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
Mr. CARRO. No. He appeared to have problems, but one of the problems
in the situation seems to be, why wasn't this boy sent to the New York
Training School for Boys at Warwick? And the fact is that the New
York Training School for Boys at Warwick is for delinquent boys who
commit crimes, really, and whose behavior is such that it is really
criminal behavior; and you brand it delinquency because of the tag that
attaches because he is under 16. You don't normally send a boy who just
stays out of school. It is for boys who commit serious acts. And as a
matter of fact, Warwick did not have what this boy needed: extensive
psychiatric help. And that is why he was not sent to the only school
we have in the city, which is Warwick, for the more serious boy. More
seriously, it is even a drastic action to place a boy away who comes
in for truancy, because truancy is itself a passive delinquent act.
It is not an act which vitiates against society or mores or does harm
to other people. It is an act of omission, a failure to go to school
rather than an aggressive acting out, where you are destroying property
or injurying persons or other things. And this is one of the factors in
here.
It was surprising in this instance that we wanted placement and the
reason we felt placement was needed in this instance was because
although you may get boys acting out in other areas, there is always
someone in the community who can help out, and the court will hesitate
to put a boy away if some plan can be formulated within, because the
court in social work feels that there is no substitute for love and
parents, even in the best of institutions that you can place children.
But here the boy had no parents; he had no father; he wasn't going
to school; he had no friends; he had--no agency was working with the
family. He was on his own. He was just watching television all day. He
wasn't mixing with anybody. He was an extremely introverted young man.
He didn't want to go to school. So that in effect he had nothing going
for him outside.
Mr. LIEBELER. And in addition to all that, that his mother didn't show
any inclination to cooperate.
Mr. CARRO. She was ineffectual. She didn't want to cooperate and there
was nothing that I as a probation officer could hang my hat on to say,
"Keep him here in New York City. The mother will see him through,
between his mother and I, this agency and I." There was nothing there
out of the total community that would be a prop or a crutch to help him
see these things through.
Mr. LIEBELER. And it was these reasons that prompted you to recommend
placement rather than a peculiar extreme mental disturbance in the boy
himself, you would say?
Mr. CARRO. Yes; it was just the sum total of the environmental factors
rather than the boy's own inward manifestations of mental disturbance
or psychotic disorder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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