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Trial in alleged assault of intellectually disabled man is put off again
Today (Tuesday) marked the fifth time Sheila Paquette has traveled from her home in western Massachusetts to Cape Cod to seek justice in the alleged assault of her brother, John Burns, an intellectually disabled resident of a group home in West Springfield.
But Paquette learned today she will have to make yet another trip to the Cape, along with David V., another resident of Burns’ group home, and Dan Aguda, a Department of Developmental Services instructor. The three were scheduled to testify today in Falmouth District Court in the trial of John Saunders, a former resident of Burns’ group home, who is charged with assaulting Burns during an outing on the Cape in June 2010.
As Paquette and the others sat in the courtroom all morning on Tuesday waiting for the proceedings to finally begin, the judge at the last moment postponed the trial until June 4 because a defense witness had failed to appear. Paquette, who is president of the Advocacy Network, a COFAR member organization, was visibly shaken by the sudden decision.
Sheila Paquette (left) in front of Falmouth District Court Tuesday after the trial of the man accused of assaulting her brother, John Burns, was postponed yet again. To Paquette's right are Dan Aguda, a DDS instructor in John Burns' day program; Deborah Reid, the house manager in Burns' group home; David V., a resident of the group home; and Ed Strout, a Board member of the Advocacy Network, a COFAR member organization.
“I can’t believe this is happening again,” Paquette said to Assistant District Attorney Kerry Whalen. “I’ve come down here five times, and every time there’s another delay.”
“It’s been almost two years (since the alleged assault),” Aguda added. “Memories will start to fade in terms of testifying.”
Whalen tried to reassure them and said she believes the trial will go forward on June 4. The judge, she said, will not grant another continuance to the defense witness.
Paquette isn’t convinced of that, but she and the other prosecution witnesses are prepared to travel to Falmouth again in June. “Anyone who assaults the intellectually disabled should know that these cases will be pursued,” she said.
The last time Paquette and the group from western Massachusetts were in court on the Cape was January 9, when Saunders’ trial was first scheduled. But Saunders himself was a no-show that day.
Saunders was reportedly arrested by police a couple of days after the January trial date and was released after posting bond that had been set by the judge at $1,000. The Falmouth District Attorney’s Office stated that it had requested a $5,000 bond for Saunders. He was present in the courtroom on Tuesday.
Paquette personally filed assault charges against Saunders in July 2010 after she became frustrated with the slow pace of state and law enforcement authorities in investigating the case. The Center for Human Development, a nonprofit firm that contracts with the state Department of Developmental Services to operate the group home in which Saunders worked, subsequently fired Saunders.
Saunders allegedly hit Burns in the face while toileting him during a vacation outing on the Cape for residents of the group home. Burns suffered two black eyes and other injuries. In recent months, Burns has been confined to a wheelchair. Paquette says she was told by her brother’s neurologist he has a neck injury typical of serious whiplash.
Saunders has denied assaulting Burns. The Disabled Persons Protection Commission concluded there was reasonable cause to believe Saunders had used excessive force and had physically assaulted Burns.
The DPPC also recommended that Saunders no longer be permitted to work with DDS clients and cited the CHD group home for failing to identify Burns’ injuries before sending him to his day program the morning after the alleged assault.
Dying, intellectually disabled man sent home twice from hospital
The disabled are often treated as second-class citizens, even in hospitals, says Dorothy O’Rourke.
O’Rourke is concerned that may have been the case with a resident of a state-operated group home in Chelmsford. The 51-year-old man, whose name is being withheld, died earlier this month after having been taken twice in two days to Lowell General Hospital and sent away each time, apparently without any significant treatment.
The man had been having difficulty breathing and was sweating profusely when he was taken to the hospital on both February 6 and 7. He died, apparently en route to the hospital, after the group home staff called an ambulance for the third time on the afternoon of February 7.
The cause of death is listed on the death certificate on file in the City of Lowell as acute respiratory failure and aspiration pneumonia, which can indicate choking. A death report form filed with the Disabled Persons Protection Commission, however, states that the man died after experiencing cardiac arrest.
Despite the possible discrepancy in the stated causes of death, the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office declined to do an autopsy, and the man’s remains were cremated. He had lived in the same group home as O’Rourke’s son.
O’Rourke strongly defends the staff of the group home, which is managed by Northeast Residential Services, a division of the Department of Developmental Services. “The staff there are wonderful,” she maintains. “They did all they could for him, including performing CPR. It’s the hospital that kept sending him home. I thought they would have at least kept and monitored him. I don’t understand it.”
O’Rourke has no information about what actually happened in the hospital after the man was taken there on each occasion. But she maintains that many hospitals are ill equipped to deal with intellectually disabled people, particularly those who are non-verbal, as this man was. “I think hospitals tend to ignore the mentally disabled,” she said. “I think they may need a special unit to handle mentally disabled people.”
A spokeswoman for Lowell General said the hospital would have no comment on the case due to privacy issues.
According to sources, the man had been sent to his day program in Lowell on the morning of February 6, and the staff at the day program made the first call to 911 to take him to the hospital. A Lowell Police Department official said a squad car was sent to the day program site at 8:30 a.m. in response to a call about a male having trouble breathing. (A police car was dispatched in addition to an ambulance each time, and the man was accompanied by a staff member to the hospital each time.)
The hospital released the man shortly after his arrival, however, and sent him back home. The following morning, the man reportedly looked exhausted and “out of sorts,” and the group home staff made a decision not to send him to his day program that day. By about 8 a.m., the man was slumped over in his wheelchair and sweating heavily, a source said. A group home staff member called 911 shortly afterward. A Chelmsford Police official said a squad car was dispatched to the residence at 8:30 a.m.
However, once again, the hospital made a decision to send the man back to his home. The DPPC report form on the death states that the man had been observed at the hospital on the morning of February 7 to be sweating profusely, but his vital signs were good when he arrived. According to the report form, the man was sent home with a prescription (the name of which was redacted).
By the time he was back at the group home, he was leaning over the side of his wheelchair and was “sweating terribly,” a source said. After the staff noticed the man’s lips turning blue, they immediately called 911 again. A staff worker couldn’t find a pulse.
The DPPC death report states that shortly after arriving back at the group home, the man began to vomit and then lost consciousness, and that the staff began mouth-to-mouth CPR until the paramedics arrived. According to the Chelmsford Police Department, a squad car arrived at the house at 1:45 p.m. The group home received a call from the hospital later that afternoon that the man had died.
The man was formerly a resident of the Fernald Developmental Center. His case is the third we have heard about in which a former developmental center resident in his 50s died suddenly at a state-operated group home managed by Northeast Residential Services. In this case, however, there doesn’t seem to be any indication that the group home was in any way at fault.
“The staff did a tremendous job,” one source said, echoing O’Rourke’s assessment. “They did exactly what they were trained to do. “They jumped right in and did their best to save his life.”
“We hope the DPPC does a thorough investigation of this case,” said Colleen Lutkevich, Executive Director of COFAR, a statewide, family-supported nonprofit organization that advocates for persons with intellectual disabilities and their families and guardians. “If indeed this hospital was at fault in failing to treat this man adequately, we need to find out why. In particular, we need to know whether his disability played a role in the apparent lack of care he received.”
Alleged assaulter of disabled man is a no-show on trial date
Sheila Paquette’s long-running quest to bring the man who allegedly assaulted her intellectually disabled brother to justice took yet another turn this week.
After months of delay, Monday, January 9, marked the date for the trial of John Saunders, a former care worker in the group home in which Paquette’s brother, John Burns, lives.
The bad news is Saunders was a no-show at Falmouth District Court, to which Paquette and five witnesses in the case had traveled from their homes in western Massachusetts. But Paquette was not deterred or defeated. The good news is that the judge in the case ruled that Saunders had defaulted on his bail and should not be released prior to trial if he is picked up on a violation of any kind.
