The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 30

C2d THE PHfLADELPHIA INQUIRER Monday, December 27, 1993 Teaching parents parental skills 4 7 1 'l Metropolitan Area News in Brief i i i i 1. I Man found shot to death in Southwest Philadelphia .4 A man was found fatally shot in the chest inside a Southwest Philadel- phia home yesterday afternoon. Po- lice were still trying to notify the victim's family last night before they would release his identity. -s Police said the man was found in the second-floor hallway inside apartment on the 1600 block of South 58th Street at 3:48 p.m. Homicide detectives were notified of the body after another man went to the 19th District police station and reported seeing the body inside the home, police said.

When police arrived, they found the victim, described only as a black male in his 20s, with a gunshot wound to his chest. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Sgt. Paul Musi at the homicide division said police did not yet know whether the victim lived in the apartment. Man's body found in ashes teered for the program in the hope of winning custody of his daughter, who lived with her mother and spent every other weekend with her father before moving in with the Boyles.

The months of on-site instruction paid off: On Dec. 7, a Family Court judge awarded him primary custody of the girl, beginning Jan. 2. Kathy Sullivan, who directs the county's fester-care unit, said the Intensive Foster Parenting program speeded up the father-daughter reunion by several months. And there are other benefits, specialists say.

The foster parent becomes a bridge between the birth parent and the child-welfare system. Ideally, the two families will live in the same neighborhood and remain in contact. "It's very devastating for a child to have to be placed with strangers. We're trying to reduce that trauma by reuniting them as soon as possible with their family," Sullivan said. To prepare for the program, foster families undergo 16 hours of training in communication and role-modeling.

They meet monthly with caseworkers to assess the birth parents' progress and are paid $24.50 a day, twice the normal rate. Only four foster families are in the program this year, but four more are planned for next year, Sullivan said. Krizovensky is the first parent in the program scheduled to be reunited with his child. Krizovensky, who lives in Norris-town and counts tinkering with cars and computers among his hobbies, said he wanted his daughter in a good foster home while he and her mother fought for custody. "I didn't know what to expect, but I knew it would be for the best," he said on a recent evening at the Boyles' home, where he had come for dinner with his daughter and the Boyles' two sons, Jeff, 9 and Scott, 7.

Krizovensky said he had been fighting for custody of his daughter since he and her mother split up in early 1991. Because the girl's mother was ill, Krizovensky said, he took care of his daughter when she was a baby, even rushing home from work at lunch time to feed her. "She loved me," he said. When caseworkers suggested that he would be a good candidate for the Intensive Foster Parenting program, he said he felt "honored." After getting to know the Boyles, he said, "I can totally trust them." A couple of by-the-book parents who have cared for six foster children, the Boyles said they had signed up for the program because they felt children should not be cut off from their parents, who generally have little contact with the foster family. opens up the relationship more," said Tom Boyle.

Krizovensky's daughter adjusted easily to living with their family, the MENTORING from C1 tween the two. It challenges the notion that foster parents must "rescue" children from birth parents who abuse or neglect them. "It's mostly a shift from saying that we have to step in and save children from a family to saying that when birth parents are given the opportunity to learn to parent youngsters, they respond," said Paul DiLorenzo, director of Pennsylvania's Foster Care Reform Initiative, which is charged with overhauling the state's foster-care system. Developing mentoring programs is a major component of the initiative, DiLorenzo said. The state Department of Public Welfare has already implemented a pilot program similar to Montgomery County's in Philadelphia's Germantown section, which will serve as a model for the state.

The Intensive Foster Parenting program, which began last year, was developed as specialists grappled with new ways to stem the growing tide of abused and neglected children flowing into the foster-care system. Nationally, 525,000 children are in foster care, and the numbers are growing, according to American Foster Care Resources. In Pennsylvania, slightly more than 14,000 children lived with foster families and 3,000 were in group homes and institutions as of May, the latest statistics available. Krizovensky said he had volun Mothers say house was full of God's love; others see abuse 4' Gerry Krizovensky (right) has been his daughter's foster parents, Tom Boyles said. Working with the caseworker, they established eating and sleeping schedules for the girl, who used to stay up past midnight and dawdle over dinner for two hours.

