Abuse

The woman who says she represents North American Power is not telling the truth about the benefits of buying electricity from her company. "You can save up to 10, 15, 20 percent of your bill, depending on your usage," she says in a telemarketing call to my house. But the rate she eventually quotes is only about 7 percent less than the standard price offered by Baltimore Gas & Electric — something the average customer would have no way of knowing. And of course the percentage savings won't vary even if my "usage" goes up to that of a steel mill.

Foreclosure protections would expand for service members, their widowed spouses and certain disabled veterans under an amendment that overwhelmingly passed the House last week. For U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Baltimore, it was a sweet victory. He offered the amendment with two co-sponsors and has made foreclosure prevention a key focus in recent years, pressing for investigations of mortgage servicer abuses , holding massive foreclosure-prevention workshops and putting together a document trail that calls into question claims that principal reduction would be a financially bad move . He was heartened that his proposed amendment to the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act passed 394 to 27 in the sharply divided House, and the Democrat said Tuesday that he expects the Senate to follow suit with a similar proposal.

Baltimore prosecutors can proceed with sexual child abuse counts against Maurice J. Blackwell, the priest accused of sodomizing Dontee Stokes more than 15 years ago, according to a judge's ruling issued yesterday. Circuit Judge John M. Glynn denied a motion made by Blackwell's lawyers last month asking that sexual child abuse charges be thrown out because they were too old and politically motivated. Glynn ruled that although prosecutors first investigated the abuse claims in 1993 and didn't charge Blackwell until 2003, the delay "was not purposefully done ... to gain advantage over the defendant."

The odyssey of Billy Rowell took another strange turn Monday when Major League Baseball announced that the Orioles' first-round pick in 2006 has been suspended for 50 games for his second violation of the minor league's drug testing and prevention program. Rowell, 23, tested positive for a “drug of abuse,” MLB stated in a news release Monday. The specific drug is not revealed. He had been in Sarasota attempting to become a pitcher after six seasons as an infielder/outfielder in which he batted a collective .261 and never played above Double-A Bowie.

The odyssey of Billy Rowell took another strange turn Monday when Major League Baseball announced that the Orioles' first-round pick in 2006 has been suspended for 50 games for his second violation of the minor league's drug testing and prevention program. Rowell, 23, tested positive for a “drug of abuse,” MLB stated in a news release Monday. The specific drug is not revealed. He had been in Sarasota attempting to become a pitcher after six seasons as an infielder/outfielder in which he batted a collective .261 and never played above Double-A Bowie.

One of the few issues not thoroughly covered in Scott Calvert's well-researched, comprehensive articles on Baltimore Behavioral Health ( "Hooked on treatment," Nov. 7 and "Sheltered addicts, strained recovery," Nov. 8) is why psychiatric diagnoses are particularly prone to misdiagnosis and overdiagnosis. The reason is that psychiatric diagnosis is not based on pathological criteria. The closest the article comes to addressing this problem is the statement that "Even in the best clinical scenario, a psychiatric diagnosis is tricky, experts say; doctors have no X-rays to help apply the criteria defining a mental illness.

FREDERICK, Md. (AP) — A Frederick County sheriff's deputy faces charges of sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl. The Frederick County Sheriff's Office said Thursday that 46-year-old Sam Bowman of New Market was charged Wednesday night. Bowman didn't immediately return a call to his home seeking comment. No defense attorney is listed in court records. Bowman has been with the sheriff's office since August. He was a school resource officer at Walkersville High School.

Let's hope that the youths who pelted a tethered dog with rocks and bricks, causing the dog to suffer severe head and eye injuries, are quickly apprehended and charged with cruelty to animals ("Group of children sought in abuse of 1-year-old dog," April 7). Animal abusers are bullies and cowards who take their issues out on "easy victims" — and they rarely limit themselves to hurting only animals. Psychiatrists, criminal profilers and law enforcement officials have repeatedly documented that young people who are cruel to animals often turn that violence against humans.

I find it sadly ironic that letter writers Kyle Lagratta and T. Griffith contributed numerous column inches to defending lacrosse and pontificating about teaching their sons respect for sport ("A culture of entitlement" and "Culture of respect missing in lacrosse, youth sports," Readers respond, May 11) but not a single word about teaching them not to physically or psychologically abuse people they purportedly love. The tragedy of Yeardley Love's death is that in this day and age, 50 years after the birth of the women's movement, fathers and mothers apparently still are not teaching their sons and daughters not to abuse the ones they love, or that no-one should ever put up with abuse from one who claims to love them.

