MICHIGAN REHAB VIOLATED RIGHTS, SUIT SAYS

Outreach center in Flint at heart of ACLU case Joseph Hanas lasted
only seven weeks in a yearlong drug rehabilitation program in 2003 --
even though leaving meant landing in jail.

It wasn't the urine-stained mattresses or the lousy food that made
him pray for a way out of the residential program at the Inner City
Christian Outreach Center in Flint, Hanas said Tuesday.

It was the people who flailed about, speaking in tongues, he said. It
was the laying on of hands in prayer.

Most of all, it was the threat that Hanas, a Catholic, would have to
proclaim at an altar that he was saved or else he would be kicked out
of the Pentecostal-based program. He said he was told he had a
choice: Convert or be convicted.

He asked the court for a new program, but said he was denied. Hanas
then served a total of six months in jail and at a correctional boot camp.

An official at the program says Hanas was never told he had to convert.

Even so, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Tuesday
in U.S. District Court in Detroit to try to get Hanas' conviction
overturned, arguing that the 23-year-old Grand Blanc resident was
punished because he failed to finish a program that violated his
religious rights.

The case isn't a criticism of the Pentecostal faith, Hanas' attorneys said.

Instead, the case argues Hanas should have never been "subjected to
efforts to convert and indoctrinate him and efforts to dissuade him
from practicing his own religion," said Andrew Nickelhoff, one of his lawyers.

Dwight Richard Rottiers, the pastor at Inner City, said Tuesday that
Hanas is lying, both about the conditions in the program and Hanas'
contention that his own religious materials were taken away.

Rottiers said Hanas was never told he had to convert.

Rottiers said Hanas was told he had to attend Inner City's services
and was not allowed to attend Catholic services. But Rottiers said he
spoke to Hanas about the program before he arrived and told him it
was Christian-based.

"If that's against their religious rights, they shouldn't come here,"
Rottiers said. "Nobody forced him to come."

In 2001, Hanas pleaded guilty in Genesee County Circuit Court to
possession of marijuana with intent to deliver. The charges could
have been dismissed if he completed a 12- to 18-month drug program,
according to the lawsuit.

Soon after he arrived at Inner City, Hanas said, the staff told him
Catholicism was witchcraft and confiscated his rosary and prayer
book. As punishment for noncompliance, he said he was once forced
into a three-day word fast, during which he could not talk to anyone,
Hanas said.

Nickelhoff also said there was no rehabilitation counseling except
for the required seven hours a day of Bible study.

Hanas' mother and her sister feared that instead of losing Hanas to
the streets, they were losing him to a cult.

"I had to fight to get him out," said Chris Hanas, his mother. "It
was like a made-for-TV movie."

After seven weeks, Judge Robert Ransom, who had agreed to let Hanas
go to Inner City, sentenced him to jail for dropping out. Saying he
had other options for rehab, the judge said Hanas' objections to the
program -- and his failure to finish three previous programs -- were
proof he wasn't committed to finishing any treatment.

Soon after, however, the court stopped sending cases to Inner City.

Rottiers said participants in the program meet with a personal
counselor once a week, and get three hours of counseling a week. He
said his program is nondenominational and its Christian-based
approach is what really helps the men turn their lives around.

The church is part of the Kingsway Fellowship International, which
practices the "Pentecostal persuasion," according to its Web site.