VOCA : New Haven Chiropractor Granted Form Of Probation

New Haven Chiropractor Granted Form Of Probation

May 9, 2008 Hartford Courant, Kim Martineau

A New Haven chiropractor charged with harassment for making a series of crank calls to a Wethersfield stroke victim was given a special form of probation Thursday and also ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Stephen Piserchia, 43, of Guilford, appeared in Superior Court in New Haven and was given accelerated rehabilitation, a form of probation for first-time offenders. He was also ordered to pay a $2,500 fine, perform 250 hours of community service and undergo a mental health exam.

At the time the prank calls were made, Britt Harwe, founder of the Chiropractic Stroke Awareness Group, was working to get laws passed intended to warn patients of the risks involved in chiropractic manipulations. To raise awareness, she took out ads on buses and billboards, listing her phone number.

Piserchia called the number and in June 2007 left a series of bizarre messages, singing, belching and making fun of people who had been harmed by chiropractors.

"Hi, I'll put my mother on," he said in one message. "She had an adjustment, and I think she had a stroke. Hold on. Oh, that's right, she can't talk."

Piserchia's lawyer, John Cirello, acknowledged that his client used bad judgment. "He was frustrated and didn't choose the best way to express it," he said.

In court on Thursday, Harwe described the difficulty in getting the police and prosecutors to pursue the case and urged the judge not to be too lenient.

"Dr. Piserchia knows that he is picking on people who now have severe emotional problems and he is preying on them by making his phone calls so that they are intimidated to want to stop warning people," she said.

Her group has been lobbying for laws to force chiropractors to discuss the risks of manipulations with their patients and also wants chiropractors to be included on a state website that lists malpractice claims.

She told the court about her own visit to a chiropractor, in 1993, for a pinched nerve in her shoulder that ended in a crushed artery to her brain and a stroke. Since the age of 26, Harwe has had to eat through a tube placed in her stomach.

"Other victims were not as lucky as I was," she said. "They became permanently paralyzed and lost their ability to walk or talk and/or they died."

Though Piserchia's record will be wiped clean after two years, his business has suffered from the publicity, said Cirello.