SON TAKEN FROM HIM

Hawera Star, Volume L, 21 February 1931, Page 9

SON TAKEN FROM HIM

A RESOUNDING wallop at Puritanism has just been delivered by a Rhode Island jurist. He has ruled that conditions in the home of New England's most zealous reformer were marked by too much restraint and repression' 'and that a youthful son was thereby started on the wrong road. A sensation has been caused by the decision that the boy shall be removed from his father’s care.

Sherman Bodwell, the 18-year-old son of the Rev. Charles B. Bodwell, executive secretary of the New England Watch and Ward Society, was accused of stealing a car belonging the president of a Providence, Rhode Island, bank. After hearing all the evidence in the case, Judge Charles A. Walsh turned to the father and, without any mincing of words, told him that he would place his son on probation if he would agree to the boy’s being taken away and

Too-Harsh Father Rebuked

placed with a man who would use less harsh treatment, and give the youth more sympathetic counsel. For an instant the Watch and Ward official seemed to reel under the rebuke. In a trembling voice he signified his agreement. Then in open court, with father and son standing in rapt attention, Judge Walsh said that he was prompted in his action by a confidential report he had received which indicated that the father’s handling of the boy was too rigid—that the boy had not been allowed to do. things other boys could do—and thus he started on the wrong road when he got out of the house. “Your son has been kept down all his life. What he needs is hard work and plenty of it, and freedom from the repressions and restraints which you, Dr. Bodwell, have placed on him in your home." —“.Sunday Chronicle" correspondent.