Safe Choices 1 – Leave George alone

by Chris Braith­waite

copy­right the Chron­i­cle Oc­to­ber 1, 2008
NEW­PORT — In his ef­fort to take con­trol of his life away from the state of Ver­mont, George St. Fran­cis found an ally in Pro­bate Judge John Mon­ette.

Af­ter a hear­ing on Sep­tem­ber 4 the judge or­dered the Of­fice of the Pub­lic Guardian and much of the staff of the Safe Choices pro­gram to “re­frain from any and all acts con­sti­tut­ing abuse, re­tal­i­a­tion, in­tim­i­da­tion, hu­mil­i­a­tion, ridicule, ex­ploita­tion, threat, or ha­rass­ment” of Mr. St. Fran­cis, who is un­der state guardian­ship.

For good mea­sure, the judge told the state and Safe Choices to give Mr. St. Fran­cis ac­cess to his own at­tor­ney, and not to change his med­ica­tions in a way that might hin­der his abil­ity to func­tion.

Mr. St. Fran­cis, 30, has been liv­ing at “Low­ell House,” an iso­lated res­i­dence that houses a few par­tic­i­pants in the Safe Choices pro­gram, which in turn is run by North­east King­dom Hu­man Ser­vices, Inc., of New­port.

Safe Choices was founded about 15 years ago as a way to deal with sex of­fend­ers who, be­cause of low in­tel­li­gence, are in­com­pe­tent to stand trial in crim­i­nal court.  The pro­gram has grown to in­clude men like Mr. St. Fran­cis, men who had not been charged with a sex crime, but were deemed to be at risk of of­fend­ing.

Mr. St. Fran­cis has been in crim­i­nal court as re­cently as Tues­day on mis­de­meanor charges brought by the peo­ple who mind him at Low­ell House.  And while it’s not clear that his com­pe­tency to stand trial has ever been re­solved as a le­gal mat­ter, he has been con­victed of one count of en­gag­ing in a “pro­hib­ited act,” and a pro­ba­tion vi­o­la­tion for es­sen­tially re­peat­ing that act.

Mr. St. Fran­cis wants to get out of Low­ell House and out of the Safe Choices pro­gram.  To that end, he has ap­par­ently filed a re­quest in Or­leans Fam­ily Court that his state guardian­ship be ter­mi­nated.

That re­la­tion­ship dates back to 1996, when he was 18 and Chit­ten­den Fam­ily Court found that he had “been di­ag­nosed as hav­ing sig­nif­i­cantly sub­av­er­age in­tel­lec­tual func­tion… which ex­ists con­cur­rently with deficits in adap­tive be­hav­ior.”

Mean­while, Mr. St. Fran­cis has filed a par­al­lel re­quest in pro­bate court that Janet Reed of Crafts­bury be named his pri­vate guardian.  Ms. Reed has worked ac­tively to help other men get out of the Safe Choices pro­gram.

While state guardian­ships are han­dled in Fam­ily Court, pri­vate guardians are ap­pointed and mon­i­tored by Pro­bate Court, and that’s where Judge Mon­ette comes in.

The state’s in­dig­na­tion at be­ing the sub­ject of such a strongly worded pro­tec­tive or­der seems to leak through the dry lan­guage of the doc­u­ments filed by its lawyer.  She is Jen­nifer Myka, the spe­cial as­sis­tant at­tor­ney gen­eral who rep­re­sents the De­part­ment of Dis­abil­i­ties, Ag­ing and In­de­pen­dent Liv­ing (DAIL), which over­sees the Of­fice of the Pub­lic Guardian.

In ad­di­tion to ap­peal­ing the Pro­bate Court’s or­der to Or­leans Su­pe­rior Court, thus in­volv­ing every court that sits in the old county cour­t­house on Main Street, Ms. Myka went to Pro­bate Court to seek the or­der’s “im­me­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion.”  That mo­tion is sched­uled for hear­ing on Thurs­day, Oc­to­ber 2.

She ar­gues that the Pro­bate Court lacks ju­ris­dic­tion in the case be­cause Fam­ily Court has ex­clu­sive ju­ris­dic­tion over Mr. St. Fran­cis’ guardian­ship.

She refers to Mr. St. Fran­cis’ at­tor­ney, Tim Yarrow of Hyde Park, as his “ap­par­ent” at­tor­ney, ar­gu­ing that the com­mis­sioner of DAIL has the ex­clu­sive power to ob­tain le­gal ad­vice on his be­half.

Ms. Myka com­plains that the Sep­tem­ber 4 hear­ing was “ex parte,” mean­ing that one side — the state — was not pre­sent.

