ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996                 TAG: 9604010064
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-8  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: MONTCLAIR
SOURCE: Associated Press| 

PARENTS WHO CHAINED TEEN SON NOT CHARGED COUPLE SAY THEY WERE AT LAST STRAW

A Northern Virginia couple said they spent months battling their son's drug use, gang involvement and habit of running away from home, then resorted to chaining him to a set of weights.

Prince William County police threatened to charge the 16-year-old's father with abduction. But after interviewing Maggie and Cornelius Oberly, the county prosecutor said they showed poor judgment, but he refused to press charges.

In their first interview since the Dec. 22 incident, the Oberlys talked last week about the events that persuaded them they needed to chain their son.

``In many, many cases, parents are just at their wits' end,'' said Linda Spears, program director of child protective services for the national Child Welfare League. ``You think about your kid being murdered, and you wonder, `Should I risk locking him in his room?' You can understand why a parent would get that desperate.''

Last year, 5.6 percent of the 192,000 juvenile cases brought to court in Virginia involved truants, runaways or children who wouldn't obey their parents, according to the state Commission on Youth.

``We didn't do it out of hate,'' said Maggie Oberly, a registered nurse at D.C. General Hospital. ``We did it out of love and concern. ... He was either going to commit a crime or get killed. We would have done anything just to get him off the streets.''

They padlocked Chris, the older of two children, to a set of exercise weights in the basement of their six-bedroom house. They locked an eight-foot chain around the boy's stomach, which gave him enough mobility to reach a bathroom, and gave him three meals a day. They said he was restrained from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. while Oberly, 48, was working as a security guard.

``Nobody thinks what they did was right,'' said Kim Chinn, spokeswoman for the Prince William police. ``We all thought it was weird and horrible when we first heard about it. But after talking with the family, we could see their rationale. What they wanted to do was keep him safe.''

Said Commonwealth's Attorney Paul B. Ebert, ``It's terrible, but when you get into it, it's really just a form of tough love.''

Until his freshman year in high school, Chris Oberly did his homework, faithfully walked his dog and took out the trash.

In 1994, Chris began flunking his classes, snorting cocaine and smoking marijuana in the house, his parents said. He also began hanging around people who officials said they believe were gang members.

They threatened in August to send Chris to boarding school in Ghana. That was when Chris first ran away.

He was gone for five days. They later learned Chris was sleeping in the bushes and getting food from friends who would leave it at night in gutters near where he was hiding. The Oberlys eventually paid a group of Chris' schoolmates $75 to show them where Chris was picking up his meals.

A series of painful confrontations did not persuade Chris to get his act together. Instead, Chris began bringing home expensive jewelry and clothes the Oberlys knew he couldn't afford.

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