At State-Run Homes, Abuse and Impunity

A New York Times investigation over the past year has found widespread problems in the more than 2,000 state-run homes. In hundreds of cases reviewed by The Times, employees who sexually abused, beat or taunted residents were rarely fired, even after repeated offenses, and in many cases, were simply transferred to other group homes run by the state.

And, despite a state law requiring that incidents in which a crime may have been committed be reported to law enforcement, such referrals are rare: State records show that of some 13,000 allegations of abuse in 2009 within state-operated and licensed homes, fewer than 5 percent were referred to law enforcement. The hundreds of files examined by The Times contained shocking examples of abuse of residents with conditions like Down syndrome, autism and cerebral palsy.

At a home upstate in Hudson Falls, two days before Christmas in 2006, an employee discovered her supervisor, Ricky W. Sousie, in the bedroom of a severely disabled, 54-year-old woman. Mr. Sousie, a stocky man with wispy hair, was standing between the woman’s legs. His pants were around his ankles, his hand was on her knee and her diaper was pulled down.

The police were called, and semen was found on the victim. But the state did not seek to discipline Mr. Sousie. Instead, it transferred him to work at another home.

Roger Macomber, an employee at a group home in western New York, grabbed a woman in his care, threw her against a fence, and then flung her into a wall, according to a 2007 disciplinary report. He was then assigned to work at another group home.

Mr. Macomber, in fact, was transferred to different homes four times in the past decade for disciplinary reasons. It was not until last year, after he left a person unattended while he went into a store, that he was put on employment probation and eventually dismissed.

Over the past year, the state agency overseeing the homes, the Office for People With Developmental Disabilities, has repeatedly declined to make its top officials available for interviews. A spokesman, Herm Hill, said that the vast majority of the agency’s employees were conscientious, and that its hands were often tied because of the disciplinary and arbitration rules involving the workers’ union. Mr. Hill emphasized that the agency takes allegations of abuse “very seriously.”

But this month, after learning of The Times’s findings, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo forced the resignations of Max E. Chmura, who led the agency, and Jane G. Lynch, the chief operating officer of the state’s Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for Persons With Disabilities, which is charged with protecting people with developmental disabilities.

“It is a basic function of state government to protect the most vulnerable among us,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement.

The Cuomo administration said it would undertake immediate and comprehensive review of the agencies and their practices. Asked about the low rate of referral of allegations of abuse to law enforcement — for example, only a quarter of sexual abuse cases were reported — officials said they were reviewing flaws in their record-keeping.

But they have acknowledged that it had been the practice of the agency to handle most accusations of abuse internally, despite the office’s lack of forensic capacity. It does not use a crime lab or standard evidence-gathering techniques, and its investigators generally lack law enforcement training; sometimes, they are simply the supervisors of the accused employees.

The Times reviewed 399 disciplinary cases involving 233 state workers who were accused of one of seven serious offenses, including physical abuse and neglect, since 2008. In each of the cases examined, the agency had substantiated the charges, and the worker had been previously disciplined at least once.

In 25 percent of the cases involving physical, sexual or psychological abuse, the state employees were transferred to other homes.

The state initiated termination proceedings in 129 of the cases reviewed but succeeded in just 30 of them, in large part because the workers’ union, the Civil Service Employees Association, aggressively resisted firings in almost every case. A few employees resigned, even though the state sought only suspensions.

In the remainder of the cases, employees accused of abuse — whether beating the disabled, using racial slurs or neglecting their care — either were suspended, were fined or had their vacation time reduced.

Most of the state-operated homes are in economically depressed areas upstate, and the jobs they provide — paying from $29,000 to nearly $62,000 with generous benefits — are sometimes among the few decent employment opportunities. The state has no educational requirements for the positions, which involve duties like administering drugs, driving residents to day activities, feeding them and preventing them from choking. Some of those hired have shown no previous interest or skill in caring for difficult populations.

“There are some people that don’t belong there; I know some myself,” said Robert Matuszewski of Buffalo, who was suspended and ordered to undergo psychiatric counseling for neglecting a resident and for referring to his female colleagues as “bitches.” “They make me look like a schoolboy.”

In some cases, not even criminal convictions are disqualifying. Henry Marrero, an employee at a group home in Utica, was convicted of beating a 99-year-old man while moonlighting at a nursing home — slapping the man three times in the face and once on the stomach. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was barred from participating in federally financed health care programs. But he kept his state job working with the developmentally disabled.