Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Saturday November 28, 1998
The only trouble is no local Girl Scout troop wants her. Quashawn is HIV-positive and her parents think that's why she's been rejected by nine different Brownie troops.
Quashawn's mother, Dianne Donovan, began looking for a troop for Quashawn to join last month in this Adirondack Mountain town about 45 miles north of Albany. She says she was upfront about Quashawn's medical condition when she spoke with the Adirondack Girl Scout Council and received an enthusiastic response from officials there.
One official, who Mrs. Donovan declined to name in an interview with The Post-Star of nearby Glens Falls, told her that Quashawn would be welcomed as a potential scout by the council and nine volunteer troop leaders.
Then on Nov. 10, Mrs. Donovan said, she received a call from a troop leader in Queensbury who wanted to add Quashawn and two other girls to her troop. The woman explained the sign-up procedures and details about the introductory meeting.
"But when I told her of Quashawn's HIV condition, there was an immediate change in the tone of her voice," Mrs. Donovan told the newspaper. "She then said she was afraid if the other girls' parents found out, she'd lose the other girls in her troop."
Two days later, Mrs. Donovan was told the troop was full.
Efforts to place Quashawn with the other eight troops in the Queensbury area have also failed. "This is the first discrimination I've experienced since my daughter and son came into this household," Mrs. Donovan said Wednesday.
The head of the Adirondack Girl Scout Council said that the Girl Scouts do not discriminate against anybody with medical conditions.
Council Executive Director Kit Huggard said the program runs on adult volunteers, and it's sometimes hard to find enough volunteers to accommodate the number of girls who want to join.
"We certainly do admit girls who are HIV-positive," Ms. Huggard said. "We will make every effort to accommodate Quashawn as we would for any child." After Quashawn's rejection, the council sent a field director to the Donovan home to induct Quashawn as an individual Girl Scout. But Mrs. Donovan says her daughter still feels left out.
She says they will keep trying to get Quashawn admitted to a troop in their area.
Mrs. Donovan and her husband, Tim Donovan, adopted Quashawn at eight months, and her brother Danny, now 10, at four months of age. Both tested positive for HIV - the virus that causes AIDS - and given slim chance of survival, but now they're thriving, thanks to protease inhibitor drugs.
Danny was admitted to a Cub Scout troop this fall, even though his parents listed his HIV status on his registration card.
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