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A Vermont state senator known for his work with at-risk teens has died.
Dick Sears, 81, died Saturday in a hospital after a battle with skin cancer, the AP reports.
He was a longtime state senator from Bennington, where he served as chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee, as well as on the Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Joint Legislative Child Protection Oversight Committee, and the Vermont State Council on Interstate Adult Offender Supervision.
Sears, who was adopted as a child and spent more than three decades in residential programs for youth, started the 204 Depot Street program for teens involved with the criminal justice system in 1971, the Bennington Banner reports.
The program, based on a program in New Jersey, used a theory called guided group intervention, using peer pressure to make changes.
"It basically used a theory called guided group intervention, using peer pressure to make changes," Sears said in a 2022 Banner interview.
"You know, to make good choices, rather than bad choices."
Sears also led efforts to address PFAS chemical contamination, after several hundred wells in the Bennington area were found in 2016 to have elevated levels of PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid), determined to have originated from the stacks of two former Bennington
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