“It was im­proper for this Court to en­ter­tain al­le­ga­tions this scan­dalous on ex parte ba­sis,” she wrote, “and to re­strict the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the State with­out any ef­fort to grant the State a right to be heard.”

The al­le­ga­tions she refers to can be found in two af­fi­davits filed in Pro­bate Court.

One, from in­ves­ti­ga­tor Car­roll Bil­lado, is based on an Au­gust 8 tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with Mr. St. Fran­cis who, Mr. Bil­lado wrote, “wants the pub­lic to hear about his ter­ri­ble ex­pe­ri­ences in the ‘Safe Choic­es’ Pro­gram.”

The in­ves­ti­ga­tor, a for­mer Or­leans County Sher­if­f’s deputy, wrote that Mr. St. Fran­cis “is very con­cerned that when he files pa­per­work with the court sys­tem, that the ‘Safe Choic­es’ Pro­gram will re­tal­i­ate against him.”

He told Mr. Bil­lado he had been in Safe Choices for nine years.

“The ‘Safe Choic­es’ Pro­gram staff has said ‘If you try to leave the pro­gram, we will put you in jail,’” Mr. Bil­lado wrote.  “The ‘Safe Choic­es’ Pro­gram staff has said ‘We’ll tes­tify against you to keep you in the pro­gram.’”

“The ‘Safe Choic­es’ Pro­gram staff calls him a ‘liar’ all the time and says, ‘We don’t be­lieve you’ when he de­nies hav­ing a de­viant fan­tasy or de­nies mas­tur­bat­ing,” the af­fi­davit con­tin­ues.

Mr. St. Fran­cis told Mr. Bil­lado he had two seizures while liv­ing at the main house in Low­ell, and was taken to North Coun­try Hos­pi­tal by am­bu­lance.  He cur­rently lives alone in a nearby cot­tage, and told the in­ves­ti­ga­tor he is afraid he might not get help if he has an­other seizure.

A sec­ond af­fi­davit was signed by a 24-year-old man who spent five years in the Safe Choices pro­gram, and lived at the Low­ell House while Mr. St. Fran­cis was there.

His af­fi­davit says Mr. St. Fran­cis was fre­quently ac­cused by his ther­a­pist of hav­ing sex with an­i­mals, in­clud­ing chick­ens and goats.

“Mr. St. Fran­cis de­nies these things,” Mr. Bil­lado’s af­fi­davit says.  “Mr. St. Fran­cis wants a ‘nor­mal’ life, re­la­tion­ship and fam­ily, like any­one else.”

The 24-year-old man’s af­fi­davit said that the ther­a­pist and the Safe Choices staff told Mr. St. Fran­cis and “all the guys, in­clud­ing me, ‘We will make you go to jail if you leave the ‘Safe Choic­es’ Pro­gram.’”

His af­fi­davit says that John Ull­rich of Bar­ton, a “com­mu­nity in­te­gra­tion spe­cial­ist” work­ing at the Low­ell House, hung a pic­ture of a rooster on Mr. St. Fran­cis’ bed­room door.  “I be­lieve that John Ull­rich did that to make fun of George, be­cause he thought George had sex with birds and other an­i­mals,” the af­fi­davit says.  “I knew that was a cruel thing to do.”

The 24-year-old com­plained to other staff, he said, and they made Mr. Ull­rich take the pic­ture down.  Mr. Ull­rich, the af­fi­davit says, called Mr. St. Fran­cis “George of the Jun­gle,” and “Cu­ri­ous George,” and made “cluck cluck” sounds when he saw him.

Mr. Ull­rich had no com­ment on that al­le­ga­tion Tues­day night.  But Kathy Aiken, co­or­di­na­tor of the Safe Choices pro­gram, said “that is­n’t the way it played out.”

Ac­cord­ing to a de­scrip­tion of the pro­gram writ­ten for a state leg­is­la­tor in 2003, Safe Choices had 17 clients who all had “prob­lem­atic sex­ual be­hav­iors.”

Seven had been sent to the pro­gram through the court process be­cause they were found to be in­com­pe­tent to stand trial and rep­re­sented a dan­ger to oth­ers.

Five had been re­turned to Ver­mont from out-of-state place­ments.

Three were placed in Safe Choices “proac­tively” by fam­ily mem­bers who were also their guardians.

And two were put in the pro­gram by state-ap­pointed guardians “be­cause they were en­gag­ing in sub­stan­ti­ated prob­lem­atic sex­ual be­hav­iors but had avoided ad­ju­di­ca­tion.”

