Domestic Abuse Director Denies Misconduct

The director of a Beverly Hills domestic violence center has been accused of abusing her position to extort personal favors from people sentenced to community service, city officials and other sources say, but authorities have yet to act on the repeated complaints of her alleged misdeeds.

The accusations against the director, Diane Miller, first came to the attention of city authorities in 1996, when Miller was serving as chairwoman of Los Angeles’ Task Force on Domestic Violence. In that capacity, Miller supervised an employee of the city attorney’s office, who was paid with public money.

According to three sources, Miller’s first subordinate complained to superiors in the city attorney’s office that Miller was asking her to perform personal favors, primarily to provide secretarial help for Miller’s nonprofit anti-domestic violence center, known as Court Watch.

That assistant also told authorities that Miller was soliciting and receiving bribes from people sentenced by judges to perform community service and ordered to do the work for Court Watch, which was set up to provide services to domestic violence victims. Instead of working, one person allegedly gave Miller computers; in return, Miller falsely vouched that he had performed community service hours. Others allegedly gave her a fax machine and prime Beverly Hills office space. And still another performed plastic surgery on her in return for voiding all his court-imposed obligations, the sources alleged.

Miller denied all those allegations and said she has never received personal favors, services or gifts in exchange for exempting court-ordered volunteers from their assigned community service.

Nevertheless, those complaints, echoed and amplified by another former aide to Miller, triggered reviews by the city attorney’s office and the district attorney’s office. Despite accounts from two city employees that supported one another, the agencies took only the most cursory actions, suggesting that one assistant take a leave, and investigating possible criminal wrongdoing, but never filing a case.

Neither prosecutorial agency ever warned the county’s judges or the organization that assigns volunteers that there was any reason to be skeptical of community service performed for Court Watch. Falsely certifying the performance of court-ordered community service is a felony.

To this day, sources say, Miller remains under investigation by the district attorney, but she has never been charged with a crime and never suffered any consequence for the allegations leveled against her. As a result, some critics--including officials in city and county governments--worry that the Miller case has exposed flaws in the loose system for monitoring convicted criminals sentenced to community service.

As of last week, Miller continues to receive community service volunteers. Miller said her organization relies heavily on volunteers.

Dismisses Allegations

In an interview, Miller acknowledged having heard the charges before, but blamed them on jealous enemies perturbed by her strident support for victims of domestic violence.

“My life is one of service,” she said. “A woman like me makes waves.”

Miller said she was aware that her actions and Court Watch had come under official scrutiny, but stressed that she had done nothing wrong.

“The city attorney’s office looked into this. I came out fine,” she said. “That’s the way this will come out too.”

Miller’s denial was supported by two people who were named by sources as having given Miller gifts in exchange for waiving their community service time. One who was alleged to have given Miller a computer denied any such gift. A second, the man alleged to be supplying her with office space, said he does donate the space. He was sentenced to 200 hours of community service and says that he performed all of them.

“I wanted to help her because I respect what she does,” the man said. “I know that she often gets stuff given to her. But that’s above and beyond the community service hours.”

Miller did concede that she may have used her city-paid employees to perform some work on behalf of Court Watch, rather than for the task force, as they were assigned. But Miller said those assignments were minimal--”Maybe a letter here and there,” she said--and called that accusation petty.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office declined to comment and would not confirm or deny an ongoing investigation. Other sources said they had been interviewed by district attorney’s investigator Henry Moraga, and Miller said she had been questioned.

At the city attorney’s office, officials also were circumspect about commenting. But several city officials said they had learned of the complaints about Miller more than a year ago and were surprised to learn that no action had been taken against her.

In May 1998, representatives of the city attorney’s office and at least one City Council staff member met with a city employee who reported to Miller. That employee described several instances in which she alleged that Miller accepted gifts in lieu of community service. One of those who attended the meeting said she expected that Miller’s case would be referred to the Los Angeles Police Department and that Miller would be held accountable.

“She’s still running Court Watch?” that person asked in an interview last week. “I find that hard to believe.”

In fact, Miller is Court Watch’s sole full-time employee and its guiding force. Even her critics acknowledge that Miller is devoted to the organization, which, according to Miller, helps direct victims of domestic violence to lawyers and monitors judges hearing domestic violence cases.

Although Miller says that Court Watch has helped hundreds of women--the organization does not keep records of its clients and therefore cannot vouch for its record--it operates on a shoestring. By Miller’s estimate, it spends less than $5,000 a year, and it is open four days a week, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Miller said she is trying to take the group national with the help of the Junior League, but she would not supply the name of the person at the league with whom she was discussing that possibility.

Miller also was at a loss to provide countering explanations for some of the accusations made against her.

She denied that she received free office space in return for waiving community service hours imposed on one defendant, but she acknowledged that she was not paying rent for her space in a Wilshire Boulevard office building in Beverly Hills. She could not supply an estimate of the value of that space.

Similarly, she could not recall how much she had paid for Court Watch’s computer. “We just put together bits and pieces,” she said, adding that she had supplied the keyboard while some benefactor had come forward with the computer itself. Although former aides recall Miller also receiving a personal computer, Miller denied that.

Asked why she no longer serves on the city’s Task Force on Domestic Violence, Miller said she left the panel because she did not have time for that job. According to Miller, it was her decision to opt off the task force.

“I was really tired,” she said. “I didn’t want to continue to do this. . . . I told [L.A. Councilwoman Ruth] Galanter’s office that this was too much.”

Conflicting Accounts

Other sources said that she was not reappointed to the task force because Galanter, Miller’s original advocate, had received complaints about Miller’s behavior and management style and decided not to reappoint her.

“She asked to be reappointed, but a decision was made not to do that,” said one person who claimed to be familiar with the decision to drop Miller.

In addition to questions about Miller’s conduct, the complaints about her have stirred concerns about the adequacy of monitoring court-ordered community service volunteers. Court Watch receives volunteers through the West L.A. Volunteer Center, which doles out court-ordered volunteers based on the type of offense they have committed and the area in which they live.

Only public nonprofit firms are eligible to receive those volunteers, and participating organizations are required to file paperwork demonstrating that their volunteers have performed the hours assigned to them. In theory, the volunteer center and county Probation Department have the job of making sure that the organizations are administering the volunteers appropriately, but those organizations are overtaxed and their supervision is sporadic.

“They had to know that something was going on,” one former employee of Miller said. “The paperwork is so shoddy.”

Sandra Lopez, associate director of the Volunteer Center in Los Angeles, said she never had reason to suspect Court Watch. “We’ve had a good relationship with that agency,” she said.

Lopez said her organization tries to keep tabs on the agencies certified to accept men and women who are sentenced to community service, but the task is overwhelming.

Each of the center’s seven Los Angeles County offices is responsible for about 300 volunteers, so the center mainly attests to successfully performed hours by verifying that the signature on the time card is that of the agency’s designated representative.

If that representative were willing to falsely vouch for hours, Lopez acknowledged, there is little that the center could do to uncover such a scheme--unless one of its spot checks happened to turn up something questionable.