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Pastimes : 100 Acre Wood -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (2924)	11/7/2002 5:44:05 PM
From: Lost1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3287

from the "Ozzie and Harriet" files: Dad who shackled truant girl said she left him little choice ASSOCIATED PRESS Thursday, November 7, 2002 SANTA FE -- When nothing else worked to get his daughter to go to school -- and a judge said he had to make sure she attended -- a father decided to shackle the preteen. "I had no other choice," 33-year-old Eugene Robbins said. "It takes both our incomes to support our house, so all I can really do is take her to the school and see her inside. I can't stay with her all day." Robbins, who was charged with injury to a child and child endangerment, said school officials told him last month that his 12-year-old daughter had only attended 10 days of school since August at Santa Fe Junior High School. A judge ordered the girl's parents to make sure she attended school or face criminal charges. Robbins said he then began chaining the girl's ankles and taking her to school. "I didn't know what else to do," he said. "I mean, I never chained her and just left her at home or anything like that." Robbins was arrested and charged last week after a woman saw the shackles on the girl at a gas station. The woman said Robbins threatened to break the girl's legs if she overfilled a gas container. Robbins said it was an idle threat. "I say stuff like that all the time," he said. "Everyone does. She got smart with her momma last week, and I told her to watch her mouth or I was going to pull her bottom lip up over her head. Doesn't mean I was going to do it. I never even hit my kids or spank them." Trudy Davis, executive director of the Child Advocacy Center, said she is sympathetic to parents who are having a hard time ensuring their children go to school. "But there is a level where you go too far," she said. "He went too far." Robbins faces two to 10 years in prison if convicted. "I'm going to go to jail over this," he said after bonding out of jail. "The least she could do is go to school." Santa Fe is about 35 miles southeast of Houston. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------