Couple Pursues Case of Attack : Hospitals: After receiving damages, a woman and her husband want rape charges filed against a nurse. They also plan a lawsuit.

Deborah and Bruce Haywood have endured financial and emotional devastation in their quest to prove that Deborah Haywood was raped by a male nurse at a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Woodland Hills three years ago.

But on Monday, just five days after an arbitration panel sided with them and awarded them $225,000 in damages, the couple said they want to push forward with a civil court action to get more money from the hospital and to bring the alleged rapist to trial using advanced DNA analysis.

“The amount of money was never important to me, but I do want to send out a message,” said Deborah Haywood, 33, trembling as she spoke. “I refuse to let them take what’s most important: My morals and beliefs.”

Kaiser Permanente and the nurse, Steven P. Coyle, have from the beginning maintained that there was no rape.

Since October, 1987, when Deborah Haywood first charged that she was raped by Coyle when she was brought to the hospital’s emergency room following a car crash, the Haywoods have spent more than $120,000 in legal, medical and counseling fees aimed at overcoming the trauma and winning their case, said their attorney, Jerome Zamos.

As their bank accounts disappeared, they had to trade their ample Calabasas house and five surrounding lots for a converted garage in Woodland Hills.

“And this has put such a strain on our marriage,” said Bruce Haywood, 48. “She used to be bubbly and cheerful. Now she’s just totally withdrawn.”

Because of a patient contract, which requires that all medical malpractice claims against the hospital go to arbitration instead of to court, the Haywoods’ 1988 civil suit against Kaiser and Coyle was referred to a panel of three arbitrators. The three--one chosen by the Haywoods, one by Kaiser and one chosen by the first two arbitrators--decided unanimously in the couple’s favor on Oct. 3 in making the $225,000 award.

But Zamos said he will petition Los Angeles Superior Court to accept the suit for trial now that the arbitration is complete. He hopes to increase the Haywoods’ award to the $5-million to $6-million range because he said anything less “is virtually meaningless when weighed against Kaiser’s profits.”

Kaiser Permanente believes that the decision is binding and cannot be appealed by either side, according to spokeswoman Janice Seib.

The Haywoods’ battle began immediately following the alleged rape, and did not die when the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office dropped its criminal charges against Coyle because of insufficient evidence.

The Haywoods pushed for a then-new form of DNA analysis, known as “genetic fingerprinting,” to be used on semen taken from Haywood’s body and from her hospital blanket. Unsuccessful in persuading law enforcement authorities to sponsor the test, they agreed to arrange and pay for the test themselves, only to discover it could not be performed because one semen sample was too small and the other had broken down through improper storage, Zamos said.

Desperate, they paid nearly $20,000 for a second, more advanced but less precise DNA test: A gene amplification process known as polymerized chain reaction. That test--which was subsequently performed on bodily fluids from all men known to have had contact with Haywood at the hospital--found that only Coyle had the gene type detected in the semen samples, according to reports from the private crime lab they used, Forensic Science Associates.

However, Coyle’s gene type is common to 7% of the white male population, which has made courts skeptical of the tests in the past. Zamos said that was the factor that led the district attorney to reject the test results as a basis for criminal charges against Coyle.

The district attorney’s office could not be reached for comment because it was closed Monday for Columbus Day.

Zamos said he believes the amplification test will eventually be accepted in criminal cases, he hopes in time to persuade the district attorney’s office to re-file criminal charges against Coyle.

Jennifer Mihalovich, a criminalist at Forensic Science Associates, said demand for the gene amplification test has grown during the past year and a half and the firm now has a six-month backlog. Forensic Science is one of a handful of labs around the country that uses the technique, Mihalovich said, although various agencies--including the FBI and the California Department of Justice--are gearing up to include it in their investigations.