T A B L E++T A L K

Parents of hyperactive and ADD children discuss their offspring's ailments and medications in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Thinking of you
By Rose Stoll
On Mother's Day, I can't escape the memories I hide from the rest of the year
(05/06/98)

Missing Children
By Rob Spillman
Wanting a Child: When the desire to be parents comes easier than the children
(05/05/98)

Drama Queen Candidates
The best of the worst of what you did
(05/04/98)

Sex and the 7-year-old boy
By Mona Gable
How to deal with it when your 7-year-old begins making the moves on you
(05/01/98)

The foundling
By Sallie Tisdale
Adoption -- and giving birth -- taught me that biology has nothing to do with being a parent
(04/30/98)

ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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Over the last two weeks, my family has been sucked willy-nilly into the jaws of the American media scandal machine, into the world of Oprah and Montel, of Dateline and "20/20," of CBS, ABC, Fox, CNN, People, "Inside Edition," the Globe, the Examiner, the Enquirer, the Star and -- most unnerving of all -- into the sights of Hollywood movie producers dangling dollars in front of our eyes. The speed with which all this has happened has taken our collective breath away. We are not celebrities. Monica Lewinsky doesn't live at this address, though we're deeply sympathetic all of a sudden to her plight.

The story as it broke around the country last month was no surprise to us. In 1979, after their divorce in Massachusetts, my sister Barbara's ex-husband, Stephen H. Fagan, had abducted their two small daughters and vanished without a trace. We had known since September that Fagan had finally been located in Florida and was about to be arrested on kidnapping charges. Over the months, we've had plenty of time to compose ourselves, to think and to wait. My sister, in particular, has become an expert at waiting -- it's been 18 years since she last saw her children.

She did not watch them on television last week when they gave a press conference in Boston or the next day when they appeared with Katie Couric on the "Today" show, declaring their unswerving love for the father who raised them. She knows what they said, and she is not surprised. Rachael, now 23, and Wendy (renamed "Lisa" by her father), 21, have been raised on the lie that their mother was dead. They have known no other parent but Fagan since they were 2 and 5 years old. They know nothing of Barbara's story or the years of suffering and recuperation that followed their abduction. They do not know how strong she is, how honest she is or how hard she has worked to rebuild her life.

Certainly, they could not have learned about this from the media. Instead of talking to us about Barbara's plight or Fagan's innumerable crimes, reporters have been grilling us nonstop about my sister's character and fitness as a mother. Another deficient mother is squarely in their sights, it seems.

Since my sister has not spoken to reporters so far, apart from reading a short statement at a press conference on April 21, "her side" of the story needs some filling in. After their divorce, Fagan had accused her of a number of parental crimes -- among them alcoholism, drug abuse and neglect -- in an effort to win custody of the girls. His allegations were investigated and dismissed by both the courts and the Massachusetts state welfare authorities, but you have to dig deep in the back pages of most newspapers to find this out. In 1971, Barbara had been diagnosed with narcolepsy, a sleep disorder that can cause its victims to pass out suddenly and at other times leaves them drowsy and incoherent. Her condition was well known to Fagan and to us. Nor did Fagan ever complain about her fitness as a mother until she left the Boston area after the divorce and moved with the children to North Adams, Mass., hoping to get as far away from Fagan as possible while keeping the girls within state borders, as she was required to do while permanent custody was being decided.

Only then, when he felt that she had thwarted him, did Fagan claim that Barbara was an "unfit mother" and a danger to the children. His attorneys gathered testimony from three women who were Barbara's neighbors in the public housing project where she lived (largely because Fagan was withholding child support). One of them claimed that Rachael and Wendy had been left outside for hours at a time, "wandering the streets, naked and hungry." Another maintained that the girls were seen eating "raw meat out of a toaster" while Barbara lay passed out drunk in her living room. Because of the seriousness of the charges, a guardian ad litem was appointed. He and the Department of Social Services both recommended that the girls remain with their mother, but a final decision was still pending on Oct. 25, 1979, when Fagan arrived for a routine visitation, took the girls and never returned.

N E X T+P A G E: Years of searching, then surrender

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PHOTOGRAPH: AP/WIDE WORLD