Statement of Schindler Family in Response to Offer of Mr. Robert Herring
March 11, 2005
It was with tremendous surprise that we learned yesterday of the offer to save the life of our daughter, Terri Schiavo, by Mr. Robert Herring. We learned through news reports that Mr. Herring, through his attorney Gloria Allred, had offered a sum of one million dollars to Michael Schiavo to let Terri live and return her to us - her immediate family.
Written words can simply not express the gratitude our family now feels for Mr. Herring and his most generous offer to save the life of our dear daughter and sister, Terri Schiavo.
We are not at all surprised that Mr. Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, will not allow him to entertain such an offer. It seems to us that the case law has become far more important to Mr. Felos than making any attempt to mediate the matter outside of the courts.
It also seems clear to our family that Mr. Schiavo has neither the inclination to discuss the matter with our family – as we have proposed previously – nor the desire to move on with his own life with his new family. After he has denied Terri therapy for so many years and denied our family any opportunity to help her, we can only come to the conclusion that he is not comfortable with the prospects of her regaining her abilities to speak and communicate to us the reasons for her condition.
Clearly, Terri's situation has touched the hearts of many people. Mr. Herring's generous offer is surely one of the most incredible we've seen, but it is also illustrative of how good people can not sit idle when a grave injustice such as this is taking place.
We thank Mr. Herring sincerely and we regret that the spirit of his charitable proposal has been dismissed out of hand by Mr. Felos and Mr. Schiavo.
