AIDS Victim Held to Blame Self for Loss of Home

Ricky Ray, one of three brothers infected with the AIDS virus, lies awake at night crying, blaming himself for the fire that destroyed the family’s Florida home, his father told a Senate hearing on Friday.

“He believes if he hadn’t tested positive, the house wouldn’t have burned,” Clifford Ray said.

Ray and his wife, Louise, recounted for the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee a story of threats and harassment that began when Ricky, 10, and his brothers Robert, 9, and Randy, 8, tested positive for the AIDS virus.

The boys are hemophiliacs and they are believed to have contracted the virus from clotting agents given to control their hemophilia.

For a year, the boys were told to stay home from school. But, when a federal judge ordered them admitted to classes in their hometown of Arcadia last month, a student boycott was organized and the family received bomb threats and threatening telephone calls.

The boys wanted to stay in school, and some of the children had started to accept them, Ray said. Then their house burned while the family was away.

“My oldest boy blames himself for the fire,” Ray told the Senate panel. “He’s had nightmares and stays awake crying.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the committee, peered over his glasses at Ricky, who was sitting in the audience with his two brothers and sister and a friend.

“This is not the children’s fault,” Kennedy said. “None of this is the children’s fault.”

The Ray family now lives at an undisclosed location in Florida. “We want to blend back into the woodwork, so to speak,” Mrs. Ray said.

“We just want to get back to a normal life, a normal routine,” she told the panel. “We’re hoping that what we have gone through will help Americans open their eyes and say, ‘This could be my family.’ ”

The boys’ doctor joined the Ray family in support of bipartisan legislation being pushed by Kennedy to forbid discrimination against people who test positive for the AIDS virus.

Dr. Jerry Barbosa, a hemophilia expert at St. Petersburg’s All Children’s Hospital in Florida, was asked whether he would have recommended that the boys be tested for the AIDS virus if he had known what was going to happen.

“No, sir,” the physician replied. “I say no because of the blatant discrimination going around now.”