Source: The Columbus Dispatch

Confiscated toys donated by state

Friday, December 15, 2000

Rita Price
Dispatch Staff Reporter

NEWARK, Ohio -- At the Center for New Beginnings, no one scoffs at the lowly, lumpy stuffed animal.

Scruffy fur and vacant, cockeyed stares don't matter to children spirited away from violent homes and thrust into the safe-but-strange confines of a domestic-violence shelter.

Their fragile sense of security, Director Tim Gano says, often corresponds to the death-grip they keep on a soft, silent friend.

"We give every child who comes here a stuffed animal, and the first night, they absolutely must have it,'' he said.

A few days pass and Gano notices a looser hold, even brief separations.

"After a week, you might find it in the stairwell -- without its owner,'' he said, smiling.

So Gano was quite pleased -- and not a bit offended -- when Attorney General Betty D. Montgomery arranged for the delivery last week of 300 counterfeit Beanie Babies to the Licking County shelter.

They don't have the little "Ty'' manufacturer tag, and an expert collector, perhaps, could look into the faces of the plush purple bears and find flaws.

That's OK. The folks at New Beginnings don't look too harshly on imperfection.

"I've got a bunch of 'em to give to my kids for Christmas, and I won't tell,'' said a 30-year-old mother who came to New Beginnings with her young son and daughter last month. "They won't know the difference.''

The toys were confiscated from Brenda R. Theos and her sons, Shawn and Chris. Montgomery's office filed a civil action against the Newark family in February, in what was the attorney general's first suit involving e-commerce.

The Theoses sold the toys via eBay, an Internet auction site, passing them off as authentic collectibles. Complaints soon began filing in from throughout the country -- some from as far away as Ireland -- about fake Beanies.

Licking County Common Pleas Judge Gregory Frost on Sept. 18 ordered Theos and her sons to repay $16,400 to 45 duped buyers.

The toys might lack a pedigree, spokeswoman Stephanie Beougher said, but the attorney general figured they weren't useless.

"It just seemed a shame to throw them away,'' Beougher said. "We wanted to take a little good from a bad situation.''

So far this year, Gano said, 133 children have lived temporarily at New Beginnings, a secure building in downtown Newark, roughly 30 miles east of Columbus.

The numbers tend to rise during the holidays, he said, when money worries and seasonal stresses fuel violence.

Many women and their children arrive with little more than the clothes on their backs. It might sound silly, one 40ish woman said, but even the adults take some small measure of comfort from warm, cushy, innocent toys.

"When I first came here last month, I wouldn't have been able to talk to you. I'd have been too scared,'' she said, taking a visitor's hand and running it across a small, misshapen bulge in her forehead. "That's where he cracked my skull.''

The bootleg Beanies she received will go to her grandchildren; the other stuffed animals in her Spartan room are for personal use.

"See that little white monkey? He's the one we pass around,'' she said. "For therapy.''

rprice@dispatch.com