PORTLAND (AP) – An attorney for a woman who was fired from South Portland schools after administrators learned she was convicted of assault in the death of her foster son says officials were aware of her criminal record.

Deborah Wolfenden’s former defense attorney Martin Ridge said Tuesday that the speech pathologist was recruited to work in South Portland by school officials who were fully aware of her past conviction.

“She never misrepresented anything or hid anything,” Ridge said. “And as far as she was concerned, the South Portland School Department knew all about her.”

Wolfenden was acquitted of manslaughter and aggravated assault, but was sentenced to a year in prison for assault in 1990 due to evidence that she spanked her son Ricky LeTourneau excessively and raked his genital area with her nails after he urinated on the floor.

LeTourneau died after Wolfenden pushed him into his bedroom.

He suffered a concussion and choked on his vomit. Medical examiners found more than 100 bruises and lacerations on the dead child’s body.

Before she was fired on April 4, Wolfenden was asked to be fingerprinted. She refused and said she’d rather leave her job, Ridge said. “She was concerned about exactly what has happened,”

State education workers have since begun interviewing school officials to determine the circumstances regarding her placement in the school, said Deputy Education Commissioner Patrick Phillips.

The school department has placed no blame on anyone, but some parents fault the school’s director of special education, Kathleen Fries, who would have supervised Wolfenden.

Fries and Wolfenden were longtime associates dating back to 1987, when Fries became superintendent of the state’s Gov. Baxter School for the Deaf, according to Dorothy Moore, who was on a committee that hired Fries.

Moore served on a policy review board at Baxter with both Fries and Wolfenden during the 1980s, and noticed that the women seemed close.

Moore said she often arrived early for monthly meetings and found Wolfenden and Fries already there, sometimes having dinner together.

“There was a comfort level with them,” Moore said. “Sometimes, I would feel like an outsider.”

AP-ES-04-13-05 1656EDT

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