TB Treatment -- No Jail, No Bail
Lawyers say translation problems lead to Fresno mother’s imprisonment
By Joyce Nishioka

When the doorbell rings, Hongkham Souvannarath’s petite body instinctively tenses. She looks toward the door, afraid police have come back to get her. But it’s only a public health official, arriving with a bag of pills and staying to make sure the 51-year-old mother of seven takes all her tuberculosis medication.

Afterward, Souvannarath signs papers stating that she took the drugs -- a step she herself requested after hearing that another Laotian immigrant had been wrongfully accused of not following a treatment plan. Such accusations, Souvannarath fears, could mean more jail time for her, and she has already spent almost a year behind bars.

“I told them I want all the records -- I don’t want to go back to jail,” said Souvannarath through interpreter Somphiane Phommahasay. “I told them after they give me my medication, ‘Please leave; I don’t want to talk to you guys.’ I’m worried there will be another problem.”

The Fresno homemaker’s nightmare began last July, when authorities, accusing her of failing to take tuberculosis medication, put her in the Fresno County Jail. After 10 months of imprisonment without a court hearing, a lawyer’s counsel, or charges filed against her, she was finally released two weeks ago.

“Once she was in jail, they kept her there to ensure she would continue to take medications,” said Catherine Campbell, an attorney representing the woman. “She was not given an opportunity to comply.”

County health officials declined to comment about the specifics of the case. But Campbell said: “She wasn’t released until somebody found out. She had been invisible until then. Her existence in jail was, I think, deliberately hidden.”

Hongkham Souvannarath is now under house arrest until a July 15 hearing.

LOST IN TRANSLATION
The only question that Souvannarath answered in English during a press conference at her home on Friday was, “Does she understand English?” In a halting tone, she answered, “Little bit.”

Mistakes that she and her lawyers blame on bad translations litter the convoluted path that took the mother from a routine screening to the county lockup. In January 1998, Souvannarath went to the hospital for undisclosed complaints and was screened for TB. An X-ray led doctors to alert the public health department. It conducted more tests that apparently verified the presence of the bacteria-borne illness.

Souvannarath took the drugs given to her, according to lawyer Alfred Gallegos of Central California Legal Services, but was soon beset by side effects like nausea, itchy skin, “gurgles” in the throat, light-headedness and yeast infections. County health officials monitoring her condition went over first with a Hmong interpreter, then a Thai interpreter -- but Souvannarath speaks mostly Laotian. What she thought she heard was that the medicine could kill her, according to attorney Chris Schneider of the legal-aid group.

By May 1998, Souvannarath refused to come to the door to meet with health workers. Sometimes, she hid at friends’ homes. Two months later, said Gallegos, Souvannarath finally confronted officials face-to-face -- while wielding a screwdriver.

On July 29, the police came with guns drawn, terrifying the homemaker, who feared they might kill her. She says a man named Tony, who was probably a health official, told her they were going to take her to the hospital, but instead took her to jail. “They got her into the van on a ruse,” Schneider said. “They kidnapped her.”

Her 19 -year-old daughter, Sonexay Souvannarath, remembers that day well.

“I was scared and nervous. All I knew was to translate what the cop said, and I tell her to calm down and don’t argue with them. I said to her, ‘They’re just taking you to the hospital, and they’ll bring you right back in.’ That’s what they told me they were going to do.

“It was scary that they could just come in,” she said. “All the neighbors were looking.”

Souvannarath and her daughters went with the men. “My mom’s eyes were watery,” said Sonexay. “When we got to the jail, she was crying. We were all crying.”

In a June 7 deposition given to her lawyers, Souvannarath said she resisted getting out of the vehicle once she saw she was at the jail. A Hmong officer who spoke a little Laotian was brought out to talk to her, she said, and he seemed to feel sorry for her. In her native language, he told her he thought this was an act of hate. County officials could not be reached for comment.

STRIPPED OF DIGNITY
At first, Souvannarath was put on a suicide watch. In her deposition, she said she thought one officer was asking her whether she was afraid of death and replied that yes, she was. For that, she said, she was stripped naked, given a thin garment to wear, and then put in an cold, empty cell, where she slept on the concrete floor. Later, she told a Hmong translator that she thought she was going to die in there, but she believes he translated her statement to “I want to kill myself.”

“They put me in a cell that had no light, no water, no heat, no food,” recalled Souvannarath in her deposition. “I was there for two or three days.”

Sonexay Souvannarath said she and her two sisters, Thongsavane, 17; and Vilayphone, 18, saw that their mother had little on and that she was cold. They asked officers why she was in that state.

“They said she might commit suicide, but we said, ‘No, she was not,’ ” Sonexay said. “They said if she signs a paper saying she’s not going to commit suicide, then they would let her out.” Sonexay said her mother signed the paper but was put back in the cell anyway.

The three young women did not know whom to contact. Their three brothers lived out of state, and their father does not live with them. Another sister also lives elsewhere.

“We called our brothers and told them we were going to talk to [the prison officials] to see if they’d release her,” Sonexay said. “They told us it’s better if we talk calmly and don’t yell or scream at them.”

“The only people they knew were the people who put their mom in jail,” Gallegos said. “They had no faith in the system.”

Eventually, Souvannarath was moved to the infirmary floor, where a doctor inserted an IV for her tuberculosis drugs and confined her to the ward. “It was very dirty and smelly there,” she recalled. “Women would urinate on the floor. The officers would yell at me to clean up, so I would clean the floors with my arm all swollen.”

In her deposition, she stated women on her floor stole her food and one threw a chair at her. When Souvannarath became acutely ill, she said she was taken in shackles to what her lawyers believe was University Medical Center, the county’s public hospital. During her stay, she was chained by her ankles to the bed.

“I really thought I was going to die or get killed in prison,” she recalled. “My only hope was that my soul and my spirit to be with my daughters.”

AN ORDER OF SILENCE
Gallegos said that public health officials visiting Souvannarath told her not to tell anyone why she was she was in jail, and they said if anyone asked where she was, she should tell them she was in the hospital. About six months later, after being deemed non-contagious, Souvannarath was transferred from the infirmary to a general-population cell, where she stayed for almost four months.

At the family’s small apartment, Sonexay Souvannarath and her sisters tried to go on with their lives. But they didn’t want to go to school, and their grades dropped.

“I felt so lonely,” Sonexay said. “I was worried they were going to send her somewhere else.” Lawyers would not comment on how the daughters supported themselves while their mother was imprisoned.

Hongkham Souvannarath finally called the people in Ohio who had helped bring her to this country from Laos 13 years before. They then contacted social service groups, including Central California Legal Services. On May 26, Souvannarath was released by a county judge who ruled that she was the victim of “an inadvertent but illegal detention.”

The sheriff’s department referred all calls to the county health department, which has declined to comment about the case. It does say it has Laotian-speaking interpreters.

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