They also helped Krizovensky act more like a father and less like a playmate with his daughter. Krizovensky said he had been unaware of his behavior. The Philadelphia Inquirer MICHAEL S. WIRTZ 31, who goes by Olafemi, and years, taken away by authorities. ter, Rhoda, 24, and the six other women who make up the core membership gathered with seven children and locked themselves in the building for a kind of retreat they called "holy consecration." They put up a sign saying, "The ark's door is locked." Weeks passed.

The women prayed, studied and sang hymns. Outside, "people went crazy," Sooty-face said. Members of the women's families came to check on them and were upset when they were not allowed in. Rumors spread that there was no heat, that the children were being beaten, that the women had made a suicide pact. The academy had largely switched, on God's orders, from using gas and electricity to lanterns and the woodstoves.

But it was comfortable inside, and the talk of beatings and suicide was ludicrous, Sooty-face said. Meanwhile, authorities had been notified. On Oct. 18, Scully, the public safety director, showed up with a county youth services agent to inspect the building. Afterward, Scully seemed satisfied, Sooty-face said, but the youth agent didn't.

The next day, the group was ordered to attend a court hearing. God told them to stay put. rrmm I i 5 For The Inquirer ROGER TUNIS learning parenting by observing and Shirley Boyle, and their sons. "It's really great to have people observing and coming back and telling me what's going on," he said. Though he faces the precarious task of juggling a job with child care, he said he was not nervous about being a single father.

"I'm no different from most parents," he said. "We do the best we can." Then, said Scully, 45, who heads a police force of 12 officers, "a caseworker came out and they said they had a court order and they wanted us to go in and storm the place." "I wouldn't do it," he said. "I wasn't going to give the people a show. I said, don't work for the "I've got to say, in all honesty, the children were not abused," he said. "They were well clothed and they were fed.

They were probably better clothed and better taken care of than a lot of kids." He said he told the caseworker, "You tell the judge to come out here. I'm not going to be the bad guy. "I wasn't going to let it happen," he said. But shortly thereafter, it did. On Oct.

21, the sheriff's deputies broke down the door. "We were kneeling down on the floor, praying," Sooty-face said. "They came in with guns drawn and bulletproof vests. They proceeded to handcuff about five of us. Then they proceeded to round up the children." LaShaun Martin, 30, who said God gave her the name Haitus, said her 7-month-old son, the youngest of three seized from her, had just been breast-fed when the men took him.

"It was sort of like a tug of war," she said. "They kind of snatched the child out of my arms." Sheila Mandley, 31, who said her God-given name is Olafemi, had her children, Obadele, 7, and Israel, 5, taken. And Alexia Kelley, 34, had her children, Hoshea, 6, and Joshua, 1, taken. Kelley said it was as if she had been raped: "You really feel violated stripped of something. They stripped me of my God-given children that had come from my womb." Said Sooty-face: "We were very upset.

We told the men, 'God is not pleased with and He was going to take care of it." Eventually, after the children were gone, those handcuffed were freed and the deputies left. Since then, the women have attended several court hearings, but have not gotten the children back. Some youngsters have been given to their fathers, and some may wind up in foster care, Sooty-face said officials have told her. Meanwhile, the women continue to live at the academy to support each other and to await directions from God. "We have to wait and see what the instructions will be," Sooty-face said.

"But we're going to higher grounds." They are also confident that they will prevail in the end. "We are going to get our children back," she said. The reason is simple: "God said so." and they sang, using music lingo for talent scouts. "But their music is far from up to par." The rappers also sang "Crossfire," the tale of children caught in drug-dealers crossfire, composed for the exhibit of slain youths' portraits. "Too many kids dyin in the crossfire.

I pray for the day when the gunplay retires," Cos and Roe rapped while D.J. Stan provided the recorded drumbeat. Though yesterday's fans were few, Matlock-Hinkle said she hopes the group will have an encore during the upcoming exhibit of the work of Horace Pippin, a self-taught African American artist who painted scenes of his life in rural Pennsylvania. As for the rappers who return today to their day jobs at a luncheonette and the postal service the turnout was fine. "This was fun," said Gos.

