MADD Is Friend in Court to Drunk-Driver Victims : Advocacy: Judges, prosecutors praise volunteers’ services. Critics say group takes too harsh a view.

As the hearing for a woman charged with drunk driving begins, Riedel Post is ready with a pen and paper, Kleenex and a soft shoulder for a friend sitting in a wheelchair nearby.

The victim, Debra Clancy, a 37-year-old South County sales executive, had been driving home from work on April 15, 1992, thinking about her upcoming wedding, when a drunk driver crashed into her car head-on in Irvine. After suffering severe facial and leg injuries, Clancy said, she was distraught to learn that she had to go to court to help prosecute the case.

She felt alone and scared. But most of all, Clancy, who does not drink alcohol, was angry at the woman who did choose to drink and drive.

That’s when Clancy met Post, a member of a small army of victims’ advocates for the Orange County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Post would help Clancy through the often bewildering court process, explaining the proceedings, taking notes and offering emotional support. But most important to Clancy, Post also had been the victim of a drunk driver.

“You really feel like there isn’t anyone who can understand what happened: the pain, being afraid, thinking ‘I’ll never walk again,’ ” said Clancy, who has limited use of her right ankle and must use a wheelchair for extended trips. “Your family and friends offer support, which is important, but MADD really understood what I was going through.”

Orange County prosecutors, judges and even defense attorneys say court advocates like Post perform a critical service for drunk-driving victims, who often feel they must endure a second round of trauma by a court system.

“Our feeling is that the drunk driver has an attorney, so the victim also needs an advocate in the courtroom,” said Post, 37. “It is often very scary for someone who has never been in a courtroom before. It re-victimizes the victim, even when it’s not intentional. The drunk driver gets the benefit of the doubt, and the victim gets to wonder whether she’ll walk again.”

MADD was started in 1980 in Fair Oaks, Calif., by a woman whose teen-age daughter had been killed by a drunk driver. The nonprofit organization takes the hard-line stance that drunk driving is no accident, any more than loading a weapon and shooting into a crowd. Advocates are infuriated by defense arguments that inebriated drivers themselves are victims who made tragic judgment errors and didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

“It’s our feeling that a drunk driver must make two choices, to drink and to drive, and that’s not an accident,” said John Rushton, executive director of the Orange County chapter. “If you are a repeat offender who drinks and drives, and you kill someone, that’s murder.” Advocates do whatever they must to help a victim. Sometimes, it’s supplying food to feed a family when a parent is hospitalized. Recently, a good Samaritan provided air transportation to Iowa for a drunk-driving victim stranded in Anaheim. Often, it’s helping the victim get over irrational feelings of guilt.

“The guilt was very deep for me,” Clancy said, who later kept her wedding date but took her vows from her wheelchair. “I kept thinking, ‘If only I didn’t brake so hard, if only I wasn’t on the road.’ ”

MADD does not recognize any safe level of alcohol consumption for someone taking the wheel, and members will not help anyone who may have played a role in his own injuries, such as a victim who is himself intoxicated.

But critics say the organization is too hard on people who may have underestimated how much they had to drink. And MADD too often unfairly demands the harshest sentences possible, balking at any discussion of leniency, say defense attorneys who contend that outspoken advocates can sway prosecutors or judges.

“How can you argue with a group called Mothers Against Drunk Driving?” asked one prominent Orange County defense attorney, who declined to be named because he represents many defendants in drunk-driving cases.

Deputy Public Defender Alan Crivaro said he believes MADD is a positive educational force, but worries about its influence.

“No judge will admit it, you can’t point to it happening, but when a judge looks out across the courtroom on sentencing day and there’s a group from MADD, you have to wonder what impact all that has,” Crivaro said.

But Orange County Superior Court Judge David O. Carter, for one, said he doubts a judge would be influenced by outspoken MADD advocates.

“You really can’t sway me by yelling at me or trying to get your way,” said Carter. “I just don’t think that happens.”

Prosecutors also find themselves under the scrutiny of MADD volunteers, who want to see drunk drivers face the toughest charges and serve the harshest sentences.

