THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 2, 1995 TAG: 9504020023
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 236 lines
When Joseph L. ``Buster'' Lawrence III came home from camp June 1, 1990, he wasn't his usual bubbly self.
For each of the previous three years he had returned from his weeklong summer adventure bursting with tales of fun. He couldn't wait to tell his mother about the boat rides he had taken. Then he would proudly hand her something he had made in arts and crafts - a ceramic dish or maybe a basket.
But when 46-year-old Buster came home from camp in 1990, he had something quite different to share. Buster told his mother that he had been sodomized by another resident of Baker House, a Virginia Beach group home for mentally disabled adults run by Volunteers of America.
Buster's disclosure horrified his mother, Jewell McGee, and catapulted her into a five-year-long search for answers. The quest, in turn, precipitated a barrage of lawsuits between McGee and those charged with Buster's care.
Though she lost her most recent court volley, McGee remains undaunted. She now plans to appeal her case to the state Supreme Court. She says she wants to secure basic human rights for her son and make the public aware of what she claims are widespread abuses in the delivery of care to mentally disabled adults in Virginia Beach.
``If my struggle results in better care for my son and others like him, it will make me so happy. It will have made it all worthwhile,'' said McGee.
Over the course of five years, McGee has accumulated reams of paperwork and invested about $35,000 in legal fees and other costs to obtain justice for her son. She also has become a resource for other parents of disabled adults and recently formed the Tidewater Association for the Physically and Mentally Challenged - an information clearinghouse for parents and their disabled children - and is seeking nonprofit status for the group.
McGee says she has a moral obligation to ``speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.''
She also has written a book titled ``A Long Road to Here'' - still in manuscript form - which details her struggle.
When Buster was 10 months old, doctors told McGee it was unlikely her baby would live beyond age 12. Doctors told her that Buster had a hole in his heart and would never walk. They said that he had Down syndrome symptoms.
``I didn't know what Down syndrome was,'' McGee said. ``I'd never heard of it. I said to myself, `Are they crazy?' Then I ran out of the room and said to my family doctor, `Come quick. These people are telling me things. They are telling me there's something wrong with my baby, that he's going to die. Quick, tell me this is not true.' ''
Despite what the doctors said, McGee refused to believe that she would lose her firstborn son.
``I didn't accept it,'' she said. ``I prayed. To me, he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. He was precious. He was my baby. He was mine.''
McGee raised three other children, all the while nurturing and cherishing Buster. She kept him at home with her for 43 years before placing him in a Virginia Beach group home. McGee hoped that Buster could continue living the happy life they had together built for him. A time could come, McGee worried, when she would not be able to look after Buster, whose father is deceased.
Entrusting others with his care was not easy for McGee.
At first, she missed him terribly. ``It was like he was a ghost in my house,'' McGee remembers of the months after Buster's 1987 placement in Baker House.''
McGee moved into a new apartment several months after placing Buster at Baker House. This helped alleviate the loss of her son and for the next two years things seemed to go smoothly.
But by the end of 1989, McGee and other parents began complaining about conditions at Baker House. State authorities investigated the home in January 1990 and found 19 violations.
One of the directives stemming from these findings was that two residents of Baker House be placed elsewhere by March 4 because of their reported aggressive behavior toward Buster.
When McGee received her copy of the state's compliance plan in early March 1990, she made an appointment with Dennis I. Wool, executive director of the Virginia Beach Community Services Board. She wanted assurance from Wool that the man her son feared would be removed from Baker House.
But upon meeting with Wool, McGee said she received no such assurances. In fact, she said, Wool repeatedly denied that there were violations at the same time he acknowledged that he had seen the violations.
A short time later, McGee was barred from visiting her son's home.
In a letter dated March 15, 1990, Errol Bueche, then VOA executive director, informed McGee, ``You may not enter the Baker House building.''
Bueche further explained in the letter, ``This action is taken to protect the Baker House program in general from what appears to be your destructive, malicious intent towards the Baker House program.''
While McGee was unable to visit Buster at the group home at 5677 Moores Pond Road, she took him into her home for weekend visits.
When she picked up Buster on April 13, 1990, for the Easter weekend, she noticed that he had red marks on his face. She would later hear from eyewitnesses that before Buster left the home that day, he had been beaten by staff.
About two weeks later, unknown to McGee, Wool wrote a letter to King Davis, then commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services.
In the letter, dated May 1, Wool dismissed McGee as a ``disgruntled and misdirected consumer,'' and then wrote, ``Despite the irrationality of the complaints, and a full knowledge of the complainant, the department has fully investigated every diatribe. In doing so, significant staff resource has been consumed, the programs efficient operation is disrupted and potentially discredited, and a strong potential exists that $4.00-an-hour workers at the program will quit under such scrutiny leaving the twelve clients clearly in jeopardy.''
Buster's alleged rape took place, police said, between May 20 and May 25, the week before he attended summer camp.
During their ride home from camp June 1, Buster did not seem himself, McGee said.
``He was quiet. I touched him. He was feverish,'' McGee said in the same hushed tones she always uses when referring to her son.
Buster ate little for supper that first night, McGee said. He was clearly tired and suffering from bug bites and poison ivy or oak, so McGee advised him to take a warm, baking soda bath and go to bed.
When Buster awoke June 2, he was still feverish. As the day progressed, he began vomiting, and his mother could tell that he was worried.
``He kept trying to tell me something,'' she said.
McGee asked her son what was wrong. At first, Buster wouldn't respond to his mother's urgings to tell her what was bothering him.
