St. Louis AIDS Agency Ordered To Give Back Pay to Fired Directors

Associate St. Louis Circuit Judge Jack Garvey on Wednesday ordered St. Louis-based Blacks Assisting Blacks Against AIDS to pay two fired employees a total of approximately $20,000 in back pay, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports (Bryant, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 5/14). The BABAA board in November 2002 fired both Erise Williams, the group's director, and James Green, its senior director, after the City of St. Louis Department of Health began investigating on behalf of the CDC allegations that the organization had used federal money from a $96,000 CDC grant to fight syphilis to pay Edgar Gaines, a retired gay pornographic film actor, to strip at a sex education event (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 5/1). The BABAA board called Gaines' appearance at the event "totally inappropriate," according to the Post-Dispatch. Williams, who was awarded $12,000 in the lawsuit, has denied that Gaines was nude at the event. Garvey awarded Green $7,560 in back pay. Donnell Smith, a board member, said that the board might appeal Garvey's decision (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 5/14).