SOME JAILED MOTHERS SAY HALE HOUSE DIDN'T KEEP PROMISES

Carmen Almodovar says her first glimpse of her 6-month-old son after his
birth was on a Hale House promotional calendar that hung on the wall of the
prison where she was serving time.

She had placed her baby in Hale House after his birth in jail, and was told
to call the Harlem baby shelter collect to check on him. But Ms.
Almodovar's prison advocate said that the charity repeatedly refused the
mother's calls and that the refusals were documented by prison telephone logs.

Another imprisoned mother, Ida Lloyd, still has not seen the twin sons she
bore more than a year ago and placed at Hale House on promises of monthly
prison visits. "They kept telling her the van is broken," Kathaleen
Linares, an advocate at Beacon Correctional Facility, in Dutchess County,
said of Hale House.

A third woman, Elaine Alvarez, imprisoned at Taconic Correctional Facility
in Westchester County, pleaded in vain with Hale House for a visit with her
infant son, Ramon Matthew, after being told that he was blind and deaf,
said Sister Tesa Fitzgerald, a Roman Catholic nun who related the inmate's
account.

Then one day this year, Ms. Alvarez heard a radio broadcast from Riverside
Church in Manhattan promoting Hale House. Dr. Lorraine E. Hale, the
shelter's director, described its charges as castoffs abandoned by their
mothers.

"She used my baby's name," the mother told the nun three weeks ago, sobbing.

These accounts are among several that have emerged in recent days involving
conflicts between Hale House and what the charity now concedes is the
source of most of the children in its care -- imprisoned mothers. In these
accounts, the mothers and their advocates acknowledge that they turned to
Hale House in moments of need, and none of them claim that their children
have been maltreated at the group residence for more than a dozen children.

But as state officials investigate the charity, the complaints reflect the
belief by some imprisoned mothers that Hale House failed to make good on
its promises to help sustain their relationships with their children and
used the children in misleading ways to raise money.

For one family, concern about how Hale House depicted the children was
underscored last weekend. Fliers posted in Harlem for Sunday's rally in
support of Hale House -- "Save the home of the present and future babies in
crisis" -- carried the image of a sweet, solemn-faced little girl in
holiday dress.

But the child has been living with her mother -- now drug-free and employed
- -- for more than a year, and the family fears that using the child's
picture could stigmatize her. The child's mother was paid $200 in a prison
voucher by Hale House for the right to use the child in promotional
material, the child's grandmother said.

Yesterday, a spokeswoman for Hale House said the charity's officials had
apologized to the child's grandmother for the use of the photograph. "The
folks who put those posters up are in the process of putting those posters
down," said Colleen Roche, the spokeswoman.

The state attorney general's office opened a formal investigation of Hale
House and its finances last week after newspaper reports chronicling
questionable practices at the charity. Since its founding in 1969, Hale
House has highlighted its care for babies born addicted to drugs or alcohol
or sick with the AIDS virus, and it raised $8.5 million last year.

Ms. Roche, responding to specific complaints by imprisoned mothers, said
Hale House officials told her that the van used for prison visits had been
in the repair shop for a long time, and that two new vans had been stolen.
But a volunteer is scheduled to drive Ms. Lloyd's twins to Beacon to see
her today, she added.

In a statement yesterday, Randolph McLaughlin, a lawyer representing Hale
House, said it was "taking steps to do all it can to further facilitate
visitations between incarcerated mothers and their children at Hale House."

In the case of Ramon, Ms. Alvarez's child, Dr. Hale said the baby now
hears, sees and is starting to crawl. "The doctors are very surprised," Dr.
Hale said in an interview last week, attributing Ramon's progress in part
to volunteers who hold and rock him daily.

Hale House had delayed taking Ramon to see his mother, Ms. Roche said,
because it required her to obtain a notarized letter excusing the baby from
daily physical therapy. That requirement was waived for a visit last week
after Sister Tesa, director of Hour Children, a program run by the Sisters
of St. Joseph, complained on his mother's behalf.

Prison rules make it very difficult for the women involved to speak out
themselves. They are not allowed to receive telephone calls, their own
calls are restricted, and volunteer advocates may not take them messages.

Over the years, Dr. Hale has spoken unsparingly of the parents who leave
babies at Hale House. In October 1999, she told a reporter that more and
more mothers are older street veterans without family ties who emerge from
prison only to drift back to jail again.

That was the case for Carmen Almodovar, who turns 35 today. Without ever
retrieving her son from Hale House, she went back to jail two weeks ago as
a parole violator after her release last May from prison, where she had
been serving one and a half to three years for attempted sale of a small
amount of drugs.

But Pat Gleaton, who directs the nursery on Rikers Island, said more of the
women giving birth in jail or prison today are younger, and still connected
to their own families.

"I think from this program, the need for Hale House has declined," Ms.
Gleaton said.

Still, some women see Hale House as their best shot at reuniting with their
children.

Ms. Lloyd, who was convicted of drug possession in Monroe County and is
serving a term of three and a half to seven years, placed her twins in Hale
House, though her own family is upstate, so that relatives would be close
enough to visit her regularly, said Ms. Linares, her prison advocate.

In formal foster care, Ms. Linares added, Ms. Lloyd would face termination
of her parental rights before she was halfway through a three-year term,
under a law that took effect in 1999 requiring such proceedings when a
child has been in foster care for 15 of the last 22 months.

Hale House seemed to offer an alternative. But Ms. Linares said Ms. Lloyd
had not even been able to obtain a photograph of the twins. "She was very
upset when they didn't even bring them up for their first birthday," she added.

Deborah Friedland, who has volunteered as an advocate at Bedford Hills
Correctional Facility in Westchester for seven years, said she no longer
tells women there about Hale House since an experience more than a year ago
when she tried to get medical records on a sick child on behalf of the
imprisoned mother.

"I was passed from employee to employee, " she said, "and finally I got Dr.
Hale." She said the exchange was alarming. "She attacked me personally,"
Ms. Friedland said. "She called me a racist. She absolutely refused to
discuss the medical situation of this kid or to release the medical records
to this mother."

Ms. Roche said that Dr. Hale had called Ms. Friedland's account "insulting"
and that she would not dignify it with a response.