But Paquette said the judge’s ruling was “a really positive thing for us. If he (Saunders) gets picked up, he’ll be in jail and there is no way he can avoid showing up for trial again.” The question is when, if ever, Saunders will be picked up. Police are unlikely to go looking for someone wanted for allegedly assaulting a disabled man.
Nevertheless, Paquette believes she is proving by sticking with the case that the system can be made to work for crime victims, even when those victims are intellectually disabled. “The state and the public should know that we will take these cases to court,” she said. She said she has started a legal fund to raise money not only to pursue her brother’s case, but to help others pursue similar prosecutions of assaults against people with disabilities. “It’s a difficult process, and I think a lot of people are intimidated by it,” she said.
Paquette said her main concern now is that her brother may have become depressed in recent months and that his condition may be connected to the assault. “It’s one more assault he couldn’t manage,” she said, noting that her brother had been assaulted on two occasions in group homes prior to the alleged assault by Saunders.
The Globe tells half the story about Fernald
A front-page article that ran Thanksgiving Day in The Boston Globe depicts with great sensitivity the lives of four men who were moved out of what was then the Fernald School 40 years ago and have lived ever since in the community.
The problem is that the piece, by Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham, implies that the Fernald Developmental Center of today remains the same over-crowded, poorly run institution that it certainly was for these men when they lived there from the 1950s through the 1970s. At the very least, the story neglects to mention the dramatic improvements that were made in the conditions at Fernald and elsewhere after the federal court assumed oversight in the 1970s of care delivered in Massachusetts to persons with intellectual disabilities.
And the story mistakenly implies that only community-based care is appropriate for the residents of Fernald and other state developmental centers today.
From the all-caps headline (“CELEBRATING THE GIFT OF BEING FREE”) onward, the article paints Fernald unrelentingly as a dark and isolated prison. While that was true up through the 1970s, the untold story is that Fernald and the five other remaining developmental centers in Massachusetts today are state-of-the-art facilities that are highly integrated with their surrounding communities and serve a population that needs their high level of services.
Abraham, however, doesn’t seem to want to discuss that part of the story. At first, it wasn’t entirely clear to me why she portrayed Fernald in such a uniformly negative light throughout the story. Not only is there no mention in the story of the improvements at Fernald since the 1970s, but there’s not even any mention of the fact that Fernald and three other developmental centers in Massachusetts have been targeted for closure by the Patrick administration. Or that guardians of 14 remaining Fernald residents oppose the closure and have kept the facility open for almost a year and a half beyond its scheduled closing date after having filed administrative appeals of the transfers of their wards from the center.
Why not mention all of those things that have been going on at Fernald currently and in recent years and place the story of the facility in a modern day context? It would have been a more interesting story, I think, had Abraham noted the contrast between the four men who are thankful today that they were able to leave Fernald, and the 14 guardians who today believe Fernald is the best place available for their loved ones.
It was only as I was nearing the end of Abraham’s piece that I came across a paragaph that made clear to me what appears to be her agenda. She stated:
The world has caught up with (the four men who left Fernald and a former worker who arranged for their move in 1971 to a group home outside of Fernald.) The goal now is to keep people with disabilities in the community, to help them realize their potential and enrich their surroundings.
Yes, it was now clear that this article was yet another in a long line of journalistic paeans to “community-based” care for people with intellectual disabilities. State-operated institutional care — bad. Community-based care — good. That’s the over-simplified storyline onto which too many journalists seem to feel the need to grasp, while ignoring the subtleties of recent history and even federal law.
Community-based care is the goal for many, but not for everybody. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Olmstead v. L.C., recognized that for some people with the most severe and profound levels of intellectual disability, institutions such as Fernald may well provide the most appropriate care.
Moreover, the community system today does not live up to the utopian ideal that Abraham’s piece sets for it. I’m sure that three of the former Fernald residents in Abraham’s story do live now in a “sweet bungalow” in Hyde Park, and that they do have a “good life,” in which they go to day programs where there is tai chi, singalongs and crafts. I have no doubt that Abraham was struck in spending time with these men by “how much of their potential was squandered” at Fernald 40 or more years ago and by “the joy of the lives they’ve salvaged” in the community.
