Baker House hopes changes lead to funding

Since last summer, when a teenage girl said she was raped inside the Ella J. Baker House by an employee, officials at the Dorchester community center have made it mandatory that all employees be trained to respond to reports of sexual assault and have forbidden workers with criminal backgrounds from being alone with youths who use the center.

The changes, the officials said yesterday, will help prevent such events and restore the reputation of the community center, which lost the financial support of public and private foundations after the allegations became public last August. The loss of funds forced the agency to lay off six full-time employees last week, including counselors, mentors, and a receptionist to close a $163,000 deficit.

Officials said they had added six members to the agency's board, including a former prosecutor and a retired city police officer. The nine-member board hopes the changes to the Baker House will persuade past contributors to donate again and rebuild the confidence the neighborhood once had in the center, which serves troubled teens and children who may be tempted to join gangs or otherwise turn to crime.

"We're trying to get it back on good financial footing," said Raffi Yessayan , one of the new members, and former chief of the gang unit at the Suffolk district attorney's office. "Right now part of it is letting the world know that the Baker House has cleaned its house and is getting its house back in order."

The changes are the result of a December 2006 report by an independent panel that reviewed the charity's operations in the wake of the allegations brought by a 17-year-old girl who was receiving mentoring at the Baker House. The girl told state social workers that an employee, Derrick Patrick , 32, repeatedly paid her for sex in 2005 and in January 2006, and sexually assaulted her in a Baker House bathroom after she refused to have sex with him.

She also said that when she told the Rev. Eugene Rivers, founder of the house, about the events he aggressively questioned her account and officials at the house asked her to reenact the alleged rape. Hospital workers who examined the girl later reported the allegations to police.

Patrick, who has been charged with rape, has denied the allegations. A police report obtained by the Globe last year indicated that a DNA test did not link him to the girl.

The events led Rivers to relinquish management of the Baker House, though he still sits on its board, and the center's contract with the Department of Youth Services , which once referred troubled children to the agency, was not renewed. The United Way and the Hyams Foundation , which had pledged grants to Baker House, withheld their funding after the allegations surfaced. Rivers could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Now, Baker House officials are sending letters to the organizations, informing them of the changes and asking state agencies for their support, said Matthew J. Machera , former chief of the Suffolk district attorney's office 's State Street Initiatives. He became chairman of the board last December. He said he hopes to restore enough funding to rehire the employees the board laid off last week.

"I want people to know that the Baker House is not in trouble," Machera said. "Most importantly, I want funders to know that the Baker House is extremely stable."

Workers at the agency now know that they must immediately contact police if a youth has reported being sexually assaulted, he said.

"The way that entire situation was handled before will never happen again," Machera said. "A lot of what happened was folks not knowing their responsibility under the law."

The panel was also critical of the former board, saying it was too small, insular, and detached from the operations of the center. The board met sporadically over a period of years, according to the report.

In the last three months, officials have added board members knowledgeable in business, including Michael Mullen , vice president of operations at Tremont Credit Union . A teacher, a Dorchester real estate agent, and a New York-based entrepreneur and musician also sit on the board, which has been receiving advice from Executive Services Corps of New England , an agency that offers management consulting to nonprofit groups.

The board has been meeting once a month, Yessayan said. He said it does not plan to remove a program Rivers introduced that allowed men with criminal backgrounds to serve as mentors to youths at the center.

Patrick had been convicted for armed robbery and assault and battery.

"These guys that were ex-offenders had turned their lives around and say, 'Don't do what I did,' " he said. "They had street credibility."

But he said the program needs safeguards. Since last year, mentors with criminal histories have not been with a youth unless another employee with no criminal record is present.

Joseph Leavey , president of the Boston nonprofit Communities for People , one of the leaders of the independent panel that recommended the changes , praised the moves.

"I think the place is really coming along," he said.

As summer approaches, and with it the threat of more violence, keeping the Baker House open is crucial, Leavey said.

"It's just so wild in Boston right now, you really don't want to shut off a service that's so vital," he said. "We've got to shore it up, and we got to get them involved."

Donovan Slack of the Globe Staff contributed to this report. Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.