Youths Removed From Van Nuys Group Home

Los Angeles County officials have removed all 68 teenagers from a group home in Van Nuys, saying that the emotionally disturbed clientele was poorly supervised and that counseling, recreation and other services were lacking.

County probation and child welfare authorities removed the teenagers from the Pride House group home on Saticoy Street, completing the transfers Friday after repeated reports that the 85-member staff could not control the youths.

Pride House still has its state-issued license although it is effectively out of business as long as the county refuses to place youths there, officials said.

“The problem was the level of supervision,” said Amaryllis Watkins, an administrator who oversees children’s homes for the county Department of Children and Family Services. “We want these acting-out teenagers supervised and not just wandering around. We want them to have good treatment.”

Clemente Sainten, president of the parent company that oversees Pride House, said he was baffled by the action. He said administrators there had been working diligently to correct the facility’s purported shortcomings.

“I am very upset about this,” Sainten said. “We displace these kids and keep displacing them and put them under this bureaucratic umbrella. If they had talked to the kids they would see what is really going on.”

A June audit report by the county children’s agency indicates that officials had been concerned with far more than supervision of the teen-age charges at Pride House, most of whom were placed in the home after being taken from abusive or neglectful parents.

According to the June audit, Pride House was paid $3,245 a month for each child it cared for, but the facility and its staff:

* Sometimes used threats, humiliation or intimidation--including telling teenagers they would be sent to a psychiatric hospital or juvenile hall--if they did not follow house rules.

* Violated some clients’ rights by preventing them from visiting their families or blocking their participation in outside activities.

* Failed to provide proper counseling, recreation and school activities. “Group therapy” often consisted merely of a discussion of household chores to be completed, the teenagers complained to auditors.

* Shortchanged residents by skimping on clothing purchases, allowances and toiletries.

Sainten said employees who had been accused of intimidating or threatening teen-age clients were fired, although he could not recall the details of the terminations. He denied that clients had gone without appropriate therapy or without clothing, allowances and other necessities.

The audit said that seven of 10 residents at the home who were interviewed by auditors said the staff seemed preoccupied with discipline and did not give them positive attention. Most of the residents said that harsh disciplinary policies prevented them from visiting their families and several said they had gone months without making a single official field trip off the Pride House “campus,” which sits behind fences in a mostly industrial neighborhood.

These policies left many of the residents claiming they felt “like criminals in juvenile hall,” the audit said.

The audit also found that the Department of Children and Family Services did not always serve the youths well. The department failed in half of the 10 cases reviewed by auditors to provide the facility with reports on the adolescents’ needs and plans for treatment, the audit said.

Watkins said the facility seemed to be making some improvements but the lack of supervision was confirmed, in part, by two incidents this month.

In one, several youths were chased back to the campus by the LAPD for being absent without leave. There, some of the residents angrily confronted the officers and made obscene gestures, leading to the arrest of one, Watkins said.

In a second incident, on Oct. 21, a young woman sneaking out of the facility fell from a second-story window and fractured a vertebrae.

Sainten said that many of the youths arrived with histories of bad behavior and that Pride House should not be blamed for all their problems.

It was two days after the injury to the teenager that the county ordered 48 youths under its supervision removed from the facility. Most of the teenagers went home, to other family foster homes or to group homes, but five were reported “absent without leave” and unaccounted for.

The county Probation Department--which places teenagers at the home who have minor nonviolent criminal records--said it ordered 20 youthful offenders pulled out of the facility last week.

Times staff writer Jose Cardenas contributed to this story.