But while there are many success stories in the community system, that largely privatized system is beset today with widely acknowledged problems of high turnover and poor training of direct-care staff, and abuse and neglect. At the same time, state contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars held by vendors to run community-based group homes are poorly overseen by the state, resulting in the potential for widespread waste, fraud, and abuse in their business practices. The media in this state have not been covering those issues, but the media in New York State have been. (See this and this.)
We think it is a tragedy that the Patrick administration apparently views care for the intellectually disabled in this same simplistic light of institution-bad and community-good, and is shutting the four developmental centers in budget-cutting moves. We are waiting for the day when the media take a more nuanced view of this issue, and at least recognize that there is another side to the story.
We strongly urge Abraham and other journalists to visit the Fernald, Glavin, Monson, and Templeton Centers, all of which are steadily being emptied of their staff and residents, before it’s too late. They will see for themselves the wonderful level of care that takes place in those centers, and will note that there are no young, high-functioning residents like Albert, Curtis, Richard, and Joe, left in them today.
Trying to make sense of DDS’s budget numbers
It’s hard to figure out what to make of the administration’s spending decisions when it comes to providing services to people with intellectual disabilities in Massachusetts.
On the one hand, since Fiscal Year 2009, the administration and Legislature have cut most community-based line items, including adult family supports (26.9% cut), community transportation (17.6%), community day and work (3.8%), Turning 22 (35%).
Not suprisingly, the developmental centers line item in the budget has been cut since FY 09 by $45.4 million, or 24.2%. (In fact, based on a set of numbers provided by the Department of Developmental Services, the budgets of the Templeton, Monson, and Glavin developmental centers alone were cut by almost 70 percent between FY 09 and FY 11.)
Yet, at the same time, the community residential line item (which funds contract-based care in privately operated group homes) has been raised since FY 09 by $182.2 million, or 32%. In addition, the state-operated group home line item has been boosted by $27.4 million, or 19.9 percent, in that time.
These two community residential and state-operated group home line items have been boosted by a total of $209.6 million, while the cuts have totaled $87.4 million during the same period (not counting the planned phase-out of funding under the Boulet lawsuit). The bottom line is the grand total of all DDS line items is $34.6 million higher in the current fiscal year than it was in FY 09.
What exactly has been going on here? We’ve asked DDS for information on where residents of the developmental centers targeted for closure have been transferred. We don’t believe very many residents have opted to live in privately operated group homes. So it remains a mystery to us just why the administration has needed to boost the community-residential line item by more than $180 million.
It’s true there are potentially thousands of people waiting for community-based residential care. But if indeed more than $180 million in new state dollars have been put toward accomodating people waiting for residential services, why has the administration been cutting funds for transportation, day programs, family support, Turning 22 and other programs for those same people?
It would seem that had the administration pared back the increase in the community residential line item to a modest $100 million increase since FY 2009, they could have prevented the cuts in the other community line items at at least held them harmless. It’s strange because the administration’s funding decisions have left it open to the charge from the Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers that the administration has failed to back its “professed interest in Community First,” an initiative intended to boost community-based services choices and spending.
In the meantime, DDS has denied a request by COFAR for records detailing community-based costs of a particular community-based residential program. We’ve been seeking to compare costs and services under this particular contract with the budgets of the Templeton, Monson, and Glavin Centers from FY 2009 to the present. (We don’t believe that the cuts in the developmental center budgets will save money in the long run because these same services must be funded in community-based accounts if they aren’t funded under the developmental center budgets.)
We asked for both a breakdown of the Templeton, Monson, and Glavin budgets and records detailing the costs of medical, nursing, clinical, and therapeutic services provided to residents of the group home program. In a letter dated October 23, DDS’s general counsel stated that the documents we requested concerning the group home program are part of DDS clients’ records and are therefore exempt from disclosure.
