Wrenching Stories of Youth Violence Told : Congress: Panel hears witnesses graphically relate their gripping experiences. Hearings are meant to draw attention to children’s issues.

Dramatic testimony Wednesday before a joint committee hearing put new faces on the rapidly escalating problem of youth and violence in the United States.

Among the witnesses were a 7-year-old Washington, D.C., boy who watched a murder being committed when he went to a local theater to see the animated film, “Aladdin”; two New York fifth-graders who saw their principal gunned down on their school’s campus; a Connecticut corporate executive who attended the funeral of an employee and her two young children who were murdered, and a suburban mother from Virginia whose 17-year-old son was taken into the woods and executed with a high-powered assault rifle by an 18-year-old acquaintance.

Her son was an excellent student, said Byrl Phillips-Taylor. His killer was an Eagle Scout. “They didn’t even smoke. I never knew there was a problem,” she said.

Liany Elba Arroyo, a 16-year-old honors student from Bridgeport, Conn., who has attended funerals for two classmates, told legislators that she often goes to sleep to the sound of gunfire and can even identify the semiautomatic weapon being used. She said that even metal detectors do not make her feel safe at school, since at least one student with a gun was able to get past the system.

The fact-finding hearings--conducted jointly by the Senate Labor and Human Resources subcommittee on children, families, drugs and alcoholism and the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families--were intended to draw attention to children’s issues, which legislators said had languished during the 1980s.

According to information presented at the hearing, 25,000 people are murdered in the United States annually, a rate 40 times greater than in Japan and far higher than 21 other industrial countries.

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, crimes by juveniles using guns have increased 79% from 1965 to 1990. So common are guns in schools that some school district supervisors have applied for burial insurance as part of their school insurance package, according to Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), who chaired the hearing.

While the session produced no explanation for the increasing threats to the safety of America’s youth, those who participated expressed hope that a new Administration will find solutions.

Schroeder said that she is particularly heartened by President Clinton’s choice of “a new attorney general who for once has worked in the criminal justice system.”

Among the success stories heard by the committee was that of Ron Fox, a 17-year-old from San Francisco who, following in his father’s footsteps, began selling drugs when he was 10 years old and spent most of his adolescence in custody. His life was turned around by volunteers at the Omega Boys Club, who he said became his new family by trusting him, helping him get a job and encouraging him to set educational goals.

Proposed solutions included federal gun control, in-home therapy for troubled families, peer counseling, jobs and job training.