The article below isn’t about guns or gun laws, but I believe it is a useful tool to help some realize just how nonsensical the issue of more gun laws in the politcal arena is becoming. It actually turned around a family member of mine today to some degree. It helps one understand how it(gun control) is nothing but a media hotbutton used by people with something to gain. 20,000 gun laws on the books, yet, as illustrated below, not a single law to convict the person/people who neglected this person, and probably ended her life by throwing her into a tub of scalding water, so hot it peeled her skin off. I am posting this to give some ammo to people who may want to argue with a different angle when they say they want more gun laws. Has Rosie spoken out for this person? Some people won’t listen to arguments about self defense and other facts, for them it is pure emotion. The fact that more gun laws are added every day and things like this go on unpunished may very well change some minds.

From the seattle times website www.seattletimes.com december 13 1999
Disabled woman suffered and died from negligence, but it wasn’t a crime

by Kim Barker
Seattle Times staff reporter Copyright ? 1999 The Seattle Times Company

BELLINGHAM – She liked Johnny Cash and girlish frills and “The Sound of Music,” which she watched every couple of weeks. She hated loud noises and hot water.

Maria Schumacher had Down syndrome, and she lived in places that would have her: state institutions, foster homes and boarding homes. Everywhere she went, she carried her pictures, dog-eared and creased, of playing in the snow and holding nieces and opening gifts at Christmas. She showed them to everyone.

Her life was worth nothing – at least under the laws of our state.

On May 31, 1997, Schumacher, 58, was left lying in her own feces in the Bellingham boarding home where she had lived for 15 years. She somehow ended up in a bathtub of scalding water, although she needed help bathing and always tested the water before she got into a tub.

She screamed, for as long as 15 minutes. By the time anyone responded, her skin was falling away. She died eight days later.

“All these levels that were supposed to be there to protect her – they were just like papier-mache,” Bellingham police Detective Carlotta Jarratt said. “Nothing would catch her.”

Jarratt spent months trying to make sure someone was held responsible for Schumacher’s death. In the end, no one was. Washington’s criminal and civil laws simply didn’t provide for it.

Changes in the law will probably never stop abuse, and they will never bring back Maria Schumacher. But they might have changed what happened after she died, might have eased her family’s pain, might have led to changes that could prevent other such deaths and hold someone accountable when they occur.

For years, advocates for the elderly and disabled have proposed solutions that might sew up holes in the system. One of these would make negligence a crime – such a law could have been used to prosecute someone in Schumacher’s death. Another law would slap longer sentences on people who commit crimes against vulnerable adults. Another would allow relatives to sue for the wrongful death of a vulnerable adult.

Other proposed changes might not have helped Schumacher, but advocates say they’d help other vulnerable people. One would allow hearsay testimony for vulnerable and elderly people, allowing more-able witnesses to testify to what they heard victims say about being abused. Washington state has a similar hearsay exception for children’s testimony in sex-abuse cases.

The Bellingham boarding home where Schumacher lived was closed down last year, but not because of Schumacher’s death. Another resident gave birth to a baby in a toilet following a pregnancy with no prenatal care.

Dolores Williams, who ran the boarding home with her husband, said she doesn’t believe anyone should have faced criminal charges or a civil lawsuit for Schumacher’s death. She thinks she has paid enough.

“It has been very difficult,” Williams said. “We loved the work we did.”

Home had long history

The Homestead boarding home looks much like it did when it was open: wagon wheels in the yard, a stenciled wooden sign, signs for staff and visitor parking, all surrounding a hulk of a building that looms like a haunted house off Interstate 5.

But now there are spider-web windows, and everything is growing, from weeds to boxes of trash. The letters on an old warning sign have been blacked out to read: “Heat Sour Do Not Ouch.” The Christmas lights are still up from a previous year.

The building started out as the Paradise Nursing Home, the first nursing home in Bellingham. It then turned into a refuge for mental patients, and finally, into a boarding home for the elderly and people with mental illnesses or developmental disabilities.

John and Dolores Williams took over the home from his father in 1979. The Homestead was certified to care for 29 residents, who were schizophrenic, bipolar, elderly, mentally retarded or just plain lost. They were all blended together with little supervision.

State law only requires a boarding home to provide “sufficient trained staff.” But no regulations specify what that really means.

The home had its problems. Mainly, it was neglected – dirty, rusty, with broken windows and evidence of rodents. In 1990 and 1991, the state Department of Health cited the home for dozens of deficiencies. The department even threatened to suspend its license if problems weren’t fixed.

Staff didn’t have the proper training, inspectors found. Once, in 1991, bathing water registered at 148 degrees. It is not supposed to be hotter than 120 degrees.

In 1991, a 62-year-old woman drowned in a bathtub. That same year, one resident nearly starved, dropping to 88 pounds. She wouldn’t talk after living there for three years. In 1996, there were two fires at the home.

Still, the home stayed open.

Dolores Williams said the home corrected any problems identified by inspectors. She blamed the state for problems, saying it didn’t pay the home enough money. In 1997, the state paid an average of $23.24 a day for each resident in a boarding home.

