State Closes Down a Home for Disabled Adults in Hawthorne : Suspension: Seven complaints of physical abuse of residents led to the action. The operator denies the allegations.

State officials have suspended operations at a Hawthorne home for developmentally disabled adults and removed its 19 residents in response to allegations that some of them were physically abused by the center’s staff.

The state Department of Social Services received seven complaints between May and July that staff members at the Hawthorne Community Guest Home slapped, shook, hit and yelled at clients, according to the Aug. 15 suspension order.

The state agency is taking steps to revoke the home’s license, as well as that of two other facilities owned and operated by Rene Lorenzo, 39, of Whittier. A fourth was closed in May amid allegations of Fire Code violations and physical abuse.

Lorenzo denied the allegations that residents of the Hawthorne home were abused. He said he believes the complaints stem from neighboring residents who dislike living next to a facility for disabled adults. He plans to fight the accusations in court.

A Social Services official declined to identify the sources of the complaints.

According to the suspension order, a witness on June 29 heard a staff member “slapping a client and yelling at the client to stop crying and hold her head up,” the suspension order stated. The suspension order also said, “During the spring of 1991 . . . on numerous occasions, there were sounds of hitting, screaming, and crying coming from the facility.”

Witnesses also reported that residents were poorly supervised and that in June, neighbors saw two people from the facility walking around naked, one of them fondling himself. In addition, there have been reports that staff members have dumped buckets of urine outside the building along the back fence, the order said.

“We felt it was imperative that we close the facility down right away, because of the abuse and the fear of harm to the clients in care,” said Kathleen Norris, spokeswoman for the state agency. “Whenever it gets to the point of revocation, there are some real problems in the facility.”

The home’s 19 residents were transferred to other adult care homes in the area.

Hawthorne Community Guest Home, 14002 Doty Ave., is among 4,400 homes statewide that serve 39,000 adults with developmental disabilities. Last month, the state suspended the license of 10 such homes accused of similar kinds of abuse.

The Hawthorne home, a single-story, wood-frame structure strung with unlighted Christmas bulbs, is set at the back of the property in the middle of a multiunit residential neighborhood south of Rosecrans Avenue. A low gate in front of the home opens onto an asphalt driveway, which contains patches of grass and a small swing set.

On Tuesday, several employees of the facility came by to pick up their paychecks and pack up their belongings. Program Supervisor Emelinda Ve Dios, who coordinated meals and activities at the facility for 10 years, said she believes the complaints came from neighbors who do not understand the needs of the residents or the staff members’ care-taking techniques. She said most of the residents are so disabled they cannot speak or understand orders.

“Our clients here are abusive,” Ve Dios said. “They bite their finger if they cannot do what they want. They dig their bottoms. That is very unsanitary. Some of them are slapping their (own) faces. If you could see their behaviors, you would understand. The only thing we (can do) to stop them is to call their attention. You have to shout or they won’t hear you at all.”

Lina Fontelera, who worked at the home for five years, said she and other employees were in tears when the residents were sent elsewhere last week. “It was terrible,” Fontelera said. “Nobody knows what was going on. One of the clients was crying because he wants to stay with us.”

Lorenzo called the accusations lies and said he has documents to disprove them.

He also said he believes the people who complained were seeking to drive the home out of their neighborhood.

“They don’t like the facility to be there. But these clients have the right to integrate with normal people,” Lorenzo said.

If his employees were abusing clients, Lorenzo asked, why did the state allow them to take similar jobs at other adult-care facilities? “That would be absurd,” he said.

State officials said it is not their policy to take action against staff members until an administrative judge rules on the merits of the allegations. The owner of the facility is held ultimately responsible for allowing the abuse to occur, they said.

Lorenzo has until Aug. 30 to respond to the state’s allegations. If he requests a hearing before an administrative judge, it would be scheduled by the end of September.

In interviews Tuesday, several people who live near the home were divided about whether its residents were mistreated by staff members. Although some said they never observed anything out of the ordinary at the home, others said they had frequently witnessed staff members abusing clients.

Hilda Flores, whose kitchen faces the home’s driveway, said she saw a man she believes is a staff member lining up clients outside the home last May and punching one of them in the stomach several times.

“I never did like that man because of the way he treated them, but I just wasn’t sure what was supposed to be going on over there,” said Flores, who said she never reported what she saw because she didn’t know whom to call. “I would see things I didn’t think were right, but they would do it so much in the open that I wasn’t sure.”

Her sister, Gina Toledo, who lives nearby, said she saw a one of the home’s residents last December wandering around in the middle of a rainstorm with no shoes or shirt. She said she knocked on the door to notify the staff members, but that it took them at least 10 minutes to get him. She also said she saw a staff member push a client on the head.

“They’re real rough with them,” Toledo said. “They don’t take good care of them. If they don’t care what the neighbors see outdoors, you don’t know what goes on indoors.”

In addition to the Hawthorne facility, Lorenzo owns and operates two other homes for elderly or developmentally disabled: Euclid Villa, a home in Pasadena for 35 elderly people and Allen’s Adult Family Home in Los Angeles, which is licensed to care for six developmentally disabled adults but has never taken clients.

Although revocation actions are pending against all of Lorenzo’s facilities, Euclid Villa was allowed to remain in operation until the conclusion of the revocation hearing.

A fourth facility, Hampshire House in Baldwin Park, operated by R. D. R. Pilot, a Lorenzo-owned company, was closed in May because of several problems, including Fire Code violations, physical abuse and failure to pay taxes, Norris said. At that time, state authorities placed Lorenzo’s other facilities on probation for a year.