ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 22, 1996 TAG: 9601220075
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WINCHESTER
SOURCE: ANNE GEARAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
The house where 12-year-old Valerie Smelser died is indistinguishable from its neighbors now - bland and shabby under a coating of ragged snow.
Gone are the piles of trash and filth that choked the yard and the darkened windows that concealed the horrors within.
Police say Valerie had been chained repeatedly to a basement door of the Middletown home and forced to sleep amid her own excrement. For 10 years, people had reported to authorities that the children of Wanda Smelser were being mistreated.
It was a year ago - Jan. 22, 1995 - when the child's head was slammed through a wall and she was kicked down a staircase by her mother's boyfriend, prosecutors said. Norman Hoverter was enraged because Valerie had spilled a tin can she was forced to use as a urinal, police said.
Valerie's naked 51-pound frame, stunted from malnourishment and bearing the scars of many beatings, was found dumped beside a rural road the next day.
Wanda Smelser, 43, who is being held in a mental hospital, will be tried this spring. Her surviving minor children live with a foster family.
Hoverter, 50, is serving a life term for first-degree murder. He pleaded guilty in July but has asked a judge to let him withdraw the plea.
Disgust and outrage over the child's torture focused public and legislative attention on education and social-service practices in Virginia. Three bills directly related to the case are before the 1996 General Assembly, and several others are expected.
``There's no excuse for what happened in that house,'' said Alice Mills, a real estate broker whose office is across the street. ``But if anything good can come out of it, it certainly made a lot of people aware of things they weren't aware of before.''
A special legislative committee was formed last year to investigate the case. The group's leader, Del. David Brickley, D-Prince William County, thinks some social service agencies were derelict in following up complaints.
``It was a senseless, tragic death and a needless one. Valerie Smelser fell through the cracks, and that should not have happened,'' Brickley said.
From the time Valerie was 2, child welfare workers heard tales of abuse and neglect in the household. But none of Wanda Smelser's six children was ever removed from her care.
Because she moved often and lied well, prosecutors said, Smelser tore holes in the government safety net that is supposed to protect the helpless.
Brickley has introduced a bill that would compel social agencies to track problem cases as families like the Smelsers move around. A second bill would beef up response to child abuse allegations, and a third would make similar child killings punishable by death.
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996by CNB