Mike Harn was at the Mother's Against Drunk Driving booth at the Western Idaho Fair on August 19th when he was approached by a fair employee about his disabled wife, Rose. Reportedly the woman asked Harn to take Rose and leave because there had been a lot of phone calls about Rose's appearance being offensive and too graphic.
Rose Harn was hit by a 16 year old drunk driver over twenty years ago. The teenager ran a stop sign and rammed Rose's car, leaving the 58 year old mother of three in a coma for 18 months with her brain stem almost cut in two. A paraplegic with severe brain damage, Rose has been cared for by her husband Mike ever since. Mike and Rose have become fixtures for their local MADD chapter, regularly making appearances at classes for convicted drunk drivers and at MADD events.
August 19th was different. At MADD's request, Mike brought Rose to their booth at the state fair so that people could see what the consequences could be for driving drunk. Those consequences were too much for some people to stomach. Mike initially refused to leave, but the next day, Miren Aburusa, executive director of MADD Idaho, dropped the Harns from their list of volunteers.
"The comments that people were making about Rose, I think were
horrible.'" Aburusa said. But she dismissed the couple because of concerns that the local sherrif would turn up to enforce the eviction request.
The Harns have filed a discrimination complaint with the Idaho Human Rights Commission and have refused to work with MADD in the future.
