Massachusetts News 
By John Maguire
 
September 2--Harry Stewart, the 40-year-old father and fatherhood activist who is serving a six-months jail sentence in what many call a case of restraining-order abuse, was back in court Thursday.  His lawyer made a plea for reconsideration and suspension of  Stewart's six-month jail sentence on a technical restraining order violation. 
 
Stewart, in his dark suit and his rumpled "Super-Dad" sweatshirt, was retrieved from the Dedham jail and sat in shackles in the nearly empty Quincy District courtroom.  His attorney, Phyllis Field, appealed to Judge Charles E. Black for a new sentence. 
 
Arguing that new data was available that should affect sentencing, Ms. Field  put in front of the judge intake forms from batterer's education programs. These forms, she told the judge, were not available at the trial. She said the forms openly assert that a batterer's education  program  "is not treatment, nor diagnosis, and is given under no guarantee of confidentiality." 
 
"If these programs are just profit-making cottage industries, and not designed to provide treatment, what is the purpose of a sentence like this?" she asked Judge Black. 
 
She asked the court "to reconsider the sentence as terribly excessive on a first offender."  She argued that there was no violence in Harry Stewart's history, and that his violation of the restraining order was a mere paper violation:  he rang the doorbell when returning his son home from a visit. 
 
An irritable and snappish Assistant DA Catherine Cappelli, who originally sought the batterer's program sentence,  opposed the motion for reconsideration. She asserted without giving any particular evidence that the information about  batterers' programs was available to the court at the time of the trial. 
 
Judge Black reserved decision on the reconsideration.  In a related matter, he approved Field's  motion for public payment of transcription costs for Stewart's appeal. 

Attorney Notes DA 'Hysteria' 
 
After the hearing, Stewart did not comment, except to quote a poem of his own which begins,  "I am looking for my children's tears--do you know where they put them?" He was led away by jailers. 
 
Attorney Field said she would await the judge's decision. She said that Attorney Cappelli had talked about wearing a bullet-proof vest to the hearing. Ms. Cappelli, she said,  "is really carrying this case to the extreme. " She called Ms. Cappelli's talk about bullet-proof vests "asinine, given that his is a harmless guy who is just trying to see his kids." 
 
She said the average man or woman in the street does not understand "the hysteria which some district attorneys invest in these cases." 
 
Assistant DA Cappelli declined to answer any questions about her recommendation of a batterer's program for Stewart. She refused even to confirm the spelling of her name. 

Stewart Case Has Gone National 
 
The Harry  Stewart case has drawn regional and national attention. Talk radio programs, both local and national, have featured Massachusetts fatherhood activists commenting on it.  A strongly worded essay called "The Abuse of Restraining Orders" by freelancer Cathy Young appeared on the Boston Globe's Op-Ed page.  NBC's "Dateline" program has producers following the story. 
 
The Fatherhood Coalition, which the Boston Globe has called "the leadership of the new domestic rights movement for men,"  plans to announce Tuesday the filing of a multiple-plaintiff federal discrimination lawsuit. Stewart and five other men are the plaintiffs. 
 
As arguments were being heard in Quincy,  members of the Fatherhood Coalition hung an eight-by-sixteen-foot  "FREE HARRY STEWART" banner off a bridge over the Southeast Expressway. 
 

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