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Filipino advocates support nurses

BY RIDGELY OCHS AND MICHAEL AMON | ridgely.ochs@newsday.com
michael.amon@newsday.com

September 26, 2007

Filipino and nurse advocates rallied behind 10 Filipino nurses charged with endangering children at a Smithtown nursing home and said political connections were behind the indictment.

"The case should be dismissed," said Rico Foz, executive vice president of the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns, at a news conference in midtown Manhattan.

Justice Robert W. Doyle is expected to rule Wednesday in Suffolk County Supreme Court on a motion to dismiss the charges.

A lawyer involved in the case said that if Doyle lets the charges stand he would ask Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to investigate.

"This is clearly vindictive and selective prosecution," said Oscar Michelen, the attorney for immigration lawyer Felix Vinluan. Vinluan, who advised the nurses they could resign, has been charged with criminal solicitation and conspiracy.

Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota's office released a statement: "The investigation and our grand jury presentation of this case was fair and objective. We believe any impartial review of our work will demonstrate any allegations of impropriety to be false."

An official in Cuomo's office said the attorney general's office could not comment because it had not received Michelen's request.

Spota met privately with the attorney and owners of SentosaCare, a Woodmere-based group of nursing homes that includes Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Smithtown, where the 10 nurses quit in April 2006. The meeting was arranged by Howard Fensterman, the owners' attorney and a prominent Democratic Party fundraiser whose law firm had given $1,500 to Spota's 2003 re-election campaign.

Spota immediately began an investigation that led to the nurses' indictment in March on charges of conspiracy and endangering the welfare of children on a pediatric ventilator unit. Legal experts, as well as the assistant district attorney handling the case, say the indictment is unprecedented.

Vinluan said SentosaCare used political connections "to retaliate against the nurses."

Fensterman countered that Vinluan was seeking to "shift blame on anyone other than himself."

The Avalon Gardens nurses were joined by 16 other Filipino nurses who resigned between April 6 and 8 from SentosaCare facilities in New York City and Long Island. They complained about pay and hours and prompted the Philippine government to suspend SentosaCare's affiliated Filipino recruitment agency.

The suspension was lifted after Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote letters to Philippine government officials on behalf of SentosaCare in June 2006. In the next three months, SentosaCare-related donors gave nearly $75,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, led by Schumer.

Carol Lynn Esposito of the New York State Nurses Association said the charges "are a big issue" for all nurses who could be vulnerable to prosecution for quitting their jobs. She said the nurses were treated like "indentured servants."

The nurses were cleared of wrongdoing by the state Education Department in October 2006.