Your article, “Students Claim Abuse, Brainwashing in School” (March 17), on an incident that may besmirch the heretofore commendable record of the Bethesda Home for Girls notes that the institution in question is “affiliated with a network of Christian homes for which a Texas evangelist named Lester Roloff serves as advisor.” According to the writer: “Mr. Roloff’s three juvenile homes in Texas were closed in 1979 after a six-year court battle when he refused to submit the homes to state licensing laws.”
Your article, “Students Claim Abuse, Brainwashing in School” (March 17), on an incident that may besmirch the heretofore commendable record of the Bethesda Home for Girls notes that the institution in question is “affiliated with a network of Christian homes for which a Texas evangelist named Lester Roloff serves as advisor.” According to the writer: “Mr. Roloff’s three juvenile homes in Texas were closed in 1979 after a six-year court battle when he refused to submit the homes to state licensing laws.”
While I realize that a news story is not intended to be a scholarly treatise covering every detail of an issue, I think the culminating event of this “battle” should have been mentioned. In District Court in Austin last April, Roloff and his church’s homes were vindicated after being scrutinized to an extent seldom experienced by public officials and agencies. As the presiding judge commented: “If all the homes were run like Lester Roloff’s homes, there would be no need for state rules and regulations.”
