SAD & SILENT B'DAY FOR MOM IN COMA
BY LINDA YGLESIAS
Sunday, April 28th 1996, 2:00AM
A snapshot of the mother, blue-eyed and smiling, lies propped inside the neo-natal incubator, by the newborn's head.
It is a final glimpse of a beautiful, brown-haired woman months before December 1985, when an automobile careened her off an icy Ithaca road into a coma.
Today, one day after her 30th birthday, the former Cornell University freshman lies in a Rochester hospital in her 10-year vegetative abyss, cradling her preemie, conceived by rape last August in a nursing home.
Her eyes scan the room as neo-natal nurses at Strong Memorial Hospital daily place her son born at dawn March 18, nine weeks premature, at 2 pounds, 11 ounces and 14 inches long in her arms.
She lacks the strength or reflex to wrap them around him. The nurses do it for her. They stand beside her bed or prop her in a padded chair, talking to her, calling the boy's name.
She silently clutches him nestled against her, a blue knit cap on his downy head.
"Some people have observed a reaction from her," said Robert Loeb, the hospital's public information head. "Her facial expression is the same, but there's the sense of her caregivers that she appears a little more relaxed when she is with the baby."
Both are expected to be released within the next few weeks, she to another nursing home, her child to its grandmother, the licensed practical nurse in her early 50s who named him and hopes to raise him.
"This grandmother loves her grandchild unequivocally," said the family's attorney, John Parrinello. "Her preference is to raise the child. . . . "She's a strong woman who's not overtaken by emotion in this."
Of the documented handful of comatose patients who have given birth, there is no known case of a woman impregnated while in a coma.
Police have named a prime suspect in the rape, John Horace, a 6-foot-tall, 200-pound former nurse's aide at Westfall Health Care Center.
Horace tended the woman, placed there February of last year, during his employment in August and September, when the woman is believed to have been impregnated. Her pregnancy was not discovered until December.
Horace was fired from Westfall Sept. 14, after a 49-year-old patient with multiple sclerosis accused him of sexually fondling her.
He pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and was sentenced to six months in jail.
Last Thursday, in an unrelated case, he was hit with another six months to run concurrently, after pleading guilty to impersonating a doctor in a state police sting. "I don't think I'm a bad person I think I made a mistake in my life," he said in court.
Meanwhile, a judge has ordered the 52-year-old to give a blood sample for DNA testing in the rape investigation.
Investigators confirm a preliminary 99.55% genetic match between Horace and the baby made through DNA testing of fetal cells and saliva from an envelope he used to seek a job recommendation.
If charged, he could face up to 25 years in jail.
Whatever comes to be, the case has turbocharged calls for reform.
"I don't believe for a moment that these two victims are isolated cases," said Attorney General Dennis Vacco, whose office is conducting the Westfall investigations.
Early this month, he put before state legislators a two-pronged amendment that would toughen public health and penal laws: residential-facility nurse's aides would face mandatory fingerprinting and background checks for state certification; certain misdemeanor charges would jump to felony raps.
According to investigators from several agencies, Horace, a divorced father, was a phony sexual therapist and gynecologist who advertised in the Yellow Pages and Pennysaver ad sheet, sought women through lonely-heart columns and distributed hundreds of leaflets in malls and neighborhoods.
"We found phony certificates from sexual counseling programs, handbooks with drawings of graphic sexual encounters, surgical-type gloves, a white doctor's coat with 'Dr. John Horace, Ph.D.' sewn in," said one investigator. "He had a collection of old gynecological instruments. Some are 25, 30 years old."
His other career, spanning two decades, lay in health care.
"Westfall did nothing to check on this man's background," said Monroe County District Attorney Howard Relin, whose office is investigating with the attorney general's. "Their excuse is: We can't fill these jobs if we carefully check out all of the people who apply. That's a pathetic excuse."
Away from the public outcry, in the silence of a hospital room where a television plays for sound, a mother strokes her daughter and holds her grandson.
She is divorced from the baby's grandfather, one among the large family of siblings, aunts and uncles and cousins who visit the mother and hold her child.
Ten years ago, the mother was a Catholic high school honors graduate in her first term at Cornell.
She was a brilliant student, a future scientist or psychologist, a gymnast and a pianist. She listened to Billy Joel. She wrote poetry. She read "The
Prophet" by Khalil Gibran.
"She wanted to get married, have kids and a career," said a close high school friend.
Police say that on Dec. 20, 1985, at 2 a.m., she was driving, her boyfriend beside her. In the snow on a rural road in Ithaca, the Dodge hit an ice slick and crashed into a tree.
He recovered from multiple fractures and is a father, married with a baby, in another state. She had massive head injuries.
On Jan. 8, the woman was transferred to Strong. "The plan was to hold off labor until sometime early May," said Loeb, "and do a C section. We were not sure how much she could participate in a natural delivery."
But at 4 a.m., March 18, she appeared to be restless, agitated. An electronic monitor confirmed contractions had begun. She never uttered a sound.
Tomorrow, a small, belated 30th birthday party with balloons is planned. Her baby will be present.
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