{ title: 'Press-Republican. (Plattsburgh, N.Y.) 1966-current, September 26, 1995, Page 1, Image 1', download_links: [ { link: 'http://www.loc.gov/rss/ndnp/ndnp.xml', label: 'application/rss+xml', meta: 'News about NYS Historic Newspapers - RSS Feed', }, { link: '/lccn/sn88074101/1995-09-26/ed-1/seq-1/png/', label: 'image/png', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn88074101/1995-09-26/ed-1/seq-1.pdf', label: 'application/pdf', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn88074101/1995-09-26/ed-1/seq-1/ocr.xml', label: 'application/xml', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn88074101/1995-09-26/ed-1/seq-1/ocr.txt', label: 'text/plain', meta: '', }, ] }
Image provided by: Northern NY Library Network
T/je Hometown Newspaper of Clinton, Essex, Franklin Counties Vol. 103 -No. 36 > Copyright 1995, Prees-Republican Pittsburgh, NY 12901, Tuesday, September 26, 1995 Fight rages as talks near By DONALD M.ROTHBERG AP Diplomatic Writer NEW YORK (AP) - Secretary of State Warren Christopher ap- pealed Monday to warring fac- tions in Bosnia to \end the fighting and end it for good\ and move on to negotiations over the future of the former Yugoslav republic. But he received no promises of a cease-fire in the 3 Vi -year-old war. After meeting here with the foreign ministers of Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, Christopher said he told them the United States would oppose a settlement that does not guarantee the ter- ritorial integrity of Bosnia. He said that would include any agreement giving Bosnian Serbs the right to secede and join Ser- bia. The meeting was arranged as peace talks again teetered on the verge of collapse. Only last- minute U.S. intervention con- vinced President Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia to rescind his decision to boycott talks scheduled here Tuesday. Meanwhile, allied Bosnian and Croatian forces squeezed a key strip of Serb-held land Monday, a sign that major new fighting could be brewing. A principal concern of the Bosnian government is that any agreement would call for a week central government unable to hold the country together against the desires of Bosnian Serbs to eventually break away and unite with Serbia. In six hours of talks in Sara- jevo between Bosnian officials and U.S. negotiators Roberts B. Owen- and Christopher Hill, the two sides agreed to proposals aimed at strengthening Bosnia's future government. According to a copy obtained by The/Associated Press, Bosnia's central government would consist of a popularly elected .parliament, which would be set iip so that two-thirds of its members come from the Muslim-Croat federation and the other third from Serb-held ter- ritory. A policy-making president AP Photo A Muslim woman weeps after being displaced from her home. would be elected by all. \We think that this all is af- firmation of the statehood of Bosnia-Herzegovina,\ Izetbegovic said after the Sarajevo talks and a phone call from Christopher. Secret of the survivors Famous quints allege abuse By DAVID CHARY Associated Press Writer TORONTO (AP) - The once-enchanting saga of the Dionne quintuplets already had been tarnished by exploitation. Now the three surviving sisters, world-famous as toddlers in the 1930s, say they were sexually abused by their father. The usually reclusive sisters — Annette, Cecile and Yvonne, now 61 — made the allegation publicly for the first time dur- ing a rare interview over the weekend on Radio-Canada's French-language television channel. \We've come to a point where we had to liberate ourselves from the past and turn the page,\ Annette Dionne said Saturday when asked why she waited so long to break the silence. The sisters became interna- tional celebrities after their birth — two months prematurely — in the northern Ontario hamlet of Corbeil on May 28,1934. Weighing less then two pounds each, they were the first known surviving quintuplets. Their seemingly miraculous survival, and their family's im- poverished background, in- spired three Hollywood movies and made them the sensation of Depression-era Canada. The identical quintuplets were taken away from their parents and made wards of the Ontario government, which put them on display for as many as 6,000 people a day who came to watch them play behind a one-way screen. Their father, Oliva, fought a nine-year battle to regain custody of his daughters. They were returned to their parents in 1943, and the abuse began soon after, the sisters said. Annette said their father, who died in 1979, would take the girls out one at a time in the family car and sexually assault them. As a teen-ager, Annette said she tried to discuss the abuse with a Roman Catholic priest at their private school. The advice she received was \to continue to love our parents and to wear a thick coat when we went for car rides,\ she said. The sisters said the abuse continued for several years. They never told their mother about the assaults \so as not to aggravate the situation,\ said Cecile Dionne. Oliva Dionne and his wife, Elzire, already had five children — three boys and two girls — when the/quints were born. One of those siblings, Therese Callahan, on Monday challenged her sisters' claims about sexual abuse. \We assert that we had good parents, and that to our knowl- edge our father was certainly not a sexual abuser,\ Mrs. Callahan told the North Bay Nugget, an Ontario daily. She said she was speaking on behalf of the other older children in The three surviving Dionne quintuplets, Annette, Yvonne and right), say they were sexually abused by their father for years. 1994 AP Fie Photo Cecile (left to the family. However, Pierre Berton, who wrote a book about the quin- tuplets, said he had been told years ago by the husband of one of the quints about the sexual abuse. Berton said the sisters wouldn't talk about it. Two of the quintuplets — Emilie and Marie — died as adults. The three survivors live in suburbs of Montreal, rarely attracting attention since they co-authored an often bitter book in 1965 about their childhood, called \We Were Five.