BOY BANDIT'S LIFE TAKES U-TURN INTO MODERN FAIRY TALE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 8, 1993                   TAG: 9304080025
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.                                LENGTH: Medium
BOY BANDIT'S LIFE TAKES U-TURN INTO MODERN FAIRY TALE
"Crime Boy" is going to charm school.
In a strange turn of events, the 12-year-old Fort Lauderdale boy charged with his 57th crime last week is spending this week at the ABI Charm and Dance Academy in Miramar, Fla. He's learning table manners and polite conversation, courtesy of the charm school owner, who heard about his troubles.
And that's just the beginning of the freebies that are rolling in, giving this inner-city child's life a sudden game-show quality.
The little kid with the big rap sheet is dogged by TV cameras and fielding talk-show offers.
On Tuesday, a Lauderdale Lakes church that promised to reform and redeem him hosted a suburban dinner party in his honor and started a fund for him at SunBank in Fort Lauderdale.
If the fund-raising drive is successful, it could pay for his education, said Dennis Grant, an elder at the Fellowship Center, a predominantly Jamaican congregation of about 150.
Church members have taken the child roller-skating, escorted him to youth group meetings and arranged a quick makeover: a haircut and new shoes.
The congregation is now shopping for furniture to make the home the boy shares with his grandmother less desolate.
Until now, the boy's life has been the stuff of urban tragedies, not fairy tales. His mother is in prison for murder and he doesn't know where his father is. He lives with his grandmother, who works. He's left alone and gets into trouble.
"He's not a criminal," said Broward County Circuit Judge Robert O. Collins, who has seen the child frequently in his courtroom. "This boy is a victim of society."
Last week, the Broward Sheriff's Office arrested the youth and some buddies trying to break into a convenience store in the wee hours; that was his 57th crime.
Press accounts dubbed him "Crime Boy" and "Boy Bandit," while children's advocates fumed that the juvenile justice system in Broward County has no money for programs to help a seriously troubled boy of 12.
The congregation of Fellowship Center, moved by the boy's plight, offered to try to change his life. Other volunteers have called his lawyer and judges involved in the case to offer help.
The irony of all the offers is not lost on children's advocates, who say there are many poor, unsupervised children in trouble in Florida, but little political will to change their environment or pay for programs to help them.
"Isn't it the height of tragedy that a child has to have threescore crimes on record before there is this kind of outcry and response?" asked Jack Levine, executive director of the Florida Center for Children and Youth in Tallahassee. "Are we going to play the publicity game with this one boy and then go off and act as if there weren't thousands of other Broward boys in this same situation?"
But the boy's game-show days are sometimes overshadowed by reality. Anthony Baker, owner of ABI Charm and Dance Academy, asked the child Tuesday what he would like if he could have anything in the world.
"He said he would love to have a mommy and daddy," said Baker, a father of five. "Oh, man, I almost sank."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB