Gay Youth Agency’s Woes Show Risks of Work

Recent allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against the staff of an agency that operates group homes for gay teenagers highlights the quicksand zone treaded by those who work with troubled teenagers.

Confused and often highly sexualized, the youngsters placed in group homes are vulnerable to exploitation by the adults who work with them--just as the adults are open to groundless charges of misdeeds by manipulative teens.

There is perhaps nothing that youth workers fear more than charges of sexual impropriety--and the teenagers know it. They will mockingly flirt with their counselors or threaten to report them for fictional transgressions.

To protect both groups, social agencies establish elaborate precautions. They put windows in counseling rooms, forbid one-on-one sessions, install closed-circuit television and say no to hugging--however innocent it may be.

But ultimately, it is up to the workers to observe strict boundaries of behavior.

“It really is a volatile situation if you don’t have a firm grasp of principles,” observed a former group home worker for the private agency under investigation, the Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services Inc. (GLASS).

A March 15 accusation filed by the state against GLASS contends that various adults associated with the organization repeatedly ignored those principles and boundaries. If upheld by an administrative law judge, the allegations will cost GLASS its license to operate five Los Angeles group homes that primarily serve three-dozen gay and HIV-infected youth, as well as three foster family agencies in the county that serve 140 children.

*

The charges have caused widespread dismay among those who work with gay youth--both because the allegations could shut down much needed services and because they could tar the whole community, feeding stereotypes of homosexuals as sexual predators.

A GLASS night supervisor, the agency’s chief financial officer, a volunteer and another staff member--all male--are accused of engaging in sexual conduct with 15-to 18-year-old boys who lived in GLASS facilities over the last couple of years. During at least one of the sexual encounters, a youth was allegedly threatened with violence.

The accusation, brought by the state Department of Social Services after months of investigation, also asserts that GLASS staff and the organization’s executive director, Teresa DeCrescenzo, failed to report suspected sexual abuse, as required by law. Instead, the document contends, DeCrescenzo conducted internal investigations that concluded that nothing improper had occurred.

As part of the state action, DeCrescenzo and two other employees--financial officer Bernard La Fianza Jr. and night supervisor Henderson Slaughter--have been barred from working at GLASS or having contact with its clients.

GLASS officials have vehemently denied the allegations, saying the charges are the inventions of unstable teenagers. “This is a loose allegation,” said attorney Thomas Hunter Russell, the organization’s legal counsel. “It wouldn’t stand for 10 minutes in a court of law.”

“Unless there is something I don’t know, the [social services] department is going to end up with egg on their face and they should. Somebody up there has an ax to grind against GLASS.”

*

Russell claimed that five of the six alleged victims cited by the state have told GLASS staff that nothing inappropriate ever happened. “It’s all hearsay,” Russell said of the accusations.

Although the victims are not named in the accusation, one 17-year-old contacted The Times, saying La Fianza is falsely accused of rubbing his thigh. The fondling never occurred, said the boy, a former GLASS resident.

Yet three former GLASS employees interviewed separately by The Times--all on the condition their names not be published--said it was well-known in the organization that La Fianza behaved inappropriately with youths he favored.

One of the employees recalled seeing La Fianza sitting next to a teenager, his arms flung around the boy and their legs touching. “They were acting like lovers, it really upset me,” said the worker.

Another ex-worker said La Fianza would engage in prolonged hugs with certain boys and get “extra touchy.”

Working during the day in GLASS’ West Hollywood offices, La Fianza would spend some evenings as a volunteer at the group homes. He would play blatant favorites with some residents, going into their rooms and taking them on outings, the employees said. When one youth was ill, he bought an expensive blender so soothing concoctions could be mixed up for the teen.

The ex-employees said the staff was afraid to complain because of La Fianza’s standing in the organization. “What do you do? Go to Terry D [a nickname for DeCrescenzo] and complain about Bernie? You’d lose your job,” one of the former employees said.

Linda Kollar, an attorney representing GLASS, said the agency last year investigated allegations involving La Fianza. “There was nothing conclusive that would lead us to believe there was any impropriety whatsoever,” she said, adding that La Fianza subsequently stopped visiting the group homes.

“I believe Bernie did not want even the taint of an allegation,” Kollar said.

Educator Virginia Uribe, the founder of a gay teenager counseling program that is frequently denounced by anti-gay crusaders, said that while all adults who work with minors worry about such allegations, “we are particularly worried . . . because that is a stereotype that has been placed on us.

“It would be a terrible loss” if GLASS closes because “they are the only agency I know of that targets this group of kids,” Uribe said.

There is concern about the juveniles removed from GLASS homes in the wake of the accusation. Although the homes were not closed, Los Angeles County’s probation and children services department pulled the 24 youngsters they had placed with GLASS and transferred them to other facilities. The foster homes’ placements have not been affected.

Darrel Cummings, deputy executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, said center representatives are meeting with county officials to try to ensure that the gay youth are put in sympathetic settings. He added that the staff at his agency’s drop-in center for street youth have seen a couple of kids in the past week who said they ran away after the county removed them from GLASS.

“People in the community are really concerned--both about the kids and the message this sends out to the population at large, particularly the population that would like to see us go away,” Cummings said.

Representatives from various youth agencies said GLASS and DeCrescenzo--a well-known figure in the gay community--had good reputations. Privately, though, some said there have long been rumors of improper behavior by some GLASS staff.

Whatever the truth of those rumors, the teenagers went to GLASS with painful histories and ample problems. Placed there by government agencies that paid GLASS $4,423 a month per child, the teenagers were juvenile offenders or had been neglected, abandoned or abused. Some had hustled on the street.

“They’re very sexual. That’s power to them,” said one of the former GLASS workers. He remembered one boy who threatened to falsely accuse him of sexual advances. “They use that. They know to get attention.”

Indeed, Lois Lee, executive director of Children of the Night, uses an extensive set of regulations at the organization’s shelter, which takes in street kids engaged in prostitution and pornography.

“I can tell you working with highly sexualized kids, you need to manage them with an iron hand,” she said.

Lee said her staff is not allowed to enter residents’ bedrooms and must talk to them instead in the hall in view of a closed-circuit television monitored by another staffer. The counseling rooms have windows, and she encourages staff to make a record of any chance encounters with former shelter residents.

When Lee recently went into a teen’s room to wash out a contact lens, she told one of her counselors and entered the visit in a log. “If the kid comes back in 20 years and says Lois Lee was in my room, it’s all down on paper,” she said.

It’s not just the teens who are a challenge.

“There’s a lot of people who apply to work in these agencies who are interested in getting close to kids for the wrong reasons,” Lee said. “You do your best to screen that out.

“Someone just called me the other week and said he wanted to take my kids to the Sierra. Give me a break. Maybe he was legitimate. But maybe he wasn’t. It’s a risk I can’t take.”