COFAR has appealed the denial to the state Division of Public Records, arguing that we are not seeking information that identifies any specific individuals. What we want to find out is which agency or agencies both fund and provide the medical, nursing, clinical, and therapeutic services under this contract, and how much these services cost state taxpayers in total.
We believe DDS can provide the information we are seeking without violating the privacy rights of the individuals in this program. Should DDS refuse to provide this information, the public will have no way of knowing basic details about the provision and cost of these kinds of public services.
Our questions about the DDS provider licensure system
How effective is the Department of Developmental Services’ licensing and certification system for operators of community-based group homes in Massachusetts?
We reviewed 30 online licensure and certification reports and DDS’s revamped licensure and certification manual. We also reviewed a 2008 licensure survey report by the state Department of Public Health of the state-run Fernald Developmental Center.
Our review found that the federal-state certification process for state developmental centers appears to be significantly more rigorous and comprehensive than the DDS licensing and certification process for state and privately run group homes. This difference would appear to have implications for the relative safety and wellbeing of clients in the widely dispersed, community-based group home system.
DDS licenses and certifies providers that operate more than 2,700 24-hour residential programs in the state, according to figures provided by the department.
State-run developmental centers, which must meet strict federal standards of care, are surveyed by state DPH staff, which follows requirements established by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The community-based group homes are surveyed by staff of the DDS’s Office of Quality Enhancement, supplemented by volunteer surveyors.
Here are some of our findings. (Additional information about our review can be found in the October 2011 issue of The COFAR Voice):
- Under the DDS’s licensure and certification process for group home providers, only 25 percent of those group home sites are inspected or surveyed by licensing staff during each two-year licensing period. This means that a provider can receive a two-year license to operate even though 75 percent of its homes were not inspected.
- While two of the licensure survey reports we sampled contained detailed findings of deficiencies in care and procedures in the providers’ group homes, the majority of the reports appeared to focus on whether the providers were working to achieve broad and often vaguely worded goals such as “maximizing independence” and “supporting people to live healthy and active lives.” One of the most frequently cited problems in the licensure reports was the makeup of the providers’ human rights committees, whether they had bylaws, and how frequently they met.
In contrast, the 2008 survey report on the Fernald Center contained 56 pages of detailed findings about treatment and care, based on direct observation by surveyors as well as on resident records. Observed injuries were noted in the CMS-DPH report, as well as direct observations that certain residents were not receiving adequate treatment.
While the Fernald Center had some 180 residents in 2008, many of the group home providers whose reports we reviewed provided services to that many or more individuals in their individual networks of group homes.
- Few of the DDS provider reports, most of which were only a few pages in length, appeared to mention the results of direct observations about the care provided to individuals in the residences. None of the reports contained findings of observed signs of injuries to residents or of abuse or neglect. Yet, the state’s Disabled Persons Protection Commission receives some 1,500 complaints of abuse and neglect each year in the community system, more than one third of which are substantiated, according to agency figures.
- In many cases, the DDS licensure surveyors appeared eager to say positive things about the providers, but even those statements usually did not refer directly to observed care issues.
For instance, the DDS licensure report for Fidelity House, Inc., stated that a “remarkable” example of “the way people were valued in their homes” was that “confidential records had one page profiles which carefully described each individual in the first person.” In a number of cases, the survey reports contained the vague statements that the particular provider being reviewed “takes great pride” in its programs or facilities or, in one case, that the provider’s services were “founded upon a values-based mission.”
- All of the DDS provider reports reviewed indicated that the providers were granted licenses to operate, even in the relatively rare cases in which potentially serious problems were cited. In one case, a provider, Behavioral Associates of Massachusetts, was given a one-year conditional license to continue operating even though the license survey found that only two out of six required “quality of life areas” had been achieved. Among the problems noted by the surveyors were that residents’ confidential records were altered and that the provider’s day program was inappropriately operating in the basement of one of the residences.
In another case, the Center for Human Development received a two-year license to operate even though there had been three instances in the previous two-year licensing period in which reportable incidents of abuse or neglect in its residences had not been reported to the Disabled Persons Protection Commission as required.