When Laguna Beach physician Ronald Joseph Allen, who has a history of drunk driving, was arrested after a Mission Viejo couple died in a head-on crash on July 11, MADD officials contacted the Orange County district attorney’s office to ask that second-degree murder charges be filed, Rushton said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Molko, who originally filed vehicular manslaughter charges against Allen and later upgraded them to second-degree murder, said MADD played no role in that decision.

“Everyone was outraged over that case, but the fact that there is a public outcry, even from a well-intentioned organization like MADD, does not affect our filing decision,” Molko said.

But on a larger scale, MADD takes credit for changing attitudes nationwide about drinking and driving and toughening laws that punish offenders.

The Orange County chapter, based in Orange, boasts about 1,000 members and supporters, four full-time staffers and scores of men and women like Post, who volunteer to the cause that unites them.

The local chapter originated the Designated Driver program, which caught on nationwide. Using the symbol of a key and a martini glass with a big slash through it, the program encourages groups to choose someone who won’t drink alcohol and will ensure that everyone arrives safely home after a night out.

The chapter also is launching a new comic book: Soberman. After his parents are killed by a drunk driver, a teen-ager becomes superhero Soberman and takes to patrolling the streets with a special laser gun that freezes drunk drivers in a block of ice until police arrive.

Soberman, who dresses in black and red tights and a black cape, will be introduced to local schoolchildren in the fall, Rushton said.

Some drunk drivers blame MADD for the length of their sentences or charges against them, and some even have lodged death threats against the organization, Rushton said. But others, like Raquelle Van Vleck, 23, of Laguna Niguel, agree that drunk driving is too serious to be taken lightly.

Van Vleck had been drinking potent Long Island ice teas and beer in November, 1991, when she decided that despite a prior misdemeanor conviction for drunk driving, she could drive. Witnesses said Van Vleck swerved across four lanes on Interstate 5 before crashing into a stalled van, instantly killing her passenger--her best friend.

“The last thing I remember, I was talking about how much we were going to party because my parents were going out of town,” Van Vleck said. “The next thing I know, I’m covered with my best friend’s blood.”

Van Vleck was sentenced to jail and ordered to perform 100 hours’ community service with MADD. At first, the idea of working with MADD seemed the harshest part of the sentence.

“I thought these people would want to kill me, to hate me, but it was the opposite,” said Van Vleck, who plans to continue volunteering for a lifetime. “They made me realize that while I can’t go back and change, I can help prevent someone else from taking a life.”

Van Vleck talks to first-time offenders with a powerful voice.

“I tell them I killed my friend, there’s no pretty way to say it,” Van Vleck said. “I’m pretty harsh. I don’t let them pull their baloney on me, because I’ve been there.”

She said critics don’t realize that MADD’s goal is to save lives by making people recognize drunk driving as a serious crime.

“Their name says it all. It’s not Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, like me,” she said. “It’s Mothers Against Drunk Driving. “

Encouraging Trend

The number of alcohol- or drug-related vehicle accidents in Orange County decreased steadily in the past six years, but still made up 36% of all crashes in 1992. Fatal and injury crashes with alcohol/drug involvement:

Fatal Injury 1992 69 2,274

*

Leading Cause

In 1992, alcohol or drugs accounted for three times as many fatal accidents as the next most frequent cause. Cause: Accidents Alcohol, drugs: 36% Unsafe speed: 12% Pedestrian (jaywalking): 11% Failure to stop at sign/signal: 8% Improper lane change: 7% Right-of-way violation: 7% Others: 19% *

MADD at a Glance

Quick look at Mothers Against Drunk Driving:

* Organized: 1980

* Nationwide chapters: 425

* Nationwide members: More than 3 million

* Orange County chapters: One

* Orange County members: 1,420

* Local office: 777 S. Main St., No. 116, Orange, Calif. 92668; (714) 835-6233

* Mission: To stop drunk driving by means of public education about hazards of drunk driving; lobbying for tougher drunk driving laws and sentences; providing outreach programs for victims of drunk drivers

Sources: California Highway Patrol; Mothers Against Drunk Driving

Researched by RENE LYNCH and CAROLINE LEMKE / Los Angeles Times