JAIL TERM FOR CHARITY BOSS

A NORWICH city councillor has attacked claims that the conviction of a
former city charity worker could have far reaching implications for
homeless charities.

Eamonn Burgess spoke after Ruth Wyner - who once ran homeless projects in
Norwich and Yarmouth - and co-defendant John Brock were found guilty of
allowing heroin to be supplied at a drop-in centre in Cambridge.

Wyner was jailed for five years and Brock for four years at Cambridge Crown
Court yesterday.

Judge Jonathan Haworth told Wyner and Brock they had created "a haven for
heroin dealers" at Overstream Home, a drop-in centre.

Mr burgess was employed as a warden at the St Martin's Housing Trust in
Norwich when Wyner was manager of the night shelter.

Wyner said earlier this week: "It seems to me that the job description will
now have to be rewritten and people in my position will have to be police
informants."

But Mr Burgess accused her of trying to hide behind a "smokescreen."

Mr Burgess, who still works in special needs housing, said: "You can't use
confidentiality to protect heroin dealers. Confidentiality does not amount
to a code of silence. When you're allowing drug dealers to prey on
homeless people and protecting those dealers from the police you are
helping to make homeless people's lives nasty, brutish and short."

Mr Burgess accused Wyner of not maintaining a professional distance from
clients when she was working in Norwich and said he had been "disturbed" by
her attitude to drugs.

"It was quite obvious there was a relaxed attitude giving a lack of
consistency to homeless people about what sort of place they lived in," he
said.

The court heard that the centre run by the Wintercomfort charity was like a
"supermarket" for drugs.

Wyner and Brock, both 49, claimed they did not realise the extent of
dealing going on at the charity's premises at Overstream House.

Wyner was suspended from her 20,000 pound a year job as head of the
Norwich-based St Martin's Housing Trust in July 1993.

The reasons emerged a year later when she unsuccessfully took the charity
to an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal.

Wyner, who was described as the city's "figurehead for the homeless"
allowed residents to smoke cannabis in their rooms, the court was told.
Wyner denied the allegations.

She told the court the claims had been invented as an excuse to dismiss
her. Within three months of her suspension from St Martin's she became
co-ordinator of the Yarmouth based Herring House Trust.

Her brief was to spearhead he fund raising drive to build a 15-bed hostel
for the homeless in Yarmouth.

Within a year the trust was welcoming the first residents to Bauleah House
and Wyner was on the move again to become director of Cambridge-based
Wintercomfort.

The pair, both from Cambridge, have appealed but are likely to spend
Christmas behind bars.