Leonora LaPeter Anton

Evelyn Robinson was gang raped in 1969 by four men. She’s been dealing with the trauma ever since.

How $100 million in cuts created chaos in Florida’s mental hospitals. A Tampa Bay Times and Sarasota Herald-Tribune investigation.

A reporter grapples with the suicide of a source:

The reporter-source relationship is a complicated one that defies easy description. It borrows a little from the salesman-buyer relationship, the therapist-patient relationship, the police officer-witness relationship, sometimes even the growing intimacy of a friendship. We work hard to gain access and trust, and generally we avoid doing anything that stops a source from talking once she gets started.

“How are you now?” I asked at the time.

“I’m suffering horribly . . . but I’m not suicidal,” she said. “It’s a soothing thing. I don’t really want to do it. But it helps me calm down, it helps me sleep to think about the possibilities to end the suffering.”

If I had possessed some sort of device that could peer inside her brain and pick up some biological trace amongst the billions of nerve cells and circuits that would indicate she was likely to commit suicide, would I have stopped the interview?

A couple’s five-year divorce battle:

“Motion to enforce court orders on sale of property. Motion to modify temporary relief. Amended motion for contempt to enforce order. Motion for protective order and extension of time. Emergency motion to modify temporary primary residence.

“All of these meant Terry and Murielle and their lawyers and their experts would come together in front of the judge, sometimes at a combined cost of $1,250 an hour. She did this, he did that. No, he did this; no, she did that. An endless battle of wills. The pair — through their attorneys — hurled seemingly unrelated and unsubstantiated accusations at each other, all of which entered the permanent public record of the court file.

“Then one day in August 2009 came this: emergency motion for return of the child and to terminate contact.”