Just Whose Life Is It? : Family and Lover Battle Over the Care of Paralyzed Woman

Sharon Kowalski, a 31-year-old woman who loved to golf, fish, ski, play basketball and ride motorcycles, now lies in a Minnesota nursing home, a profoundly brain-damaged paraplegic barely able to speak or move.

But around her rages a vicious, four-year court battle over her custody between her father and a woman who says she is her lover.

Donald Kowalski, a retired iron miner, has won guardianship of his daughter in court and has barred her former roommate, Karen Thompson, from seeing her since 1985.

Thompson, however, has made unceasing attempts through the courts to gain access to Sharon. She disputes some doctors’ assertions that Sharon has the mental capacities of a 6-year-old and argues she may have sufficient presence of mind to help decide who should care for her.

If Thompson, a 41-year-old physical education professor, can gain guardianship of the woman she considers her spouse, the verdict could affect hundreds of similar cases in which homosexuals or disabled individuals are seeking broader interpretations of their civil rights.

A Family in ‘Hell’

In interviews this week, Donald Kowalski called Thompson “an animal,” and said he does not think his daughter was or is a lesbian.

“I don’t feel like I should be forced into believing Karen Thompson,” said Kowalski, 57. He spoke softly, sadly as he recounted the “hell” his family has been through since the 1983 accident, in which a drunk driver in a pickup truck struck Sharon’s car, severly injuring her and killing her niece, Melissa, 4.

Since then, Kowalski said he has suffered two heart attacks. His wife, Della, was treated in 1984 for “moderately severe depression,” which caused “sleeplessness, weight loss, lack of energy and chronic anxiety,” a court document said.

Kowalski, one of the 1,408 residents of Nashwauk, Minn., said he thinks it is unimportant whether his daughter is a lesbian: “What difference does it make, in Sharon’s condition?

“I don’t believe in that life style but I would not disown our daughter (if it were true). The good Lord put us here for reproduction, not that kind of way. It’s just not a normal life style. The Bible will tell you that.”

When asked if he found his daughter’s mental capacities to be those of a 6-year-old, Kowalski said: “You want my opinion? What difference does it make? She’s in diapers, she can’t talk, she can’t even turn herself. Really, what difference does it make if she’s 80 or 32? She’s not consistent. Her mind is all over the place.”

Parties from both sides agree Sharon’s short-term memory is impaired. Her sister, Debbie, said she has told Sharon repeatedly that her niece is dead and cannot visit her. But Sharon never remembers.

Thompson, nonetheless, said Sharon “is not a child,” and noted that Sharon has typed, “Karen, make love to me,” for her former companion before she was banned from visiting her. Sharon also “startled” a Minnesota newspaper reporter, who, on a 1987 visit, asked her what her favorite flower was, “and she laboriously types out ‘columbine.’ ”

Thompson feels it is discrimination against the handicapped to assume they are non-sexual; the Kowalskis, however, have brought individuals to court to testify Sharon is in danger of sexual abuse if Thompson is allowed to visit.

That is a charge Thompson, a St. Cloud State University professor, angrily denies. She said Kowalski is part of a “rich, white, heterosexual, able-bodied, Christian, male system, which oppresses anyone who’s different.”

Thompson, who once was nervous when speaking to her classes and was a lesbian so deep in the closet that she did not even mention the word gay to her lover, has undergone a transformation.

To underscore her wish to care for Sharon, Thompson revealed their lesbian relationship to the Kowalskis, and, soon after, to audiences nationwide.

Thompson has become a feminist lesbian activist, giving speeches across the country to raise money for her legal bills and to encourage homosexual couples to make out living wills. She said she has written a book about her experience to be published this fall.

Support committees for her cause have sprung up in several cities. On Sunday--the eve of Kowalski’s 32nd birthday--lesbian, gay and disabled activists plan to draw national attention to the matter by staging various events in more than a dozen places, including Los Angeles, to “Free Sharon Kowalski.”

Thompson’s public campaign has infuriated the Kowalskis. Sister Debbie, whose daughter was killed in the accident that so severely injured Sharon, bitterly noted that Thompson admits she had an abortion years ago.

“If she killed her own baby,” she said, “what would she do with Sharon if she found out Sharon wasn’t everything she thought she could be?”

Reacting to that statement, Thompson’s words flowed in rapid bursts of frustration and anger. She accused the Kowalskis of “attacking me physically and verbally” for five years.

Abortion Was a ‘Mistake’

She then addressed the question directly, calling her abortion a mistake: “I’ve spent my life questioning that decision and I’ve settled that between me and my God. It’s no one’s right to judge me for that.

“I love Sharon Kowalski and I want to see her develop as far as she can.”

Kowalski is as fiercely dedicated to his battle as Thompson is to hers. He will fight her in court, he said, “till they cover me up in the ground.”

