Home for Boys : State Accuses Minister of Molesting Youth, 14

State regulators have temporarily suspended the license of a group home for troubled boys in Van Nuys and accused its president, a minister, of sexually molesting a 14-year-old resident of the facility.

The suspension order by the Department of Social Services accuses the Rev. Roger W. Burt of molesting the boy in 1984 at the Youth Encounter Home he operated under the auspices of a parent company, Christian Counseling Assn.

Burt, president of the home and Christian Counseling, is also accused in a 17-page complaint of disciplining a boy by handcuffing him to a chair for several hours. Additionally, the complaint says that Burt failed to notify state authorities that he was arrested in 1986 on suspicion of committing a lewd act in public with a male prostitute.

Mark M. Reese, staff attorney with the Department of Social Services, said Monday that the lewd conduct charge was reduced to a trespassing violation on April 2, 1987, under a plea bargain with prosecutors.

Reese said that police accounts of his arrest, combined with allegations of the molestation, showed that Burt is “absolutely a clear and present danger” to youngsters at the Valerio Street home.

Burt could not be reached for comment, but a member of the home’s Board of Directors, Harley Broviak, said he was shocked by the allegations.

“This is just like getting hit by a ton of bricks. I just can’t believe it,” Broviak said.

The temporary suspension order, issued May 13, prohibits the Youth Encounter Home from caring for boys at a one-story wood and brick house. The home contracted with Southern California juvenile probation departments to treat teen-agers with emotional, drug abuse or behavioral problems.

The home was licensed in 1985 to care for as many as six boys at a time. But Reese said Burt sometimes exceeded that limit and treated boys who were not properly referred to the home through private or government social service agencies.

Reese said the molestation took place in November, 1984, before Christian Counseling Assn. received its state license to run the group home. The victim was a runaway from Northern California who heard about the home on the street and was not referred to the facility by an agency, he said.

Christian Counseling has until May 31 to appeal the suspension, Reese said. If the home does not appeal in time, it will automatically have its license revoked permanently, he said.

If Youth Encounter Home does appeal, the case will go before an administrative law judge.

Reese said his department rarely issues temporary suspension orders and usually waits for allegations of misconduct to go before the administrative law judge.

The allegations and evidence against Burt, however, were so severe that the department had to act, he said.

Reese would not say whether information about the alleged molestation would be turned over to the district attorney for possible criminal prosecution.

In addition to the molestation and lewd conduct allegations, the complaint also lists several record-keeping violations at the facility and says Burt called residents degrading names.

The complaint was based on comments from former home employees and residents and on inspections of the facility by investigators, Reese said.

Burt, at the time he founded the home, was affiliated with the Evangelical Free Baptist Church Alliance.