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Covered with excrement when she was found last week, the 78-year-old woman weighed just 54 pounds. She had apparently spent years in an upstairs room that was locked from the outside, sleeping on a bare mattress stained with fecal matter in a room littered with tiny bits of paper she had shredded, court papers say. Edith Hodsdon died in a hospital Sunday, a few days after being removed from the home of brother and guardian Everett Hodsdon. He claims she was fine until she was taken away and says he did the best he could to care for her. Hodsdon has blamed the media for blowing the case out of proportion. Some neighbors agree. "I think the poor man just didn't know there was help available, or what help was available," said next-door neighbor Margaret Mackie, who last saw Edith Hodsdon 20 years ago. "I think he was just doing the very best he could. He didn't know how to do anything else." Hodsdon, who is in his 70s, is a self-employed house painter who was responsible not only for his sister, but for his invalid wife, who was found naked from the waist down and tied to a chair to keep her from falling over. The arthritic woman had been in that position for 12 years, according to her brother. Everett Hodsdon has said he promised his mother before she died in 1979 that he would never let his sister enter an institution. "This is an example of a family that was subjected to the social mores of the early '20s ... when people were basically told that they needed to be kept separate from people with disabilities," said Richard Brown of the Charlotte White Center, one of two programs in town that offers services to the mentally ill and mentally retarded. An apartment building run by the center is next door to the Hodsdon residence. Brown said the case was tragic because no referral was made to an agency that could have helped. "I don't know if anyone was fully aware of the extent to which the situation had degenerated," he said. Social workers were called to the Hodsdon home to look into the condition of Everett Hodsdon's wife, Amy. The visit was prompted by a call to police by her brother, John Pingree. A caseworker from the Department of Human Services determined Amy Hodsdon was mentally competent, and she decided to stay. More disturbing was what was discovered upstairs. Dover-Foxcroft police are investigating the case, but would say little on Thursday. No one answered the door at the Hodsdon home. One neighbor, Dave Johnson, said taking care of two invalid women while holding down a job would be hard for most people, let alone an elderly man. "He's a nice man," said Johnson. "He's painted probably everyone's house on this street here. Everybody in town knows him and he's friendly to the kids." Another neighbor, Mary McCue, was disheartened. "This is such a nice neighborhood," said McCue, who works with handicapped children. "I'd like to think we reach out to each other, but I guess we don't." By FRANK FISHER, Associated Press Writer Past Stories:
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Neighborhood wonders how tragedy slipped through the cracks Copyright (c) 1998
Nando.net DOVER-FOXCROFT, Maine (September 4, 1998 02:02 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) -- High Street is a shaded, tree-lined lane seemingly out of a Norman Rockwell painting. There are sprawling Victorian houses, children playing on the lawns and neighbors who've known each other for decades. But beneath the pleasant surface was a family tragedy that came into full view with the discovery of an emaciated, mentally retarded woman who died shortly after authorities removed her from her brother's home. |