Letters to the editor.

To the Editor:

I had to howl at Steve Neal's piece on the Byzantine world of bouncing candidates off Chicago election ballots ("Getting on the Ballot and Staying on the Ballot Takes Moxie," a May 5 Chicago Sun-Times article based on the May Chicago Reporter story, "Eliminating the Competition").

Neal's comment that, "the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners ... does a good job of explaining rules of the road to the candidate," is an extreme misstatement about the nature of the game. The challenge process is a legal trial.

As a recent candidate for alderman in the 44th Ward, I survived two such political trials. Though not a lawyer, I prevailed despite legal and in-house staff trickery; getting unfair rulings overturned, wading through phony delays [and] contending with missing notices ... as election staff would sheepishly explain, "I don't know nothing. Nobody knows nothing. Ask a lawyer."

A dupe is used to conceal the political attack. A rival candidate, though he is paying for [the] assault, gets a pal to put his name on the challenge papers. That way, while you are busy fighting legal slings and arrows, ... the real challenger is busy wooing voters, playing "nice." Insiders--including the media--understand the game. After all, said one staffer, "This ain't America. This is Chicago."

Karen Kennedy Chicago

To the Editor:

In part three of the article, ("Foster Case Ends in Disaster," February 2003), while referring to state wards who were returned to Illinois from out-of-state facilities, [Illinois Department of Children and Family Services consultant Ron] Davidson states, no "violent sociopathic predators--who properly belong in jail-were ever part of the masses of mentally ill and emotionally disturbed kids that Illinois was dumping in other states."

He is probably correct, because DCFS found a much more convenient, less costly place to dump their violent offenders. They dumped those kids into unsuspecting adoptive homes instead. By doing so they saved millions of dollars, because, once adopted, those kids have virtually zero access to services.

If returned to the system, these kids are moved from home to home, gaining access to new victims with each move. This is the norm with DCFS. My adopted son was determined by DCFS to be a serious threat to any home or community in which he lives. His therapist says the chances are he will re-offend are 100 percent. DCFS has placed him on their sex offender list for the next 50 years, yet they plan to place him in a regular foster home!

The adoptive parents have nowhere to turn. If the kids end up back in care they are moved from home to home, gaining access to new victims with each move.

I know because my adopted son brutally raped a younger child, something I would have suspected him capable of had I known his true history.

Name withheld Marion, Illinois