COFAR blog

It was on a Monday in May that Mercy Mezzanotti, a client of the Department of Developmental Services (DDS), was taken against her will from the home of Karen Faiola, with whom Mercy had been living for four years.

The person who came to take her worked for Venture Community Services, a nonprofit contractor to DDS. Up to that time, Venture had been paying Karen to provide shared-living services in her home to Mercy.

“I told them (the Venture employee and later other managers of the corporation) this is against my human rights,” Mercy said in a phone interview. “I’m my own guardian. I’m not going along with this. But they wouldn’t tell me anything. This should be under investigation.”

Both Mercy and Karen contend that Venture was retaliating against them because they had complained to managers of the organization in April that two of its employees had been verbally abusive toward Mercy.

Karen Faiola (left) and Mercy Mezzanotti

Mercy, 47, has a mild intellectual disability. As she put it, she has “trouble processing certain things.” But while she attended special needs classes in her school district as a child, she took mainstream classes in English and consistently made the honor roll. “I constantly studied,” she said. “I loved school.”

As her own guardian, Mercy has full legal authority to decide where to live, as well as to make other major life decisions. In our view, Venture’s alleged action to remove her from her home against her will was arbitrary if not unlawful.

Mercy and Karen said that the Venture employee drove Mercy on May 23 from Karen’s home in Sutton to the home of a family in Worcester that Mercy didn’t know. She said none of the people in the home spoke English. The next two days and nights were filled with anxiety and emotional trauma for her, Mercy said.

“I thought I would never see my home and Karen and my two cats that I love again,” she said.

Karen said that she conferred with Mercy’s private therapist after getting calls from Mercy saying she wanted to come home. She said the therapist maintained that Mercy had the right to make that decision; so Karen picked Mercy up on May 25, and drove her back to her home.  She said Mercy told her that she no longer wanted to have anything to do with Venture or its employees.

Venture stops payments

On May 23, the same day that Mercy was removed from Karen’s home, Venture notified Karen that they were terminating her shared-living contract to care for Mercy in her home. Karen said DDS officials have subsequently refused to act on her request that her contract be referred to another shared-living manager. She said the organization she suggested to DDS is located near her house and is one that she has experience with.

As a result of the contract termination, Karen said, she has not been paid since May for caring for Mercy in her home. She said that she nevertheless intends to keep Mercy there as long as Mercy wants. “I’m not going to allow anyone to take Mercy to any place she doesn’t want to be,” Karen said.

Under Mercy’s shared living arrangement, DDS had paid Venture to contract directly with Karen for providing residential services to Mercy. Karen said Venture paid her $2,882 a month under the contract.

“Karen has helpd me grow and see my potential and find a voice,” Mercy said. “I feel confident speaking to people.” She said Karen regularly takes her to doctors’ appointments, for pedicures, and to visit her father and a friend of hers.

Mercy added that she and Karen have gone hiking together and go shopping together. She said Karen makes her meals and helps here take care of her cats, while she takes the trash out. “I love Karen,” she said. “She’s  such a dream, such a great person.”

No written reason given in shared-living contract termination notice

Karen said a Venture employee alleged in a Zoom meeting with her and other provider personnel on May 19 that Mercy was going to be removed from her home because she had neglected to take Mercy to doctors’ appointments for the previous three years. Karen said this charge was untrue; and she provided COFAR with a doctor’s summary indicating that Mercy’s doctors’ visits and medications were up to date as of March of this year.

In a May 23 letter to Karen, Dorothy Cote, executive vice president and CFO of Venture, gave notice of the termination of Karen’s shared-living contract, but did not include a reason in the letter for the termination.

Cote’s termination letter cited a provision of the contract, which stated that Venture “may terminate (Mercy’s) placement upon due cause, a suspicion of due cause, abuse or neglect.”  The letter also said Mercy could be removed from the home  “pending the outcome of an investigation.” The letter, however, did not allege due cause, abuse or neglect against Karen. Cote’s letter also did not indicate that an investigation of any kind was pending.

If Venture officials did believe Karen had been neglectful in her role as a caregiver, there appears to be no indication that anyone reported an allegation against Karen of omission of care to the Disabled Persons Protection Commission (DPPC), as they would have been required to do.

Retaliation alleged for reporting abuse

Both Mercy and Karen contend that the sudden removal of Mercy from Karen’s home and termination of Karen’s contract were acts of retaliation by Venture against the two of them.

Karen said Mercy had been living with her for the past four years without incident. But she said that a number of months ago, there were changes in management at Venture, and problems began to develop with the new personnel. One of those new employees, she said, was assigned as a job coach to Mercy.

