Posted on 04/30/2005 1:01:01 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
ST. PETERSBURG - Largo lawyer John Trevena correctly predicted that outrage would follow his release last week of the now-famous videotape.
Three police officers handcuffing a crying 5-year-old girl in braids, white socks and a neatly pressed tan dress? It was a stunning abuse of power, he concluded. A legal "no brainer."
What he did not expect was that people would view the 28-minute tape and direct so much of their anger at someone who wasn't even on it - the girl's mother, Inga M. Akins.
"I fully expected some backlash," said Trevena, who has since been fired by Akins. "But not to the degree and volume which occurred in this case."
From cable television shows to Internet chat rooms to talk radio programs across the nation, the 24-year-old St. Petersburg mother of three became a magnet for public scorn.
The disapproval is unfair, said Trevena and others, including a high-profile Florida law firm that has come to Akins' aid.
But critics have pointed to video images of her daughter ripping papers from bulletin boards, throwing items from desks and swinging at school staffers who tried to calm her.
Some said Akins was a bad parent. Some said she should be put in jail. Others bristled when she blamed her daughter's behavior on a school administrator at Fairmount Park Elementary, where the handcuffing took place March 14. Many faulted Akins for hiring a lawyer and for selling her daughter's story to the tabloid television show, A Current Affair.
She also has been roundly criticized for the perception she did not get to the school fast enough when the office called her to say her daughter was having a tantrum.
In a public drama with a real life cast of characters - the embattled assistant principal, the crying classroom teacher, the tough-talking police officer, the irascible kindergartener - Akins' role as the serious single mom seeking justice for her child has been widely panned.
Even in corners where Akins might have expected to draw unqualified support, she did not. In separate news conferences Thursday to denounce the handcuffing, civic leaders, ministers and retired educators in St. Petersburg's black community listed Akins, who is black, as one of the players who helped things go awry.
Clifton Burney, a retired social worker active in efforts to improve education for black children, said: "I firmly believe that this is a case of child abuse, not only by the school system or the police, but the parent."
He added: "I know these are strong words." But all three parties, he said, need to find ways to ensure children "behave in a respectable way in school."
* * *
Weeks before the tape was released, Akins sensed that people were blaming her for the incident.
In an interview March 17 with the St. Petersburg Times, she said of school officials and police: "They're trying to make it seem like I'm a bad person and I'm not. But it's going to all come back on them."
Since traveling to New York last week to tape shows for A Current Affair, Akins has limited her public statements to the program.
On Monday evening's show, she said problems between her daughter and the assistant principal, Nicole Debenedetto, forced her hand. "I tried getting her school changed. I tried getting her class changed. (The school district) wouldn't do anything to help me."
On Tuesday, one of the show's reporters asked Akins what she learned from the case. "Listen to your kids because they are telling the truth," she said. "Because I sure listened to mine. And what she was telling me was the truth."
On Wednesday, Akins appeared with Jesse Jackson, who asked her, "What are you doing now about it, Inga?"
She responded: "Trying to get legal representation. And I ask for you to help."
On Thursday, Akins made several comments.
On her daughter: "She's a very active child. She loves to read and write."
On people who blame her: "I don't care what they say. It's not my fault. It's the School Board and the St. Pete Police Department's fault."
On whether the girl was raised correctly: "She was raised right. She was raised very well."
On those who say she's trying to make money from the case: "Get paid for what? I want justice."
Asked what she tells her daughter now, Akins said: "I tell her to try to keep her head up. There's going to be bigger and better things."
Tim Green, smiling host for A Current Affair, signed off: "Sweet little girl. And, Inga, you're a good mom."
* * *
In addition to the 5-year-old girl, Akins has a son, 4, and another daughter, 3. Pinellas court records show she has been trying without success to collect child support from two St. Petersburg men who are the fathers of the children. The father of the 5-year-old has been arrested more than a dozen times since 1995, mostly on drug charges.
Akins is a certified nursing assistant at a Seminole retirement complex, where a supervisor declined to be interviewed for this story.
In 2002, records show, St. Petersburg police stopped Akins on Fourth Street N for driving a car with a stolen license plate, a misdemeanor. She was taken to jail, but went to jail two more times on the same charge because of missed court appearances.
She later paid a fine.
Records also show that around the time of her daughter's handcuffing, Akins was in the throes of an eviction proceeding with the owners of her St. Petersburg apartment. A note she wrote to the court indicates the problem involved subsidized rent payments from the St. Petersburg Housing Authority.
In a recent interview, Akins said the arrest prompted the state Department of Children and Families to investigate her. She said he passed a DCF review. "The focus should not be on her background; it should be on whether police acted appropriately when they handcuffed a 5-year-old child in kindergarten as if she were a criminal," said (Tricia) C.K. Hoffler, a partner with the law firm of Gary, Williams, Parenti, Finney, Lewis, McManus, Watson & Sperando, which on Thursday became Akins' new legal representative.
