Use of Disaster Funds in Virgin Islands Probed : Audit: Counseling group reportedly spent hurricane relief money on getaways, personal bills and books about sex.

U.S. officials said Friday they are conducting a criminal investigation of a counseling group that reportedly spent Hurricane Hugo relief money on weekend getaways, personal bills and books about sex.

The expenses were disclosed in an Interior Department audit of the Caribbean Behavioral Institute of St. Croix. The institute received $6.6 million in U.S. money after the September, 1989, disaster.

Among other improprieties, the audit said, $85,000 was spent repairing a building leased from Institute Director Chester Copemann’s mother.

Copemann has challenged the audit, saying in a letter that the institute disagreed with “every aspect” of it. He said federal regulations were not applicable to his institute and argued that he was not given time to provide documentation supporting many expenditures.

A receptionist at the institute, which does business under the name Neighborhood Support Network, said Copemann was off the island Friday. The institute conducts psychiatric evaluations and counseling, often under government contract.

An official at the U.S. attorney’s office acknowledged that the institute had seen thousands of people after the hurricane and helped many of them. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Hurricane Hugo devastated St. Croix, the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Federal Emergency Management Agency doled out $750 million in relief funds on the islands.

The audit said the institute paid for a weekend trip by employees to the Dominican Republic, spent thousands of dollars on “fun days at the beach,” and nearly $6,000 on a Christmas party and turkeys for Thanksgiving.

Among other purchases cited were books entitled “Sexual Secrets” and “Dirty Words.”

At least $1,500 was spent on personal utility bills in the two years after the hurricane, according to the five-month audit conducted by the Interior Department’s inspector general, James R. Richards.

Richards was quoted in the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News on Friday as saying the report was one of more than 150 in the past six years showing “deep-seated, unresolved problems” in the nation’s Caribbean and Pacific possessions.

The Interior Department, in a Sept. 30 letter to Gov. Alexander Farreley, “took exception to the entire $6.6 million” in federal funds received by the institute. The department wants it back if Copemann cannot account for it.