VOCA : Chiropractor sentenced for calls

Chiropractor sentenced for calls

May 10, 2008 New Haven Register, Randall Beach

NEW HAVEN — A local chiropractor who made phone calls mocking a stroke victim has been granted accelerated rehabilitation in Superior Court, which eventually likely will clear him of a second-degree harassment charge.

Steven Piserchia, who has an office in New Haven, was ordered by Judge Philip Scarpellino to pay $2,500 in charitable contributions, do 250 hours of community service and undergo a psychiatric evaluation as part of the agreement.

Under the accelerated rehabilitation arrangement, Piserchia will be on probation for two years. When he completes the probation satisfactorily, the charge will be dismissed and he will not have a criminal record.

Piserchia and the woman who received the phone calls, Britt Harwe, faced each other in court Thursday. Harwe read a lengthy statement detailing emotional damage she suffered from the calls; Piserchia apologized in court for making them.

Piserchia’s attorney, John Cerillo, said in an interview afterward that Piserchia had become “frustrated” by seeing a billboard on Interstate 95 in Bridgeport advocating stricter informed consent laws for chiropractors. When he made the phone calls to the number listed on the billboard, Piserchia thought he was calling an advocacy organization office rather than Harwe, according to Cerillo.

Harwe, a Wethersfield resident, is president of a collection of victims called the Chiropractic Stroke Awareness Group. She said she represents hundreds of members who have suffered strokes as a result of a simple chiropractic adjustment.

Her group is working with another organization, Victims of Chiropractic Abuse, to get a law passed in Connecticut mandating informed consent for patients. Under the proposal, Harwe said, the chiropractor would be required to discuss with a patient the possible risks of manipulative treatment before administering it.

Harwe formed the group after she went to a chiropractor (not Piserchia) in 1993 for a pinched nerve in her shoulder. “The chiropractor crushed an artery to my brain and I had a stroke,” she said in her court statement.

“Since the age of 26, I have not been able to eat normally but must take my food through a tube that was surgically placed in my stomach,” she said.

Harwe said other victims of this chiropractor procedure “were not as lucky as I was. They became permanently paralyzed and lost their ability to walk or talk and/or they died.”

Piserchia declined to comment when a reporter called his office. But Cerillo said of Harwe, “She’s slandering an entire profession. The real tragedy here is, when you make medical statements and you’re in the business, you have to get it vetted. I don’t know if she has any medical training.”

Cerillo said Harwe’s public campaign, which includes ads on buses, newspapers and TV, is “provocative.” He said if a person places such ads with a phone number, “You’ll get some phone calls.”

But Harwe said in her statement the calls were “annoying, harassing messages: singing songs, belching and making fun of stroke victims.”

Harwe told Scarpellino she opposed Piserchia being able to “get off” with accelerated rehabilitation. “This will not stop him from harassing, frightening and emotionally hurting these people, these stroke victims,” she said.

Cerillo said he considers the granting of accelerated rehabilitation “a win.” But in terms of the conditions imposed, Cerillo said, “This has affected (Piserchia’s) business in many ways. So we felt he was already adequately punished. The judge just didn’t think that way.”

Cerillo added, “There’s also the free speech argument, but that’s kind of behind us now.”

But VOCA spokesman Jon Crane said Scarpellino noted during the courtroom proceeding as he commented on Piserchia’s business losses: “He brought it all on himself.”