More Charges Filed Against Gay Youth Agency

Moving against a Los Angeles youth agency for the second time this year, the state has filed new allegations accusing staff members of engaging in sexual conduct with teenagers under their care.

The latest charges come six weeks after the state Department of Social Services initiated action to revoke the license of Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services Inc. (GLASS) on the grounds that various male adults associated with the organization sexually abused teenage boys living in the agency’s group homes.

Lisa Hightower, an attorney for the social services department, said the additional allegations, filed Tuesday, stem from new information her office received recently.

The new charges involve two people--a former board member and a part-time staffer--named in the original March accusation, as well as two former staff members not previously cited. The purported victims were 16- to 18-year-old boys.

Some of the alleged incidents occurred as recently as February, while others date to 1991. They range from fondling and sexual comments to oral sex. After being propositioned by a staffer, state documents say, one teenager ran away from his group home. Another youth is said to have put a chair against his bedroom door at night after twice waking to find a staff member in his room.

GLASS officials have adamantly denied the charges, maintaining that the state is engaging in a witch hunt and is rehashing unsubstantiated hearsay that was investigated earlier and found to be baseless.

With one exception, GLASS executive director Teresa DeCrescenzo said the new allegations involve matters that “were previously reported to the department and found to have no basis in fact.”

The one item that was not reported, she added, involved an alleged fondling incident at an event that the accused person never attended. “So it’s just one more in the pack of lies,” DeCrescenzo said.

The allegations threaten to shut down what is described as the only organization in the nation to offer long-term residential care for troubled and homeless teenagers who are gay or have the AIDS virus.

Also endangered is DeCrescenzo’s career. The founder of GLASS and a pioneer on gay youth issues, she is accused of not taking appropriate action when informed of some of the alleged abuses and of double-billing the state for group home residents. The social services department has barred DeCrescenzo, who is on paid leave, and two other staffers named in the accusation from working at GLASS or any other California licensed care facility.

That order could be reversed by an administrative law judge, who will review the charges at a hearing this month and decide whether to revoke GLASS’s licenses to operate five group homes and three foster care agencies.

The allegations have received extensive, often critical coverage in the gay press. One publication compared the accusation to the ill-fated prosecution in the McMartin preschool case. Another ran a lengthy opinion piece by DeCrescenzo’s life partner, Betty Berzon--a former president of the GLASS board--in which she accuses the social services department of engaging in a “witch hunt to eliminate a highly successful gay agency.”

Hightower said that is a common reaction to state licensing charges against all types of agencies.

“That’s usually the response when they don’t have anything substantive in the way of a defense,” she said. “This has nothing to do with being gay. This has to do with having sex with kids. And I certainly hope GLASS isn’t suggesting that the state not follow its responsibility to protect children simply because these children are gay.”

As for GLASS’s contention that the state is dredging up old, unsubstantiated abuse claims, Hightower said, “I don’t have any information that these [allegations] were found to be unfounded or unsubstantiated and if that were the case . . . we never would have included them in this action.”

The gay community is not alone in watching the case. The Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition, a religious group, details the charges in a fund-raising letter that begins with a warning that the mailing “contains sexually explicit information that is inappropriate for children and youth.”

In interviews, GLASS employees and volunteers, past and present, have painted a complex picture of DeCrescenzo. Some have strenuously defended her, saying it is impossible for them to believe she would have turned a blind eye to any type of misconduct.

“Terry ran a really tight ship,” said Sharon Kidd, a former GLASS program director. “I cannot imagine she knew of any of this and would have let it go on. . . . It’s hard for me to believe any of this happened.”

Others, while saying GLASS has done much good work, contend that DeCrescenzo had something of a double standard and became defensive and hostile if questions were raised about her allies or influential members of the organization.

One volunteer, who did not wish to be identified, described DeCrescenzo as having a “circle-the-wagons mentality--and sometimes she puts the wagons around the wrong person.”

Former teenage residents of the homes and adults associated with the agency said the administration frequently warned that the state was out to get GLASS and that any mention of impropriety could destroy the organization.