Treating Sexual Predators at Hospital Urged

Excluding sexual predators from Camarillo State Hospital could prove more dangerous to the community than treating serial rapists and child molesters at the under-used facility, the top state mental health official said Friday.

If all of California’s sexually violent predators are housed elsewhere, killers and other violent criminals would have to be moved to Camarillo, said Stephen W. Mayberg, director of the state Department of Mental Health.

“You’d have more risk to the community if you didn’t have sexually violent predators than if you did,” Mayberg said during a private meeting with a handful of community leaders in Camarillo on Friday morning.

“I have to have a mix” of patients to justify keeping Camarillo State operating, he said. “I can’t have all of one and none of the others.”

Mayberg’s comments, part of a state campaign to sell county leaders on the idea that sexual predators would be no real threat to the community, came a week after he said the county should support housing them at Camarillo State as the only way to head off Gov. Pete Wilson’s plan to close the hospital due to dwindling patient loads.

A final decision will be made this spring.

Sexual predators would not pose a serious threat to nearby residents, Mayberg said, because psychiatrists do not rate a patient’s potential for violence by what crime they may have committed to get into the system.

Instead, the propensity for violence by patients is determined by the behavior they exhibit while in treatment.

Therefore, some sexually violent predators, killers and other violent criminals could be treated successfully at Camarillo State with little threat to the community, Mayberg said.

Changes in the inmate population at Camarillo State would require spending millions of dollars on security improvements, but also would save 1,500 jobs and an $80-million annual payroll.

Rather than close the 60-year-old hospital, Camarillo State could be converted to a medium-security hospital with armed guards on patrol, Mayberg said. But it would not house the most violent of mental patients.

High-risk patients would continue to receive treatment at Atascadero and Patton state hospitals, and only those who exhibit lower-risk behavior while in custody would be moved to Camarillo, Mayberg said.

A screening procedure would be established to determine which offenders are the most prone to violence, with those patients being sent to high-security hospitals, he said.

“I don’t think [the Department of] Mental Health has all the answers, but we know a lot about treatment,” Mayberg said. “The community needs to understand that every day violent people get released [from prison] into the community.”

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Mayberg’s plan contradicts a resolution unanimously approved by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors last month that specifically calls for keeping sexual predators out of any new patient population at Camarillo State.

Nonetheless, Supervisor John K. Flynn, who drafted the resolution approved Feb. 13, said Friday that he was encouraged by Mayberg’s comments and that he remains confident that the hospital will be spared from closure.

“There’s been an earthquake-type shift in looking at alternatives, and that’s positive,” Flynn said. “The facility might look different, but the characteristics of the population isn’t going to look any different.”

The meeting among local officials was called Friday after Mayberg announced last week that he was reversing his earlier recommendation to close Camarillo State.

Although closure plans are still underway, Mayberg said he will recommend to legislators and Wilson that the hospital be converted to a facility that treats only mentally ill criminals.

“We’re going ahead with our closure plan, but we’re also submitting an alternative,” he said. “If the alternatives do not work, then we will go ahead with the closure.”

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Civil commitments to Camarillo State would be phased out over the next several years, under the new recommendation.

That means that patients found to present a danger to themselves or others, but who have not committed any crimes, would have to be relocated to other, less-secure state hospitals or community homes.

Also moved within the next two years would be the adolescent and senior treatment programs, as well as the balance of developmentally disabled patients.

Plans to move the 500 or so retarded patients, who are under treatment by the state Department of Developmental Services, are being challenged by some parents.

The Green Line Parent Group Inc., a nonprofit organization that offers support for retarded patients at Camarillo State, has launched a campaign to keep some of their sons and daughters at the hospital.

In newspaper advertisements, they are urging Mayberg and other officials to consider a joint operation at Camarillo State that would leave patients whose families reside in and around Ventura County at the hospital.

“We’re not too happy with the bottom line,” said Gene West, who attended the private meeting Friday.

“We’d like to see some sort of compromise that would leave some of the [non-criminal] mentally ill and some of the developmentally disabled patients in Camarillo,” he said.

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The Green Line Parent Group is now preparing a formal proposal that will be forwarded to Mayberg later this month.

Mayberg said Friday that he has not studied such a joint proposal, in part because Developmental Services already has plans to move its patients to other state developmental centers.

“I can’t guarantee that it would work,” he told Green Line officials at the meeting. “But it’s possible. It’s worth looking at.”

NEXT STEP

The Oxnard City Council on Tuesday will consider a resolution in favor of keeping Camarillo State Hospital operating as a mental health facility. On Friday, Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) will host a town hall meeting at 7 p.m. at Camarillo City Hall to gather input about the future of the hospital from residents and workers.