A “broken” Lorraine Hale was sentenced to five years’ probation yesterday for stealing money from her late mother’s renowned Hale House charity for sick tots.
Honoring the terms of a plea agreement with the state Attorney General’s Office, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Herbert Altman also ordered Hale, 76, and her husband, Jesse DeVore, 70, to pay $766,000 in restitution to Hale House, the refuge for abandoned babies of drug addicts and AIDS victims Hale used to head.
Hale’s lawyer, William Dowling, said the husband and wife had returned about $125,000 to Hale House so far, which is their life savings, and are trying to come up with the rest of the cash.
“They are destitute. They’re living on Social Security,” Dowling said, referring to them as “broken people” who feel “a certain amount of remorse.”
He said the looting of the charity was “a blip” in an otherwise sterling career of public service.
That “blip” included using about $1 million of the charity’s money to buy art, make improvements to their Westchester home, send Hale’s nephew to college and prop up DeVore’s theater company.
As part of the deal with prosecutors, the couple would go to jail if they ever try to run another charity. They could have faced up to 15 years in prison if they’d been convicted at trial.
Juanita Scarlett, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, said the artwork was seized in a forfeiture hearing. The charity owns the couple’s Scarsdale home, and is allowing them to live there, she said.
Hale was removed from the charity founded by her mom, Clara “Mother” Hale, in May 2001 after six years in charge.
In a statement, the charity’s current chairman, former U.S. Attorney Zachary Carter, said they have a “new management team” in place that is “committed to fiscal integrity and responsibility.”