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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 21, 1993                   TAG: 9304210168
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WACO, TEXAS                                LENGTH: Medium

FROM THIS WORLD, THE CHILDREN COULD NOT BE SAVED

Seventeen children, some just babies, had the hour of their deaths dictated by David Koresh, the religious zealot who was father to many of them and who controlled every aspect of their brief existence.

These children, none older than 10, "were absolutely under his control," FBI agent Jeff Jamar told reporters Tuesday in Waco. "Once he decided that this is what he was going to do, he was not going to let them go."

Neither were the children's mothers able or willing to disobey their leader's plan. Jamar said the FBI had evidence that some cult members may have been killed inside the compound before the flames reached them.

In the aftermath, FBI agents said they had wanted to ratchet up the pressure on Koresh, or break the resolve of his followers. Maybe, finally, they would capitulate. Maybe, at least, they would set the children free.

From the start, the children were at the center of the standoff. They were the reason the FBI waited almost eight weeks before moving on Koresh, a 33-year-old high school dropout who fathered several infants with women he claimed as his "wives."

"We thought that their instincts, the motherly instincts would take place and that they would want their children out of that environment," FBI Special Agent Bob Ricks said Monday.

"That did not occur," he said. "Unfortunately they bunkered down the children the best we can tell, and they allowed those children to go up in flames with them."

Also victims were the 21 children who left the compound during the standoff, ranging in age from 5 months to 12 years. Many lost their parents in the flames.

"Anytime that you have to talk to children about the death of their parents, it's difficult," said Bob Boyd of Child Protective Services in Waco, which handled the custody of the freed children. "Children shouldn't have to go through that."

Unlike the adult members, youngsters and teen-agers had in most cases never known any other home than the isolated Branch Davidian compound.

Cult members have said children played in the compound pool, watched TV and raced around outside, like "normal" kids. Attorney Dick DeGuerin, hired by Koresh's mother to represent the cult leader, backed up that portrait.

"I saw no physical abuse of the children," said DeGuerin, who visited the compound periodically during the siege. "I didn't see any scared kids. I saw happy kids - kids that were at peace."

But former partisans have described a stark world: one in which Koresh had sex with minors, including a 14-year-old girl who bore his child; one in which Koresh whipped the children in an underground bunker area known as "the spanking room."

"There was in fact evidence of the mistreatment of children," FBI Director William Sessions said Tuesday. "We know, for instance, from the beginning that some of those children were in fact wives to Mr. Koresh, that there were children who were born to children. The pattern of abuse was there and it was systematic."

President Clinton, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and agents in charge all have said the children's safety was largely what prompted the decision to move armored vehicles into the compound.

"We had information, and I'm not sure of the timing of the information, that the babies were being beaten. I specifically asked, `Do you really mean babies?' " said Reno, who said the reply was, "Yes, that he's slapping the babies around."

After seven weeks of siege, she said, sanitation was deteriorating and she came to believe the children were at risk no matter what option she chose. "If I delayed it . . . I could go in there in two months and find children dead of any number of things," Reno said.

Jamar, the FBI agent, said children in the compound could have survived the fire if Koresh had ordered them into a buried bus on the grounds. A few bodies were found in the bus but officials believed they had died in the Feb. 28 shootouts.

"In that bus, the air was cool and there was no gas," Jamar said. "Had Koresh wished those children to survive, that was one place he could put those children.

"He had those fires started. He had 51 days to release those children. He chose those children to die."

Keywords:
FATALITY