December 24, 1997
San Francisco Bay Gaurdian

By Tommy Westerfield

AN ORPHANED preteen prostitute whose parents were crackheads. An 18-year-old heroin addict who's been sleeping in abandoned buildings since he was 14. A 13-year-old who sleeps with a middle-aged man in a room whose walls are covered with crucifixes and pictures of little boys.

They may sound like characters from a modern Dickens novel, but these Tenderloin residents are real.

One person committed to making their lives more tolerable is a 41-year-old former Methodist minister and ex-prostitute. Father River Sims of the Evangelical Anglican Church in America is the founder of Temenos Catholic Worker. Sims's

approach is modeled after the anarchist Catholic Worker movement that started in the 1930s and is known for its commitment of voluntary poverty and direct service to the poor. Temenos, Sims explains, is a Greek word for the area outside the walls of a city to which social outcasts such as prostitutes were exiled.

Sims, who says he felt "called" to live in San Francisco's Tenderloin area after creating programs for runaway teens in Minnesota, subscribes to a philosophy of "radical harm reduction."

Rather than lecture youths about their behavior, he provides condoms, blankets, food, and information on safe sex and how to avoid being arrested.

He also exchanges needles, collecting them from addicts and turning them in to a needle exchange site run by Prevention Point, where he picks up clean ones to distribute.

"I give the teenagers the means to survive until they someday, maybe, reach the point of wanting to make different choices," he said.

But Sims, with his seen-it-all gray-green eyes, has few illusions about that someday.

"I believe anyone can change. But some people are not going to change. Ever. So some say I'm 'enabling' them, helping them stay where they're at," Sims said.

"Roger," an 18-year-old heroin addict who says he was thrown out of his alcoholic and physically abusive father's home, scoffs at the suggestion that Sims is helping kids remain on the street.

"That's bullshit. River isn't helping me stay here," Roger said. "People are going to do what they're going to do. I like [heroin]. I talk about quitting sometimes, but there's no pressure [from River]. I'm a dope addict, and he exchanges my needles, and whenever I'm hungry he gives me some food. He's real nice. I don't know anyone else who does anything like him."

Barbara Garcia, director of homeless programs for the city's Department of Health, agrees with Roger. Garcia has gone out with Sims on his rounds in the Tenderloin, meeting the youths he works with.

"River reaches people where some may not be able to because he does it at late hours, 9 p.m. to 3 a.m.," she said. "He is spiritually driven and is not bounded by government funding and reductions." Garcia concedes there's been criticism of Sims but feels his "direct contact and helping immediate needs" has an impact in the long run.

"There needs to be diverse models [for working with homeless youth], and he provides an important model," she said. "He's an institution unto himself."

Such responses to disenfranchised and homeless youths don't find much support from the systems and organizations that are supposed to deal with them.

Sims contends the police are less likely to pick up johns in the Tenderloin because "they're prominent people with money. I had a police officer say to me, 'Let the old men have their toys.' "

The indifference or inability to deal with the teens as they are, according to Sims, comes from all sides. While he thinks social service agencies such as Larkin Street Youth Center do a good job of helping kids who want to return home or get off drugs, he feels they're not equipped to deal with more severely troubled kids who can't follow rules, or who don't want to go home.

"Some kids are safer on the streets than the homes they run away from," he said. "The sexual abuse, the physical and emotional abuse -- of course they don't want to go back home."

Surprisingly, Sims says little help is to be found even within the gay community, including those affiliated with religious organizations. He thinks that the fear of the stereotype -- the adult gay man preying on youths -- keeps them away.

"I know of one gay social worker who refuses to be out of the closet because he's afraid the agency he works for will view him from that stereotype," he said. "It's a shame, because the only adult gay role model these kids have is the johns. Sometimes I'm the only safe male they know."

Sims has been frustrated by the bureaucracy of AIDS service organizations as well. He said the Tom Waddell Health Center has been helpful, providing him condoms to distribute. But he said he has had trouble getting supplies from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Two years ago, when he was looking for lubricant to distribute, he ended up "talking to at least 15 individuals" at the AIDS Foundation before he "just gave up."

Derek Gordon, communications director of the S.F. AIDS Foundation, said he was not aware of the incident Sims described but that the foundation does have an outreach program in the Tenderloin. Though it does not specifically target youths, it does provide condoms and lubricant to people there, he said.

Although Sims has his own Christmas wish list of what government and social service agencies could provide -- drug treatment on demand, less rigidly structured shelters, free medical clinics open at all hours, support systems for gay kids, hygienic centers that have showers and laundry rooms -- the immediate needs of the homeless teens he works with are simpler.

"Socks," he said. "These kids wear the same pair sometimes two weeks at a stretch. And there's a desperate need for blankets and jackets now that it has turned cold. More supplies like condoms, and there's this one kid who needs a new pair of glasses really bad."

When asked why he has devoted his life to caring for people who are often self-destructive and who, some might say, are beyond help, Sims replies, "I believe everyone has a contribution to make, even if I don't know what it is. You treat them like human beings with dignity and they'll treat you the same way."

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