The 37-lawyer firm based in Stuart, is led by Willie E. Gary, whose nickname "The Giant Killer" came from nine-figure judgments against such titans as Anheuser-Busch and Disney.
Hoffler said the firm is preparing to bring its considerable resources to bear on the case.
* * *
Several of Akins' former neighbors at the apartment complex said they didn't know her well because she left early for work and came home late.
"She was a "good morning, good afternoon' kind of person," said Mariveth Rodriguez, 34, a stay-at-home mom whose children sometimes played with Akins' children.
Neighbors said they did not consider Akins' oldest girl a discipline problem.
Rodriguez said Akins' two daughters sometimes came to play with her children on the back patio, and "they were very well-behaved."
She said she is disturbed by talk-show pundits who have criticized Akins' parenting skills.
"I think they were good people," she said. Asked about the 5-year-old's tantrum, Rodriguez said, "she didn't act like that over here."
In a police report on the handcuffing, officers said Akins arrived at the school March 14, stormed to one of the police cruisers and yelled, "Why is my daughter in a police car?"
Officers said they twice directed the upset mother away from school officials they were trying to interview. The girl's great-grandparents also showed up at the school and argued with police.
Officers eventually released the girl to Akins.
"I immediately recognized that it was a wrongful arrest," Trevena said, citing laws that young children do not have the ability to participate in their defense and thus are legally incompetent.
Akins fired Trevena this week in a fax sent from the offices of A Current Affair. Now he believes her claim against the city of St. Petersburg has been "severely compromised," saying juries are reluctant to award damages to people seen as trying to exploit a case for money.
"I believe she's an inexperienced and unsophisticated young woman who is being taken advantage of by a tabloid TV show," Trevena said.
The lawyer said public criticism of her parenting skills was "grossly unfair."
"The fact with this mother is that we simply don't know what the family situation is," Trevena said. "She may be the best mother on the planet."
Times staff writers Alex Leary and Curtis Krueger contributed to this report
You're so right. I wish I'd been born rich.....but that's the breaks, eh? Regardless...we were taught we were free to achieve anything our hearts desired. All three of us kids are professionals now....and comfortable.
You know, it never occurred to us to ask for $$ when we educated ourselves.....because there wasn't any! It also didn't occur to ask for grants.... because of our economic status. We just dug in... and though it took us longer than if we'd been "put through" college.... it meant much more when it was achieved.
Wow....puts a WHOLE new light on this, eh?
Quite frankly, we don't know why the fathers are not involved with the children, except for the fact that one of them apparently has a criminal record involving drugs.
"The woman who produced the babies..." They produced. "She chose". Actually, they chose to engage in sexual relations with one another.
The parents carry equal responsibility. Location does not seperate you from responsibility.
Yes, it does "come back to Miss Atkins", and father #1, #2, and so on......
Yes, I can only imagine what is going on at Miss Atkins home. There certainly isn't a father in that home. Maybe that in and of itself is good. I don't know due to the lack of information.
I would imagine that there could be several things going on. What does the childs diet consist of? If it's Fruitloops, which BTW contains dye and an excessive amount of sugar, that could explain some of the behavior. Coupled with what appears to be an absence of appropriate discipline, and you have the makings of trouble looking for a place go.
Exactly. I was sometimes bratty and impulsive as a child, but one thing that helped keep me in line was not wanting to cause my parents embarassment. What happened to that?
My kids used to get mad at me because I was supportive of the teachers, even in fine-line situations. And I was embarassed when I got called a couple of times when my kids had trouble in school.
One teacher in junior high slammed my son on the steps. It never once entered my mind to sue the school! I figured he must have mouthed off and had it coming. I didn't make a big deal with it either with my son or the school, and don't remember any more school problems with him from then on, not that he didn't do other kid stuff that caused me occasional grief out of school. I always tried to rectify things myself as best I could like paying for a broken toy of a neighbor's kid, he damaged somebody's property and I apologized profusely but he didn't ask for compensation, he had an accident on the bike path and a man had to go to the hospital for stitches. I paid out of my own money what his insurance wouldn't cover. He brought a gun home from a kid's house he knew at school and I made a BIG DEAL out of it and took the gun back to the kid's father. I should have been more careful about knowing he was hanging around with that kid which he usually didn't. He and his friend (nice Mormon kid) stole some knives from a retirement home where they worked (the Mormon kid might have had nothing to do with the stealing part, I don't know). I took them (the knives) back and they acted like I was kind of odd. I knew if I sent him to take them back he would probably have gotten rid of them and lied to me about it. I won't go into my two girls. I tried the best I knew how at the time to keep things going.
