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[email protected]REHAB VIOLATED RIGHTS, SUIT SAYS Outreach center in Flint at heart of ACLU case
By Chastity Pratt
Free Press Staff Writer
Joseph Hanas lasted only seven weeks in a yearlong drug rehabilitation
program in 2003- even though leaving meant landing in jail.
It wasn't the urine-stained mattresses or the lousy food that made him
pray for a way out of the residential program at the Inner City Christian
Out-reach Center in Flint, Hanas said Tuesday.
It was the people who flailed about, speaking in tongues, he said. It
was the laying on of hands in prayer.
Most of all, it was the threat that Hanas, a Catholic, would have to
proclaim at an altar that he was saved or else he would be kicked out of the
Pentacostal-based program. He was told he had a choice:Convert or be
convicted.
He asked the court for a new program, but he was denied. Hanas then
served a total of six months in jail and at a correctional boot camp.
An official at the program says Hanas was never told he had to convert.
Even so, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Tuesday in
U.S. District Court in Detroit to try to get Hanas conviction overturned,
arguing that the 23 year old Grand Blanc resident was punished because he
failed a
program that violated his religious rights.
The case isn't a criticism of the Pentecostal faith, Hanas' attorneys
said.
Instead, the case argues Hanas should never have been "subjected to
efforts to convert and indoctrinate him and efforts to dissuade him from
practicing his own religion," said Andrew Nickelhoff, on of his lawyers.
Dwight Richard Rottiers, the pastor at Inner City, said Tuesday that
Hanas is lying, both about the conditions in the program and Hanas'
contention
that his own religious materials were taken away.
Rottiers said Hanas was never told he had to convert.
Rottiers said Hanas was told he had to attend Inner City's services and
was not allowed to attend Catholic services. But Rottiers said he spoke to
Hanas about the program before he arrived and told him it was Christian-
based.
"If that's against their religious rights, they shouldn't come here,"
Rottiers said. "Nobody forced him to come."
In 2001, Hanas pleaded guilty in Genesse County Circuit Court to
possession of marijuana with intent to deliver. The charges could have been
dismissed if he completed a 12-to 18 month program, according to the lawsuit.
Soon after he arrived at Inner City, Hanas said, the staff told him his
Catholicism was witchcraft and confiscated is rosary and prayer book. As
punishment for noncompliance, he was once forced into a three day word fast,
which he could not talk to anyone, Hanas said.
Nickelhoff also said there was no rehabilitation counseling except for
the required seven hours a day of Bible study.
Hanas mother and her sister feared that instead of losing Hanas to the
streets, they were losing him to a cult.
"I had to fight to get him out," said Chris Hanas, his mother. "It was
like a made-for-TV movie."
After seven weeks, Judge Robert Ransom, who had agreed to let Hanas go
to Inner City, sentenced him to jail for dropping out. Saying he had other
options for rehab, the judge said Hanas objections to the program- and his
failure to finish three previous programs- were proof he wasn't committed to
finishing any treatment.
Soon after, however, the court stopped sending cases to Inner City.
Rottiers said participants in the program meet with a counselor once a
week, and get three hours of counseling a week. He said his program is
nondenominational and its Christian based approach is what really helps the
men turn
their lives around.
The church is part of the Kingsway Fellowship International. which
practices the "Pentecostal persuasion," according to its Web site.
Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
--Francois Marie Arouet "Voltaire", French author and playwright
_________________
Drug war POW
Straight, Sarasota
`80 - `82
