Comments (0) 

 Recommend (1)

Child access center hits 1-year mark

Facility provides safe custody exchange

By Sara Ganim

BELLEFONTE — It was merely weeks after Jodi Barone was shot to death in 2007 during a custody exchange gone very wrong that community leaders began meeting to create a safe place for estranged parents to swap children.

Other counties that already had safe-exchange centers told Centre County leaders there was no way they’d get one up and running quickly.

But they did. And now the Centre County Child Access Center is celebrating one year — serving 17 families, 24 children and making 276 safe exchanges “all done in safety, all done without threat.”

Those are the words of county Judge Thomas King Kistler, who handled the Barones’ case and then spearheaded the center’s existence.

“We had very motivated citizens, willing to work hard to see the project through,” Kistler said. “We did not wait for funding, we just pushed ahead and figured that the need was there, and that funding would come — it would have to come.

“It’s very encouraging that the community has supported the access center with its resources and its volunteerism and its effort to get the center set up,” Kistler said. “It’s been very rewarding in that regard.”

Of the families participating, one father spoke about the ease it brought to a previously painful process.

“The program has been a blessing for me and my daughter,” he said. “It’s a hundred percent better from past experience. I don’t know how to put it, stress free.”

Before the center opened, he explained how his 3-year-old was in the middle of a bad situation with his ex-wife that included a protection from abuse order. At each exchange, he’d have to bring a witness in case something was later disputed.

“I had to meet at the house — at my ex’s house,” he said. “I didn’t quite understand that because I had a PFA on me from my ex. She can say anything and put me away and that’s not right for me and my daughter.”

Coming from a split home himself, he wanted better for his child.

“I’ve seen her change for the good,” he said of his daughter now. “She’s not crying, she doesn’t see her mommy and daddy arguing. ... A lot of parents go through their kids to get to each other. This is the best thing that could happen to us. We have our time and she can have her time with her mother.”

The center is set up so parents arrive in intervals, never see each other and don’t know the other’s location.

“Now it’s a lot easier for me. I don’t have to bring somebody with me. My child doesn’t have to see what’s going on. It’s watching out for me, for my safety, it protects my word and how somebody else sees the situation.”

Director Evelyn Wald said they’ve seen great results.

“We’re actually seeing change in the adults,” Wald said. “They’re actually communicating better now. Giving some of these families some breathing space has made a change.”

And now, they’re looking ahead to serve even more. By the beginning of the year, the center, which works out of the Bellefonte Family Resource Center, hopes to be doing supervised visits for parents who the courts have deemed unsuitable to be alone with their children.

It’s just another step toward change — a change that Jodi Barone’s mother, Vickey Warshaw, sees in parents when she volunteers at the center.

“I love it there, I love it,” Warshaw said. “There are more couples speaking to each other and their level of maturity has risen. The level of their anger has come down, which has prevented someone from getting hurt, maybe.”

Warshaw is one of the center’s 12 volunteers, who represent the tremendous community effort to create change.

“We can’t go backward,” said Warshaw. She was watching on Easter Sunday of 2007 when her daughter was shot by estranged husband Ben Barone. He had decided not to bring their then-3-year-old daughter, but instead bring two guns — one for Jodi and one for himself.

“It might have been a really good thing for Jodi and Ben,” Warshaw said. “We don’t know. Sometimes tragedies have to happen for something good to come from them.”

Sara Ganim can be reached at 231-4616.

Comments (25) 

 Recommend (0)

Changes follow '07 Easter shooting

Victim’s mother praises Centre County’s efforts

By Sara Ganim

STATE COLLEGE — Two years ago in the parking lot of the Mill Hall Sheetz, four gunshots pierced the air in a sudden and tragic crime.

 

 

View larger

• Judge asked to pull man's passport
• County prisoner pleads guilty to weapons charges

Just one county over, the echoes are still ringing.

The gunshots that killed Jodi Lynn Barone brought to life issues that people in Centre County refuse to let die.

“It’s amazing to me, the people of Centre County,” said her mother, Vickey Warshaw. “How they came together. How influential they are on things that need to be done. It’s awesome. It lifts me.”

Jodi Barone, a 36-year-old mother, came to Ferguson Township from Williamsport to escape her abusive husband, 35-year-old

Benjamin Anthony Barone.