Thompson said she and Sharon secretly had made a life commitment to each other. They had exchanged rings and had taken out life insurance, naming each other as beneficiary, just as a married couple would.

Thompson wants all the same rights with Sharon that she would have if it were her 31-year-old husband who had been injured. She has been in and out of Minnesota courts more than 20 times trying to get them.

In the courts, Thompson has contended that she has run up against a conservative, Midwestern “old-boy network” of “bought-and-paid-for” doctors; the judges seem to her to be at the beck and call of Jack Fena, Kowalski’s attorney and a former state legislator. The medical and legal experts who have testified have offered diametrically opposed opinions as to whether Thompson’s early visits harmed or helped Sharon.

At the core of her legal battle is her contention that Kowalski is so biased against women and the handicapped--she says he sees them as helpless--that he is not making available to Sharon a full range of rehabilitative care.

Sharon now receives occupational, physical and speech therapy at her nursing home, her family said.

But Thompson has argued that Sharon, if offered more advanced therapy and equipment, might learn to eat more (most of her nourishment now is delivered via a stomach tube). She also said Sharon--who now uses a typewriter, a letter board and whispers on occasion--could communicate better with a computer’s help.

Thompson won a minor court victory Wednesday when the probate court in St. Louis County, Minn., ordered Sharon moved from a nursing home in Hibbing, Minn., to a hospital facility in Duluth for the purpose of being evaluated by a team of medical experts.

“Once we get the results we’re going to assess them very carefully to see if we have additional (legal) grounds to remove the guardian,” said M. Sue Wilson, Thompson’s attorney. “Has her father neglected her medical treatment by putting her in a nursing home rather than a rehabilitative facility?”

Kowalski had tried to stop the Duluth evaluation, arguing the move would confuse and scare Sharon. Asked if he thought Sharon needed to be evaluated, Kowalski said, “No, I don’t. It’s a waste of money. It’s just to satisfy Karen Thompson.”

In his view, Thompson is seeking “complete control” over Sharon’s life and was an upsetting influence on her when she had visited her early on. The Kowalskis, backed by testimony of four doctors, contend that Thompson’s visits plunged Sharon into a clinical depression.

A Public Spectacle

Thompson has countered that she was the one who insisted Sharon be evaluated for depression, for which she was not the cause. In court, Thompson admitted that Sharon got upset when she left her or when she had to tell her she could not take her home with her.

“When I have to reject Sharon, she turns away from me,” Thompson testified.

Kowalski is particularly angered because he feels Thompson has made an embarrassing public spectacle of his daughter so she can make money and a name for herself and advance a cause. Even when Sharon was hospitalized in a coma, Thompson asked for her rent money and for $85.50 to cover her share of a credit card bill, Kowalski claims.

“She never had no tears, unless she gets on TV or in front of an audience and cries for money,” he said.

Thompson tells it differently. She said Kowalski approached her in the hospital, wanting to know what Sharon owed her in rent and other bills. Because the couple still were in the closet, Thompson did not want to tip off the Kowalskis by admitting that she had been supporting Sharon.

“They think I’m her landlady,” she recalled. “How can I tell them I thought it was my right to take care of her? I was afraid they would guess. They gave me 400-some dollars. I really got rich.”

The money she raises in donations to the “Free Sharon Kowalski” committees all goes to her legal bills, which have exceeded $125,000, Thompson said.

Over the years, various people have visited Sharon and asked her who she wants to care for her. At different times, she has answered “parents” or “Karen T.”

Kowalski said Sharon never asks for Thompson. “She don’t talk about nothing on her own,” he said.

According to court documents, an exchange between Sharon and a Minnesota Civil Liberties Union attorney went like this:

Question: Do you understand that there is a court proceeding going on where decisions are being made about who you get to see and where you live?

Answer: Yes.

Q: Do you feel that your wishes are being made known to the court?

A: No.

A different exchange with a psychiatrist went like this:

Q: Do you want to live with your father?

A: Yes.

Q: Do you want to live with your mother?

A: Yes.

Q: Do you want to live with Karen?

A: Yes.

Gary Pagliacetti, Sharon’s court-appointed attorney, is anxious for results of the medical evaluation. He has not taken sides in the volatile case.

He has asked Sharon who she wants to care for her. She answered yes to both her parents and Thompson. Then when asked to choose just one, she replied, “Parents.”

But he is “reluctant to put a lot of force behind” that reply, preferring to wait for the medical evaluation.

“What I have asked for is evaluations of her communicative skills,” said Pagliacetti, who has handled other cases involving disabled people. If the evaluator says Sharon “knows what you’re asking her and that her answer is in response, then we’ll ask her what she wants to do.”

But after her lawyer and even Sharon have had their say, it still is unclear whether the long-running custody battle will be resolved. In fact, based on what they have said and done, Thompson and the Kowalskis may be combatants still for a time to come.