DATE: Monday, November 10, 1997             TAG: 9711100055

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  126 lines

DEFENDING THE DEFENSELESS CLAIMS OF ABUSE HAVE LED THE STATE TO REVIEW CARE, WITH A REPORT DUE IN DAYS.

When Joseph L. ``Buster'' Lawrence couldn't bite into his favorite fast-food hamburger, his mother, Jewell McGee, knew something was wrong.

She looked in Buster's mouth and found his two bottom incisors jutting backward. She wiggled them. They were loose - so loose she believes she could have pulled them out. Instead, she rushed her adult son to the emergency room.

It was two days before Christmas last year, and Buster, mentally disabled, had just returned to his mother's home to live. For more than three years, he had lived in a supported-living apartment run by Fidura & Associates, a private company that contracts with the Virginia Beach Community Services Board to care for some of the city's mentally handicapped citizens.

A few days after returning home, Buster, now 54, lost his front teeth, and soon McGee would be told by her son that a Fidura counselor had knocked them loose. Buster also alleged that he had been roughed up at other times, including being beaten with a belt.

The U.S. Justice Department and Virginia Beach police are now investigating Buster's allegations.

Despite the ongoing investigations, advocates contend that Virginia lacks adequate human rights protection for mentally retarded adults who claim to have been abused or neglected.

Buster's is one of several cases that have highlighted the problem and led the state to launch a review of the care system. And Jewell McGee has emerged as a leader in pushing for that review.

The first of several reports is due this week and could lead to recommendations for the General Assembly when it reconvenes in January.

Jennifer Fidura, president of Fidura & Associates, has declined to comment on Buster's allegations, saying she cannot talk about patients or employees.

The licensing authority of the state's mental health department investigated the allegations and found no violation of state regulations. But an investigator for the Department for Rights of Virginians with Disabilities, also a state agency, concluded incidents of abuse likely took place.

The DRVD's investigator spoke privately with Buster in his mother's home, while the licensing authority's investigator approached Buster at his workplace.

The most high-profile case being studied by the state involves a patient's death at Central State Hospital.

The U.S. Justice Department focused its investigation on patient care at the institution near Petersburg after the June 1996 death of Gloria Huntley.

The Associated Press reported earlier this year that Huntley spent more than 300 hours in isolation, bound to a bed, in the final month of her life, despite warnings from her doctor one year earlier that restraints could kill her because she suffered from asthma and epilepsy.

Justice Department investigators discovered that other patients spent long hours restrained and isolated.

While that case spotlighted the need for reform of practices within state institutions, problems reported by McGee and others in public hearings around the state this year have widened the focus to residential and vocational services at the community level.

McGee first lodged complaints against Buster's former counselor with Virginia Beach police, who launched an investigation. The Police Department would not comment on the investigation.

McGee also notified local and state officials responsible for the care of the mentally handicapped. Getting no satisfactory response, she ultimately pleaded Buster's case with federal authorities.

The federal investigation has not been limited to Buster's case. Authorities have taken statements from families of other mentally disabled citizens who receive, or have received, services through the Community Services Board as well. And federal investigators also have received information from employees and former employees of Fidura & Associates who are concerned about the care clients receive, present and former employees said.

McGee has become a lightning rod for Hampton Roads families of the mentally disabled. Her organization, Tidewater Association for Physically and Mentally Challenged, for which McGee is seeking nonprofit status, contends that a system that polices itself is an unaccountable system.

McGee and the 30 or so parents and others who are part of her group are pushing for an independent investigatory body with power to do more than slap the hands of lax caregiver companies.

At a public hearing in Chesapeake in August, McGee and members of other clients' families detailed mistreatment they say loved ones have suffered. The hearing was one of three conducted around the state by a study group appointed by the state mental health department to look into whether clients' human rights are adequately protected.

The study panel is due to report its findings Thursday to the state's department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services. The Hall-Gartlan legislative committee, which is assessing the state's mental health care delivery system, may then be advised by the mental health department. The Hall-Gartlan committee is, in turn, scheduled to make recommendations to the General Assembly.

Charles Osterhoudt, Roanoke attorney serving as chairman for the human rights study panel, said last week that at hearings throughout the state, his group encountered people who gave ``anecdotal evidence'' of ``unfortunate'' personal experiences in the system. He said these incidents were ``inevitable'' and declined to elaborate on what his panel will have to say in its report.

For McGee, the incidents Buster reported were nothing new. He had claimed to have been beaten and sodomized before, in 1990, while living at Baker House, another Virginia Beach group home for the mentally handicapped, this one operated by Volunteers of America.

Police investigated that earlier incident and took Buster's case to the commonwealth's attorney, who declined to prosecute because of Buster's severe disabilities, which limit his ability to testify on the witness stand. Police ``exceptionally cleared'' the case, meaning they believed that the incidents had taken place.

As for Buster's treatment at the Fidura-run facility, Gregory B. Stolcis, regional manager for the licensure division of the state Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, conducted a prompt inquiry into Buster's allegations.

He interviewed Fidura staff members connected with Buster's care, as well as those in charge of a Community Alternatives Inc. day workshop Buster attends. Stolcis also studied the results of an internal investigation conducted by John Barrett of Fidura & Associates.

But he concluded, after talking with Buster, that no abuse had occurred.

Yet L. Ray Hollowell, an attorney appointed by the Department of Rights for Virginians with Disabilities to look into the matter, concluded otherwise.

``I strongly suspect that (Buster) was the victim of some type of abuse,'' Hollowell wrote in his report.

He also said that the state's investigation was flawed because Barrett accompanied Stolcis on an interview with Buster at the day workshop. Barrett formerly held Stolcis's position with the state licensure board. ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot

Joseph ``Buster'' Lawrence, left, and his mother Jewell McGee say he

was abused by staffers at the Virginia Beach mental health care

facility where he lived. Authorities are investigating. KEYWORDS: DISABLED PERSONS ABUSE

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