Arrest Prompts Call for CYA Resignations

Amid new charges of sexual misconduct at the scandal-plagued Ventura School, state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) demanded the removal Tuesday of top school administrators and the director of the California Youth Authority.

A top-to-bottom housecleaning is justified, Wright said, in the wake of the arrest of a former teacher on suspicion of having sex with two female inmates, allegations of sexual misconduct involving other employees and a spate of complaints from female school employees of sexual harassment.

“The administration there is absolutely running amok,” said Wright, whose district includes the school. “I personally believe that the administration should be removed, and some of them should be fired.”

CYA Director Francisco Alarcon should pay the price, she said, for failing to clean up the problems at the Youth Authority’s only coed facility.

“Everything that’s going on at Ventura School is his responsibility,” Wright said. “But instead of trying to fix the problem, he says there’s no problem.”

The Ventura School has been a center of controversy since 1997, when state lawmakers accused the CYA of covering up inmate rapes by guards. Three officers were later fired or resigned.

The current crisis has erupted out of two new investigations, a criminal probe begun in April by the CYA, and an inquiry into charges of mismanagement that began in September by the state Inspector General’s Office.

The criminal investigation led last week to the arrest of former industrial arts teacher Bradley Gardner, 42, of Camarillo. He is to be arraigned on four felony counts of having oral sex with two teenage inmate students in his shop class, and one count of sexual penetration with a foreign object.

Youth Authority investigators have also referred six other sexual misconduct cases against current and former Ventura School teachers and guards to the Ventura County district attorney’s office for possible criminal prosecution, officials said.

Apart from the criminal prosecutions, the CYA has taken a variety of administrative sanctions: firing four Ventura School employees, forcing the resignation of three others who faced discipline, and requiring another to take a disability leave, according to investigators.

Since September, Wright said, six female employees have complained to her and to the state Inspector General’s Office that administrators at the juvenile prison turn a blind eye to improper sexual activity by male employees.

Those activities include sex with female wards and sexual harassment of female employees, officials said.

“They say they are being harassed for not capitulating to the demands for sex or refusing to turn their heads” when guards have sex with female inmates, Wright said.

“At this point, the inspector general feels that probably that whole administration is going to be removed,” said Wright, who requested the inspector general inquiry six months ago. Formal findings and recommendations are expected within two weeks.

Director Touts Accomplishments

Ventura School’s top two administrators, Mary Herrera and Chuck Kubasek, referred inquiries Tuesday to CYA Director Alarcon in Sacramento.

Responding to Wright’s call for his removal, Alarcon said he has no intention of debating the senator. “She has a right to her opinion,” he said. “I don’t think the department or myself has to be placed in the position to defend everything that’s going on at that facility.”

Alarcon is not convinced there needs to be a change of administration at the school, which he believes is running well.

“You’ve got to look at the total picture,” he said. “And there are some other signs that a lot of good things are occurring at that facility.”

Inmate recidivism is down and high school graduations by wards are up, he said.

“Certainly the number of investigations we’ve been involved with there over the last year or two is higher than normal,” Alarcon said. “But these things tend to run in cycles. This year it was Ventura, but maybe five years ago it was another institution.

“The mistakes of seven to 10 people,” he said, “don’t automatically color the integrity of the quality of the other 390 staff at that facility.”

Alarcon questions whether female employees are being routinely harassed at Ventura School. He said authorities have investigated four harassment complaints over the last year. One male employee has resigned, while the other three cases are open. The Ventura School is the only coed facility among 15 run by the Youth Authority. It houses 415 male wards and 317 female wards between the ages of 13 and 25. Most were imprisoned for violent crimes.

Gardner, a shop teacher hired in 1991, resigned in May while under investigation. He is free on $20,000 bail and scheduled for arraignment Feb. 11.

He was arrested on suspicion of committing oral copulation with two minors--a girl from Humboldt County who was in custody for murder and an inmate from Del Norte County convicted of felony assault. The alleged offenses began in 1996 and 1997, when the girls were 16 and 17.

In an interview, Gardner refused to say Tuesday whether he committed the crimes.

“You don’t understand, there is more here than meets the eye,” he said. “There is more to this story than the D.A. is currently aware of. It will all come out in court.”

Gardner said he is a dedicated teacher who worked at Ventura School because he is an idealist.

“This whole thing is making me out to be a really bad person and I’m not,” Gardner said. “I wanted to help young people get away from lives of crime and realize that there’s hope and there’s a future. I helped a lot of students get out of gangs and give up crime. And I know I did a lot of good.”

Meanwhile, state investigators say they have referred six other cases to local prosecutors.

