Warren Commission (08 of 26): Hearings Vol. VIII (of 15)United States. Warren Commission
History
Warren Commission (08 of 26): Hearings Vol. VIII (of 15)
United States. Warren Commission
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 -- Assassination; Oswald, Lee Harvey
Actually he came before the court with no prior record, with just the
fact that he was not going to school, and the other thing that touched
me was that the mother at that time seemed overprotective; she just
seemed to think that there was nothing wrong with the boy, and that
once we got him back to school, which I told him in no uncertain terms
he would have to go back because he was just too young to decide he
would not go to school any more, that all his problems were resolved.
I think it may have been a threat to her to want to involve her in the
treatment for the boy, because I did make a recommendation that he--it
seemed to me that he needed help, that he needed to relate to some
adult, that he needed to be brought out of this kind of a shell that he
was retreating to, and not wanting friends, not wanting to go out, and
not wanting to relate to anyone, and that I thought he had the capacity
for doing this, and the psychiatric report sort of bore this out in
perhaps much more medical terms, and they recommended that he either
receive this kind of a support of therapeutic group work treatment at
home, if it were possible, or, if not, in an institution.
Now, the situation in this kind of case is that treatment has to
involve the parent, you know, the whole family setup, not just the
child, and I think this is where the mother sort of felt threatened
herself. People do not always understand what group work and treatment
and psychiatric treatment means. There are all kinds of connotations to
it, and she resisted this.
We tried--or even before we came into the case, before the case came to
court, I think she had been referred to the Salvation Army, I believe
it was, and she had not responded. Actually, when the boy came back
with all these reports to the court, he was not put on supervision
per se to me. The matter was sort of up in the air where it would be
brought back every month while we made referral to various agencies, to
see if they would take him into Children's Village or Harriman Farms,
and whatever it was, and it was just looking around, shopping around
for placement for him. And the mother, I think, felt threatened about
that time, that the boy was back in school, we were looking to get him
psychiatric treatment, and she came in and wanted to take the boy out
of the State, and we told her she could not take him out without the
court's OK.
As a matter of fact, I recall the case was put on the calendar before
Judge Sicher in November of that year, 1953, when she was told, yes,
that it was necessary to have the boy remain here, and that that is
when the judge ordered a referral to the psychiatric clinic of the
court, and to the Big Brothers who subsequently accepted the boy for
working with. With that the mother took off in January, without letting
us know, and just never came back.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you have the impression that Mrs. Oswald had the idea
that you were going to take the boy and place him?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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