As a single mom, I had a ton of problems with my kids. But I always blamed myself for not doing some things right. It is not an easy way to go, but there are things you can do not to aggravate things when bad things happen.
My kid got hit by a car when he was a toddler. It totally freaked me out. His dad was supposed to be watching him in the back yard and they went across the street to retrieve a ball. I think my ex-husband told him to stay in the yard and he didn't listen. I was in the kitchen. When I found out my son was going to be all right, I never wanted to sue anybody. I just thanked God. To me it has always been a miracle of the timing. One second sooner and he would have been in front of the car rather than running into the side of it.
I wouldn't wish being a single mom on anybody. It is a hard way to go. No sense in making it worse by encouraging your kid's anti-social activity. That mother should have stuck up for the school (and maybe even the police) and not given her child the message that it was somebody else's fault. That's what too many people are doing now.
My daughter and her friend stole some pencils from a store after school. Get a call from the police. Have to go down with the other girl's mother to get my daughter. On the way home, I made my daughter go with me right back to the store and apologize and pay for the pencils. Did I blame the police or the store? Nooooooo. The other mother stayed in the car with her daughter. Her daughter went on stealing more stuff. I think mine did, too. Then she got on drugs and stole from me and did all sorts of awful things.
A lot of this wouldn't have happened if they had had a decent father who supported me and laid down the law to them. That's what I tell myself anyway.
To this day I blame myself for not being a better mother. I always came right home after work, but was so tired all the time that I sometimes tried to find the easiest way out which was to do nothing but what I had to do to get through one more day and keep the bills paid.
Probably whatever the child says she wants
Now if it were a need for a guy to starve his wife to death so he could marry his new honey, betcha' Pinelas County courts'd be on top of that in a second.
Best thing this lady did was escape from Florida. It can't be worse in New York.
Remember the bulletin board incident? Do we know what was on there? We only know from background commentators that she's attacking the bulletin board in an apparantly random, unpurposeful way. Maybe there was something there she didn't like.
I remember this one teacher who did a class survey (about 2nd grade) and came up with one of those "I like this kid" charts. This one is hard to forget because one kid whom no one had named as being "liked" tore it to pieces.
We really need to know what was on the bulletin board to see if the attack was simply destructive or purposeful.
My money is on it being something with a nasty jibe at the little girl.
Both systems work. Each has advantages under different conditions. Matrilinealism works in environments where there are many different viruses and bacteria at work preying on humans.
Where we get into trouble is mixing elements of matrilinealism with a patrilineal circumstance.
What about the Vice Principal? She seems to be a problem all by herself.
Something like that.
She took her kids with her. She got out of Florida and Judge Greer's courthouse. Never know what's gonna' happen down there these days.
I would suspect that if you had that particular Vice Principal around she'd rather have you conducting legal street theatre like some sort of amateur Greg Craig than trying to control your classroom.
You don't know that she didn't marry either of them. Still, she was smart enough to get away from the doper wouldn't you agree?
Interesting. Can you provide any biblical citations? I'd like to look into it.
I told you people that it was long overdue for "W" to run the Army into FL and start guaranteeing them a republican form of government as required by the Constitution.
It starts when they take the remaining jelly beans away from her.
How can you come up with this fruit loops idea in this thread when we have all these people who have been so antagonistic toward me for having noted the jelly bean angle?
You must be nuts because the hotheads who want to string up the 5-year old are loose in here again, and they are going to brutalize you~!
That clearly harkens back to matrilinealism. Only women bear children.
In the age of hunting and gathering that's what most folks did too. Where the climate was exceptionally rugged in winter the men would go on the "long hunt" living on what game they could find.
The women and old folks and children stayed in the village or permanent winter camp.
In the Spring, the men would return. You never knew how many or who either. Some of the women would have died. New selections were made, new marriages consummated, and new families formed until the Fall and the "long hunt".
Your uncle or clan leader was more important to you as a male than any biological father.
Where there was a lot of disease, e.g. as in Africa, marriage was frequently for no longer than the period of gestation. Your mother's brother, or eldest brother, is the big guy in your life.
You might re-read your earliest Biblical stories with an eye to the matrilineal opportunities.
"I am really happy someone is placing the blame where it needs to be, it was obvious from that child's behavior she has not been taught to respect authority or how to behave in public. I had a good friend who is a teacher attacked by a 5 year-old in a school hallway, she was hit, kicked, bitten, and clawed to the extent she needed medical attention (which involved an HIV and a Hepatitis test). This same 5 year-old has attacked other school personnel- sending an Assistant Principal and 3 other teachers to hospitals for x-rays, etc."
In addition, a Rabies Test seems appropriate too!
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