Farmhand Says His Employer Beat Him : Pennsylvania: Owner, another worker plead not guilty. But another ex-employee made similar complaints six years ago.

If you believe Rodney Chappel, Barbara Burleigh See is a modern-day Simon Legree--in the flesh.

See hired this slender, simple-minded man to tend the 60 cows at her farm. But she thought he worked too slowly, he says, and she made his life hell.

In his soft, quavering voice, the 35-year-old Chappel told a court hearing how See--who outweighs him by at least 100 pounds--frequently confronted him, poked him in the ribs with a shovel handle (he had a bruised heart and broken ribs, doctors said) and boxed his ears until they were misshapen.

Three times, he said, she burned him with cigarettes when she caught him smoking near hay in her barn. Another worker, 18-year-old Larry Sopher, punched him and kicked him with steel-toed boots, he said.

A court will decide whether they did all these things; she and Sopher have pleaded not guilty to charges of assault, harassment and reckless endangerment.

But many people in this economically depressed city about 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh have already decided that something seriously wrong was happening at Barbara See’s farm--especially since another farmhand made similar complaints six years ago.

At the converted feed mill known as the Powder Horn Cafe, the regulars expect that she’ll avoid jail. They don’t like it, though; around Titusville, people tend to believe in their own laws, not the state’s, but even they feel Barbara See has crossed the line.

“We may not all be wrapped together right, but by and large we’re good people. If we run out of meat and we have no money, we go shoot a deer. Yes, we break some laws. But nothing like this, and no one should be able to get away with it, not even her,” said Jim Slagter, a former Navy Seal.

The See farm had a history of high turnover, neighbors and townspeople say. People in this town of 6,800 are still talking about the farmhand who left one day and hitchhiked as far as the Midwest before calling See to ask for money.

“She finds the boys who are a little slow and gives them a place to live, room and board. She makes it look like she’s doing their families a favor, because otherwise they might end up in an institution,” said Donna Appel, a Titusville resident and psychology student at Edinboro University.

See is 50 years old, husky and blond; her father owns a large patch of land, two dozen gas wells and one of Titusville’s only barns with aluminum siding.

Farmhands came and went for years. Then, half a dozen years ago, See was accused of wounding another worker, Danny Mott. That charge was dropped, according to court records, but See paid $112.50 in court costs.

Mott, now 40, says See nearly poked his left eye out with a pitchfork in 1989 because he wasn’t milking cows fast enough. In an interview, Mott recalled having to beg for food from See’s neighbors.

“If I saw her today, well, I would tell her, ‘I do not appreciate what you did to me.’ And I would want her to be in jail, because I would not want her anywhere near me,” said Mott, a mechanic in Warren, 30 miles north.

He was replaced at the See farm by Chappel, a high school graduate who took some special education classes. Chappel failed in the military in the early 1980s because he could not march in step.

Chappel said he took his beatings in silence because he needed the work.

“I figured they would just go away. The soreness always went away,” he said in court. He added, “I had nowhere else to go.”

He recalled two half-hearted attempts to flee last spring, once through the woods behind the farm and once via roads. See caught up with him in her truck each time, and he said he got in without protesting.

Chappel said he didn’t try harder to escape because See told him that his mother and stepfather hated him. And he said See told him not to use the telephone to call them because it would interfere with her satellite TV reception.

He told a state trooper that he got so hungry that he resorted to eating green apples off the ground and dog food out of the bag.

The 5-foot-7 Chappel weighed 100 pounds when he left the farm July 31 after a three-day bout with diarrhea, according to his medical records. He said See gave him three paychecks, drove him into town at his request and dropped him at a grocery store, where he called his mother.

See has been cleared of one charge already--unlawful restraint, a less severe form of kidnapping. Defense attorney Don Lewis successfully argued to a judge that Chappel was able to come and go from the farm as he pleased.

Lewis insists that See cooked Chappel regular meals. And he suggested in court that Chappel was clumsy and had hurt himself. Under questioning, the farmhand acknowledged that he was knocked off his bike by a bull, fell down the stairs once and often whacked his own foot with farm tools, though he couldn’t say when those things happened.

See and Sopher had no comment when reached by telephone.

But Chappel’s family is not so reticent. His mother, Helen McCalmont, showed bingo buddies pictures of her shirtless son bruised from head to toe.

“Nobody has a right to do that to someone else,” said Marilyn Hollabaugh, his aunt. “You don’t even do that to an animal.”