Baker House founder responds to allegations
The Rev. Eugene F. Rivers III said yesterday that immediately following allegations of rape and wrongdoing in the Dorchester community center he founded, he launched a top-to-bottom review of safety and supervision at the Ella J. Baker House, installing surveillance cameras on every floor open to children and intensely scrutinizing staff members.
Speaking publicly for the first time about the allegations, Rivers said he was ``devastated" when he learned in January that a 17-year-old girl who had come to the Baker House for services reported she had been raped by a 32-year-old administrator in a center bathroom.
And he said suggestions by a social worker that he questioned the girl too aggressively about the episode sent him into a bout of introspection few would expect of the outspoken preacher known more for his bravado than thoughtful analysis.
``The first thing I did was try to reconstruct the events of that day, everything I said and did," he said in an interview yesterday at his Dorchester home. ``It was astounding to hear the accusation made. I never challenged her version or account. I just wanted to understand it."
It was about 7 p.m. on Jan. 5 when Rivers said a Baker House supervisor called him and put the 17-year-old girl on the line. She told him that Derrick Patrick, a five-year Baker House employee, had sexually assaulted her. Rivers said he immediately went to her house to pray with the girl and her mother. Then, he said, he sat down with Patrick.
``I had this long conversation with him," he said.
Patrick denied any wrongdoing, but Rivers put him on administrative leave, pending the outcome of an investigation. The next morning, at a meeting with the girl and her mother, Rivers and two Baker House staff members asked the teenager to go through what happened. The social worker from the state Department of Youth Services also was present.
``At no point did anyone challenge the tone or content of the questions," Rivers said. ``Two things concerned me: What were the facts? And how to help the child."
In the ensuing weeks, Rivers said, he met individually with each staff member at the center to discuss what happened and review procedures and supervision. He said managers updated criminal background checks and conducted sexual offender registry checks of all employees.
``We had to be more circumspect in every way about everything," he said.
Still, Massachusetts Department of Youth Services officials severed a 10-year relationship with Baker House in the wake of the allegations, Mayor Thomas M. Menino ordered an audit of city funding of the organization and the state Executive Office of Public Safety pulled a $350,000 grant that Governor Mitt Romney had already publicly pledged to Baker House. Rivers said he believes those decisions were influenced by the accusations.
When Patrick was arrested last month and charged with paying for sex and encouraging the 17-year-old girl to engage in prostitution, Rivers said he fired him, even though Patrick has not been convicted of rape. .
``I said, `Right now, the controversy surrounding the unproven allegations against you is injurious to this organization. You're innocent until proven guilty, but we cannot permit this controversy to undermine the interests of children,' " Rivers said .
Patrick told the Globe on Thursday he is innocent of all charges and is eager to prove it in court, but he said his attorney advised him not to say more.
Boston p olice, the Suffolk County district attorney's office and the state Department of Social Services are investigating the girl's complaint. It's unclear whether Patrick will face other charges.
Documents obtained by the Globe say the 17-year-old girl told investigators at the district attorney's office that she repeatedly had consensual sex with Patrick at Baker House in the months leading up to the encounter in the bathroom. She said he gave her money and rides home in his car, according to a report compiled by a DSS social worker who was present during the interview.
On Jan. 5, she said he offered to pay her $40 for anal sex, and she told him no repeatedly, but he covered her mouth and ``did what he wanted anyway," the report said .
Patrick, who had served time in the early 1990s for assault and battery and armed robbery, ran a program for preadolescent boys at Baker House.
Rivers has been a proponent for years of hiring ex-offenders to work with young people believed to be in danger of turning to crime. He said yesterday that he still believes they are ``uniquely qualified to address the needs and challenges facing the most violent and high-risk youth in this city."
In the more than six years that Baker House has hired former offenders, neither DYS nor DSS has received complaints about children being mistreated at the center. And Rivers said when issues have surfaced, he has addressed them immediately. He conceded there've been a few, though none has directly victimized children. During one summer jobs program, a supervisor was believed to be wrongly pocketing money and paying other teenagers who weren't working. In another case, a worker was caught looking at inappropriate material on the Internet. Both were fired.
``The issue of ex-offenders is a major challenge for our society," Rivers said. ``The model (of hiring them to work with kids) is innovative and controversial by its nature. What this incident has done has deepened our commitment to improve and refine the model."
As for the intense media scrutiny of the past week, Rivers lashed out at those who would pass judgment against the work he said he and Baker House have done for more than a decade in one of the more dangerous city neighborhoods. Some 500 children pass through the doors of the center each year, and thousands more are influenced by its street ministry and outreach, Baker House staffers have said.
``How does a society judge a ministry that has served thousands of children?" Rivers asked. ``They render a judgment based on accusations, but there's no trial as of yet."
Since Rivers returned from a trip to Africa on Saturday, he said he and his family have been inundated by media calls. He plans to have a press conference this morning. In the meantime, he said his sermon yesterday at the Azusa Christian Community, which meets in the Baker House chapel, had extra oomph. The lesson was about overcoming challenges.
`` `Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance,' " Rivers read from James I, then added, ``This test and this trial is actually an opportunity."
Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.
Correction: Because of a reporting error, stories in the City & Region section on Monday and Tuesday about rape allegations against an administrator at the Ella J. Baker House in Dorchester mischaracterized the status of a state antiyouth violence grant to the community center. While the stories said the grant had been withdrawn after the allegations, the grant application was denied in early August by the state Executive Office of Public Safety. 