\ During the TV interview, in- tended partly to promote a new biography of the quintuplets, the sisters spoke mostly about their ordeal as Canada's No. 1 tourist attraction during the late 1930s. Authorities placed them in a virtual theme park called Quintland, across from the parents' home in Corbeil. An- nette Dionne blamed both On- tario officials and the Roman Catholic Church for allowing them to be treated like \a com- mercial product.\ Suit bypasses libel, challenges ABC's newsgathering methods ByPAULNOWELL AP Business Writer GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) - In 1992, ABC's \PrimeTime Live\ ran a hidden- camera expose accusing Food Lion, then the country's fastest-growing super- market chain and Wall Street's darling, of such unsanitary practices as selling rat- gnawed cheese and spoiled chicken that had been washed in bleach. Food Lion denied the allegations and sued. But not for libel. The company went after ABO farfraud, claiming among other things that, the network staged some of the scenes in, the 24-minute report and used deception tb obtain jobs at Food Lion for the two ABC producers who went undercover. The $30 million lawsuit threatens one of TVs most successful newsgathering techniques. Such lawsuits \are designed to tap into what they hope is the public's distrust for hidden cameras and microphones ... even if it's being used to inform, the public about some bad stuff,\ said Sandra Baron of the Libel Defense Resource Center in New York. A loss for ABC \would have a chilling effect on surreptitious newsgathering, in- cluding the use of hidden cameras and other operations,\ said law professor Rod Smolla, director of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law at the College of William & Mary. Suggested Price: 50 c 24 Pages Missing child Body of girl found; man faces charge KINGSTON, N.Y. (AP) r- A district attorney promised Mon- day to seek the death penalty for a man accused of killing a 7- year-old girl he allegedly snatch- ed from in front of her home. Larry Whitehurst, a 25-year- old unemployed social worker, was arraigned on a charge of sec- ond-degree murder in connection with the slaying of Rickel Knox. Rickel disappeared while rollerblading in front of her Kingston home Thursday. Her babysitter had gone inside the house for a few minutes, and when he returned, the girl was gone. After being arrested late Saturday night on kid- napping charges, Whitehurst 1 e d p o 1 i c e Monday to a wooded area outside of Kingston where they found the girl's body at about 4:30 a.m., police said. Ulster County District At- torney Michael Kavanagh said if Whitehurst is convicted he will seek the death penalty against him. It could be the first death penalty case in New York since the state's new capital punish- ment law went into effect Sept. 1. It was thought a case in Clin- ton County involving a fatal stabbing at Clinton Correctional Facility could have been the first, but charges have not yet been fil- ed against an inmate serving a life sentence who allegedly killed another inmate. \We have the dubious distinc- tion of apparently prosecuting one of the first,\ Kavanagh said. \I'm sorry it came this way. What he did here, in my view, if proven, clearly qualifies and I fulty intend to seek it,\ the DA said!\ It is up to local district at- torneys to determine if they want to pursue the death penalty, under the New York law. Kavanagh has 120 days from the time of Whitehurst's indictment to upgrade the charge to first- degree murder and thus seek to prosecute the case as a capital crime. Kevin Doyle, director of the state agency set up to defend poor people charged with capital crimes, said Kavanagh has gone on the record more firmly than any other prosecutor in New York in planning to seek the death penalty. WEATHER Cloudy and cool with rain likely. High around 60. Chance of rain 60 percent. Light south wind. > /i 111 < i 11111' i , ''' / i / ; i i.'i iui \//.\ HI 'i 11 i //•' 1111111 111.,, INDEX Bridge.... ...20 Ann Landers. 8 Business News .12 Health 4.7 cS±::::::::::::::::::::- 9 : 2 8 *«**«• .....9-10 Editorial 4 Sports 14-18, Horoscope 8 Weather 12 N.Y. Lott.ry: 255. Tlek 4\: 7560. Pick 1,6; .3; 5,8,23,24, 30,32,36,40,42,44,48,53,59,61,69,70,72, 74, 75. N«w England: tick 3': 944. Pick 4': 2421. .. . .. ...•' • 'fiv !•'.'.•;..•..'..'•*'...'.•. Essex County spares Hubbard Hall; renovation preferred By AUSON CALKINS Staff Writer Ctntral Eii«x luMau ELIZABETHTOWN - His- toric Hubbard Hall apparently is safe from the wrecking ball. The fate of the county-owned but state-condemned 145-year- old building was decided during the Essex County Board of Supervisors Ways and Means Committee meeting Monday. Following a presentation from the Rediscover Elizabethtown Association, which opposes demolishing Hubbard Hall to make a 15-space parking- lot, Chesterfield Supervisor Gerald Morrow offered a resolution declaring the building surplus property and giving it back to the Town of Elizabethtown. \ThenTefcthetown decide what they want to do with it. What's the sense of tearing a beautiful building down and putting in parking spots?\ he said. Although no official action had been taken to raze the building, it was targeted as a potential parking lot once the new county courthouse complex is completed in December 1996. The Space Committee had recommended the board wait un- til the complex was done before making any final decision about Hubbard Hall's fate. The building was built in 1840 as the private residence of Con- gressman Orlando Kellogg, a close friend of Abraham Lincoln. In 1895, it was extensively remodeled by Kellogg's son, Judge Rowland Case Kellogg, in the then-popular Queen Anne style. Continutd Peqm 3 Hubbard Hall, which was going to be razed for a ing lot, will now be turned over to the Town of bethtowrt. fl park- Eli m 4 > •>,•••<» •&&SW.W, v^H^^A-T^i/-..,' :'•: -.V ' ' ... ..