FARMINGTON – An investigator for the Maine Human Rights Commission believes there are reasonable grounds that Rumford Group Homes unlawfully discriminated against a Phillips man on the basis of his whistleblowing activity when he was fired in 2006.

The Human Rights Commission will take up the case of Greg Simoneau of Phillips v. Rumford Group Homes in Rumford at its meeting at 8:45 a.m. Monday, April 14, at the Senator Conference Center (Best Western) Embassy Room at 284 Western Ave. in Augusta.

The investigator, Robert D. Beauchesne, believes Rumford Group Homes violated the state’s Whistleblowers Protection Act when it disciplined and terminated Simoneau after he reported alleged child abuse to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, according to his report to the commission.

Rumford Group Homes offers services to children, youth and families in the Rumford area. One of its residential programs is the Transition House Program, which has a residential facility in Rumford that serves adolescent males as they transition into the community from institutional living, according to the investigator’s report.

Simoneau, who was a program director at the Transition House Program, believes he was disciplined and then terminated because he had reported alleged child abuse and neglect to DHHS, according to the investigator’s report.

“The timing of my dismissal was such that I would not be present when DHHS conducted its investigation, scheduled for later the same day that I was terminated,” Simoneau stated in the report.

According to Rumford Group Homes’ response in the report, Simoneau “was terminated due to his poor performance including lack of documentation and lack of holding staff accountable” and not because of his reporting two incidents of alleged child abuse – staff members yelling at children – to DHHS before a supervisor was alerted.

Simoneau states in the report that he tried to hold staff accountable for infractions but was often overruled.

“Rumford Group Homes denies allegations. Beyond that it is too premature to talk about this case. The commission has not made a finding,” the agency’s attorney, Michael Messerschmidt, said Friday.

Simoneau’s attorney, Chad Hansen, was unavailable for comment.

Simoneau also stated that he reported an incident in 2005 to a supervisor after he had heard an allegation of a former resident in the program having sex with a former staff member. He was advised not to report the complaint to DHHS because it was “hearsay,” the investigator’s report states.

The incident was reported a few months later to DHHS and investigation ensued in April 2006, resulting in DHHS determining a licensing violation had occurred because the agency should have reported it when representatives first became aware of it, the report states.

In March 2006, Simoneau became aware of another incident when a different former resident alleged he had sex with another staff member, the report states. He advised his supervisor of the allegation and then later made a report to DHHS on April 13, 2006, after he tried to investigate the matter at his supervisor’s direction.

On April 26, 2006, Simoneau learned that two other staffers were alleged to have yelled at children and he reported the incident to DHHS and directed a case manager to report the incident to supervisor.

Two days later, Simoneau, who claimed he was never disciplined in his two years there, was given a documented verbal warning for failing to follow the program’s process and procedures. And, on May 2 he was given a written warning for reporting the April 26 incidents to DHHS prior to reporting it to his employer, the report states. He was terminated May 8 after a performance evaluation prior to DHHS’ appearance that day to conduct an investigation on those allegations of abuse, the report states. A 2 percent raise was crossed out in the evaluation and replaced with a “zero,” the report states.

In this case, Simoneau “was disciplined and later terminated for the express reason that he failed to notify (the agency’s) management prior to making an alleged abuse report to DHHS.” Since the mandatory reporting statute does not require a prior report to management, the (agency) cannot “discharge, threaten or otherwise discriminate against” Simoneau because he followed the requirements of the mandatory reporting statute, Beauchesne stated, which appears “to be exactly what occurred in the pending case.”