Ordeal

An article in Saturday's editions of The Sun about a rape allegation at Mount Hebron High School in Howard County described a man speaking on behalf of the girl as her stepfather. In fact, he has adopted her. The story was as horrible as a principal - especially one at a competitive suburban high school - is ever likely to hear. A 15-year-old girl said she was led into the boys' bathroom of Mount Hebron High School in Ellicott City by three teen-age boys and sexually assaulted in the middle of the school day April 15. "She was shaken," recalled Principal Veronica Bohn.

SIX WEEKS after darkness descended, Patti Owens rose from her bed and gazed into the Kernan Hospital bathroom mirror, only dimly aware of her post-surgical Mohawk haircut and the teeth all gone from her mouth. She thought, for the first time, that something looked different about the right side of her face, which had been crushed. "Eddie," she called into the next room to her husband, "did something happen to my eye?" Gently as he could, Eddie told her, "Honey, you don't have an eye." She looked into the mirror again, trying to understand the thing that Eddie was saying, and trying to absorb what her remaining vision was unable to translate to her brain.

SARASOTA, Fla. - For two families in Florida, the pain of an adoption gone wrong is plainly visible on their faces. Carmen and Darlene Scoma talk sadly about the child from the Marshall Islands they thought they had legally claimed in Hawaii in 1997. For 4 1/2 years, Atina Erakdrik had been their daughter, until they lost her early last year after a bitter court battle. "She's our daughter. She will always be our daughter," says Darlene Scoma, her voice quavering. In Fruitland Park, 130 miles north, Atina's birth mother, Molly Juna, 31, who traveled more than 7,000 miles to reclaim her child, talks about the pain she endured during the protracted court fight.

RAMAT GAN, Israel - It was the little girl that made him stop. She was standing next to three adults on a street near the airport at dusk. Eliyahu Gurel, usually careful about who he picks up in his taxi, swung to the curb and offered a ride to what the Israeli thought was a Palestinian family. The 4-year-old girl was apparently a decoy. When the cab reached Jerusalem, a backseat passenger put a knife to Gurel's throat, beginning a four-day odyssey that ended late Tuesday when Israeli commandos stormed a hiding place in the West Bank and rescued the 61-year-old taxi driver.

ROSE HILL, Kan. - Gracia Burnham picks up her daughter's backpack and slings it across her shoulder. The memory hits with such force that it knocks her back - back a year, back to the jungle. For a moment, she is a hostage again, marching at gunpoint up a mountain - filthy, famished, hauling uncooked rice in an old green pack. The flashback dissolves. She is again in Kansas and continues walking toward her minivan. Burnham does not let the memories haunt her. But she cannot erase that year of terror.

FAIRFAX CITY, Va. - The lawyer steps up to a bouquet of microphones, runs his fingers through his hair, surveys the cameras and looks exasperated. A few weeks earlier, he had taken on a nationally renowned case in which his client was accused not only of capital murder in Fairfax County, but was a suspected sniper or shooting conspirator in at least 21 shootings, 14 of them fatal. "All we are asking for is a fair shake," Michael S. Arif was saying after failing last month to persuade a judge to allow him to hire a psychiatrist and experts to help with the defense of his client, Lee Boyd Malvo.

A Baltimore County mother who was raped in May made a rare personal and emotional plea yesterday for the public's help in finding the man who "continued to beat me as I begged for my life." "Then, he strangled me until I lost consciousness," said the Pikesville woman, who was seven months' pregnant with her sixth child at the time. The baby survived. "This attack caused me to sustain permanent injuries," the victim said. "My pregnancy was complicated following the attack and my unborn child was also injured.

MOSCOW - After being held hostage for 57 hours by Chechen guerrillas in a Moscow theater and gassed by Russian special forces, Yakhar Neserkoyeva faced one more crisis. She was arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist. Investigators said the groggy 42-year-old economist gave "inadequate" answers during an interrogation in a Moscow hospital in the hours after the crisis, which began Oct. 23 and ended Oct. 26. But the basic reason for her detention may be simpler: Neserkoyeva is Chechen.

MOSCOW - On Oct. 23, as always, the second act of the Broadway-style musical Nord-Ost opened with a line of pilots in Soviet-era uniforms tap-dancing across the stage. As always, Yekaterina Moreva was in the orchestra pit. She touched her bow to the strings of her violin, ready to play a military march for the hero, who was about to stride from the metal hangar doors that served as a curtain. But instead of music, a tragedy began. Moreva heard gunfire before she could play a note. Instead of the play's hero, a man appeared on stage wearing camouflage and a black ski mask and carrying a Kalashnikov.

MOSCOW - Russia's elite counter-terrorism police ended a three-day siege by Chechen guerrillas in the heart of Moscow yesterday, shooting their way into a cultural center after pumping in a disabling gas, nearly wiping out the heavily armed guerrillas and freeing about 700 hostages. The attack claimed the lives of at least 90 hostages - in some cases under circumstances yet to be explained - and 50 guerrillas, including 18 women, the government said. Hundreds of injured former hostages swamped the city's hospital wards and emergency rooms.