Children Feel Yule Heartaches : Shelter: Counselors offer diversions to boost spirits of needy youngsters at Casa Pacifica. Many have been abused or abandoned.

It was a scene counselors have encountered too many times: As a make-believe Santa dished out donated Christmas presents to needy children at Casa Pacifica, a young girl rejected her gift-wrapped package and went off by herself.

She was in tears.

Minutes later, counselor Jerome Smith tried to console the 12-year-old, asking if she didn’t like the gift, a shiny new watch.

“It’s not the watch,” she told him. “It just reminds me that I won’t be home for Christmas.”

That was last year, and Smith hopes it won’t happen again. But he knows it might.

“A lot of these kids have never really experienced Christmas,” said Smith, director of residential treatment at Ventura County’s nonprofit shelter for abused and abandoned children.

“We try and change that.”

These are difficult days for the children at Casa Pacifica.

On one hand, they are relieved to be protected from the beatings and molestations, the drug use at home by their parents and the gang activity in their streets.

But there is a gnawing pain to their relative comfort, a nagging depression that tells them they should be with their families.

Even visits from Santa Claus, group Christmas caroling and free gifts from their counselors and volunteers do not fill that void. Always, they say, there is a feeling that they belong someplace else.

“It will be a very depressing Christmas because I’m not with my family,” says one 16-year-old Oxnard girl, who said she was repeatedly beaten by her mother and watched her father use drugs.

“I miss my brothers and sisters,” she said. “But I’ll also be happy because I’m not there anymore.”

Another, more urgent emotion will grip her this Christmas morning: the anniversary of when she last saw her little sister. “She had bruises all over her,” the girl said. “She denied that it was my mom that hit her.”

Executive Director Steven Elson said he and his staff are extra sensitive to the juxtaposition of emotions that the children at Casa Pacifica experience at this time of year.

“All these kids really want is to go home for Christmas,” Elson said, “so it’s a real mixed mood.”

Everywhere the children look, there are images of the nuclear family, subtle messages that they should be with their relatives, counselors say.

“The holidays are a big reminder that they’re not home,” Elson said. “They look at TV and see families together, and that makes it even harder for them.”

Casa Pacifica staff and volunteers keep the 60 or so children who live at the sprawling south Camarillo campus busy with recreational and holiday activities.

Sometimes the diversion is a Lakers game; at other times it’s a trip to the see the lights on Christmas Tree Lane in Oxnard.

Last week, a group of Harley-Davidson bikers showed up with a truck full of snow and bags of gifts. Earlier this week, it was a traditional Christmas party and a visit from Santa.

“Their Christmas can last up to two weeks,” said Smith, one of the first counselors hired when Casa Pacifica opened last year. “There’s something going on every day through some of our volunteers.”

One 15-year-old Agoura boy, in his eighth month at the shelter for what he said was a short fuse and a tendency to assault people, said his first Christmas at Casa Pacifica will help him learn to control his emotions.

“It will be a good experience,” he said. “They go out of their way to do things for us because we can’t be with our own families.”

Come Christmas morning, the children will gather in the gymnasium and open presents donated by the community, echoing a scene that will unfold in millions of homes across the country.

But a 15-year-old Oxnard boy who has spent the last five weeks at Casa Pacifica is sure that this Christmas will not be routine for him.

“We do the same things, but it’s just not the same,” said the boy, a victim of domestic abuse.

“Being here helps us feel secure, but sometimes we need to fight our own struggles,” the boy said. “When we get out of here, we’re going to have to learn to take care of ourselves, solve our own problems.”