Gay Couple Weighs Civil Rights Complaint

"It made me sick to my stomach."

– Mike Marasco, responding to anti-gay slurs he said were made against his neighbors 
The complaints by the Kuenens and the other tenants were focused on the male head of the household, a 35-year-old man with a lengthy rap sheet that includes drug and other criminal charges.

Mike Marasco, a resident of the complex, said he overheard the neighbor harassing the Kuenens, who he said “are like family,” and “it made me sick to my stomach.”

The Kuenens are an asset to the complex who do landscaping and spruce up the property, and who have organized potluck dinners and gatherings during the holidays, several neighbors said.

“These guys work hard to make their home nice,” Marasco said. “They pay their bills, they take care of this place and they clean it up.”

Another complex resident, Pat Cox, told the Kuenens that their upstairs neighbor had been trying to rally other tenants against them because they are gay and that he heard him making slurs against the couple.

For the Kuenens to be subjected to “a continuous barrage on their human rights” is wrong and “if  could physically handle that person, I would have done something about it,” said Marasco, who is disabled and confined to a motorized wheelchair.

He said that when he told Marjean Short, the property manager for Sunrise Valley Apartments at 1039 Fifth St., that “we need to work with these guys and watch their backs, she just shrugged her shoulders.”

Short declined to comment or to direct Patch to anyone who could comment on the issues raised by the Keunens.

“I grew up racist and prejudiced against everything. ...Change is in your control."

– Kevin Sloan, neighborNeighbor Kevin Sloan said he also overheard the Kuenens’ upstairs neighbor making comments about their sexual orientation and also had heard him try to explain his alleged bias away as a symptom of his addictions and not an attitude within his control.

“You make your own decisions,” said Sloan. “I grew up racist and prejudiced against everything. I grew up in that kind of family.”

Sloan said that when he lived in a multicultural prison population, he learned that people aren’t their ‘isms.”

“Change is in your control,” he said,

From a Polk County Jail cell last fall when the problems first erupted, the neighbor reportedly promised to do just that.

An Apology for 'Awful Words'

While incarcerated, the men’s neighbor apologized for “past behavior” and for choosing “awful words,” according to a hand-written letter on paper furnished by the Polk County Jail that the Kuenens shared with Patch:

“I am very sorry. However, I was intoxicated and under the influence of meth, which is no excuse, but it did worsen things for me. … As you both know, I have been fighting a very bad addiction with meth. …”

In the same letter, he asked the Kuenens to stop calling the property manager with complaints because “it messes with the roof that’s over my kids’ heads and that makes me VERY upset.”

“We are all men,” he wrote. “If you have a problem with anything that I, my wife, or my children are doing, be a man and please bring it to my or my wife’s attention and we can get things resolved civilly in a mannerly fashion. … So again, please bring it to my attention. I know in the past, I’ve dealt with things wrong, but you will see a major change in me. And that I promise.”

Brad and Adan Kuenen said their neighbor never fulfilled that promise.

The neighbor had been hired by the property manager to repair the bathroom in his family’s residence, and on May 1, the Kuenen bathroom directly below began to show severe water damage, according to the report on file at the West Des Moines Police Department.

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The Kuenens contend maintenance workers found no leaks and said the damage must have been intentional, according to the police report.

Couple Tried to Go Through Channels

The Kuenens said they attempted to resolve the situation with the property manager, who they said was unsympathetic to their problem, even though the lease prohibits most of the conduct they accused the neighbor of engaging in, including “disturbing or threatening the rights, comforts, safety, health and convenience of others” and “possessing a controlled substance or drug paraphernalia, or engaging in or threatening violence. …”

So they called T.J. Estlund, a rental housing inspector for the city of West Des Moines, and asked what could be done about the gaping hole in their bathroom ceiling that leaked water – as if, Brad Kuenen said, someone had stuck the hand-held shower wand into the wall above.

That was around the first of May. Estlund told Patch that he advised the Kuenens that if the plumbing issue posed “an immediate health and safety issue,” the property manager “needed to address it right away.” If their complaints involved their rights as tenants, remedy is found under the landlord-tenant law of Iowa, Estlund said

Estlund said he told the Kuenens that if they filed a formal complaint, the apartment managers would have been given a seven-day notice to respond. But Estlund said he never heard any more about the matter and assumed it had been corrected.

Though Short, the property manager, declined to comment when Patch called on May 20, repairs at the apartment began later that day, Brad Keunen said.
 
Editor’s note: Patch’s policy is not to name suspects in police reports who have not been charged with a crime. The Kuenens’ neighbor has not been charged.