Inside Look at Casa Pacifica Reveals Crises and Quiet Moments

Sexual abuse, drugs, physical violence. A past most people don’t like to talk about--but a way of life for children before residing at Casa Pacifica.

They suffer the aftermath of abuse and neglect on a daily basis--it creeps up in their nightmares, it shows its face while they are awake in the form of voices and hallucinations, and it lashes out when they attack staff, each other and themselves. Although it could happen at any time, the side effects of abuse erupt most often after sunset--when darkness opens the Pandora’s box of their young lives. On what began as a quiet Tuesday evening last week, the explosions were rapid fire.

Suddenly, in a residential treatment dorm called Angels Cottage, a 16-year-old started yelling, spitting on staff, throwing chairs, banging on walls and slamming doors--seemingly unprovoked.

Suffering from depression, psychosis and post-traumatic stress disorder from sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect, she was edging closer to what her clinician suspects is a “psychotic break” that will lead her into the caverns of schizophrenia.

Just next door at Caldwell, the residential treatment cottage for boys, a 10-year-old was triggering a second minor crisis, setting off the fire alarm, ripping a piece of wood from a wall and swinging it at the staff members trying to subdue him.

“Get away from me,” he screamed. “Get away from me. Leave me alone.”

At the same time, members of the county’s Psychiatric Evaluation Team were arriving to evaluate a 15-year-old boy who had broken a light fixture in his room and cut a staff member’s hand with a shard of the broken glass--shouting that he wanted to cut the heads off his counselors.

And another 15-year-old was being escorted to the visiting area to meet with deputies from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department because of an earlier assault on staff members.

To Steve Elson, executive director of Casa Pacifica, it was an unusually chaotic night for Ventura County’s only residential treatment and shelter facility for abused and neglected children.

But not really all that unexpected.

“These kids have extreme emotionally charged behaviors and are often seriously undersocialized,” Elson said. “Their needs are more serious, their trauma more severe, their emotional states more fragile and their behavior more challenging than the planners of Casa Pacifica ever imagined.”

Under Investigation

Beside dealing with the daily crises that come with the treatment of seriously troubled children, Casa Pacifica has been confronted with a larger crisis over the past six months.

Under scrutiny by the state Department of Social Services since October, Casa Pacifica’s future is threatened by allegations including inappropriate disciplinary measures and lack of staff supervision.

Within the next few weeks, state investigators will decide whether to place the treatment facility on probation, temporarily suspend its license to operate or hand the issue off to a judge to decide.

Against that background, every routine scuffle or dormitory confrontation is magnified.

“Staff are required to be better prepared, more vigilant and ready to intervene at a moment’s notice to keep other children safe,” Elson said.

To provide a glimpse of the daily routines now under state scrutiny, Elson last week opened the doors of the facility to The Times for two days and nights.

The troubles of Tuesday evening were just part of the events at Casa Pacifica during that period. There also were quieter times--the girls in Angels Cottage reclining on a couch together reading magazines, a staffer stopping by a pond on the property with a 2-year-old boy in search of tadpoles, staff members line dancing with the girls and playing basketball with the boys.

Since October, Casa Pacifica has added staff to increase supervision in the cottages, modified incident reports to include more information and adopted a one-on-one safety watch in which staff are within arm’s reach of children found to pose a danger to themselves or others.

The facility also has included specialized and more intensive staff training sessions, and installed additional outdoor lighting and radio communications to improve supervision.

Casa Pacifica has two distinct programs: the shelter program, a partnership between Casa Pacifica and the county, and the residential treatment program, a private nonprofit run solely by Casa Pacifica.

In the shelter program, a total of 328 children, from newborn through age 17, were placed at Casa Pacifica last year after being removed from their homes under court order due to physical or sexual abuse, neglect, abandonment or parent imprisonment. Those children are housed in one of two shelter cottages, either Rainbow or McDonald, depending on the child’s age, and the facility can handle up to 50 children.

Casa Pacifica’s other program, a 28-bed residential treatment program, serves children from 9 to 18 who have exhausted the resources of Ventura County foster care and group home settings and require a more restrictive environment. These children stay in either the Caldwell or Angels cottage, separated by gender. Last year, 39 were placed in the residential program.

A typical day for all the children begins at 6:30 a.m. with a breakfast of eggs, cereal, doughnuts and juice. After washing dishes, taking showers and cleaning their rooms, the children huddle with the cottage counselors to decide on individual and group goals. The huddles occur after school and throughout the evening as well. Goals may range from completing classroom assignments to using appropriate language.

After the huddle, staff escort school-age children to their classrooms while the younger ones scoot off to preschool. Just as there are two separate shelter programs, there are two distinct school programs at Casa Pacifica: The shelter children attend public school classes run by county teachers; the residential treatment children, most of whom have been diagnosed as severely emotionally disturbed, attend nonpublic school classes run by Casa Pacifica.

There is also a day school attended by children who were in the residential treatment program and now live at home but are not yet ready for regular classrooms. The day school program was set up at the request of the public school districts because there are only two other nonpublic schools in Ventura County.

To assist with problem behavior, teachers in all the school programs have available to them four behavior specialists, who carry radios so they can be easily reached in any crisis.

There is also a preschool for shelter children from infancy to age 5, each of whom arrives with his or her own set of needs.

“Most of the kids come with no social skills and some language problems,” said Judy Larry, the preschool teacher.

‘I Go Home and Cry a Lot’

These children are pulled from their homes by court order because of abuse or neglect and are emotionally needy, defiant and often traumatized, Larry said.

“They’re amazing kids, though--really resilient and spirited after what they’ve been through,” said Robin Lidz, a preschool aide. “But I go home and cry a lot. Some days are really sad. It’s tough here.”