``He kept saying, `Can't tell you.' ''
Finally McGee suggested, ``You don't have to tell me, Buster. Go upstairs and get on your knees and tell Jesus.''
It was then that Buster told his mother about his rape.
``I thought I was going to die,'' she said. ``I thought, `this is horrible.' I thought, `Oh, God, he's been raped.' ''
McGee tried to console her son. She put her arms around him and told him, ``Buster, don't cry. God will take care of you.''
Then she called police.
Detective John Tosloskie came to McGee's home to talk with Buster. McGee left the room, but listened just out of sight in the kitchen.
McGee said Buster told the detective that two other male residents of Baker House had accosted him in the hallway as he returned from showering and then forced him into his bedroom. There, they took his pajamas off, and one of them sodomized him.
That same evening, Detective Ernest C. Seiderman Jr. filed a complaint of sodomy, listing Baker House as the location of the crime.
Buster stayed with his mother for the next two years. During this time McGee tried desperately to get answers to her questions:
Who was responsible for her son having been left unattended when he was supposed to have 24-hour care?
Why hadn't anyone been held accountable for what happened to Buster?
Where would Buster be safe?
In the spring of 1992, McGee would discover that Wool had not told Community Services Board members about Buster's alleged rape and beatings or her earlier worries about his safety.
Maureen E. Olivieri, a board member from 1988 to 1993, said recently that she had been unaware of McGee's complaints and the allegations of abuse and rape until McGee brought her case to the board in the spring of 1992.
Olivieri said she was surprised when she learned that while Wool had told the board of other minor problems at Baker House, he had not shared information about allegations of rape and beatings.
McGee's complaints were ``of a serious nature,'' yet ``nothing was done,'' said Olivieri.
``McGee proved everything to the board,'' Olivieri said.
After McGee aired her complaints to the board, an investigation was ordered.
Olivieri said the investigation was turned over to ``appropriate staff,'' though she had urged an independent investigation.
``An in-house investigation is like having the wolf watch the henhouse,'' Olivieri said.
In a June 2, 1992, letter from then board Chairman John Y. Richardson Jr., McGee was informed, ``based on the evidence, no further action on these allegations was warranted.''
Richardson attached an otherwise-unattributed report adopted, he said in the letter, on May 28, 1992, in which the board addressed McGee's concerns as well as those of other parents.
Of Buster's alleged physical and sexual abuse, the report said, ``The board is sensitive to the distinction between not being able to prove an incident of abuse and concluding that it did not occur.''
The report said that the allegations had ``been the subject of Social Services investigation, a police investigation, Mrs. McGee's civil suit against two VOA employees, a Department for Rights of Virginians with Disabilities review and the subject of a joint meeting between representatives of the board staff, DHMRS's licensing division, Social Services, Virginia Beach Police Department, the Department for Rights of Virginians with Disabilities, and Mrs. McGee, which all have resulted in one conclusion; that it was impossible to substantiate the allegations of abuse.''
In the fall of 1992, Buster was finally given placement in a group home where McGee felt he would be safe.
The residence is run by Fidura & Associates, another company that contracts with the Community Services Board to care for mentally disabled adults.
McGee, however, remained concerned that no one had been held accountable for Buster's alleged rape.
Last fall, she learned that police had ``exceptionally cleared'' Buster's rape case, meaning that police believed the rape had taken place.
McGee then decided to see why state investigators did not take further action.
In a letter dated Jan. 5 of this year, Timothy A. Kelly, commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, told McGee, ``A thorough review of our records revealed no information that these incidences were reported or investigated. Consultation with department staff also did not reveal any knowledge'' of the alleged rape.
McGee wrote in February to Commonwealth's Attorney Robert J. Humphreys and Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Walter J. Brudzinski.
Humphreys responded that he had reviewed the case and cited the victim's ``severe disabilities'' as part of the reason for his refusal to prosecute.
Brudzinski, however, stated, ``That documentation has long since been discarded, and no record of it currently exists in this office.'' He further explained, ``I have no independent recollection of the facts of this case, nor do I specifically remember refusing to prosecute.''
Buster, now 51, is content living in his Fidura & Associates apartment, McGee says. One other mentally disabled man lives there, and staff are on duty 24 hours a day.
Buster is also happy with his job at a Community Alternatives workshop where he goes each weekday. It makes him feel good, he says, to earn his own money.
But McGee worries that her son will again become a victim if she does not remain vigilant. She calls and visits him frequently.
McGee's attorney, John S. Norris Jr., expects to file a petition to appeal with the state Supreme Court by April 10.
The case McGee is appealing arises out of Wool's May 1, 1990, letter, which McGee charges defamed her.
On Dec. 1, 1994, after three days of testimony, Virginia Beach Circuit Judge A. Bonwill Shockley found in favor of Wool and the Community Services Board. The case never reached the jury.
Asked recently to comment on McGee's appeal, Wool said that the case ``was settled in court. Her motions for actions were dismissed.''
As to Buster's alleged rape, Wool would say only that it had already been resolved. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
CHARLIE MEADS/Staff
Joseph L. ``Buster'' Lawrence III talks with his mother, Jewell
McGee, who has been battling officials over his treatment.
Photo
CHARLIE MEADS/Staff
Jewell McGee of Virginia Beach has for years been battling agencies
over the care provided for her mentally retarded son, Joseph L.
``Buster'' Lawrence III.
KEYWORDS: SEXUAL ABUSE LAWSUIT MENTAL RETARDATION by CNB