YWCA Vows Not to Give Up Hot Line Records : Counseling: The agency cites the Simpson case in refusing to surrender confidential materials.

With the O.J. Simpson case focusing new attention on domestic violence, national leaders of the YWCA on Wednesday denounced Massachusetts court rulings that they contend could destroy the effectiveness of counseling hot lines for battered women and rape victims.

The YWCA officials, in Los Angeles for their national convention, pledged to defy court orders that a Massachusetts Y hot line surrender confidential records of counseling sessions with the alleged victim in a rape case. That YWCA is being fined $500 a day for its refusal to hand over the files, with the fines now totaling $6,000.

“The YWCA of the U.S.A. will not be intimidated by threats from a legal system that does not honor or respect the tragedy of violence that befalls thousands of women and girls every year. And certainly we know that was a part of the history, the tragic history, of the life of Nicole Brown Simpson,” YWCA national President Ann Stallard said.

Stallard was referring to the relatively light sentence that O.J. Simpson received in 1989 for beating his then-wife. He received no jail time and was allowed to undergo counseling over the telephone. He is now charged with killing her and a friend of hers.

Leaders of the YWCA, the nation’s oldest women’s organization, said confidentiality is crucial if counselors are to help abused women emotionally heal and to give them courage to bring criminal charges against attackers.

“It’s a question of protecting women’s privacy and upholding their civil rights,” YWCA national Executive Director Prema Mathai-Davis said at a news conference at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Downtown.

In Massachusetts, a defense attorney in a Springfield, Mass., rape trial said state law allows a judge to scrutinize confidential material in private and then decide which portions, if any, can be used as evidence. The public defender, Andrew Klyman, stressed that his office was “not trying to intimidate, embarrass or harass, or anything in that nature. We are doing this so that we represent our client to the best of our abilities within the limits of the law.”

Klyman, who heads the public defender’s office in Springfield, said it was ridiculous for the YWCA to link the Simpson murder case to the controversy over the files he wants as possible proof of his client’s innocence. “Of course, domestic violence is a very important issue. I’m not denigrating that at all. But this is mixing apples and oranges.”

In an emergency motion, the YWCA of Western Massachusetts on Wednesday asked a judge on that state’s Supreme Judicial Court to eliminate the fines and to overturn the lower court’s order for the hot line records. But Justice John Greaney denied the Y’s request, according to its attorney, Wendy Murphy.

Meanwhile, the fines mount daily as the YWCA faces a lengthy wait for a full appeals hearing. National YWCA leaders are expected to announce a strategy today to possibly raise funds for the fines.

California law generally grants therapists and properly trained rape hot line counselors confidentiality when their clients are accusers in a sex assault case. But experts explained Wednesday that such confidentiality is not guaranteed, and that California judges can decide that the accused’s need for evidence outweighs damage to the victim’s privacy.

But such breaches of confidentiality are rare, experts said. “That’s a real high hurdle to clear,” Steve Schwendimann, an official in the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning’s domestic violence and sexual assault section, said of protections for secrecy. As in Massachusetts, a California judge must first review files in private and release only relevant portions.

Patricia Giggans, executive director of the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women, agreed that California courts almost always uphold confidentiality of hot line and counseling sessions. But she said the rules on evidence “make you feel vulnerable if you get some judge or defense attorney who really pushes.”

In the Massachusetts case, Luis Figueroa, 18, is charged with the rape of a 24-year-woman in Springfield last December. Figueroa claims that he had a prior relationship with the woman, but she denies that. The public defender’s office asked a local judge to review the hot line records to help determine the woman’s credibility.