AZ Shelter, Utility Charged With Fraud

Trudy W Schuett writes "An AZ women’s shelter and a public utility has been charged with soliciting funds from the public in a fraudulent manner.

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In a formal complaint filed with the AZ Attorney General last week, Yuma resident Trudy W. Schuett accused Catholic Community Services, the administering agency of Safe House, a women-only shelter, of misrepresenting both domestic violence statistics and census figures of the shelter itself, in order to raise money for a proposed expansion effort. The Arizona Public Service Company, which paid for a half-page ad which appeared in the September 28 issue of the Yuma Daily Sun, was included in the complaint.

Schuett believes the shelter’s claim of “turning away 350 families” and a section of the ad purporting to contain “National Domestic Violence Statistics” to be both without basis in fact and misleading to the public. “There is no evidence given or statement of fact to support any claims made in this advertisement,” she says in the letter, which was received at the Attorney General’s office on October 15.

The ad, which asks Yuma residents for help in raising $180,000 to expand the shelter, claims that “Domestic Violence is the #1 cause of emergency room visits,” and that “95% of victims are women and children, among other statements. Schuett maintains these statements to be “wildly incorrect and inflammatory…No reference source for these numbers was given; neither was any time frame in which they applied.”

The complaint was made after direct attempts at contact with both Catholic Community Services and APS were ignored. Schuett faxed and/or e-mailed letters to all parties, including the Yuma and Tucson offices of CCS, and the Yuma office of APS shortly after the ad appeared in the newspaper. Her letters protested the use of this kind of information to solicit funding, and requested that CCS and APS publicly admit to “the false and misleading statements made by Safe House,” and return any funds derived from the campaign. She has had no response from either APS or Catholic Community Services.

When an article on the Safe House expansion appeared in the Yuma Daily Sun on October 3, Margie Coffaro, Executive Director of CCS, repeated the ambiguous “350 families” term, which led Schuett to believe CCS was intentionally misleading the public.

This led to the filing of the formal complaint. “I’m well aware of the way fundraisers are conducted,” Schuett says. “In fact, I’ve worked in fundraising for CCS myself in the past. But this kind of numbers game cannot be allowed, especially when the agency has been given the chance to admit to an error. Apparently CCS feels they can tell the public anything they like without challenge, or providing any definition of their terms or proof.”

In addition to serving either as volunteer or as paid staff at Yuma charities at various times since 1986, Schuett has been an advocate and activist for domestic violence victims since 1999. She first became aware of what she terms “the crisis in service” while doing research for a novel on a male victim of domestic violence. The novel, Friends to the End, was initially published in 2000. “The agencies of the entire domestic violence field have failed their communities miserably,” she said in a recent post in the DesertLight Journal, her publication related to issues of domestic violence and divorce. The DLJ has been in publication since 2001."

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