In October 2010, the Kennedy Donovan Center received a recommendation for a “deferred license” for its residential services after failing to meet the standard on 20 indicators of care and services. The surveyors found that residents in six different group homes had gone more than a year without a physical exam, with two residents having gone 18 months and two having gone 17 months without an exam. One resident who didn’t have a dental exam for more than two years was later was found to need several fillings and extractions, the report stated. Another resident, who had had pneumonia was not provided with a follow-up review by a physician.
A deferred license means the agency can continue operating, but has 60 days to correct the problems. There was no information online to indicate whether those corrections were made.
- Of the 30 online reports surveyed, fully one third were out of date on the DDS website, some by as much as two years. It wasn’t clear whether the DDS has simply been slow in posting licensure reports on its website or whether the licenses may have expired for some of the providers reviewed.
- The DDS licensure and certification procedure was revamped in July 2010, based on input from the providers themselves. In 2009, the Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers stated that it was working with DDS to revamp the licensure system and that it was seeking to reduce the number of group home sites surveyed and the time spent surveying in each location.
Among the changes made by DDS in 2010 were a reduction in the licensure survey time spent in group homes from one to two weeks down to 5 working days, according to the online licensure manual.
- Both the old and revamped reports did not always specify the total number of clients served by each provider or even the total number of group homes run by the provider. Some reports listed all relevant indicators while others didn’t.
We plan to bring our findings to the attention of state legislators who deal with DDS issues, many of whom may be unaware that there is any difference in the state’s oversight of developmental centers and community-based care settings. The claim that the community system provides equal or better care than the developmental centers doesn’t mean much if the oversight of the two systems is not equal.
It’s about the care model
A disturbing incident involving an attempted rape of a woman by an intellectually disabled resident of a community-based group home last month can teach us all a valuable lesson.
We’ve been in the midst of the wrong debate here about care for people with intellectual disabilities. We really shouldn’t be having a debate between “community-based” care versus institutional care. What’s really at issue here is the care model for these people in Massachusetts.
Bear with me for a moment.
On June 3, The Lowell Sun reported that a resident of a state-run group home in Chelmsford walked out of his residence, went next door and attacked a pregnant woman as she was sitting in her living room with her husband and three-year-old daughter. The man managed to tear off Amy Hillman’s shirt and jump on top of her before he was pulled away by Hillman’s husband, James.
The group home resident, Tholda Chhom, and James Hillman ended up in the front yard, where Chhom continued to charge at Hillman before running back to his residence just before police arrived, according to witnesses. Chhom was later charged with assault and attempted rape, and has been placed in a “more secure state facility,” according to The Sun.
Meanwhile, the Hillmans and their neighbors have been left asking questions. Will Chhom be allowed to return to the group home? Why were the Hillmans previously told that Chhom did not have violent tendencies, even though he frequently used to yell out of his window at passersby?
The Hillmans, in fact, were so concerned about Chhom, prior to the May 8 incident, that they built a stockade fence around their yard. According to James Hillman, Chhom appeared to be left all day long in his room. But on the day of the attack on Amy Hillman, the staff at the group home reportedly didn’t even know he had left the group residence.
It would be tempting for us to say that Chhom should never have been in a community-based group home; he should have been in a develpmental center, where, at the very least, it would have been more difficult for him to have gotten out out and to attack a resident in the community. But that argument may miss the real point here.
What people like Chhom are missing in the community system — even in state-run community residences — is an intensive care model that meets the federal standards set for Intermediate Care Facilities. ICF-level care, which happens to exist only in the developmental centers in Massachusetts, stipulates that residents receive onsite clinical, medical, and nursing care and full-time supervision. Not everyone with intellectual disabilities needs this level of care. Only a small fraction of them do. But Chhom would appear to be one of them.
That’s why we’re so upset that the Patrick administration is shutting down four of the six remaining developmental centers without replacing the ICF care model available in them. We don’t want the big old buildings there either. It’s the ICF care model we want to preserve for those who need it.