“The district attorney is reviewing allegations of criminal misconduct involving sexual impropriety with female wards by employees and former employees,” said Robert Stresak, assistant director of internal affairs at the Youth Authority.

“Most cases involve a single employee with more than one ward on different occasions--these were isolated, one-on-one events,” Stresak said. “One event involved three employees and two wards. Not all the employees were participants, but they failed to take action to prevent it.” Stresak said he is also investigating two more sexual misconduct cases that sprang from the other cases.

Despite past criticism by Wright that the CYA has covered up its problems at Ventura School, Stresak said things have improved. “We have a stronger, more efficient administrative response now,” he said.

In a concurrent inquiry of Ventura School, Chief Deputy Inspector General Solange F. Brooks said she and six investigators have been pursuing allegations of sexual harassment of female employees and mismanagement.

Wright Blames Superintendent

“We started in September with five new cases and reviews of two existing ones,” Brooks said. “Now it’s expanded. These cases are more complex than meets the eye at the beginning.”

The results of that investigation will be reported to the state’s top prison administrator, Robert B. Presley, secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency. Inspector General Lloyd Wood would not say what his office will recommend.

“I will say there are some management problems--from security to supervision and sexually related things,” Wood said.

Wright said she blames Ventura School Supt. Herrera.

“She knows what’s going on and she isn’t doing anything about it,” Wright said. “When things come up, they do a cursory investigation so it appears there’s no problem. Whatever the day-to-day officers are doing, it’s because of the lack of oversight by the administration.”

The new inquiries follow special legislative hearings into the Ventura School in late 1997, during which former Sen. Ruben Ayala (D-Chino) accused CYA officials of lax supervision that allowed inmate rapes, sex between a 17-year-old ward and a 50-year-old officer and even a female ward’s suicide.

Ayala questioned whether the Ventura School should remain a coed facility. And he noted that 45 of 68 attempted suicides at 15 CYA facilities in 1996 occurred at Ventura School.

The inspector general reviewed the incidents raised by Ayala and concluded that two Ventura School employees had committed sexual misconduct with wards, and that a supervising officer had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a subordinate.

One staffer was fired, another applied for medical retirement and a third abruptly resigned after the inspector general began a new investigation of the case, according to an inspector general’s report.

To improve the Camarillo facility, the Legislature last summer approved $2.5 million to build a security fence to separate male and female wards and to open an intensive psychiatric treatment center for girls.

“Things have slightly improved, but not enough,” Wright said. “I’m telling you it’s still a mess up there.”

Specifically, Wright said female employees have complained recently about being harassed by male guards, and then suffering punishment or ostracism as a result.

Of the six women who have contacted Wright, one female guard has been fired on what she says are trumped-up charges, and a second is on medical leave, the senator said. A third employee is off work because of a stress disability. The remaining three employees are still on the job, but unhappy about their work environment, Wright said.

“It seems that they don’t get their promotions if they don’t go along with the absolute advances of some of the men officers in regard to sex,” Wright said. “Or if there is something going on that they’ve seen with the wards, if they try to report the misconduct, it’s the women who get punished, not the men.”

Wright refused to identify the complaining employees, saying they fear retaliation as long as the current administration remains.

But in a 1998 lawsuit, Ventura School guard Laurian Franklin contended that a correctional counselor made “sexually derogatory” remarks about her and other female employees to a number of inmates.

She sued counselor Calvin Spellman and also claimed that school Assistant Supt. Kubasek and CYA investigator Ray McLaughlin had failed to take corrective steps after the incidents.

Sexual Harassment Claims Continue

The suit maintains that authorities retaliated against Franklin after she complained by “subjecting her to repeated and continuous meritless disciplinary inquiries and eventually a reduction in pay.”

Kubasek said last year that Franklin’s complaints were dealt with in a hearing before a state personnel board, which sustained administrators’ actions and denied Franklin’s appeal. “She’s basically not happy with that,” he said.

Wright said, however, that the number of similar complaints recently by female employees has convinced her that there is a severe problem at Ventura School.

She thinks the Inspector General’s Office will respond forcefully this time because it no longer operates under the auspices of the state Youth and Adult Correctional Agency.

A new state law passed partly because of the Ventura School scandals placed the inspector general under the control of the governor and gave state legislators the right to ask that office to investigate on their behalf.

The law became effective in September and Wright immediately asked for another inquiry into the Ventura School.

“The senator is focusing on the administration, and some would say rightfully so, because my experience is that the top person sets the tone of an organization,” Inspector General Brooks said.

“Her concern is that whenever there’s wrongdoing, where the system breaks down, we’ve got to find out who’s the keeper of the system,” Brooks said. “She’s very much into holding administrators accountable.”