The following reports originate from a variety of sources, including the Associated Press. We're always on the lookout for news of interest. Send us news and if we use it here we'll send you a `Piss on Pity' button. Use the eMail below.
Louise Sauvage, the young Australian wheelchair racer, has been chasing Jean Driscoll for five long years. She finally overtook her in April at the Boston Marathon.
Driscoll, winner of seven consecutive Boston marathons, was trying to become the only athlete ever to win eight. Going into the 23rd mile, Driscoll and Sauvage were neck and neck. Then Driscoll caught a tire in a trolley track and overturned her chair. Sauvage, who is strongest on the flat stretches, roared out of sight. Driscoll was helped on to her wheels and back into the race, finishing second nearly six minutes back. Candace Cable finished third, 25 seconds behind Driscoll. Rose Winand was fourth and DeAnna Sodoma (See May '97 MAINSTREAM cover) was fifth.
Sauvage, who beat Driscoll by one second earlier at the Los Angeles marathon, said she was sorry about Driscoll's spill. "Sure, I'm glad I won, but I wanted to beat Jean in a fair race. It was nice winning, but her accident took away from it."
Driscoll was stoic. "I know all about those tracks...I had decided to be aggressive, and that's why it happened. It was my fault," she said.
In the men's race, Franz Nietlispach, 39, of Switzerland, placed first, coming in seven minutes ahead. Phillipe Couprie of France was second and Eric Neitzel of San Diego was third.
In other sports news...
-- The Dallas Mavericks won top honors at the 49th Annual National Wheelchair Basketball Tournament held in Birmingham, Alabama in April. The Mavs, including several members of the 1996 U.S. Paralympic basketball squad, defeated the Golden State Warriors, who also included some Paralympians, by the score of 85 to 61 to win Division I. The Ann Arbor Thunderbirds beat the Pacific Spartans 63 to 50 to capture the Division II title.
-- For the first time in five years, Tony Volpentest lost a 100 meter sprint. Volptentest, who set the world record in this distance at last year's Paralympics, was beaten by Australian Neil Fuller at the Ultimate Challenge Track and Field Invitational in Chula Vista, California. The pace was well off the record. In all 12 world records were broken at the inaugural event and $130,000 in prize money was awarded to the 70 amputee athletes from 12 countries. Among the records: Shawn Brown broke his own world record in the discus with a mark of 54.20 meters. Andrea Scherney of Austria set a new mark of 10.20 meters in the women's shot put. Halagahu Lutoviko of New Caledonia set a men's shot put record of 14.97 meters.
-- Randy Snow, 10-time U.S. Open Wheelchair Tennis champion, was named the U.S. coach for the 1997 World Team Cup Championships to be held July 28-August 3 in Nottingham, England. The U.S. has dominated World Team competition for several years, but faces tougher competition now from such nations as France and Australia. Snow hopes to coach the U.S. tennis team in the 2000 Paralympics in Australia.
-- SkiTAM '97, the cable industry's second annual fundraising event for the U.S. Disabled Ski Team, raised more than 25 percent over the $100,000 raised a year earlier. The final tally was uncertain, pending final expenses.
-- Dawn Birley, a sophmore at Gallaudet University, is a varsity letter winner in volleyball, basketball and softball. But Birley is also one of the top middleweights in the world of martial arts sport of Tae Kwan Do. Birley, from Regina, Saskatchewan, was recently named Deaf World Sportswoman of the Year for her prowess in Tae Kwan Do.
The head of the powerful Catholic organization Opus Dei told an audience in Sicily that most disabled people were the offspring of "impure parents" who had sexual relations before they were married. According to the Times of London, Bishop Javier Echevarria said that "according to scientific research" 90 percent of people with disabilities had been born to parents who had "not entered into marriage in a pure state."
Opus Dei is supported by Pope John Paul, but is viewed by liberal Catholics as a powerful, even sinister right-wing organization. It figures.
Opus Dei officials said the Bish was misunderstood, that he really was referring only to AIDS and HIV-infected people. And, also, that the Bish's Italian isn't so hot. Yeah, right.
Radio City Music Hall is moving to improve access for people with disabilities following an Easter Sunday protest.
