PARENTS SPOILED GIRLS, STARVED BOYS: COPS

New York Post, By ANGELINA CAPPIELLO and KATE SHEEHY

October 27, 2003 -- The sicko New Jersey couple who starved their four sons apparently preferred their daughters - allowing them to pig out in front of the boys, authorities said.

While the little girls could be seen frolicking in a small pool behind the family's house in the middle-class Philadelphia suburb of Collingswood in the summer, the tragic skin-and-bones boys were forced to wash their clothes in a bucket on the side of the house and clip the grass with small hand shears, neighbors said.

"I thought the boys had AIDS. That's why I never called anyone," one shaken neighbor said yesterday.

The boys - ages 9, 10, 14 and 19 - weren't wasting away from disease, but from the stomach-churning neglect of their parents, Raymond Jackson, 50, and his 48-year-old wife, Vanessa, authorities charge.

The boys, who had been adopted between 1995 and 1997, were locked out of the kitchen and given only uncooked pancake batter, peanut butter and jelly and cereal to eat, officials said.

The boys told authorities they thought they were getting more nutrients by also eating bits of the home's wallboard and insulation.

Meanwhile, the girls - two adopted, ages 5 and 10, and a 12-year-old in the process of being adopted - were allowed to order Chinese takeout and chow down in front of the boys, authorities said.

"The girls were heavy and well-fed," neighbor Dee Evans said.

By comparison, the oldest boy stunned cops when he told them he was 19. They caught him rummaging through a neighbor's trash for food, and the family horror was finally exposed.

He was a pathetic 4 feet tall and weighed 45 pounds - about the size of a normal 6-year-old.

The children lived with the Jacksons and their biological son and daughter, both in their 20s, who also appeared healthy.

Neighbor Pete DiMattia said he tried to reach out to the boys over the years, but every time "you would ask the kids if anything was wrong, they would say, 'No, Mr. Pete. Everything's fine.'

"They said that for years."

DiMattia said he was especially upset when he brought back toys for the boys after a vacation. Later, when he asked one of the girls if her brothers liked the gifts, she said, "No, they're not allowed to play with toys."

He said the family went to church every Sunday and sang gospel songs back at the house at night - a cruel facade masking what life was really like.

On Friday, when the Jacksons were arrested, DiMattia said Ray came up to him, shook his hand and said, "It's just a misunderstanding."

"I hope they throw the book at him," DiMattia said.

The couple, who essentially lived off stipends they got from the government for the children, were each being held in lieu of $100,000 bail.

The state case worker who had been assigned to oversee the 12-year-old girl's pending adoption has resigned, officials said.

Kevin Ryan, head of the state's new Office of the Child Advocate, summed up the case this way:

"We have a caseworker who went to a house 38 times in two years, and many of those times, she saw all seven children, and she reported in the case record that those children were all safe, despite the fact that the utilities had been turned off for the last six months, the kitchen doors were locked shut and the four boys were obviously starving."

The parents claimed that the boys suffered from eating disorders that made them so scrawny.

Authorities said a physical exam proved otherwise.

With Post Wire Services