We think the current residents of the developmental centers should be able to stay in their current locations in the most cost-effective residential settings, while receiving the same level of care from their familiar staff. That might well mean they would live in small group homes on the campuses — the “postage-stamp” idea. Meanwhile, other people in the community, such as Tholda Chhom, who need that level of care, should be able to receive it as well.
But the administration is seeking to eliminate the ICF model and replace it with care under which the ICF standards have been waived. It’s referred to as community-based care, but it should really be labeled “waiver based” care, because the standards are lower. Direct-care staffing levels do not have to be as high, clinical and medical personnel can “float” among different homes in geographic regions, and medications can be administered by people with less training.
What does this mean for the safety of neighborhoods around the state where thousands of community-based group homes exist? What does it mean for people like Tholda Chhom, if there will no longer be an ICF-level facility one day to accept him? Will he simply be thrown into prison?
Once again, let me be clear. I’m not trying to make an argument here to preserve the six developmental centers as they exist today, although no doubt we’ll continue to be accused of that.
Go ahead, call it all community-based care. Just keep the care model and let the current residents of the developmental centers stay in their current locations with their familiar staff. And finally, provide the opportunity for ICF-level care for all who need it, such as Tholda Chhom.
Justice elusive in assaults of the intellectually disabled
When Sheila Paquette found out her intellectually disabled brother had apparently been viciously assaulted while on an outing from his group home last June, she had no idea of the long road she would be traveling to seek justice in the case.
What she — and we at COFAR as well — have learned is that there often isn’t a lot of interest among law enforcement authorities in prosecuting cases of abuse of the disabled, or in the mainstream media in reporting on it. Paquette is a COFAR member and president of the Advocacy Network, a COFAR affiliate, which advocates on behalf of persons with intellectual disabilities in Massachusetts.
Paquette’s brother, John Burns, was allegedly assaulted by John Saunders, a group home staff worker, who allegedly poked his fingers in both of Burns’ eyes while he was toileting Burns. The alleged incident occurred in the late morning at a vacation house on Cape Cod that was rented by the Center for Human Development, a state contractor operating Burns’ West Springfield-based group home.
Burns was not examined by a doctor until the following day, when he was taken, at Paquette’s insistence, to Noble Hospital in Westfield. Paquette said she was told by the medical staff there that Burns’ black eyes “were consistent with somebody taking their fingers and shoving them right into his eyes with sufficient force to cause blood to pool.”
In an article in the Advocacy Network’s Fall 2010 newsletter, Paquette wrote that she took the unusual step some three weeks after the alleged assault of personally filing a felony charge against Saunders of Assault and Battery on a Disabled Person. “Until I filed the charge myself, the situation wasn’t taken seriously by the law enforcement authorities,” Paquette contends.
Photo taken of injuries to John Burns' eyes
Paquette isn’t alone in questioning our society’s commitment to ensuring justice or safety for persons with intellectual disabilities. The New York Times reported yesterday that an inquiry by the paper found that New York State’s group home system of care “operates with scant oversight and few consequences for employees who abuse the vulnerable population.”
An investigation by The Cincinnati Enquirer described “a statewide law enforcement system (in Ohio) that routinely fails to investigate and punish those who abuse and neglect mentally retarded citizens.” There’s not much reason to assume the situation is any different in Massachusetts.
Paquette said the alleged assault of her brother was witnessed by his roommate, who said the incident was entirely unprovoked. Later in the day, Burns and his roommate were driven back to West Springfield by another staff member of the group home. Paquette said her brother had to sit in the back seat with Saunders, the alleged perpetrator, the whole way.
Paquette wrote that she was later told informally by an investigator that her brother spent the night in his group home moaning and crying. But it wasn’t until he was sent the following day to his regular day program that someone from the program called Paquette’s other brother, Jim, who shares guardianship with her. The caller said John Burns had two black eyes and was being sent back to his residence.
That was the first Paquette had heard about the injury to her brother. She said she gathered her camera and a notebook and went to the group home to find her brother indeed with two big black eyes. It was then that she began to experience the first of many frustrations with the state’s system for responding to reports of abuse of the intellectually disabled.