Mercy maintained that the job coach often harassed her at her job at a Papa Gino’s restaurant by mocking her work ethic. In one instance, in April, she said, the job coach suggested to the Papa Gino’s manager that she should fire Mercy. In another instance, she said, the job coach threatened not to drive Mercy home from work.

Karen said that in addition, a Venture service coordinator assigned to Mercy further abused her emotionally by threatening to remove her from Karen’s home.

Karen said she reported the incidents to a supervisor at Venture, and that led to the removal of Mercy from her home.

Therapist corroborates claims of emotional abuse

Grishelda Hogan, a licensed clinical social worker, has been Mercy’s therapist since 2019. In a July 21 email to Mercy and Karen, Hogan wrote that Mercy had “expressed consistently that she was happy in her home (with Karen)…It was clear in therapy,” Hogan stated, “that (Mercy) was making great strides in her life and I was able to see her self-esteem and self-worth develop as she finally felt seen and heard.“

Hogan stated that Mercy “had been reporting ongoing concerns with her Venture job coach. She reported feeling trapped and unsupported…” Hogan added that Mercy felt she had been lied to, and that the job coach had violated her privacy by talking to another individual on the phone about Mercy’s personal information. She said she passed her concerns on to DDS.

Hogan stated that she contacted Mercy’s DDS service coordinator after she learned that Mercy had been “abruptly moved from her home without warning or discussion despite being her own guardian.

“I shared that Mercy was reporting intense anxiety, difficulty sleeping, feeling sad and defeated, missing her home and her cat and her shared living monitor (Karen),” Hogan stated in her email to Karen and Mercy. “She was reaching out to me consistently asking for help and advocacy to get home.”

Hogan said the service coordinator told her she didn’t know the reason Mercy had been removed from her and Karen’s home. Hogan said Mercy had told her neither Venture nor DDS had ever asked her about concerns in the home prior to the move.

In her email, Hogan wrote that she personally reported to the DPPC that Mercy had been improperly moved from Karen’s home. “Mercy has consistently stated she believes her rights were violated,” Hogan wrote, “and DDS should be held accountable. And she fully believes the move was retaliation due to herself and her shared living monitor (Karen) speaking up.”

DPPC decides against full investigations of emotional abuse allegations 

Karen said she also reported three allegations of emotional abuse against Mercy to the DPPC in May, just before Mercy was removed from her home. Those allegations include instances involving the job coach and the service coordinator, and the then pending removal of Mercy from her home.

Subsequent letters addressed to Mercy from DDS Area Director Denise Haley, dated May 27, indicate that Karen’s allegations were referred to DDS for an Administrative Review.

According to DDS regulations, an Administrative Review is undertaken when the DPPC “screens out” abuse and other allegations for full investigations by either the DPPC itself or DDS (115 CMR 9.11). It’s not clear to us why DPPC would have screened out Karen’s and Hogan’s allegations, as both Karen and Mercy stated that Mercy had suffered emotional injury as a result of the alleged abuse.

No response to COFAR query sent to DDS area director and Venture CFO

On July 19, I sent an email query to DDS Area Director Haley and to Cote, the Venture executive vice president and CFO, raising our concerns about the removal of Mercy from Karen’s home and the termination of Karen’s shared-living contract, apparently without written cause. I cc’d Anthony Keane, the DDS Worcester regional director.

In the email, I discussed Karen’s and Mercy’s allegations of retaliation by Venture against them for having alleged abuse by Venture employees. I asked for any comment Cote or Haley might have. To date, I have not received a response from any of those persons to my email.

DDS removes client’s eligibility for Medicaid funding for shared living services

In my email to Haley, Cote, and Keane, I said we were also seeking an explanation for the apparent disqualification by DDS of Mercy from eligibility for Medicaid Intensive Support Waiver Services. A July 6 legal notice from DDS stated that Mercy was being denied eligibility for the Intensive Support Waiver. No reason was given for that denial in the notice, other than an unsupported and unexplained statement that there were “no waiver services” available.

We agree with Mercy that a full investigation is warranted of Venture’s apparently unlawful removal of her from her home, and of the other alleged instances of emotional abuse against her. We also would urge DDS to immediately refer Karen to another shared-living contracting agency, and that she be reimbursed retroactively for having provided shared-living services to Mercy since May.

This case appears to fit a pattern in which family members or other individuals who report abuse or poor care of DDS clients are dismissed or find themselves subject to retaliation by corporate providers or by the Department itself. We are hoping that in continuing to shine a light on these cases that we can help one day break this pattern.