Although the Rainbow preschool may look like an ordinary preschool, the curriculum is tailored to the needs of these children, with more hands-on and one-on-one activities--as are all of the school programs, whether for the shelter children or those in the residential treatment facility.

Staff members from the cottages, the medical clinic and the classrooms keep in close touch about each child’s status through an in-house e-mail system. Meetings are held on a regular basis to evaluate how to modify a child’s program to produce the best results possible. In times of crisis, emergency meetings are called.

In addition to the school programs and the regular staff meetings, there is also a medical clinic at Casa Pacifica. And in many ways it is as important as any of the facility’s programs.

Whether children are placed in the shelter or residential facility, all are examined at the on-site medical clinic to ensure there are no injuries that might have been overlooked by the child’s social worker prior to the child’s admission.

“Most kids that come in here haven’t even had a physical, so we do a complete exam,” said medical clinic Manager Barbara Nicholas.

Problems are identified and treated at the medical clinic that might have gone unidentified in their homes, Nicholas said. Medical staff also try to ensure treatment is continued when the child leaves to either return home or move to a foster home.

“We’ve seen some things that, even for our staff, has been difficult,” she said, “belt marks, black eyes, bruises and cuts from children being tied up.

“These kids come in with so many past issues that it makes them very fearful.” Nicholas said Pap smears are perhaps the most difficult procedure to do because most of the girls have experienced sexual abuse.

Confessions of the Victims

While the teachers and the other staff at Casa Pacifica work to fix what they can in the children who arrive, the children themselves sometimes play a critical role in their own therapy.

One group therapy session is held weekly for the girls of Angels Cottage who are survivors of sexual abuse.

Before dinner Tuesday night, a 14-year-old started the session by proudly announcing that she had had a Pap smear earlier that day. She thought a second and then continued:

“It’s something I refused a year ago because I couldn’t stand to have anyone touch me after being abused.”

Hugging her teddy bear, she added that she didn’t feel comfortable telling anyone about her abuse prior to the group therapy sessions because she thought it was her fault. She had been molested by a family friend when she was 3 and 4 years old and raped when she was 9.

A 13-year-old said she had been abused when she was a baby by her stepfather and then again from the ages of 6 to 8 by her cousin. She came directly to Casa Pacifica six months ago from a psychiatric hospital, where her mother--who has since gotten slightly more involved in her treatment program--had planned to abandon her. She has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder from sexual abuse and suffers from severe depression as well.

“I’ve only had one flashback in the last three months,” she said. “But I still have a lot of nightmares about it .. . . I told my little sister before I told my mom because I blamed it on myself.”

All in the room quietly agreed that they blamed their abuse on themselves and couldn’t tell anyone about it for quite some time.

A 14-year-old said her father started molesting her when she was 4 years old. She has been at Casa Pacifica for four months and has been diagnosed with severe attention deficit disorder and depression.

“I don’t want this to happen to other kids,” she said, holding a stuffed animal in one arm and comforting another girl with the other. “I know the pain that doing something like this to a person can cause. I don’t know why people do these things to other people. This shouldn’t happen to other little kids anywhere and I’m glad it’s over.”

She added that it was strange, though, that her father only spent one month in jail for molesting her but was sentenced to one year for being delinquent on his child support payments.

On the other side of the room sat an 18-year-old who, since the age of 8, had been molested by her uncle, father, stepfather and eight other men who were her mother’s friends. She has been at Casa Pacifica for 20 months and is frequently suicidal.

“My stepdad used to tie me to a bed with handcuffs and rape me,” she said. “He’d spray Mace in my eyes or hit me with a bullwhip when I’d talk back to him. It’s easier for me to talk about now. I still hate him, but I don’t hate myself as much because I know I didn’t ask him to molest me.”

She worries that one day she’ll harm other children. Others in the group already have.

“Sometimes children who have been badly abused will remolest--act it out sexually--on another child,” said Pat Pope, who runs the support group in her role as Angels Cottage clinician. “They’ll also act it out through running away, drugs, alcohol or trying to hurt themselves.”

Therapy, medications, specialized classes, constant supervision, a stable environment--sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

For most of the girls at the Tuesday therapy session, there will still be months and maybe even years ahead of them at Casa Pacifica, time for all the counseling and schooling to either take hold or not.

But for every child there is a final line--the cutoff point that comes at the age of 18 when they must ultimately leave Casa Pacifica, either for placement in some other institutional setting or to face life as an adult on their own.

The first child Casa Pacifica took in 2 1/2 years ago will soon be leaving. He remembers his first day at Casa Pacifica well.

“The grass wasn’t here and they hadn’t made the pool yet,” he said. “I came in through the gate and they took me to the cottage. The first thing I remember is the way the cottage’s structure was very much like a mansion--built high like a cathedral.”

He has been in the system since he was 4 because his father severely abused him and his mother was unable to care for him due to physical and mental disabilities.

Executive Director Elson met him when he was 8 years old while heading another program, the Sycamores in Altadena. The boy had left the Sycamores before Elson and spent four years at Camarillo State Hospital before winding up at Casa Pacifica under Elson’s supervision.

“I was pretty violent when I first came here. I was angry at a lot of things,” he said. “But it eventually died off and I stopped getting restrained and in trouble so much. They taught me how to walk around or draw when I’m angry. . . . They’ve really helped me a lot.”

He visits his mother now and works at a McDonald’s in Camarillo on weekends. He turned 18 in October, and the staff of Casa Pacifica has been trying to find him a place in a transitional group home where he can learn more life skills.

“They’re trying to get me into a place where I can learn to live on my own,” he said, nodding and smiling. “And then from there, I’ll finally go home.”