Hearing Slated on Unlicensed Rehab Centers

As the known number of unlicensed alcohol and drug rehab centers of the “aversion therapy” type under investigation in at least four deaths grew past 50 Friday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors scheduled a hearing on the centers.

Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Mike Antonovich called a special hearing at next Tuesday’s board meeting “to discuss the unfolding investigation into suspected alcohol poisoning deaths of several clients at an unlicensed alcohol treatment facility in the San Fernando Valley.”

Criminal charges have been brought in two deaths at such clinics, including one in North Hollywood, where patients were allegedly tied up and forced to drink large amounts of alcohol on the theory that overdosing on it would give them a distaste for drinking.

A source close to the investigation said an additional six deaths are also being looked into, against a background of reports that in some cases patients were forced to drink poisonous rubbing alcohol.

County health officials on Friday issued a list of 57 alcohol treatment centers where patients might have been forced to drink alcohol. The list was sent to Municipal and Superior Court officials, warning them not to send defendants sentenced to take part in alcohol and drug rehabilitation programs to such centers.

“We urge you to warn defendants ordered to attend alcohol treatment or Alcoholics Anonymous to avoid these programs until the investigations are concluded,” Patrick L. Ogawa, chief of the Alcohol and Drug Program of the Los Angeles Health Services Department, wrote in a memo to the courts.

“The common thread at these programs is that clients allegedly consumed alcohol during their recovery. This may have occurred as ill-advised aversion therapy and may have been involuntary, with hands and feet bound,” Ogawa said.

Ogawa said some of the centers, which are as far north as Lancaster and as far south as Inglewood, were on a current Spanish-language Alcoholics Anonymous directory.

Misdemeanor defendants convicted of crimes such as driving while intoxicated, some of whom are required to attend 90-day treatment programs or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, were given the list Friday and told to stay away from the suspect centers.

“It concerns us greatly that we may have been referring defendants to these schools if they were unlicensed and using measures that were inappropriate,” said Deputy Municipal Court Administrator Peggy Shuttleworth.

Only residential facilities that are open 24 hours a day or administer drugs are required to obtain a license from the state, said Sharon Wanglin, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. Groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, which offer drop-in counseling, are not required to obtain a license, Wanglin said.

Shuttleworth said she does not know how many of the temporarily banned programs were on the list of centers previously recommended by the Health Department because her office has yet to compare the lists. She said employees did not find the suspect facilities on their lists during a preliminary review late Friday.

However, Grupo Liberacion y Fortaleza on Lankershim Boulevard, where the deaths of three men are being investigated by authorities, was on a list of approved Alcoholics Anonymous counseling centers, according to a man who said he enrolled there last year to comply with a court order to get treatment.

Justo “Gus” Galan said he attended evening meetings at the North Hollywood facility from September to December to meet his counseling requirement ordered by Van Nuys Municipal Court after he was convicted of drunk driving.

Galan, 46, of Sun Valley, said the center helped him kick a beer addiction. He said that when he attended sessions there, six to 10 other people were also there for court-ordered Alcoholics Anonymous counseling.

He said he was not sent to the “mattress room,” where authorities allege men were bound and forced to drink alcohol.

He said that room was reserved for the worst alcoholics and that he was never restrained or forced to drink.

“I’ve seen people laying in that room. They can’t take it no more. They’re shaking,” he said. “They only give them alcohol if they need it. They don’t force it to them.”

A relative of one of the men who died at the home voiced suspicions of the treatment there, however.

Mercedes Leal, whose brother was found dead outside Grupo Liberacion y Fortaleza in March, said her brother, Simon Lopez, 40, visited her in her Sun Valley home the day before his death, promising to change his drunken ways.

“He told me he had a surprise for me. He said: ‘I have to heal myself and become a great man. I want to make you proud of me,’ ” Leal said. “The next day I got a call and the surprise I got was that he was dead.”

She said Lopez was found March 21, dead in a chair outside the facility.

Leal said authorities still have not told her what killed her brother, but she suspects the group’s methods are to blame.

“I was chatting with him the day before,” Leal said. “He did not look like he was about to die.”

One investigator confirmed that Lopez had marks on his wrists indicating he had been tied up when he died and that the probe into his death has been reopened.

Lopez’s unexpected death brings to three the number of suspicious fatalities at the North Hollywood center, where authorities allege alcoholics were tied up and fed liquor in an attempt to create an aversion to alcohol.

Four leaders of Grupo Liberacion y Fortaleza were charged with manslaughter and false imprisonment last week after Enrique Bravo was found dead in a chair outside the North Hollywood center. They pleaded not guilty.

Coroner’s officials have not released Bravo’s cause of death, and prosecutors said earlier this week that it is still unknown.

Other patients were bound, gagged and moved to another building where they could not be interviewed when police showed up to investigate, a patient told officers.

County death records show another man, Toribio Perez, 38, died at the facility on Oct. 1, 1996, of “acute ethanol-isopropanol toxicity”--indicating he had consumed a mixture of common drinking alcohol and a toxic chemical found in substances such as rubbing alcohol or radiator fluid.

Officials are also reviewing five other deaths that occurred at similar Spanish-speaking alcohol treatment centers across Los Angeles County, which are often run as cooperatives, said one source close to the investigation.

Charges have also been filed in a 1997 case in which Ariel Prado died of “positional asphyxia” after he was allegedly forced to drink alcohol, then hog-tied, gagged with tape and left face-down at the Grupo Vida Nueva Alcoholicos Anonymous treatment facility south of downtown.

Faustino Arenas, 30, Victorio Lonbera, 26, and Albert Garcia, 26, have pleaded not guilty to murder charges in Prado’s death.