“They pay less than a motel room would cost for one day,” she said. “Then they expect 24-hour care.”

‘Maria was always left behind’

As a child, Maria Schumacher loved dolls and country music – the songs about horses and doggies, not breakups and divorces. She never really understood why she didn’t go to school like her two older brothers.

Instead, she went to an institution when she was 15, like many others of her generation with Down syndrome. She lived at Rainier School, then Fircrest School, both state institutions for the developmentally disabled.

After 18 years, she moved to Bellingham, into a foster home run by a woman she knew as “Grandma,” who took in Schumacher and a good friend of hers. In 1982, with Grandma’s health failing, Schumacher had to move. And despite the efforts of what friends she had, the only place available was the Homestead.

“We tried to get the state to find something else,” said Bonnie Bergan, who befriended Schumacher in the mid-1970s. “But somehow or another, Maria was always left behind. I guess Maria’s life just went from bad to worse.”

Schumacher worked for 22 years in Bellingham, helping put together things like VHS headcleaners and boot holders for skis at Northwest Industries. Once a month, she’d board the bus wearing large pink curlers, getting her long blonde hair ready for the big dance that night.

Her family had scattered, mainly to California. One brother lived in Illinois. Some extended family lived in the Bellingham area, but relatives rarely visited.

When her niece and grandniece came, Schumacher got ready hours early and waited at the door with her pictures. She sang songs at restaurants and ate strawberry ice cream. When she was mad at someone, she’d say, “You A-B-C-D.” When she was mad at something, she’d say, “Rats’ nests!”

She gained weight. Her eyesight started to fail. She retired from her job. She had to have gall-bladder surgery. She started falling frequently. And she yelled over the slightest thing.

“Normally, she could lose one of her slippers, and she’d start hollering like the world was coming to an end,” said Jerry Gibson, who worked at the Homestead on and off for four years. “She made a lot of noise. It wasn’t anything to get excited about.”

Hollering went unheeded

Schumacher hollered that afternoon. Some reports say 10 minutes; others, 30.

Gibson, who once was the Homestead’s janitor, was the cook that day. He wasn’t certified to care for patients, but he was the only person at work that afternoon, like most afternoons.

While Schumacher screamed, Gibson cooked. Finally, another resident, Maria Barci, came down the hall to tell Gibson that Schumacher was covered in feces. He walked down to her room and saw her, crying in her nightgown on her bed.

“There was nothing I could do,” Gibson said. “I was in the middle of cooking. I couldn’t get involved in a cleanup.”

So he called the on-call staff person: Valerie Williams, the daughter of the Williamses, who lived in an apartment next door. She was more than eight months pregnant.

According to witnesses and records from the state and the police, Valerie Williams came over, looked at Schumacher, and said she couldn’t deal with the problem. She said the next staff person would be there in a half-hour. She left.

Williams told police that Schumacher was clean when she looked at her.

Gibson went back to cooking. And Barci, the other resident, came and asked Gibson if she could help clean up Schumacher, still screaming.

“I said yes,” Gibson said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said yes.”

He gave Barci some towels.

What happened next isn’t clear. Somehow, Schumacher got into the bathtub. And somehow, the hot water got turned on. Schumacher started screaming again, for five minutes, 10 minutes, no one is entirely sure.

Finally, Barci ran to get Gibson. By the time he ran to the bathroom, Schumacher had second- and third-degree burns over 40 percent of her body. Skin and feces floated in the water.

Gibson first tried to call Valerie Williams, but she didn’t answer the intercom. So he called 911. One of the firefighters who responded said Schumacher was “a screaming basket case.” He said she couldn’t help herself out of the tub, probably because of the flesh detached from her ankle.

Later, the water temperature tested at 136 degrees – 16 degrees higher than allowed by state law. This is how hot that is: Less than 30 seconds in it will leave third-degree burns.

Her burns showed no splash marks, indicating that Schumacher didn’t even try to get out of the tub. During her eight days at Harborview Medical Center, notes showed she was “agitated,” in “severe pain,” in “moderate pain.” She couldn’t communicate. She was given pain killers and anti-anxiety drugs and pumped full of fluids and hooked up to a respirator.

But an old heart problem flared. Her lungs and heart started failing.

At 5 a.m. on June 8, 1997, Schumacher’s heart stopped beating. It was her brother’s birthday.

“I remember it was very sad,” said Dr. Nicole Gibran, who cared for Schumacher. “She was not responsive, and her burns were significant. I can still picture her in the room.”

She was cremated, and the funeral was held in Everett. Her ashes were buried near Portland, in the plot right next to her mother.

Push for a new law

The investigations started.

The Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) stopped placing people in the boarding home.

Detective Jarratt thought someone should face criminal charges for Schumacher’s death. But she wasn’t sure what the crime could be: Neglect? Ignoring someone to death?

Washington state has laws against criminal mistreatment, which aim to punish caregivers or parents who harm a child or a dependent person by withholding the “basic necessities of life.” There are two levels of seriousness, first- and second-degree. Both are felonies. And both require proof of “recklessness.”

