Board Schedules Hearing on Rehab Centers in Wake of Deaths

As the number of unlicensed alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers known to be practicing “aversion therapy”--which is under investigation in at least four deaths--grew to more than 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 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 six other deaths are 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 may have been forced to drink alcohol. The list was sent to Municipal and Superior Court officials, warning them not to send defendants sentenced to alcohol and drug rehabilitation programs to such centers.

Patrick L. Ogawa, chief of the Alcohol and Drug Program of the Los Angeles Health Services Department, said some of the centers--which are located 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 on 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--those that are open 24 hours a day and those that administer drugs--are required to obtain licenses 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 licenses, 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, it appears that 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 to comply with a court order to get treatment.

A relative of one of the men who died at the facility 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. She said Lopez was found March 21, dead in a chair outside the facility.