Who Will Check Out Report of Abuses by Social Services Agency?

It’s 10 o’clock this past Monday night and 83-year-old Inda Kuperman--actually two days shy of her 84th birthday--is sleeping in her bedroom. A frail, sickly woman, she had a stroke 12 years ago and could not survive without round-the-clock care. She cannot feed, bathe or dress herself. Someone has to change diapers for her. When she walks, her knees sometimes lock and her son will walk on his knees behind her and straighten her legs so she can move across the room. She understands words but seldom speaks.

On this night, her son is seated at the kitchen table in the home he shares with his mother. Leon is the reason Inda Kuperman is still alive. Now 56, he grew up in Romania but came to America 30 years ago and went to work in the aerospace industry. He still speaks with a thick Eastern European accent and is telling a story that causes him to alternate between even-handed narration and bursts of anger. When his voice rises, he apologizes. Eventually, though, he always gets back to righteous indignation again.

To Leon, the story is simple: The Orange County Social Services Agency has, to his way of thinking, accused him without proof of being a criminal. Worse yet, the allegation was that he abused the person to whom he has willingly--but clearly not without paying a price--devoted the last dozen years of his life.

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On the afternoon of Oct. 2, he says, three social workers arrived unannounced and knocked on his door in Huntington Beach. They wanted to see his mother. Put off, Leon refused and told them to schedule an appointment. Within minutes, two cops arrived.

The social workers were investigating an anonymous complaint of possible abuse to his mother. Upon seeing Mrs. Kuperman, one of the three said she saw a bruise on her face. Incensed, Leon disputed that a bruise existed. Despite Leon’s vehement protests, his mother was taken to Columbia Huntington Beach Hospital and Medical Center.

Hot already, Leon heated up even more at the hospital. He demanded that an administrator come look at his mother’s face to verify a bruise. A policeman eventually told him, Leon says, to “shut up.” Leon was allowed to join his mother, who was being examined by a doctor, on the condition that he remain silent. He agreed, but when he then asked again for an administrator, he says, two policemen arrested him.

Cited for trespassing on hospital property, he spent 7 1/2 hours in city jail. He has a court date Nov. 5.

He blames everything on Social Services. “There is not one shred of proof I ever abused my mom,” he says.

His rage at them has a deeper origin. Because he receives a pittance from the county to care for her, a social worker comes once a year and stays about 30 minutes to check on his mother.

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“In 12 years, I don’t know what long vacation is,” he says in his broken English. “I don’t know what short vacation is. I don’t know what long weekend is. Who is the person who sacrificed for her? Ask these social workers how many times did they show up at the door and say, ‘Mrs. Kuperman, can we help you? Leon, is there anything you need?’ If they mean well, they would have been here helping me, not ambushing me.”

I tell him these situations are more complicated than that, but he is not assuaged. He insists I follow up on his mother’s “bruise” and about her condition the day she was taken away.

I contacted the office of Mrs. Kuperman’s longtime doctor, Laurence Jacobs, who treated her after her stroke and now sees her about once a year. His office secretary, Maureen Bonaventura, spoke with me and said she was speaking with Jacobs’ approval. She said Jacobs reviewed the evaluation of the doctor who saw Mrs. Kuperman at Columbia. Although the report indicated she had been brought in for “possible elder abuse,” the attending physician made no mention of a bruise on her face. “He [Dr. Jacobs] has read it and didn’t feel that anything was involved in the way of a problem,” Bonaventura said.

Leon sees all this in grand conspiratorial terms. He sees a repressive bureaucracy at work where social workers openly lie and deceive to feather their nests. He says his mother had no specific need to be in the hospital, and he has another conspiratorial theory for why Columbia kept her for six days. A Columbia spokeswoman said the hospital can’t discuss patient records.

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Meanwhile, the stigma of “possible elder abuse” now hangs over Leon. “Where is the accountability?” he asks.

After talking to Stephen Schrieber-Smith, a senior supervisor for the county’s Adult Protective Services, I tried explaining it to Leon. Schrieber-Smith is prevented legally from talking about specific cases, but he could talk about hypothetical ones.

Social services is legally empowered to investigate complaints like those against Leon. It is legally empowered to take an incapacitated person to a hospital if, in a social worker’s judgment, the person needs care. Even if proof of the complaint that triggered the original visit isn’t found, a social worker may determine that other forms of abuse or neglect have occurred and can recommend removal of a person from a home.

As in child-abuse cases, social workers make no apologies for erring on the side of protecting children or vulnerable elderly persons.

“Anything where outside agencies interact with private persons, there’s a certain risk of upsetting the person and getting a wrong report or drawing wrong conclusions,” Schrieber-Smith says. “But the only alternative to that would be to avoid getting involved at all, and society has found that that’s not an acceptable alternative because, in fact, there is very serious abuse that happens in our society, both to children and the elderly and disabled and handicapped.”

I’ve written on this subject before, incurring the wrath of social workers. That’s OK, because I support them most of the time. What’s most disturbing is the seeming obliviousness in some of them to the impact of falsely accusing someone of abuse.

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Leon insists I “expose” them as bureaucratic tyrants. I can’t convince him of this, but I prefer to think of them as people who see so many awful things in their jobs that they justify heavy-handed treatment of innocent people.

Someone owes Leon an apology. “My mom has one person taking care of her,” he says. “He was thrown in jail.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com