Mattison fights animal cruelty charges

‘Brother’ determines to reopen animal shelter

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

LAKE HUNTINGTON, NY — For 22 years, he’s been living in a small enclosure on the side of an old motel, loosely sealed by a hanging wool blanket.

On the other side, the one-story building has fallen to pieces, but Victorian Mattison swears by the steal frame of his home, even if it is mostly skeleton.

He says he has everything he needs—the roof over his 10 square-foot room shelters his bed, refrigerator, television, computer, fax machine and electric counter-top stove, and a kerosene heater keeps him warm. But Town of Cochecton officials have made it their business to decide whether the former motel and two adjacent buildings on Pinewood Road are still safe for Mattison to inhabit.

Unsafe building reports, submitted by Town of Cochecton Code Enforcement Officer John Drobysh, have enabled Drobysh to cite Mattison at least twice for staying at the placarded property.

In addition to four months spent judging Drobysh’s recommendation that all three buildings be demolished and removed, the town board has spent $20,000 over six years dealing with complaints of alleged criminal activity on the property, including charges of animal cruelty, Supervisor Salvatore Indelicato said at the April 14 council meeting.

Mattison’s neighbors have entrenched themselves in a campaign to prevent the man who calls himself a Lazarian from operating his animal shelter, incorporated as the Lazarian Society for Animals of the Congregation Brothers of Saint Lazarus on June 11 of 1980 in Delaware County.

In January, the Sullivan County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals heeded complaints about neglect and abuse on the property and led an investigation that resulted in 94 counts of animal cruelty alleged against Mattison.

Sitting outside the motel building last week, he said he would push the case to a jury trial, insisting the prosecution must find him personally guilty of animal cruelty. The proceedings began Tuesday night after this issue of TRR went to press.

“I had every right to expect my employee to do the work [of managing a shelter],” Mattison said. He blames any alleged neglect on an employee he said was paid $7.50 per hour but failed to complete assigned duties.

His attorney will submit a report from Highland Physicians, Ltd. describing Mattison’s congestive heart failure, peripheral vascular disease and osteoarthritis, among other conditions, in an effort to clear personal culpability.

In response to the unsafe buildings case led by the town board, Mattison’s attorney Randall Coffill said at the April 14 meeting that he and his client decided not to rehabilitate the buildings because the estimated cost of doing so is too high.

Mattison plans to buy another house in Cochecton.

“We decided to secure the buildings for future use by boarding them up,” Coffill said.

During the meeting, Mattison approached Indelicato with pictures of other buildings in the town he said would make his look like “a palace.”

“You’re harassing me,” he said, calling himself a victim of “internal subterfuge.”

After the meeting, he said, “I’m just going to let it [the buildings] sit there, boarded up.” But then he said the property would eventually be “redone” to serve as an animal shelter.

The board scheduled a recessed meeting for April 28 at 7:00 p.m., when it will decide its ruling on the unsafe buildings report.

After Mattison left the town hall, Indelicato accepted Mattison’s point and directed Drobysh to attend to other unsafe buildings in the town.