A Broken Covenant : Scandals Continue to Batter the Covenant House Network for Runaways and Its Founder

As Bruce Ritter tells it, it all started in February, 1969, with a 2 a.m. knock on the door of his shabby, $60-a-month East Village apartment. Six teen-agers had heard the Franciscan priest was living in the wretched neighborhood, and they hoped he would let them sleep on his living-room floor, instead of leaving them on the bitter cold, dangerous streets.

Ritter had moved to the area from the comfort of a college teaching job with the vague idea of being “useful to the poor.” But as more and more runaways began showing up at his door, the outlines of his mission grew clear.

“Hundreds of kids--urban nomads, as I had begun to call them--were coming to what my friends and I now termed Covenant House,” Ritter wrote later. “So many kids, so many lost, dying kids came to Covenant House in those early years. We did what we could--which was to provide a clean bed, some food, somebody safe to be with. Mostly we loved them and the kids knew that.”

Twenty years later, Covenant House has grown to an international network of runaway shelters, and with an annual budget of more than $85 million, a phenomenon among private charities. Presidents, senators, even such revered figures as Mother Teresa, dropped by its shelters to visit and be photographed with Ritter and the troubled youths he called “my kids.”

“It is absolutely the largest nonprofit fund-raiser in the city of New York, and the largest child-care agency in the country. Like a rocket ship it went off,” said William Treanor, executive director of the American Youth Work Center, a youth advocacy agency in Washington.

But now, the priest hailed as a national hero in former President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 State of the Union address has seen his reputation tattered and the very survival of Covenant House threatened.

In the past three months, Covenant House has been rocked by one sensational allegation after another. Donations are reported to have plummeted, although Covenant House denies this. Ritter, steadfastly maintaining his innocence and integrity amid the spreading scandal, two weeks ago resigned from the organization, which is under investigation by New York Atty. Gen. Robert Abrams and the provincial office of the Franciscan Order.

The problems began in December with the first of several accusations that Ritter preyed sexually upon young men who had turned to Covenant House for refuge from the streets. More recently, attention has focused on reports of possible financial misdealings, including a secret trust fund worth almost $1 million that was aimed, in part, at hiding the size of Ritter’s income.

Fresh allegations surface almost daily, followed by Covenant House’s denials of impropriety.

On Tuesday, New York Newsday cited internal memos indicating Covenant House had impeded an investigation of the brutal murder of one of its clients by denying that it had any connection with the victim. This occurred, Newsday reported, despite the fact that the client’s picture had appeared on the first page of its 1989 annual report.

Covenant House responded by accusing Newsday of “innuendo and misrepresentation” and suggested that unidentified people had attempted to “bribe street kids with drugs and money to lie about Covenant House” and make it appear that the organization had interfered with the investigation.

On Wednesday, the Village Voice reported that Ritter had awarded interior-decorating and renovation contracts worth more than $200,000 to his niece and her husband. Ritter’s lawyer, Stanley Arkin, responded that the relatives had gotten the job only because they had been the lowest bidders.

With such accusations, longstanding concerns about Covenant House’s methods--accusations often dismissed during its heyday as backbiting on the part of its smaller social service competitors--also are getting new attention.

Critics long have contended that Covenant House’s short-term shelters, which may have more than 150 beds, are less effective than smaller facilities. They note that the locations are usually in the heart of the urban “combat zones,” drawing runaways toward instead of away from the destructive environments.

Others have suggested that public relations and fund raising--done largely through direct-mail appeals that graphically describe the travails of teen-agers taken in by Covenant House--often took higher priority with Ritter than getting youngsters off the streets.

And some say his fund-raising appeals are misleading--conjuring images of blond girls being forced into prostitution, for example, although only a small percentage of runaways get involved in that activity.

“This guy never fooled very many people in social services,” Treanor said.

Many of these concerns arose again last year, when Ritter put forward plans for a 100-bed shelter in Hollywood. He scaled back his Los Angeles effort after objections from rival youth programs.