1st 1-' ill IS 'A of burned N. Phila. house A man's body was found inside a vacant North Philadelphia rowhouse i yesterday, a day after firefighters iJ had extinguished an arson fire there, fire officials said. The man's body was found in the 4 charred debris by neighbors who en- tered the vacant home in the 1700 block of Lippincott Street after the Saturday fire was extinguished. They told firefighters, who returned to the home around 5 p.m.

yesterday and found the body on the floor. The fire broke out early Saturday and was ex- tinguished by 3 a.m. The fire marshal ruled arson as the cause. Last night, the fire marshal, fire- fighters and a representative of the Medical Examiner's Office were at the scene trying to determine how long the body had been inside the home and the cause of death. Fire officials said the man's identity remained unknown.

61-year-old man killed in car crash in Northeast A 61-year-old Huntingdon Valley man was killed last night when he lost control of his vehicle and struck a metal pole on Roosevelt police said. Thomas Kelly was driving north-'', bound in a 1992 Ford Explorer when he lost control of the vehicle at the intersection of Roosevelt Boulevard and Old York Road, Accident Investigation Division officials said. They said Kelly's vehicle struck the medi- an on the boulevard and hit a steel sign post about 7:35 p.m. Kelly was rushed to Albert Ein- stein Medical Center, where he was( 11 pronounced dead at 8:10 p.m., AID officials said. Investigators said that it was unclear why Kelly lost control of the vehicle and that an autopsy would be performed.

City, PHA get $13.3 million to assist homeless families The City 61 Philadelphia and the' Philadelphia Housing Authority, have received' $13.3 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Ur- ban Development -to-Jielp homeless families. The city's Office of Services to the -Homeless and Adults will receive $7.6 million to provide rental housing and support services to 371 home- less, disabled people. The Philadelphia Housing Authority will receive three Section 8 grants, worth a total of $5.7 million, to reha-. bilitate units to house and provide services to 119 homeless people.

Narberth woman killed in Havertown car crash Judith Clofine, 49, of Narberth, was killed Saturday night when she lost control of her automobile about 10:30 p.m. while driving west on Wynnewood Road at Olcott Avenue in Havertown. The car traveled across the lawn of the Walnut Hill Condominiums, -where it struck a tree, went down ari embankment and hit a fence. Clofine was not wearing a seat belt and was partially thrown from the passenger side of the car, police said. She was pronounced dead at the scene about 10:47 p.m.

Temple seeks older adults for its respite program Temple University is looking for adults 55 and older to provide com- panionship to mentally retarded mi- nority children and their families. Partners in Time, a new program funded by the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, will train older adults to be respite workers, supervising chil- dren in the program while the par- 1 ents take a break. Respite workers are paid $5 an hour for a minimum of two hours and an average of six to eight hours a week.

They play games with the help with homework and teach skills. For more information, call Adam Brunner at Temple's Center for In-tergenerational Learning, 204-3196, or Lisa Bratton at Temple's Institute on Disabilities, 204-5398. Police chief to address latest class of recruits City Police Commissioner Richard Neal will address the new class of recruits today at 9 a.m. at the Police Academy, 8501 State Rd. The 80 police recruits will receive instruction in physical training, laws of arrest, search and seizure procedures and police directives, among other subjects.

They will graduate from the Police Academy in May. MOTHERS from C1 burning stove and the light from candles and lanterns; where there is no phone; where herbs and faith healing are the only medical care, and where some of the furniture is from the old days when Sooty-face lived in a big house outside Buffalo, nearly 30 years ago. It is also a place of principle, where the wearing of pants is not condoned the members of the group are all women where clothing has fringes, heads are covered, and sleeves are pointed, according to Biblical traditions. And it is a place where the lessons of the Bible exist side-by-side with those of the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the writings of Sooty-face and revelations from the Director, God. The academy is the product of the spiritual quest of the 59-year-old educator who was born Rosa Williams, whose dialogue with the Creator began when she was a young woman growing up in Clairton.

