AIDS Victims’ Mother Talks to Senate Panel

A Florida mother whose family was driven from their home after her three hemophiliac sons tested positive for the AIDS virus admitted to a Senate committee today that she had once been prejudiced herself and urged Congress to help others avoid such persecution.

“We’re hoping that what we have gone through will help Americans open their eyes and say, ‘This could be my family,’ ” said Louise Ray, who lived in Arcadia, Fla., until the family home burned down.

Ray told the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee that she had once been prejudiced herself and refused to let her sons attend a camp for hemophiliac children a few years ago because she was afraid they might get AIDS.

‘I Learned’

“I’m ashamed of myself for that now,” she said, “but I went out and learned.”

Ray recounted for the committee a story of threats and harassment that began when young Ricky, Randy and Robert tested positive for the AIDS virus. The boys are believed to have been infected through blood transfusions; none have symptoms of acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS-related complex.

Nevertheless, the boys’ longtime barber refused to cut their hair, the family pastor advised them to stop coming to church and school officials told the boys to stay home--an absence that lasted a year.

A federal judge ordered the school system to allow the boys back into classes and they did return for a week last month. But during that week, Ray said, a boycott was organized, there were two bomb threats and the family received threatening phone calls.

‘We Lost Everything’

Then the family home was burned down while they were out of the house and “we lost everything we had,” she said.

The nightmare didn’t even stop there. Ray said the family moved to a motel after the fire but was asked to leave because of the boys.

“If anything good can come out of what our family went through, I hope it is that other families whose children test positive can get some help against discrimination,” she said.

Committee chairman Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said the Ray family saga “confirms everything we know about the need to fight hysteria and fear with education. It demonstrates the destructive forces that can be readily unleashed when people react to fear with hatred and discrimination.”