The Food and Drug Administration is calling on pharmaceutical firms to give more attention to the potential for abuse of new drugs when subjecting them to pre-market testing. The agency this week released a draft of new voluntary guidelines to assist drug makers in figuring out which compounds should be placed under the Controlled Substances Act, which regulates the handling, record-keeping and dispensing of controlled substances. The guidelines urge researchers to look beyond traditional indicators such as whether a compound is addictive to other characteristics that could lead to abuse.

The recent ruling by the Maryland Courts declaring pit bulls "inherently dangerous" is not only inhumane, it's simply not true ("Fallout from pit bull decision," May 2). Just as a human child needs love and discipline to grow up to be a contributing member of society and not a menace, a pit bull puppy needs love and discipline to become an obedient, loyal and affectionate member of its family. Examine the early childhoods of people convicted of crime and you will almost certainly find episodes of abuse and neglect.

Former Major League Soccer midfielder Santino Quaranta has spoken before about a story that is both disturbing and uplifting — signing with MLS when he was 16, battling abuse of cocaine and painkillers, becoming sober, returning to the game and playing for his country. But Quaranta said Tuesday's speech to about 650 Baltimore-area high school athletes was special. It was the largest crowd to hear his deeply personal message. It was delivered near where he was raised (he attended Archbishop Curley)

So often, we drop our kids off at their lacrosse practices and games with no questions asked. A neighbor picks them up a couple of hours later and, when they get home, we assume they've been having fun and improving their game. Most of the time they have, but parents should not be blind to the infrequent possibility of injury, emotional stress or even sexual abuse that can occur in the youth sports environment. Odds are it won't be your kid, but the reality is that it will be somebody's at some time.

I have been watching the congressional hearings on the waste, fraud and abuses of public servants in the General Service Administration who spent more than $800,000 on a "conference" trip to Las Vegas. And according to the Inspector General's Office that was just the tip of the iceberg. The really frustrating aspect of this is twofold. First, this occurred in 2010 and was discovered soon after. The exact time is difficult to ascertain from the hearings since there is so much double-talk, but the Inspector General began an investigation.

Pastor Leon W. Jones, who founded the Renewed Hope Christian Church on the 700 block of N. Paca St., was convicted Wednesday of sexually assaulting a teen-age girl, the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office announced. The abuse occurred during a two-year period from April 2000 through March of 2002, prosecutors said. The girl, now 27, was introduced to Jones by her mother, who participated in the abuse and was convicted of five counts of child sexual abuse. A jury convicted Jones of eight counts of second-degree sexual offense, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors dropped charges Monday against Ryan Marcus Coleman, a former City College administrator accused of sexually abusing a 17-year-old student, saying they lacked sufficient evidence to take the case to trial. Coleman, 36, was charged in July 2010 with sex abuse of a minor, fourth-degree sex offense and second-degree assault. Assistant state's attorneys Michael Leedy and Katherine Smeltzer dropped all of those charges in Baltimore Circuit Court just before jury selection and a trial were slated to begin.

A 25-year-old Royal Caribbean employee has been indicted on charges of sex abuse of a minor after authorities say he had sex with a teenage girl aboard a cruise ship out of Baltimore, records show. According to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Fabian Palmer befriended the 14-year-old girl and her family during a cruise that departed from Maryland on Dec. 17. On Dec. 23, the victim told authorities, she was alone on the deck of the ship and encountered Palmer, who took her into a men's locker room and began having sex with her. He stopped when another employee knocked on the door, she said.  Video cameras captured "the likeness of Palmer," the victim, and the second employee outside the locker room around the same time that the victim said the abuse occurred, records show. Palmer was interviewed by Royal Caribbean employees and admitted having sex with the girl, but said he believed she was 16, records show.

A former Fallston psychologist, who sexually abused three girls under his care, will serve 18 months in jail, rather than the six years he agreed to as part of a plea agreement reached with prosecutors in August. Despite calling it a "sad and distressing case," retired Harford County Circuit Judge Maurice Baldwin Monday sharply modified the sentence David Wayne Schrumpf, 56, of the 4400 block of Prospect Road in Whiteford, from what Schrumpf had agreed to when he entered an Alford plea, which is not an admission of guilt, but rather an acknowledgment that the state had enough evidence to get a conviction.

The General Assembly has approved a bill imposing steep penalties on homeowners who are caught getting homestead property tax credits they're not entitled to receive. Fines would equal 25 percent of any undeserved break - a considerable punishment given that the credit currently cuts the tax bills of many Baltimore homeowners by thousands of dollars per year. "Hopefully this significant penalty will deter people from abusing this tax credit in the future," the bill's sponsor, Del. Samuel I. “Sandy” Rosenberg, said Saturday evening after final passage by the House of Delegates.