Sex Assaults by Counselors Alleged at Group Homes

LUCERNE VALLEY, Calif. —  In what social workers characterize as a startling chain of attacks in California’s foster care system, seven emotionally disturbed teenagers say they have been raped or molested in San Bernardino County group homes by counselors hired to protect them.

State officials acknowledge the abuse allegations--raised in a June lawsuit filed by five of the teenagers--and say they are investigating. San Bernardino prosecutors, meanwhile, have already obtained guilty pleas from two former counselors who admitted participating in sexual assaults, court records show.

The lawsuit contends that the assaults occurred over the last two years and as recently as May in three of six foster-care facilities operated by Victor Treatment Centers.

David Favor, Victor’s chief executive officer, said Monday that his company tries to implement safeguards to prevent such incidents and performs extensive background checks when hiring staff members.

“I just can’t imagine what we could have done--could have, would have, should have--that we didn’t do,” he said. “Safety is our foremost concern. . . . I’m proud of what we’re doing.”

Favor said he founded the homes in 1968 because he believed that some teenagers housed at the time in state hospitals didn’t need to be in confined surroundings. As far as the lawsuit goes, he said: “We’re not too worried about it. We feel confident that we will prevail.”

The six-person homes, known in the vernacular of child welfare experts as “Level 14” facilities, are reserved for the most severely disturbed teens in the child welfare system. The homes are considered a last stop, and a final resort, before the teenagers are sent to mental hospitals. Victor is one of the largest operators of Level 14 homes in the state.

Favor said most of the teenagers in Level 14 facilities have been removed from their homes and funneled into the child welfare system because they were abused or neglected as children, and most have been molested before they get there.

The allegations have prompted a flurry of criminal charges and investigations by county and state officials.

According to court records, Steve Ayala, a counselor at a San Bernardino home known as the Bronson House and a teacher’s aide at a school run by the group homes, pleaded guilty to sodomy in January and received a six-year prison term. He is also named in the lawsuit.

The suit accuses another aide of exposing the same teenager, while naked, to other residents and aides. According to the lawsuit, the teenager was ridiculed in front of other residents after he gained weight--a side effect of his medication.

Robert Michael Duron, a counselor at a San Bernardino home known as Marshall House, pleaded guilty to one count of rape in January. He was sentenced to 120 days in the county jail. The lawsuit accuses Duron of raping or otherwise sexually molesting three residents between December 1998 and March 1999.

In all, three counselors are named as defendants in the suit.

The California Department of Social Services is also investigating the foster homes and has cited Victor for failing to quickly report the attacks. If there are more incidents, the state says, it will consider further action, which could include revoking Victor’s license to run the homes.

“One is too many,” said Blanca Barna, a department spokeswoman. “These are clearly very serious charges.”

Interviews with victims and attorneys, as well as reviews of Social Services documents, paint a troubling picture of life in the group homes.

At least one episode mentioned in the lawsuit is also reflected in state inspection records: A 12-year-old was allegedly sodomized by a teacher’s aide in late 1999. But when he complained of rectal bleeding in the weeks afterward, staff members refused to take the boy to a doctor, the reports say. The boy was finally taken to a doctor when he visited his parents for Thanksgiving that year.

Another state report says that “inappropriate interactions between staff and [residents] were witnessed by . . . staff and no disciplinary action was taken.”

After the alleged attacks, at least two teens lapsed in their therapy and are now in state mental homes, according to their Santa Ana attorney, Jack H. Anthony. Two others have reportedly attempted suicide. Currently, the teens range in age from 13 to 19.

“It could hardly be a coincidence,” said Dr. Gilbert Kliman, medical director of the Children’s Psychological Trauma Center in San Francisco.

Human Beings Acting ‘as Beasts of Prey’

Kliman has met six of the teenagers, and is assisting Anthony in bringing suit against the state, the county and Victor Treatment Centers, the Chico, Calif.-based nonprofit group that received $5.5 million in public funds this year to run group homes in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Two other organizations each operate a single group home in the area.

“You always have some human beings that act as beasts of prey,” Kliman said. “To have so many in one place is truly unusual. This is shocking.”

One teenager among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Wanda, agreed to be interviewed by The Times.

She said she grew up in a home near Brawley where drugs were commonplace. By the time she was 6, she said, she had been molested by four men. Social workers removed her from her parents’ home and placed her in the state’s welfare system.

According to the suit, 10 years later, in February 1999, after winding her way from one group home to another, she found herself being raped again--this time by a counselor at a Victor group home in San Bernardino known as the Chestnut House. Even as she struggled on the couch that night, the irony was not lost on her: She had come full circle. Another man she was supposed to trust was raping her, she said.

“This time, when I got raped, it hurt me more,” said Wanda. “I thought he was there for me when I needed to talk. He used to hold my hand and tell me everything was going to be OK. I never thought he was going to do anything. I trusted him.”

Kurt Rowley, San Bernardino County’s deputy district attorney in the Crimes Against Children unit, said prosecutors sporadically receive charges that people in positions of trust--from clergy to day-care workers--have taken advantage of children.

“But this kind of level is surprising,” he said of the Victor allegations. “How they got away with it--who knows?”

State regulators are troubled by what they call a poor exchange of information between the homes and inspectors.

For example, state inspection records contain a detailed history of the homes. Staff members are scolded in the documents for everything from cussing at residents to treating them too harshly when restraining them.

The records outline techniques for anger management, such as letting residents create, and then destroy, clay figurines. Some incidents are detailed in the documents, such as one that says a resident had “numerous seizures” but was not taken to a doctor--”though the seizures were continuing and intensifying in frequency and duration.”

But only one of the lawsuit incidents is reflected in the files.

According to the documents, three group homes run by Victor have been cited for failing to submit written reports about incidents such as the rapes to licensing agents.

“The reports were not being done in a timely manner,” said Barna, the Department of Social Services spokeswoman. “That’s very important to the state. And those are grounds to take it to another level.”

The civil lawsuit, meanwhile, is scheduled for trial Dec. 18.

Some experts say a rebellious or sexually charged atmosphere is common in such group homes.

In interviews, Wanda casually told of “going AWOL”--leaving the homes to get drunk on brandy and high on speed and marijuana. She also told of smuggling drugs back inside upon her return to the group home.

And in a report prepared by the San Bernardino County Probation Department, Duron, the staff member accused in three sexual attacks, paints a picture of promiscuity. Two teenagers initiated the sexual encounters he is accused of, he said.

Victor Treatment Homes receives $5,732 per bed, per month, to run its group homes. Staff members often are young and inexperienced and have little or no college education. They are often paid just $8 an hour to supervise the most troubled children in California’s child welfare system.