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

DATE: FRIDAY, November 24, 1995                   TAG: 9511240053
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER
DATELINE: BEDFORD                                LENGTH: Medium

BUT NOT ALL LAUD MILLS, HIS WORK

Some are apprehensive about Mills' plans to start ``a tough-love boot camp'' for troubled juveniles. Others are put off by letters in which he blasts local government officials, and newsletters in which he tells about sexual crimes committed by unnamed local people.

Mills, who once ran a monthly tabloid newspaper in Florida called ``The Mills Turn,'' sends letters to government officials and others with ``The Mills Turn'' on the letterhead and signs them ``Jack Mills, chief investigative reporter.''

In many of the letters, he talks about how ``THE SYSTEM'' is corrupt. In a letter to Commonwealth's Attorney Randy Krantz, Mills wrote that he was being threatened by government officials for his work with victims of domestic violence. He told Krantz, ``Now, you tell THE SYSTEM to BACK OFF!''

Others are concerned about the potential for violence by abusive husbands.

Mills charged one husband with assaulting him. And Mills himself was charged with assaulting a teen-ager. Mills said he had to restrain the boy to keep him from hurting his mother. The charges against Mills were taken under advisement, but Mills was ordered to have no contact with the boy for a year.

``In my opinion, he's long on rhetoric and short on results,'' said Leighton Langford, Bedford County's director of social services. ``So far, he's only helped one or two people that I know of.''

Langford says his department won't recommend HONOR-QUEST to clients until he knows more about Mills' background and how the program performs.

Mills is correct about battered and homeless women in Bedford County needing help closer to home, Langford said. After all, most of these women now go to shelters in Roanoke and Lynchburg.

But Langford isn't sure that Mills' approach is the best one.

``I don't think anybody who's setting up a utopian society in the woods is dealing with the reality of domestic violence,'' Langford said. ``Society is not going to change.''

Langford said he is talking with church leaders and others about starting a battered women's shelter in Bedford County that would be operated with the cooperation of the courts and would provide coordinated social and legal assistance that he says HONOR-QUEST won't provide.