After examining her brother, she asked the house manager to report the injury to the police and the Disabled Persons Protection Commission. But when a police officer arrived at the house, he said he couldn’t investigate the incident because it had occurred in another town, outside his jurisdiction.
The DPPC was called immediately to investigate. But the chronically under-funded agency handed the investigation over to the Department of Developmental Services (which funds the contractor running the group home).
Fortunately, Paquette said, the management of the group home did take the situation seriously. Both the house manager and his supervisor questioned Burns’ roommate on separate occasions about what he saw, and were convinced his description of the event was consistent and credible. Burns’ roommate is intellectually disabled, but is able to communicate. CHD fired Saunders immediately, based on the assault allegation.
Nevertheless, the system has been slow and inefficient in tracking Saunders down. Saunders failed to show up in Falmouth District Court for a pre-trial hearing that had been scheduled in October. He is currently free on bail and is currently scheduled to appear in court on March 28.
In the meantime, Paquette has gotten little information about the case, she says, from the investigating authorities. The DPPC, for instance, will not release the report done on the incident by DDS even to her because the matter is under criminal investigation.
“I’ve gotten nothing in writing from DPPC and nothing from CHD,” Paquette says. “The DPPC says they can’t release anything to me because it’s in criminal court, but it’s in court only because I happened to file the charges.
“What did the DDS find out about this case?” Paquette adds. “What did CHD write up? If everyone in those agencies has seen those reports, why not the victim, or at least why not me, who is the victim’s voice? It’s almost surreal. It’s just like fog. I’m trying to stay calm, but I find myself getting more and more irritated.”
At COFAR, we’ve also been frustrated in trying to get media coverage of this case. Although we notified the media around the state prior to a pre-trial hearing for Saunders that was scheduled for March 3, no one showed up to cover the hearing, and nothing appeared in any media publication about it.
Paquette said her goal isn’t “to put someone in jail for 30 days, it’s to have a jury hear this case, to let people know about this problem (of abuse of the intellectually disabled), and to make sure agencies check on their employees and make sure they can fire them if they are causing these types of problems.”
We all know that the media is facing its own financial issues and is cutting back on its coverage of issues in all facets of society. Yet, in New York and Ohio, newspapers have recognized the importance of the problem of abuse of the disabled.
After we sent follow-up emails to some local newspapers in the Cape Cod (location of the pre-trial hearing) and Springfield areas (location of Burns’ group home), we heard back from the editors of The Cape Cod Times and The Daily Hampshire Gazette. We were told by the Cape Cod paper’s editor that their news editor is “considering” a story about the incident that would run around the time of the next court date. The editor of The Gazette said somewhat apologetically that West Springfield is outside of that paper’s circulation area, but otherwise, “we would have covered this type of story.”
The Springfield Republican initially assigned a reporter to the story, but nothing has appeared in the paper, and neither the reporter nor the executive editor have responded to our follow-up emails about the matter.
Paquette noted, by the way, that 15 years ago, her brother was badly injured by a house manager in a different residence in Westfield. At that time, The Boston Globe sent a reporter all the way out to Westfield to interview her, and Geraldo Rivera sent a television reporter as well. Times have apparently changed.
Among the issues Paquette would like to find out is why the firm running the day program, in particular, didn’t bring her brother to the hospital immediately, but rather just sent him home after observing his black eyes.
She also wants to know whether a State Police unit attached to the DPPC is conducting its own investigation of the case, separate from the Falmouth District Attorney’s Office. It was only after she filed the charge that the DPPC sent a Massachusetts State Trooper to her home to interview her, Paquette says.
Paquette believes her decision to personally file the charge took many people by surprise. “I don’t think it occurred to anyone I would go and file charges myself,” she says. “I believe everyone was waiting around for DPPC and DDS to go do whatever they do.” She said she was told by a DDS investigator that had she left the matter entirely in that agency’s hands, “this more than likely would have taken two years for this to get to the criminal court. I short circuited the process, she says.”
COFAR blog 