James Sent to Prison Rather Than Rehab

Singer Rick James, famous for his 1981 hit “Super Freak,” was ordered to begin serving five years and four months in state prison Monday after a Van Nuys Superior Court judge refused his last-ditch appeal to enter a drug rehabilitation program.

Instead, Judge Michael R. Hoff told the Grammy Award winner that he was lucky he wasn’t headed to prison for a dozen years, perhaps even for life, in connection with two violent attacks against women. The judge called the shorter sentence “a gift.”

Also, court records released for the first time reveal James’ tales of a troubled childhood and the depths of an addiction that consumed half his life and made him a virtual recluse.

James, 46, was convicted last year in connection with assaults on two women at his home and at the St. James’s Club & Hotel in West Hollywood and could have faced nine to 12 years in prison on those counts, Deputy Dist. Atty. Andrew Flier said. The jury was hung on a torture charge that carries a life sentence.

But before prosecutors could retry James on that count, allegations surfaced that a district attorney’s investigator had furnished drugs to a jailed witness who testified against James. The investigator was not directly involved in the James case, Flier said.

Hoff told James on Monday that “he can thank the D.A.’s investigator for his continued luck.”

The alleged misconduct is being investigated by the state attorney general, and the investigator no longer works for the district attorney’s office, a source close to the case said.

Because of the scandal and internal probe, James was allowed to plead no contest to assault charges involving the attack at this home. Prosecutors said James and his girlfriend, model Tanya Anne Hijazi, imprisoned and tortured a woman during a weeklong cocaine binge at his gated house in the Hollywood Hills. Hijazi, who pleaded guilty to an assault charge and eventually testified against James, is serving two years in prison.

Under terms of the arrangement, James received a shorter sentence and prosecutors said they would not oppose his entry into the drug program instead of serving time in prison.

James entered the Civil Addict Program at the state Corrections Rehabilitation Center in Norco in February and by all accounts was doing well.

But Warden Jean E. Anderson decided in May that James didn’t qualify because his crimes involved acts of violence.

“The law is clear,” said Richard R. Clouse, an attorney for the state Corrections Department. Clouse said the department is given “a great deal of discretion as to whether any particular person is entitled to the Civil Addict Program. The fact that Mr. James is a famous person and a celebrity makes no difference.”

Defense attorney Mark Werksman said James was considering possible appeals. He contended that prison officials had been prejudiced against James because of his fame and image.

“For 15 years, he has been known as the Super Freak,” Werksman said. “They rejected the Super Freak. They never bothered to learn about the real Rick James.”

James’ real name is James Johnson. He was born in Buffalo, N.Y., and by all accounts, was devoted to his mother.

Evaluations in James’ court file offer new glimpses into the singer’s background and the depth of his drug addiction. They are based largely on psychologists’ interviews with James.

The reports described James as an abused child who first experimented with drugs at 14 and spent half his adult life as an addict. By 1991, he was holed up full-time in his bedroom, taking as many as nine Halcion sleeping tablets a night and spending up to $1,000 a day on cocaine, according to the reports.

James, the third of eight children, described his father, James Johnson Sr., as an abusive alcoholic who left when he was 7.

“Rick observed that his father was ‘very sadistic’ with his mother and beat her often,” criminologist Sheila Balkan wrote in her Dec. 23 evaluation.

“Once in a while I would try to help her, but my father told me I’d get it if I didn’t stay out of it,” James told Balkan.

After his father left, James’ devoutly religious mother, Betty Gladden, worked two jobs: as a maid, “and in the numbers rackets,” which James said made him ashamed, according to the reports. She also beat the children after her husband left, the reports said.

“For Rick, his mother was the main abuser. He relates that she was often uncontrollable, and that she administered beatings with a knotted electrical cord for little or no reason, ‘letting out her frustrations on us kids.’ ”

James told the psychologists that social services workers came to the family’s tenement several times, but the children refused to leave because, James said, “we were all a team.”

As a child, James told psychologist Raymond E. Anderson, he would take walks and become absorbed in thought. Sometimes, he’d walk 10 to 15 miles. He ran away to get his mother’s attention.

His relationship with his mother improved as he grew older, and she was supportive of his musical career. Later, he said, she became his “best friend.”

James said he started using drugs, including marijuana and heroin, during his mid-teens. His career in music exposed him to more drugs, which he consumed in increasingly large amounts after his first album in 1977 made him an overnight success.

“With my first check, I bought all the drugs I could afford,” he told Balkan. He started freebasing cocaine in 1981, the same year “Super Freak” started its climb up the charts.

“By about 1985, I was spending several hundred thousand dollars a year on cocaine,” James said. “Doing coke was not a social thing with me. I did it by myself in a back room of my house a lot of the time. I felt like I had a big hole inside me, and getting high seemed to fill it for a while.”

With his new wealth, James bought his mother a big house in Buffalo. “Anything she wanted, she had it,” he said. He also became surrounded by hangers-on, and his addiction fueled feelings of paranoia and betrayal, Balkan’s report said.

By the late 1980s, he said he was spiraling downward. He was involved in a lawsuit with Motown Records and didn’t write or record for four years. In fact, he says he didn’t even leave his bedroom.

“My housekeeper would put food in front of the door. I was staying in my bedroom watching movies, talking with people on the phone and getting high.”

When his suit with Motown was settled in 1990, James returned to the studio, but took the next two years to produce his next album. “The drugs really took their toll,” he said.

His mother was diagnosed with cancer in 1990 and died the following year. During that time, he said, “I would lock myself in my room and get high all the time. I couldn’t believe I was losing her. She hated seeing the way I was. She told me my house was a tomb for me.”

Shortly after his mother’s death, James restrained and burned a young woman with a hot pipe during a weeklong cocaine binge in July, 1991, at his house in the Hollywood Hills.

He was free on bail in November, 1992, when the second assault occurred in James’ room on the 11th floor of the St. James’s Club & Hotel on Sunset Boulevard.

The experts who evaluated James agreed that he probably wouldn’t have hurt the women but for the influence of cocaine, and that he would have benefited from the state’s drug program.