PEABODY — Social services workers will gather in three locations across Massachusetts tonight to remember the life of Stephanie Moulton of Peabody.
Moulton, a 25-year-old caseworker at the North Suffolk Mental Health home in Revere, was working alone, when Deshawn Chappell, a resident at the facility with a long history of both violence and mental illness, stabbed her, fled with her in her own car and left her body behind a church in Lynn, police say.
The vigil is to remember and honor Moulton on the one-year anniversary of her death, but also to remind state officials that more work needs to be done to protect social workers, said Kimberly Flynn, Moulton's mother.
"I have been working day and night on this because this isn't going to happen again," said a determined Flynn, who has testified in front of the Senate, rallied lawmakers and held events in Peabody and Salem to garner support for more protections for social workers.
The lack of safeguards for the workers in group homes — many of them women — hit home for Flynn during her daughter's wake, when she met many of Moulton's co-workers for the first time. Group homes are temporary housing for mentally ill, convicts just coming out of jail, and people with other issues that make it difficult for them to live on their own.
"All these girls were coming up and introducing themselves to me, and they were all the size of my daughter, 5-foot-2, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up," she said. "I said to myself, 'This is not going to happen again,' and I've been fighting tooth and nail to make sure it doesn't."
There are currently two bills working through the Legislature. One, filed by Sen. Fred Berry, titled Stephanie's Law, makes it mandatory for residential facilities to provide employees with a panic button to call for help in case of an emergency.
"It's a very reasonable proposition ... it's the minimum we should be doing for the staff," said Danvers Rep. Ted Speliotis, who is a co-sponsor of Stephanie's Law. "The job has a certain risk involved, and everyone understood that even before the loss of Stephanie. Every day, they're putting their lives on the line."
The bill is currently in a joint committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse and should come up in the next few weeks, Speliotis said.
"If we can get a positive report coming out of committee, then we'd be on the way," he said. "Events like (the vigil today) go a long way in helping that."
Flynn hopes the bill will pass by April, then she will begin pushing a law making the residents of group homes subject to CORI checks so staff members have a better understanding of the history of the people they are working with. Currently, residents are not subject to such checks.
There are other movements on the issue since Moulton's death.
A second bill, working through the House, would establish a commission to provide more broad oversight to the mental health support system in the state. That bill is also still in committee.
Also, shortly after Moulton's death, the Department of Mental Heath created a task force on staff and client safety, which over the course of months and countless interviews and surveys, produced a report last summer with 17 recommendations. The department, which has lost $55 million in funding since 2009, needs a smaller staff-to-client ratio, more funding, better oversight, better training, more manageable caseloads and better safety measures like panic buttons, among other things, the report said.
Toby Fisher, a field policy specialist with the Services Employees International Union, and a member of the commission, said the department has been slow to adopt the recommendations and has thus far only increased some training, "but not the vast majority of recommendations we think they should," Fisher said. "Some of the recommendations are simple, but some will take a broader effort and will take time."
Organizers hope tonight's vigil will help keep the issue in people's minds and spark more lawmakers to action. Originally just planned for Peabody, the support has been so strong from social workers unions across the state that there will also be vigils held in Springfield and New Bedford. The Peabody vigil will be held at Buckley Field, 79 Central St., at 6:30 p.m. It will include speeches from Speliotis, as well as Susan Tousignant, the local president of the service workers union.
Moulton's death "has resonated with a lot of people, especially the workers, because they all knew it could have been them," Fisher said.
For Flynn, the vigil will be bittersweet: remembering the tragic loss of her daughter, but also the promise that other lives could be saved from it.
"I want to make sure that my daughter did not die in vain; there has to be some reason she is gone," Flynn said. "Her death is what we had to go through in order to help" other social service workers.
If you go
What: Candlelight vigil to remember Stephanie Moulton
Where: Buckley Field, 79 Central St., Peabody
When: 6:30 p.m.
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