Mother Knew Best

The first time Robert Coombes was accused of attacking a little girl, his mother believed he was innocent. After all, he was only 14. He was a little sullen, but a nice-looking boy with his dark curly hair. That was three years ago. The second time, when he attacked a seven-year-old girl in a cinder-strewn lot near his home in Maiden, Mass., his mother knew better.

She talked to parole officers, told them frankly that the boy was unbalanced, and begged them to keep him "somewhere away from general society." The state refused, gave him just the routine "training" school punishment.

One night last week Mrs. Coombes was sitting in the front room of her dingy first-floor flat, waiting for Robert. He had been released from a training school three weeks before. About 9 o'clock he came in. His trousers were muddy and covered with wet cinders. He explained that he had been splashed by a car. As usual, he refused to say where he had been.

Next morning Mrs. Coombes was listening to the radio. There was a news flash. The body of an eleven-year-old girl had been found under some boards in the same lot where Robert had assaulted the other little girl two years before.

White-lipped, Mrs. Coombes telephoned the police, asked them to get Robert. To police, Robert confessed that he had attacked the little girl, but claimed she had hit her head on a rock. The police thought differently. She had died of asphyxiation and strangulation. Said Mrs. Coombes sadly: "Robert should never have been released."

There Were Others. Massachusetts broke into an uproar of indignation. Why had Robert been released? Authorities explained that, under existing regulations, the school parole committee can "only judge on the boy's behavior in custody; past record doesn't enter into the tenure of his sentence." Robert's behavior in school had been good.

Why had Robert not been placed in a mental institution? The law was that Robert, though "psychopathic," could not be committed because he was neither insane nor feebleminded.

Why had he had no mental care? Benjamin Joy, chairman of the board of trustees for Massachusetts Training Schools, explained that he had been refused permission to hire psychiatrists, though one out of five inmates were mentally defective.

At week's end, the air was thick with demands for investigations and reforms. Newspapers reminded readers that there were 1,040 other known sex offenders whom the state had freed after they had served their sentences. Governor Robert Bradford declared that he would ask for a mental hospital for psychopathic delinquents, not now committable as insane. A special legislative commission declared that Massachusetts was 50 years behind in treatment of child delinquency.

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