Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 7, 1994 TAG: 9401070060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Last fall, Theresa Shell hired John Read, a lawyer in Lexington, to represent her over problems she was having with defective breast implants. She also hired him to represent her 15-year-old daughter, Melanie, over injuries suffered in an auto accident.
Shell says both she and her daughter were hurting and vulnerable.
She charges that Read abused their trust - by humiliating her with vulgar sexual remarks, and by making physical advances on both of them.
It wasn't until after she made a complaint to the Virginia State Bar, Shell says, that she learned of Read's earlier legal and mental problems.
Shell says she endured "a lot of sexual innuendo, a lot of dirty remarks . . . He started asking me what I liked to do when I had sex. He was very explicit."
According to her complaint, Read also patted both her and her daughter on the buttocks.
"He had no right to touch my baby," Shell said in a telephone interview.
Read would not comment.
His attorney, Jon Kurtin of Roanoke, said Read "welcomes an investigation into this matter; and he's confident that when it is investigated, it will be determined that he has done nothing that is a violation of any disciplinary rule."
However, Kurtin said, "to the extent that anybody ever has their feelings hurt or is offended, he regrets that."
The case opens old wounds in Lexington, where John Read once wielded great power and influence.
Read had all the trappings of honor that are valued in history-rich Lexington: He came from a prominent family. He was a graduate of Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee Law School. He was a decorated Vietnam veteran.
In 1975, Read became commonwealth's attorney for Lexington and Rockbridge County. His tenure got rocky in the early 1980s amid a controversial grand jury drug probe and allegations that he was making sexual advances toward clients in his private practice.
During a hearing held by a special three-judge panel, seven women testified that Read had fondled them or rubbed his sock-clad feet over their legs. One said he exposed himself and tried to force her to perform oral sex on him.
An eighth woman, a former court official, said he used foul language to describe the sex acts he wanted to perform on her.
At a second hearing, a psychiatrist testified that Read had a post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the near-fatal wounds he suffered in Vietnam. The psychiatrist said Read also suffered from "narcissistic personality disorder," a mental illness in which someone holds a grandiose sense of their own importance.
In late 1986, the judges took away his law license while Read received counseling.
Three years later, the judges returned his license - after the psychiatrist testified that Read had recovered and was "well-equipped to return to the practice of law."
Shell, who works as a paralegal, moved to town after all this happened. "As far as I knew, he had a clean slate."
She went to him in September, because he was representing two other teens who had been in the car wreck with her daughter.
The first time she went to his office, Shell says, Read almost immediately volunteered that he had had a sexual problem 10 years ago. "He said the more you talk about it, the more it helps you."
According to her complaint to the State Bar, he told her, "I thought I had to [expletive] everything that came along. I was a big deal then. Some people wanted me to run for attorney general and things like that."
He did not mention his three-year disbarment or that the problems had involved his clients, she says.
It was during the next meeting, Shell says, that he started asking her sexually explicit questions, including "Are you [expletive] anyone now?"
From there, she says, the questions became even more detailed and degrading.
At first, "I kind of chalked up the things he would say to a VMI mentality - you know, saltwater talk."
She says Read insisted that she have photos taken of herself disrobed above the waist - pictures she now believes were unnecessary for the case.
Also, she says, he asked for any earlier nude photos of herself or any sexually explicit letters from boyfriends. According to her complaint, when she told him she didn't have such pictures, he told her, "Look, you can lie to your kids, you can lie to your lovers, but don't you ever lie to me."
Shell says Read told her to tell a psychiatrist that she could have sex only in certain ways, because of the emotional damage caused by the ruptured implants.
Shell says he told her he needed the sexual information to build her case over the implants.
But "it got to a point where I said, `John, no, this is sick. No court would need this.' . . . You feel small, when you're up against people like John or other attorneys. . . . They're supposed to be invincible - and that's intimidating."
During one office visit, he sent her out to make some copies. When she returned, she says, Read was grabbing and kissing her daughter. Shell says Read had persuaded Melanie to play a game in which she rolled dice, and if her number didn't come up, he would get a kiss.
"I got the impression that he gets a thrill out of the excitement of being on the edge - of being caught."
On Oct. 21, Shell wrote a 3 1/2-page letter to Read, telling him she would find another attorney if "there are any further insults, sexual innuendos, insinuations of any type, inappropriate physical contact" or other similar behavior.
In the letter, Shell offered to set Read up with a support-group leader who could help him take on other clients in implant cases.
Kurtin, Read's lawyer, points to that as evidence that Shell was not greatly upset with Read at the time.
Shell says she was trying to tell Read that he could be a good lawyer in these cases - if he could get his mind off sex.
A few days later, she says, she visited a psychiatrist to whom Read had referred her. Read told her the doctor was also his psychiatrist, Shell says.
She says she told the doctor what had happened and "he said, `Today, not later, I want your word you'll call the bar ethics committee.' He said, `Trust me, you have only seen the tip of the iceberg.' "
She fired Read and filed a complaint with the state bar.
An investigator with the bar interviewed Shell and her daughter in November. The state bar will not comment on the case while it is under review.
Read's lawyer, Kurtin, would not respond to any of the specific allegations.
"Everyone ought to keep an open mind until the case is considered by an impartial tribunal in which both sides can be heard," Kurtin said. "We're just not going to try the case in the media."
Shell, who has since moved from Lexington, says she didn't want publicity about the case. But she says she had to come forward once her complaint was reported in The Advocate, a weekly newspaper in Rockbridge County, and Kurtin had responded to questions from the Roanoke Times & World-News.
Both Shell and her daughter, Melanie, agreed to have their names used in the story, she says, because "we didn't do anything wrong. We have nothing to be ashamed of."
At the same time, Shell says, "I don't want his family hurt. I think his wife is a wonderful lady." In fact, Read's wife was her daughter's favorite teacher at Lexington High School.
But Shell says she had to do something. "My daughter needs to know that no one has a right to do this to anyone."
by CNB