County Endorses SLIC Ranch Drug Center

Robert Meehan gets either hoots or cheers. Neither he nor the Sober Live-In Center Ranch, the drug rehabilitation center he established more than two years ago on a remote foothill in Escondido, inspires neutral reactions.

Parents whose teen-age children are broken of drug habits by SLIC Ranch’s Alcoholics Anonymous-inspired program, and many of the recovering addicts themselves, swear by Meehan, who vaulted into prominence six years ago when he helped entertainer Carol Burnett’s daughter kick drugs.

But some local mental health experts, parents and SLIC alumni, who pay more than $5,000 for the 30-day program, say that while the ranch may sober up youngsters, it substitutes a cult-like fixation on Meehan for an addiction to drugs.

Repeatedly on Wednesday, the emotionally charged debate over Meehan and his programs thrust aside the narrowly defined issue before the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. The board heard, and ultimately rejected, an appeal of a Planning Commission decision granting a land-use permit to Meehan--a permit that is a prerequisite to reopening SLIC. The ranch has been closed since May, when the county cited it for operating without a permit.

The supervisors’ endorsement of the permit throws the question of the ranch’s future into the domain of the California Department of Social Services. The state has refused to license SLIC Ranch as either a children’s group home or an adult rehabilitation facility, citing its failure to meet fire safety, water and sanitation standards. If Meehan shows that those standards can be met, the department will determine if the ranch’s staff meets state requirements, according to Tom Hersant, district manager for community care licensing.

Throughout the 90-minute hearing, supervisors insisted that their only job was to consider testimony regarding fire safety and sanitation questions that prompted neighbors of the ranch to challenge issuance of a permit to Meehan to operate the ranch in the hills south of Lake Wohlford.

Nonetheless, both advocates and critics of SLIC Ranch strained to focus their comments on land-use concerns.

Kim Fletcher, chairman of the board of Home Federal Savings and Loan, appeared before the board to testify that fires were unlikely to spread from the ranch to nearby homes and that the narrow dirt road that provides the only access to the ranch and homes is adequate in case of an emergency.

Fletcher explained that his daughter had enrolled at the ranch. “It will bring families back together,” he told supervisors.

His comments drew catcalls from critics of the ranch, who clearly were outnumbered in the board’s packed chamber when proponents and opponents stood to show their strength.

Don Sutton, a high school teacher whose home on Oakvale Road sits about 200 feet from one of the ranch buildings, filed the appeal, hoping to keep the ranch shut down. He testified Wednesday that fire safety in the remote hills was his primary worry.

“This is not only a land-use matter, but also an issue that could involve the loss of many lives,” Sutton said.

Sutton told the board of several small fires at the ranch site and at SLIC’s previous location on the north side of Lake Wohlford. He also noted published reports describing gunplay at the ranch, ranch supervisors who started fires “for kicks” and generally inadequate supervision of the recovering addicts.

Sister Mary Vincent Otto, a counselor and past president of the San Diego County Mental Health Assn., made no pretense of addressing land-use concerns.

She said she was familiar with Meehan from the days when he ran the nationally acclaimed Palmer Drug Abuse Program in Houston, and that when she found they both had relocated to San Diego, she referred clients to him.

But Otto said she quickly began hearing reports that youngsters who worked with Meehan were coming under an unhealthy spell. SLIC Ranch and Freeway, a support and counseling group with which Meehan is associated, were permeated with “a cultist mentality where Mr. Meehan reigns supreme,” Otto said. The reopening of the ranch could pose “dire consequences, both materially and psychologically,” she testified.

Supervisor Brian Bilbray, joking that he was getting even for years of knuckle-wrapping at parochial school, scolded Otto for wandering away from the land-use question. But the levity lasted only a moment. Kathy Allan, who said her son was a Freeway enrollee, showed supervisors a picture of his car, its interior burnt by what she said was a recent SLIC Ranch graduate’s careless play with a disposable lighter.

Throughout, Meehan sat silently in the front row of the chamber, a tall, thin man with rimless glasses whose bald head is ringed with gray-blond hair that hangs past his shoulders.

Besides Fletcher and a consultant to Meehan, testimony favoring the ranch was offered by a psychologist who works with Meehan and a parent of a SLIC Ranch alumnus who does public relations work for Meehan.

“In three years almost of operation, there has been no personal injury or property damage resulting from SLIC Ranch,” said the parent, Mary-Pat Hoffman.

She urged supervisors to turn down Sutton’s appeal and bring the ranch one step closer to reopening. “It is in this type of environment where kids are given a chance to ‘time-out’ and not be involved with drugs,” she said.

When supervisors voted unanimously to reject the appeal, Meehan’s supporters stood en masse to cheer. Sutton and his neighbors rose silently to leave, except for one man who called out that the supervisors would be responsible if his family died in a fire.

Afterward, a smiling Meehan told reporters, “It feels good to finally feel like somebody wants me.” He denied the allegations of frequent fires and horseplay with guns at the ranch. Meehan, a self-proclaimed former drug addict and con man, said allegations that he was exercising cult-like control of youngsters were “not worth commenting on.”

State officials have told him he could win a license within weeks, Meehan said. But he said he may pursue obtaining something other than the standard license, which could slow state approval. He was unsure when SLIC Ranch might reopen.