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14 Witness my hand and seal at Lilburn, Gwinnett
15 County, Georgia, this the 24th of October 1997.
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19 MARY PARHAM, CCR, CVR
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21 CERTIFICATE NO. B-1727
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23 (CCR SEAL)
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