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1898-1998 100 Years of Professional Social Work Fallen Heroes Social Workers Killed in the Line of Duty |
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1898-1998 100 Years of Professional Social Work Fallen Heroes Social Workers Killed in the Line of Duty |
Human services workers report mounting levels of anger and hostility in this country. The causes—psychological, economic, social and spiritual—are debated widely, but the rising tides of rage and incipient violence are not.
--editorial, Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne), April 29, 1997
Donna Millette-Fridge, 36, New London, Connecticut. Stabbed by a client while walking to work at a community mental health outreach program, Sept. 22, 1998. Millette-Fridge recently had received her master’s degree from the University of Connecticut School of Social Work in West Hartford.
Steven Tielker, 41, Fort Wayne, Indiana. Shot by a client on probation for child molestation, April 28, 1997. Tielker, a Family and Children’s Services supervisor, counseled both victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse. The client, whom he was counseling under court order, also fatally shot a probation officer before taking his own life.
Rebecca Binkowski, 25, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Stabbed in her car by a tenant at an apartment complex for persons with mental illness, where she worked as a resident manager, February 3, 1993. A graduate student at Western Michigan University, Binkowski was awarded her master’s degree in social work posthumously.
Barbara Synnestvedt, 46, Whitmore Lake, Michigan. Beaten and strangled by a teenage inmate and sex offender at a juvenile detention center, April 25, 1993. Synnestvedt worked at the W.J. Maxey Training School.
Robbyn Panitch, 36, Los Angeles County, California. Stabbed by a deranged client whom she was counseling at a Santa Monica mental health clinic, February 21, 1989. Caught up in a round of budget and service cutbacks shortly before her death, Panitch had expressed fears because "the caseload was getting bigger and bigger and people were getting crazier."
Ladonna Wolford, Romney, West Virginia. Beaten to death with a baseball bat by two teenagers at a shelter for runaways, July 1988.
Norman W. Fournier, Tacoma, Washington. Shot by a client whom he went to pick up on an involuntary commitment order, August 4, 1987. A social worker for 25 years, Fournier served as mental health coordinator for Pierce County, Wash.
Jose Manuel Parada, Santiago, Chile. Found dead by a roadside, March 31, 1985, several days after being abducted by gunmen thought to be members of Chile’s national security police during the Pinochet regime. Parada was a social worker with the Catholic Church in Santiago.
Michael Schwerner, Philadelphia, Missisippi. Schwerner, a social work student, was one of three civil rights workers found shot to death in an earthen dam on August 4, 1964. Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney had gone to Mississippi during Freedom Summer to investigate the burning of a black church.
Madeleine Levy, Auschwitz, Poland. A social worker and grandaughter of French army officer Alfred Dreyfus, Levy worked with the French Resistance during World War II. She was arrested by the Gestapo and died at Auschwitz in 1944.