In New York City alone, however, as many as 500 teens a night seek shelter with his organization, noted James J. Harnett, Covenant House’s acting president. Facing so great a need, debate over such details as the size of the facilities Covenant House offers, he said, is “kind of an academic and professional argument.”

He denied published reports that donations to Covenant House have dropped sharply. Despite an initial dip in receipts, “the donors are just so committed to this work that the bad press has not convinced them that this work is not worth supporting,” Harnett said.

He did acknowledge that it is too early to tell the effects of the latest allegations, which center on Covenant House’s finances rather than allegations about Ritter’s sexual behavior.

Covenant House’s problems first became public in December when Kevin Kite, a former prostitute, asserted that while part of the program, he had received special favors and money in exchange for having sex with Ritter, 63. Ritter denied the charges and produced Kite’s father, who publicly branded his son a liar.

But several other clients soon came forward with stories similar to Kite’s. It also was revealed that Covenant House officials gave Kite a new identity by using the baptismal certificate of a 10-year-old boy who had died of cancer in 1980. The dead boy’s parents were outraged when they learned of the switch.

The Franciscans ordered Ritter to take a leave of absence for “rest and recuperation” as the order investigated some of the charges. Ritter resigned from Covenant House on Feb. 27, and organization officials said he was not available for comment.

But even after Ritter quit, the controversies at Covenant House did not end. At the same Feb. 27 board meeting at which Ritter resigned, Frank Macchiarola--a former New York City schools chancellor who had taken temporary control of Covenant House only three weeks earlier--also quit. In his stead, the board chose Harnett, a close associate of Ritter and his handpicked successor.

That move, in turn, prompted the resignation of Donna Santarsiero, a director for a decade, who was Macchiarola’s lone supporter on the 18-member board. She insisted that he had offered “remedial actions that needed to be taken,” and blasted her fellow board members in an interview.

The board, whose members include prominent corporate executives, is a group of “very egotistical, very grandiose, highly manipulative people used to having their own way,” she said. “They were in way over their heads.” (Other Covenant House board members did not return calls from The Times seeking comment.)

This month, Covenant House’s scandals took another twist when the New York Times reported that Ritter had set up a trust fund of almost $1 million, ostensibly for work with runaways. However, none of the money was spent on programs and instead was used for loans to two Covenant House board members and Ritter’s sister, the newspaper said. The board members subsequently resigned.

Ritter also has acknowledged using $140,000 from the tax-exempt trust to cover his own expenses and conduct his ministry. The trust, which most board members were unaware of, was created years ago with part of Ritter’s own salary. He said he was concerned that his critics would attack him for earning so much, so he used the trust to make his pay seem to be far less--$38,000, rather than $98,000.

It is undetermined whether Ritter broke any laws. The Internal Revenue Service has said it can find no evidence that Ritter filed required annual reports on the trust.

Besides the trust woes, the finances of Covenant House itself are under scrutiny. Last week, its attorney acknowledged that the agency had made large, interest-bearing loans to high-level employees, who resigned when the loans were made public.

New York’s John Cardinal O’Connor, who previously had expressed support for Ritter, last Friday deemed the situation at Covenant House “a mess,” and said the Archdiocese of New York would step in to help designate yet another interim president.

Covenant House also launched an internal investigation, to be headed by a former New York City police commissioner, Robert J. McGuire.

Meanwhile, Harnett said, Covenant House shelters in six U.S. cities, Canada and Central America continue to carry on their mission, which is estimated to reach 25,000 runaways a year.

Anne Donahue, director of Covenant House’s newly opened Los Angeles shelter, insisted that local fund-raising has been “going fine so far. Obviously, there has been some uncertainty” on donors’ part, she said. “Until the air is cleared, I’m sure there will be some hesitation, at least on a short-term basis.”

But, she added, the number of youths the agency is helping keeps increasing. “Between our shelter and paying for bed space (elsewhere), we’re sheltering 55 to 60 a night, with dozens coming to our drop-in center and vans.

“We keep trying to focus the attention on the need,” Donahue insisted. “Whatever accusations are going on regarding Father Ritter, it has no effect on our mission.”

Times Staff Writer Kathleen Hendrix in Los Angeles contributed to this story.