CYA School Staff Accused of Cover-Up

State legislators at a hearing Monday accused administrators of the California Youth Authority’s Ventura School of shoddy investigative practices, scapegoat tactics and even of attempting to cover up an alleged rape of a female ward by a male officer.

“I feel very strongly there is a cover-up and nothing is proving to me that there isn’t,” said Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley). “There is material missing and information on documents that has been whited out and typed over.”

Wright said she has heard nothing but excuses from CYA staff members for not producing documents she requested concerning the investigation of a 50-year-old guard who allegedly raped a 17-year-old inmate last year.

“I’d much rather if you told me to my face to go to the devil, that I wasn’t going to get that information,” Wright told CYA Director Francisco Alarcon, who responded that there was “absolutely no truth to a cover-up” and that information was omitted only to preserve confidentiality.

Monday’s hearing is the latest chapter of an inquiry into the Ventura School, the only coed juvenile correctional facility statewide. The facility houses offenders 13 to 25 years old, most of whom have committed violent crimes and are incarcerated for an average of 22 months.

The hearing, at Camarillo City Hall, was a follow-up to an Oct. 7 special legislative hearing in Sacramento during which members of the Select Senate Committee on Prison Management accused CYA officials of lax supervision that allowed other alleged rapes and even a ward’s death.

The state’s prison management committee launched an investigation into the Ventura School in May, prompted in part when allegations surfaced that a male inmate raped a female inmate in the showers at the facility in June 1996.

Monday, Sen. Ruben Ayala (D-Chino) requested the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department become more involved in major investigations at the Camarillo facility.

Sheriff Larry Carpenter said his department has occasionally responded to requests for help from the facility.

“But this is a state facility, with state walls, state employees and state peace officers,” Carpenter said. “And the state ought to pay the bill.”

Although Carpenter suggested that CYA pull together a specially trained response team to cover all major crimes at youth correctional facilities statewide, Ayala said he would work on legislation that would reimburse the Sheriff’s Department for assistance.

“When you provide internal investigations, many times it’s like putting Colonel Sanders in charge of the chicken coop,” said Ayala, chairman of the prison committee.

Further discrediting the facility’s ability to investigate crimes, CYA Inspector General Lloyd Wood testified that medical evidence from the alleged rape by an inmate was not preserved properly. He also said the CYA investigation of a nurse’s aide abruptly fired in June, one year after she reported the alleged rape, was “incomplete and limited in scope.”

CYA officials were accused of a second cover-up Monday when a union representative for the California State Employees Assn. told the prison committee that the nurse’s aide, Carlee Barnes, worked for the CYA for 22 years with no prior reprimands and was fired only after the alleged victim hired an attorney.

“The Youth Authority tends to show a circle-the-wagons type of mentality when dealing with situations like this,” said union representative Maureen Lynch. “It’s not an issue of confidentiality; it’s an issue of a cover-up.”

Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco) said the dismissal was peculiar. “We call this a scapegoat,” Kopp said.

A state administrative personnel hearing on Barnes’ case ended Nov. 6 and the judge is expected to return with a recommendation after Jan. 1.