Many prosecutors across the state – even in the Attorney General’s Office – say this standard is difficult to prove. Since 1990, only 182 people have been charged with criminal mistreatment. Most have pleaded guilty.

State law has other standards of culpability besides recklessness, including one called “criminal negligence,” used as a standard in other crimes but not criminal mistreatment. And several groups, including advocates for the elderly, the disabled and the state prosecutors’ association, have pushed for a new law – criminal mistreatment in the third-degree, a misdemeanor that would have negligence as a standard instead of recklessness.

Jarratt called for help at the state Attorney General’s Office, in the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which investigates allegations of patient abuse.

In the end, neither the Whatcom County prosecutor nor the attorney general pursued criminal charges. There just wasn’t enough evidence to prove the standard of recklessness, lawyers said.

“Finally, they sent me a letter, on Oct. 8, 1997,” said Charles Schumacher, Maria’s brother. “It said, ‘This is not a criminal act. There is insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges.’ I read that over. Then I started reading through that whole file. And the more I read, the more pisseder I got.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute. There’s nothing being done!’ “

Effort to fill legal void fails

Schumacher’s wasn’t the first case in which a different standard might have led to criminal charges:

A Mukilteo man died in 1996 after his bed sores became infected. A visiting nurse had told the man’s adult family home to get him treated immediately, but the home waited five days to take him to the hospital.

A woman in a Tacoma adult family home died in 1997 after being restrained by a belt. She climbed out a window, and the belt strangled her.

A man with Alzheimer’s died near Wenatchee this fall, when a vehicle hit him as he wandered down a rural road late at night. He was supposed to be under watch in his boarding home.

In 1997, the Attorney General’s Office proposed sweeping fixes to the state’s criminal-mistreatment law, including adding the third-degree level.

“We had had some cases where we couldn’t prosecute,” said Elaine Rose, an assistant attorney general who works with the Legislature. “And we felt like they were cases worthy of protection under the law. We were trying to fill a void.”

Everything passed – except for the third-degree level. So in 1998, the Attorney General’s Office went back to lawmakers, asking only for the third-degree criminal mistreatment law. It unanimously passed in the House. But it never even made it off the floor in the Senate. Advocates say it failed because of lobbying from facilities that care for the vulnerable and elderly.

The Attorney General’s Office plans to ask for the law change again next year.

Oregon already has a misdemeanor level of criminal mistreatment. Prosecutors there have used the statute as a plea-bargain tool, and also to charge a facility’s owners.

“Criminal mistreatment – it’s probably our favorite statute,” said Ellyn Sternfield, director of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in Oregon, the attorney general arm that investigates allegations of patient abuse.

Nobody can sue

If Charles Schumacher couldn’t get justice for his sister in the criminal courts, he thought he might get it in civil court.

It wasn’t about money, he said; he simply wanted someone to be held accountable. His resolve was strengthened when the Bellingham mother of a boy with Down syndrome called his home, worried her son could one day face a fate similar to Maria Schumacher’s.

So he hired Tim Farris, a Bellingham lawyer whose developmentally disabled brother had died in an institution. Farris sued the Williamses, the Homestead, the state and the Health Department, on behalf of Schumacher’s estate and Charles Schumacher.

In September, a Superior Court judge in Whatcom County decided what many advocates for the developmentally disabled had feared: No one could sue for Schumacher’s wrongful death.

State law says someone can sue for wrongful death only if he or she is a spouse, a child or stepchild, or an economically dependent parent. The law says nothing about siblings.

Most people with developmental disabilities do not get married. They do not have children. And often, they outlive their parents, who are almost never dependent on their disabled children anyway.

If Schumacher was only maimed in the accident, she most likely would have won a lawsuit for her injuries, Farris said. Another Homestead resident has been awarded damages in a civil suit. But Schumacher died.

“They killed her for free,” Farris said. “The state takes the position that the life of a disabled person is worthless.”

Farris appealed the decision. He believes other laws, specifically one regarding vulnerable adults, can be interpreted to allow Charles Schumacher to sue for his sister. Farris also has other cases waiting to be filed if the courts agree with him.

The state Developmental Disabilities Council, a federally mandated watchdog group, and other advocates for the developmentally disabled plan to introduce legislation this year that would specifically allow certain relatives to sue.

Similar legislation has failed before.

To people like Bonnie Bergan, this is unconscionable. Bergan, the legal guardian for three women with developmental disabilities, met Maria Schumacher in the mid-1970s. Bergan used to help take Schumacher gifts at Christmas – perfumes, maybe a Johnny Cash tape, dresses.

Recently, Bergan sat in a tiny scratch of a park in Bellingham, on the lone black metal bench. There is a plaque here, dedicated to Schumacher, and the bench faces where the outdoor concerts play in the summer and the children play all year long.

In Bellingham, this bench is Schumacher’s legacy. Bergan and other advocates for the developmentally disabled hope that she’ll eventually have another legacy statewide, of helping to change the laws for the future.

“Everybody has worth,” Bergan said. “To say our people, our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, have no worth, that their lives have no worth, is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Kim Barker’s phone message number is 206-464-2255.

Copyright ? 1999 The Seattle Times Company

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