The protest by 20 activists was prompted by treatment received by actress Kitty Lunn, who bought tickets for "Lord of the Dance" in March. She was told she and her non-disabled husband would sit together, but, in fact, she was seated a row (and a railing) behind him.
Lunn met with Radio City officials, and toured the hall, recommending several specific accommodations for people with disabilities, including areas in the orchestra section that could accommodate wheelchairs. Radio City Music Hall now is working on the problem.
"I got a sense that they are genuinely interested in correcting the problem," Lunn told a reporter.
Lunn also was asked to help provide sensitivity training for Radio City employees.
Like they have done much of their lives, blind vendors are relying on other senses, and sometimes other people, to survive in the new world of federal regulations governing tobacco sales.
Many operate canteens in state and federal buildings across the country that sell cigarettes or other tobacco products. As of February 28, the Food and Drug Administration mandated that they, like all other stores that sell tobacco, check customers' photo identifications to prevent sales to those under age 18.
Donald Gist, head of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, says the regulations threaten the livelihood of blind vendors.
If blind vendors can't card customers,"they either have to get sighted help or they have to stop selling tobacco," FDA spokeswoman Laura Alvey said. But another spokesman said the agency would work with blind retailers to develop guidelines.
A beggar with a disability had to drag himself across a Hong Kong courtroom floor and into the dock because his crutches had been seized as evidence.
Cheung Sun-wah, who had polio and was an illegal immigrant from China, had been arrested and taken to a police station, where he allegedly hit an officer with a crutch and set fire to 300 Hong Kong dollars in banknotes.
Cheung got a suspended sentence after he pleaded guilty to arson, assaulting an officer and being an illegal alien. But the Hong Kong Legal Department appealed the sentence for being too lenient. When the case went back to the judge, the beggar was still crutchless. The judge agreed to have them returned to Cheung after he sentenced him to six months.
High school sophomore Callie Smartt ended her struggle to join the cheerleading squad in Andrews, Texas, opting for a newly formed pep squad instead, her mother said.
Callie decided this semester that she'd rather join her friends on the yet-unnamed pep squad rather than try out for Andrews High School's cheerleading team.
"She said she knew if she got on the cheerleading squad she'd be treated the same, and she didn't desire to go through that anymore," mother Fonda Smartt said of Callie's alleged degrading treatment by Andrews cheerleaders last year.
The pep squad is open to any Andrews student who maintains passing grades. They'll practice and wear uniforms, but their cheering will take place from a special section of the stands, not from the field.
Callie, who has cerebral palsy and uses a power wheelchair, had waved pompons and cheered alongside junior varsity cheerleaders during her freshman year. Last year, school officials restricted her sideline activities, citing safety reasons.
Callie planned to participate in tryouts before opting to join the pep squad instead. "She said she probably would have chosen the pep squad all along if there had been one," Ms. Smartt said.
Andrews is located about 30 miles north of Odessa.
Mike Jacobson just wanted to rent a movie. He went to his local Video Library outlet in Coquitlam, British Columbia þ that's just outside Vancouver þ and was promptly ordered to leave. Why? "We just did renovations two weeks ago," said the store manager. "We are trying to keep the floor clean." He said it's too much work to clean up after wheelchairs.
When Jacobson, who is quadriplegic, went back to the store with a reporter, the staff said Jacobson could enter only if he wheeled around the store with a staffer accompanying him and placing a mat under his wheels.
Jacobson plans to take his complaint to the B.C. Human Rights Commission.
A Vietnamese villager claiming to be a traditional physician beat a mentally ill woman to death during treatment he said would exorcise a spirit in her body, police said.
Le Van Mai will be charged with reckless manslaughter, a police spokesman said.
The 37-year-old victim was suffering from a psychological disorder that Mai said was caused by demons possessing her body.
Mai bound Nguyen Thi Cuc in chains and beat her repeatedly with a stick. He also forced her to eat ashes from decorated paper burned in a ceremony. Cuc was taken to a hospital but died.
One mother took her child to the Nazi doctors voluntarily, all but signing the girl's death warrant. Another was frightened into handing over her daughter. A boy was snatched from the street and came back in a coffin.
The Nazis called them "unworthy lives." Across Europe, 75,000 people, including 5,000 children, were pronounced mentally or physically deficient and killed because they did not fit Hitler's vision of a perfect world.