That dialogue continued during the decades when she lived away from Clairton, and has now brought her home with an unconventional canon and an odd, heaven-sent name. Sooty-face means "the beautiful one," she says. Her academy is part school, part church, part commune, where the women live, eat, study and pray together, listening for guidance from God and possessed of an alarmed vision of the state of the world. "Prepare!" say the signs in the front window. "Ameriklan Injustice Can't Stand God-given Blueprint Now in Our Hands Repent and Prepare." An academy news release says the group faces a conspiracy of government, business, law enforcement and Ku Klux Klan types bent on thwarting the school and the advancement of African Americans.

The Seed of Joseph is not a cult, its members say, and not satanic as neighbors are said to have feared. There seems to be more fear inside, where, members believe, the building is bugged and their every move is monitored by the authorities. "I think she's practicing a form of religion," Scully, the public safety director, said of Sooty-face. Besides, "last time I looked I don't believe there's anything in the crime code that says a cult is illegal." Whatever the case, the conflict has led to a fundamental clash involving parental rights, child welfare and the. practice of religion.

A court hearing on the case scheduled for last week was postponed until Jan. 5. "The parents want the children back ion condition," Sooty-face said in a phone interview Wednesday after the postponement. "No strings attached. That means they're not going to share it by Haitus, Sheila Mandley (center), ranging in age from 7 months to 7 rope.

She returned to the United States several years later and settled in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area of New York, working as a reading diagnostician. She adopted two children, was divorced, and one day heard in a dream that God wished her to quit her job. She dreamed she saw a new job description that instructed her "to work at My pleasure as assistant to the Director." In 1976, she quit her job with the Buffalo Board of Education. And she began writing a book eventually she would write nine identifying African Americans as among the Seed of Joseph who the Book of Mormon says came to America from Jerusalem in 600 B.C. In 1980, she was instructed by God to return to Clairton and establish a school, she said.

She rented the storefront and in 1981 opened the academy. She taught about race, religion, identity, freedom, bondage and unity, as well as traditional academic skills. She taught children and adults. In 1984, she moved into the building. Meanwhile, she had also developed a small group of followers who held Sabbath services in the academy on Saturdays.

On Sept. 26, Sooty-face, her daugh LaShaun Martin (left), 30, who goes Alexia Kelley, 34, saw their children, motherhood with any agency." While she and the other women have awaited the court decision, they have also been listening for the higher authority, and waiting for Him to say what comes next. One afternoon recently, as the light from the day faded in the storefront windows and candles and lanterns lit up the darkness, Sooty-face paused in her quiet routine to tell her story and explain her beliefs. Rosa Williams was born on Jan. 27, 1937, the daughter of a steelworker in this old steel mill town of 10,000 on the Monongahela River just south of Pittsburgh.

A spiritual person, she grew disenchanted with mainstream religions in her 20s and began to attend meetings of the Church of Jesus Christ, a denomination that uses the Book of Mormon and the Bible. She prayed and began, she said, to have personal revelations from God. Eventually, after one in which she heard the singing of angels, she joined the church and was baptized in the Monongahela River. Meanwhile, she had gone to college, attended graduate school and become the first African American grade school teacher in Clairton. She married in 1960 and moved to Eu J.

Rap group inspires creativity in artists i rim "t.V -f, I'- RAP from C1 ciative audience. "This is better than taking them to the movies," Jones declared as her niece and nephew, sprawled on the carpeted floor, scribbled and sketched to the beat. Fittingly, the Green Paper Company (the wishful name refers to the greenbacks they hope to earn) chose to perform in a gallery filled with a temporary exhibit of abstract paintings by Edna Andrade, one of the academy's illustrious graduates. Amid 20-fooMong canvases with titles such as Sprjce Cage, Cloud Plan, Turbo and Rotation, the rappers, who grew up together, sang about about a "damn Datsun" that constantly broke down on Cos, about all-night composing sessions and about trying to break into the music business. "Rap groups come like a dime a dozen.

Their cousin is probably A The Philadelphia Inquirer ELIZABETH MALBY Roe of the rap group The Green Paper Company, performs to inspire the creative process for young artists Michael (left) and'Alicia (right) Alamia. Art teacher Maryann Matlock-Hinkle draws with ihem..