Home for Teenagers Dealt New Setbacks

A group foster home for disturbed teenagers--already being ousted from rented space at UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange--was hit Monday with two setbacks from state and local authorities that threaten its plan to relocate in Azusa.

State officials moved late in the afternoon to revoke the operating license for Research and Treatment Institute’s home on the grounds of the medical center, reporting violent outbursts among poorly supervised youths--incidents for which the firm denies responsibility.

And the Azusa City Council held an emergency discussion behind closed doors Monday night to explore whether there are legal grounds to prevent the firm from moving next month into an vacant rehabilitation hospital on Sierra Madre Boulevard.

The actions followed a report Monday in The Times detailing how the home is being evicted by medical center officials who say the teenage residents are “out of control.” The home was notified of the eviction in early February, the culmination of a bitter feud that included a dispute over nearly $100,000 in back rent. The notice also came after a reported sexual assault on a boy in the home.

Monday’s developments create problems, but not necessarily insurmountable ones, for the facility’s bid to open in Azusa.

State licensing officials said the revocation petition against the home at the medical center does not necessarily disqualify it from opening the new facility. Such formal disciplinary actions are often used as leverage to gain greater compliance from companies that operate homes for abused and neglected children.

In its formal accusation, state community care licensing officials added new details to their earlier complaints about the home, also known as the Adolescent Team Center. The six-page accusation cites eight incidents over seven months that regulators say illustrate that teenagers in the the home did not receive adequate care. Among the episodes in the report:

A 13-year-old suffered convulsions and facial injuries after being choked into unconsciousness and dropped to the floor by another resident; two younger teenagers were threatened with a utility knife and forced into oral copulation by an older boy; a 15-year-old perched on the three-story facility’s roof pelted a maintenance man with rocks, causing a head injury; another 15-year-old scratched the face of a counselor with a weapon fashioned from a soda can and, last month, two teens hung from the second-floor ledge and threatened suicide.

“We need to get this on record,” said Martha Lopez, head of the community care licensing division. “They have had these kinds of problems and we don’t want them to recur.”

“Our position is that they need to have sufficient staffing in order to accept these children, “ Lopez said. “They need more and better-trained staff.”

David Morrison, Research and Treatment Institute’s executive vice president, called the state’s action “absurd,” adding: “This is holding the [caretaker] responsible for the children’s behavior. Our staffing far exceeds what is required.”

Lopez said further review will be needed to determine whether the institute can open its proposed 53-bed home in Azusa, and under what conditions.

Officials in Azusa are considering a harder stance.

One Azusa city councilman said Monday he will attempt to block the move, which the home hopes to make by the end of June, when it must be out of the medical center.

“These kids wander loose. They just run away and wander in the neighborhood,” said Councilman Dick Stanford. “If that happens here like it did down there in Orange County, then all of a sudden it’s a danger to the people in our neighborhoods.”

Stanford said he believes the home’s performance in Orange County should be enough to prevent it from opening an even larger facility in his town. “I am looking for something to hang my hat on” to stop the home, Stanford said.

And Azusa Mayor Cristina Cruz-Madrid said that the company’s performance in Orange County proved that “they don’t know how to handle these teenagers.”

“Why would we want what [UC] Irvine doesn’t want?” she said. “This is unbelievable.”

The City Council took up the issue under an emergency agenda item, but said any formal action would have to wait.

But if a state license is granted, blocking the home would be difficult. Azusa officials would have to overcome tough federal and state civil rights laws that prohibit local officials from barring facilities simply because of the type of clientele they serve.

“No community wants these severely emotionally disturbed children,” said Research and Treatment Institute’s Morrison. “But then were does little Johnnie go? . . . These kids have already been abused a lot and now they are going to be rejected again.”

The home’s attorney, Robert M. Myers, said that a host of state and federal laws prevent cities from blocking facilities for the mentally disturbed.

“What Azusa is talking about doing . . . is a pretext to try to keep kids with disabilities out of the community, kids who they are afraid of,” Myers said. “It’s unlawful and it’s reprehensible.”

It was just two months ago that the City Council voted unanimously, with one abstention, to approve a permit for the home to take over what had been the Sierra Royal rehabilitation hospital in the San Gabriel Valley city of 45,000.

The city’s Planning Commission had originally recommended against approving the project. But Research and Treatment Institute threatened to sue, citing the Americans with Disabilities Act, federal fair housing laws and other civil rights statutes.

Myers said the city would be foolish to reverse its earlier decision. “If they do,” he said, “they will find themselves in federal court, defending their action.”

Azusa City Atty. Sonia Carvalho conceded that she does not know if there are legal grounds for the city to prevent the home from moving in. “We would hope the law would allow cities to do what is best for the health, safety and welfare of their residents,” Carvalho said. “I am looking at that right now.”

Times correspondent Richard Winton contributed to this story.