Vienna's city government now plans to get rid of a gruesome legacy of this policy þ the brains of some 400 children murdered by the Nazis and stored for medical research in a city clinic.
The children were killed by injection, medical experimentation or simply starved. Little was said about their murders for more than 50 years.
City officials say the existence of the brains - used for teaching and Nazi research on abnormalities - had been common knowledge since the 1980s, when they were transferred to a Memorial Chamber at Vienna's main psychiatric clinic, complete with a plaque decrying Nazi horrors.
Fewer than 10 relatives have claimed the brains.
Women with spinal cord injuries can still have orgasms, new research shows, contradicting conventional medical wisdom.
Meanwhile, a recently discovered chemical messenger that blocks pain in rats could give clues for enhancing sexual pleasure in those women.
But a Rutgers University research team stressed that development of any "orgasm pill" would take more than a decade to develop þ if it's feasible at all.
"There may be (a pill) one day, but that's not what I'm working on," said Rutgers sexuality researcher Beverly Whipple, author of the landmark 1982 book "The G-Spot and Other Recent Discoveries About Human Sexuality."
Whipple said at least three of the 16 women with spinal cord injuries she has worked with have learned during laboratory training how to produce orgasm through self-stimulation, primarily through gentle pressure on the G-spot, located midway between the pubic bone and cervix.
One woman who had not had an orgasm in the two years since her injury experienced six in one session.
Wheelchair-user Jill Graham sued the Aloha Stadium Authority in Honolulu over the stadium's policy of banning wheelchairs from field level.
Graham purchased a $70 field level ticket for a Michael Jackson concert in January. But because of the policy, she was forced to watch from halfway up to the top of the stadium.
A day after a blind congressional aide was prevented from entering the Senate, the lawmakers unanimously agreed to open the door to guide dogs and made the chamber more accessible to others with disabilities.
An aide to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., was prevented entry to the Senate chamber because she had insisted she be accompanied by her guide dog, Beau.
When Moira Shea, an energy policy expert in Wyden's office sought access to the chamber, she was summarily rebuffed because she insisted on taking her dog, a yellow Labrador named Beau.
The four other senators in the chamber didn't care and the Senate seems to have no formal rules on guide dogs. But a Democratic lawmaker telephoned the cloakroom and raised an objection.
The objection had been raised by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who is known for his strong views about Senate tradition.
Assaults against people with disabilities recently filled the news in Massachusetts. On April 9, after a two-week trial in Northhampton, Clinton J. Maynard, 36, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of William Allen Paige, a mentally disabled resident of Greenfield. Still awaiting trial were Richard and Roger Perry, cousins of Maynard. Already convicted is Frederick Perry, brother of Richard and Roger, who also was sentenced to life without parole.
The four were accused to imprisoning Paige in a house for three months, during which they sbjected him to repeated beatings, rapes and torture with electric shock, among other atrocities. Maynard, for example, broke Paige's fingers. Paige died and his body dumped in an abandoned quarry.
On April 10, Steven Banks, 21, was arrested for theft and assault on Richard Bennett, 34, who has spina bifida. Banks was his personal care assistant. Banks allegedly struck Bennett on the head with a flashlight, failed to get him medical aid on other injuries and used Bennett's money to buy cigarettes and alcohol. Banks denied stealing the money but admitted hitting Bennett on the head "to get his attention." Banks' girlfriend, Yvonne Rinaldi, 19, also was arrested and also admitted hitting Bennett with the flashlight.
In Raynham, meanwhile, two men pleaded not guilty to abusing two mentally retarded men in their care. Karol Simonton, 60, and his brother Harry, 57, allegedly kept the men chained in their backyard, forcing them to perfoprm sex acts and to beg for food and medicine.
Finally, two men and a woman were arraigned in Cambridge for beating to death Helena Gardner, 19, described as homeless and"mildly mentally retarded." Nicole Fernandes, 19, Randy Williams,23, andMark McCray, 34, allegedly lured Gardnen into an abandoned cargo trailer on March 25, beat her to death with a sledgehammer, and then set her body on fire in an attempt to hide the evidence.
-- from Fred Pelka
Associated Press reports were used compiling this column.