'A crime against humanity'

The 23-year-old with cerebral palsy cannot speak, requires a feeding tube and sometimes has several seizure attacks in a row. He was so sick four years ago that he weighed 80 pounds when Seven Hills, a pediatric nursing facility on Hillside Avenue, took him in after seven other places refused to do so.

"So don't tell me he belongs to a group home," said Sheehan, a nursing assistant from Shrewsbury, of the state's decision to remove Patrick from Seven Hills.

The state wants to put 600 or more disabled people, including 31 from Seven Hills, into community group homes after a settlement in a case in which the
Families march through Groton to protest the state's decision. SUN PHOTO/HIROKO SATO
residents had no direct involvement.

"I'm not going to let them beat us down," Sheehan said of the state.

More than 100 family members of the residents at Seven Hills Pediatric Center marched down Main Street yesterday afternoon in protest of the state's announcement that their loved ones will soon be evicted from the facility.

Pushing them in wheelchairs with oxygen tanks strapped to their backs, the marchers tried to get drivers' and pedestrians' attentions. Some jumped out into the street, handing out fliers to the drivers, while others hoisted placards that read, "Sacrifice the most helpless?" and "Group homes are unsafe for the medically fragile."

"Each of us feels that we are living in a nightmare day and night
Advertisement
since we learned of this situation this past May," Louis Putterman of Concord, who has a 33-year-old daughter at the center. "We wake in the morning worrying about it, we go to sleep at night worrying about it, and we spend the day worrying what can we do that we have not yet done to try to protect our loved one from this danger."

The state's decision stems from a decade-old, class-action lawsuit, Rolland v. Patrick, in which the lawyers who brought the case were trying to free a disabled Agawam woman, Loretta Rolland, from a nursing home where the state had placed her.

Those who attended the march yesterday said they did not know until this May that the case was filed on behalf of 1,600 mentally retarded and developmentally disabled people, including those at Seven Hills.

After deinstitutionalizing many of the 1,600 by 2007, the state, under Gov. Deval Patrick's administration, reached a new settlement in May, promising to put another 600 or more into community-based housing and care.

The shocked parents and guardians at Seven Hills complained to the state that their loved ones do not fit the deinstitutionalization criteria. The state told them it's an issue they should discuss with the plaintiff. The plaintiff's lawyers, in turn, told the families that the Department of Mental Retardation came up with the list of people to be placed into group homes, according to Putterman's wife, Vivian Tseng.

Tseng, who is a lawyer, said there is a hole in the federal law that allows lawyers to file certain types of class-action suits without informing the involuntary plaintiffs.

Seven Hills parents and guardians say the state decided to displace residents who require around-the-clock medical care without consulting families or the nursing home.

Ralph Stewart of Wakefield said his 30-year-old son, Jesse, who suffers from microcephaly and three different seizure disorders, and is blind and deaf, wouldn't survive in a group home. Putterman called the state's move "a crime against humanity" and "a death sentence" for many families.

Putterman said he and other parents met with state Sen. Steve Panagiotakos, D-Lowell, as well as an aide to U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas, D-Lowell, and other legislators.

"They seem to be sympathetic and understanding" about their plight, Putterman said.

State Rep. Robert Hargraves, R-Groton, agrees with Putterman that the state may be trying to save money by transferring residents to group homes.

"I can't help but think there is politics in this," Hargraves said, standing in front of all the marchers. "I want you to know I will be there supporting this cause."

Stewart, a retired auto mechanic, said he lost his first newborn 34 years ago to the same genetic disorder Jesse has. With quality care, a miracle is possible, he said.

"I hope he will outlive me," Stewart said of his son.

To View Online Article From The Lowell Sun, Please Click Here