Social welfare records say Schiavo not abused

ORLANDO, Fla. -- In the four years after Michael Schiavo won the right to remove his wife's feeding tube, the state's social welfare agency methodically investigated 89 complaints of abuse, but never found that he or anybody else harmed Terri Schiavo, records released late yesterday indicate.

To the contrary, the state Department of Children & Families, or DCF, repeatedly concluded that Michael Schiavo ensured that his wife's physical and medical needs were met, provided proper therapy for her, and had no control over her money. They also found no evidence he beat or strangled her, as his critics have charged.

The 45 pages of confidential abuse reports made public by court order yesterday indicate that despite the complaints, investigators never found that Terri Schiavo had been abused.

That raises what Michael Schiavo's attorney said is a key question: Why, during her last weeks of life, did DCF twice try to intervene in the seven-year dispute pitting Terri Schiavo's husband against her parents?

''This was nothing but a political intervention," attorney Hamden Baskin III said.

DCF spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez did not address the charges of political interference directly but said, ''We have a duty to . . . investigate allegations of abuse."