Every Sunday, the Barones met in Clinton County to exchange custody of their then-3- year-old daughter. But Easter Sunday 2007, instead of bringing the child, Ben Barone brought two guns — a handgun he used to shoot Jodi Barone three times, and shotgun he used to kill himself.

“It’s kind of a almost a double anniversary every year because it’s April 8th and Easter Sunday,” Jodi’s father, Don Warshaw, said.

Vickey Warshaw, who moved into Jodi’s home the day she was murdered, says strangers still come up to her in stores and on the street, telling her how much they loved and now miss her daughter who worked as a State College hairdresser.

“It’s still like yesterday,” Vickey Warshaw said. “It hurts. I cry for her every day. But with the friends that are here — the people that surround me — they’re filled with all kinds of positive thoughts.”

And it’s evident in what followed that Centre County didn’t write this off as just another case of domestic violence, in which the man who pulled the trigger couldn’t be prosecuted.

Making changes

Days after the murder, Centre County Judge Thomas King Kistler began working to eliminate those gas-station-type custody exchanges for families like the Barones, who have protection from abuse orders in place.

Kistler had handled the PFA order filed against Ben Barone that was supposed to deter him from contacting his ex-wife.

“I think we’ve made tremendous progress,” Kistler said. “We have created and opened a center which has allowed for many families .... to exchange their children. They’ve all been done peacefully. They’ve all been done safely. It gives the courts a real, viable option to do exchanges in a way that’s in the best interest of everybody. It’s just been wonderful.”

The Child Access Center is nearing its sixth month of operation. Vickey Warshaw has become a regular volunteer, helping families who are getting a chance at safety that her daughter didn’t have.

“That center is such a positive environment, not just for the children, but it’s soothing for the parents,” Warshaw said. “We have parents in the system that have such anger inside of them, but that the center being established ... I really think that this is calming some people down.”

The Centre County Domestic Violence Task Force recently began gathering information to review Jodi Barone’s murder case.

They’ll study the chain of events that led to her death, and piece by piece try to put them back in an unbroken way.

“We bring anybody in that may have had any information of what was going on in the lives of these people that led up to this,” said Ferguson Township Police Chief Diane Conrad.

“What we find is that everybody has some piece of information and if we all had this information, some services would have kicked in to break this cycle and it wouldn’t have happened. ... We’re really looking to improve the system, to respond to the victims.”

Questions unanswered

Many questions still loom over the devastating day, such as how Ben Barone, who was required by a PFA to hand his guns over to a third party, got the weapons he used.

“Our agents are continuing the investigation into how Barone obtained the weapons that killed his wife and himself,” said Kevin Harley, spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office.

Advocates at the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence still shake their heads at the law that allows defendants of PFAs to hand over their weapons to a third party.

“We’re trying to do an assessment of how frequently this is happening in the state,” said Judy Yupcavage, of the PCADV.

Centre County Sheriff Denny Nau says 85 to 90 percent of PFA defendants in the county opt for the third-party clause.

He calls it blatantly “bad.” “Who does a person want to turn the firearms over to?” he said. “Normally a friend or family member. It is much too easy for the defendant to get control of one or more of his firearms if he so desires when his friend is holding for him.”

In Jodi Barone’s case, Ben Barone’s firearms were handed over to his brother, Matthew Barone, with whom he coowned a bakery in Williamsport.

One day before the murder-suicide, Ben Barone changed his $1 million life insurance policy to eliminate Jodi Barone as a beneficiary. A Luzerne County judge decided the change wasn’t valid, because it reached the insurance company after Ben Barone was dead.

The $400,000 designated to Jodi Barone will go to her daughter, Vickey Warshaw said.

Meanwhile, the families continue to battle over the custody of the child, now 5. A Williamsport judge has said he’ll decide in May if custody will go to her father’s family, or to Vickey Warshaw. She starts kindergarten in the fall.

Though disappointed that the third-party law remains unchanged, Yupcavage said she saw some good coming out of Centre County because of this tragedy.

“It’s a community that has responded in many ways,” she said, “and a model for other communities to see how everyone has stepped up in this case and tried to make recommendations and changes for the better and the safety of the community.”

Sara Ganim can be reached at 231-4616.