Steiner Seeks Replacement of Orangewood Auditor

An auditor probing allegations that abused and neglected children may have been improperly medicated at Orangewood Children’s Home should be replaced because she apparently will not turn over the conclusions of her investigation, Orange County Supervisor William G. Steiner said Tuesday.

“I feel a tremendous frustration,” Steiner said. “We need to bring closure to this issue. If there are problems, we need to restore confidence that they are being handled.”

Melinda Young, a Torrance psychiatrist hired seven months ago to lead two other health-care professionals in a probe at the county-run home, initially refused to hand over her final report.

She told county Mental Health and Drug Abuse Services Director Timothy P. Mullins this summer that she feared a defamation lawsuit, despite assurances from Mullins’ staff that she would not be held legally accountable, Mullins said.

Four weeks ago, she appeared to relent, he said, promising him that the audit results would be in his hands within a week or so.

Mullins is still waiting for the report, which was completed in late June. “I call and leave messages” that are not returned, he said. “It’s awful.”

Young, who has not been paid for her work, also has not returned repeated telephone calls from The Times.

Steiner, a former director of Orangewood, said that he has reached the end of his rope.

“I believe we should move on,” he said.

He asked county Chief Executive Officer Jan Mittermeier on Tuesday to bring in a new auditor to replace Young and to obtain and release reports from the other two auditors, a Camarillo pharmacologist and a psychiatrist who works for Los Angeles County. Steiner also asked for an opinion from the Orange County counsel’s office on whether those reports are public records or must remain confidential to protect patients.

One of the two other auditors, pharmacologist Barbara Jones, said Tuesday that she turned in her report in early April. Jones, who worked independently and never met the two other auditors, declined to discuss her findings. The third auditor, Michael Malkin, whose report was supposed to be incorporated into Young’s, could not be reached for comment.

A community group that has pushed for release of the audit results expressed exasperation Tuesday.

“It adds a lot of mystery to the issues . . . of whether these ‘throwaway children’ are being used experimentally,” said Amin David, chairman of Los Amigos of Orange County, a local civil rights group.

Steiner initially called for the audit last November, after a former employee of the county mental health department, Zaida Ramos, complained that one of the psychiatrists at Orangewood was recklessly prescribing adult drugs to children and perhaps using youngsters in pharmaceutical experiments.

The audit was delayed until March, however, because of the upheaval caused by the county’s bankruptcy. In the meantime, Ramos took her concerns outside--to organizations including Los Amigos and the Orange County Juvenile Justice Commission.

The commission, as it happened, already was conducting its own review of youngsters’ mental health treatment in the county’s court system in response to other complaints. That review is ongoing.

Mullins has said all along that he has no reason to believe that the findings of the auditors are especially negative--one of the reasons he finds Young’s behavior so perplexing.

Steiner wants to put any doubts to rest.

“I feel comfortable with the care and treatment of children at Orangewood currently . . . but there are some unresolved issues from the past,” he said Tuesday.

The issues are current in one sense: The psychiatrist whose practices were called into question by Ramos remains an employee of the Orange County mental health department.

The doctor, who has not been identified, no longer works at Orangewood but continues to treat and prescribe medications to children, Mullins said. The physician was at one point disciplined for “untimely charting practices,” Steiner said.