In 2003 the care of those 17 men cost the pro­gram more than $1.2-mil­lion, with the cost per man rang­ing from $20,252 to $112,954.

The cost of main­tain­ing one man at Low­ell House in 2006, a pro­gram doc­u­ment shows, to­taled $187,766.

Eric Grims, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of North­east King­dom Hu­man Ser­vices, said Tues­day that he thinks Safe Choices cur­rently has 18 to 20 clients.  With­out do­ing some re­search, he said, he could not sep­a­rate Safe Choic­es’ bud­get from the $15-mil­lion his agen­cy’s de­vel­op­men­tal ser­vices di­vi­sion spends an­nu­ally on ser­vices for well over 100 peo­ple with de­vel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to crim­i­nal court records, Mr. St. Fran­cis’ stay at Low­ell House has not been un­event­ful.

In Or­leans Dis­trict Court Tues­day he pled in­no­cent to a mis­de­meanor charge of dis­or­derly con­duct.

Ac­cord­ing to the af­fi­davit of State Po­lice Cor­po­ral Paul Mosher, a staff mem­ber at Low­ell House com­plained on Au­gust 17 that Mr. St. Fran­cis en­tered the main house car­ry­ing a steak knife and pointed it at him.  The staff mem­ber told the of­fi­cer that he felt threat­ened, and told Mr. St. Fran­cis to drop the knife.  He took the knife away, he told the of­fi­cer, and Mr. St. Fran­cis left the house.

Ac­cord­ing to court records, Mr. St. Fran­cis was or­dered to re­port for an eval­u­a­tion of his com­pe­tency to stand trial.

Mr. St. Fran­cis was ar­rested at Low­ell House in Sep­tem­ber 2005 and charged with a “pro­hib­ited act” af­ter a fe­male staff mem­ber com­plained that he had reached around her waist and “started to push his groin into her but­tocks,” ac­cord­ing to the af­fi­davit in the case.

Though a long se­ries of hear­ings were sched­uled to es­tab­lish whether he was com­pe­tent to stand trial, he pled no con­test to the mis­de­meanor in May 2006 and was given a six-to-12-month sen­tence, sus­pended with pro­ba­tion.  Among the con­di­tions of his pro­ba­tion were that he stick to his men­tal health plan and abide by the rules of his group home.

But in Au­gust 2006 an­other fe­male worker at Low­ell House com­plained that Mr. St. Fran­cis put his arms around her and pushed against her with his body.

Court records say Mr. St. Fran­cis ad­mit­ted that he had vi­o­lated pro­ba­tion and was or­dered to serve five days of the sen­tence im­posed on the orig­i­nal charge.  He was once again put on pro­ba­tion through Au­gust 14 this year, and told to abide by his men­tal health plan and the rules of the group home.

The state’s lawyer in the pro­bate case, Ms. Myka, ac­com­pa­nied her writ­ten ar­gu­ment with a 2005 Fam­ily Court de­ci­sion by Judge Den­nis Pear­son on an ear­lier pe­ti­tion to end Mr. St. Fran­cis’ state guardian­ship, filed by Day­ton Lan­phere of Wol­cott, who had helped care for him dur­ing a two-month stay at Nightin­gale Respite Ser­vices.

The judge de­nied the pe­ti­tion on the grounds that Mr. Lan­phere was not an “in­ter­ested per­son” as de­fined in the law gov­ern­ing state guardian­ships, and so had no stand­ing to file the pe­ti­tion.

But Judge Pear­son noted that the Com­mis­sioner of DAIL, as the su­per­vi­sor of the Of­fice of the Pub­lic Guardian, had failed to com­ply with the law:

“The Com­mis­sioner has failed to dis­charge his/​her yearly duty to pro­vide ‘an an­nual re­view of the so­cial ad­just­ment and pro­gress’ of GSF (Mr. St. Fran­cis), and to re­port on and ‘an­nu­ally re­view the le­gal sta­tus’ of GSF and de­ter­mine whether con­tin­ued guardian­ship is still nec­es­sary and ap­pro­pri­ate.  There have been no such writ­ten re­ports or re­views of GSF at all since 1996….”

How­ever, the judge noted later, “no rem­edy ex­ists, nor is any sanc­tion or other re­lief iden­ti­fied, for the Com­mis­sion­er’s ob­vi­ous, and un­ex­plained fail­ure here….”

Asked about the judge’s find­ings on Mon­day, Gail Falk, who heads the Of­fice of the Pub­lic Guardian, said “that was a good wakeup call for us.”

Since then, she said, her of­fice doc­u­ments its re­views of the peo­ple whose lives it over­sees in an an­nual re­port.