Bleak Days for Covenant House

By Mary Cronin

For thousands of runaway teenagers in New York City and other urban areas, Covenant House is the home that compassion built. Now the man who founded the nation's most successful program for runaways is himself in need of compassion. Father Bruce Ritter, 61, the energetic Franciscan who built Covenant House largely on the basis of his own charisma, has been accused by four young men of having sexual relationships with them while they were under his care.

Last week Ritter was forced to step down as president of Covenant House while the allegations are investigated by state and local prosecutors and his religious order. Whether or not the probes result in formal charges, says an observer close to the church, "the chances of Father Ritter returning to Covenant House are zero."

Fortunately, the organization that Ritter created seems strong enough to survive his departure. One of the last remaining bulwarks against the New York City notion that nothing need be done because nothing can be done, Ritter personifies Covenant House in the minds of the 800,000 donors on his mailing list. Last year Covenant House's budget was $85 million, three times what the Federal Government spends annually on programs for runaways.

It was on Holy Thursday in 1968 that Ritter abandoned the comfortable life of a chaplain and a professor of theology at Manhattan College for the mean streets of the city's Lower East Side. Challenged by a student to practice the good works he preached, Ritter responded with a colorful act of muscular Christianity: he paid $50 to a couple of toughs to scare drug dealers into vacating their apartments. He used the space to house homeless children. Later he opened a shelter for runaways in a three-room hovel on East Seventh Street and solicited money to help the hundreds of teenagers who flocked to the shelter: drug addicts, prostitutes or simply abandoned, lonely adolescents with no place to go.

Over the years, Ritter gradually expanded the operation to a paid staff of 1,700 and about 2,000 volunteer workers. In 1984 President Reagan called Ritter an "unsung hero" in his State of the Union address. George Bush, who considers Ritter one of the brightest of the nation's "thousand points of light," visited his Times Square center last June.

But six months later, Ritter was making headlines in the New York Post. The newspaper reported that the district attorney's office was investigating allegations by Kevin Kite, a 26-year-old former prostitute and drug runner with a history of lying. Kite claimed that he had an eight-month-long sexual relationship with Ritter after the priest brought him from New Orleans to New York City in 1989. He also alleged that Ritter diverted up to $25,000 in Covenant House money to finance the affair. Ritter denies Kite's story, although he says he helped get Kite a scholarship at Manhattan College. Covenant House officials say they paid Kite's board at the college, gave him pocket money and bought him a computer. They also say a Covenant House contact in upstate New York provided Kite with papers that allowed him to take the identity of Tim Warner, a young boy who died of leukemia in 1980.

Ritter explained all this by saying that like many former drug runners, Kite needed a fake identity to be protected from the Mob. Ritter brought Kite's father to New York, where he declared that his son was a chronic liar. Still, Ritter warned, copycats might surface in the wake of Kite's allegations.

Then, on Jan. 24, another accusation surfaced in the Village Voice. John Melican, 34, of Seattle, told the weekly that from the time he was 17, he had an intermittent 13-year sexual relationship with Ritter. Melican repeated his claims to the New York Times, which published them last week. The Times also reported that a third man, Darryl Bassile, 31, had approached the paper in mid-January to say he too had sexual relations with Ritter. He had complained earlier to the Franciscan friary in Union City, N.J., after he heard of Kite's charges, and it started an investigation. A fourth accusation came from Paul Johnson, 33, an admitted felon who claimed that he was involved with Ritter for six years. Ritter denies that he had a sexual relationship with any of these men.

Last Tuesday Franciscan Minister Provincial Father Conall McHugh, who heads the order on the East Coast, directed Ritter "to begin a period of rest and recuperation without responsibility for Covenant House until the inquiry is completed."

Even before the suspension, Covenant House's board of directors was searching for someone to replace Ritter when he retires. Board member Frank Macchiarola, 48, a former New York City school chancellor known for his ability to salvage troubled youths, was named interim president -- with Ritter's blessing, he says. In December, Covenant House took in $3 million less than the $15 million it expected, but contributions are recovering. Said chief operating officer Jim Harnett: "I don't know what the impact of the new allegations will be, but for the moment we have put all expansion plans on hold."

Although the institution will survive, Covenant House will miss Ritter's flair and spirit. Shane Sanders, 20, sold drugs and lived on a rooftop in Harlem until checking into a Covenant House shelter three weeks ago. Says he: "I finally came here because I couldn't stand living on the streets all the time. I find it hard to believe all these things against a man who built Covenant House for 22 years. It hurts a lot of us. Father Bruce is like our father."