Labor Union President Assails Latest CYA Firing

Authorities at the Ventura School juvenile prison began the process of firing another correctional officer Friday, prompting an angry response by a labor union official who claimed the state’s nine-month investigation into alleged sexual misconduct is an unfair “fishing expedition.”

“It’s absolutely uncalled for,” said counselor Daryl Lee, president of the local chapter of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. “They’re trying to show everyone they’re being proactive, when actually it’s just damage control.”

Neither Lee nor Ventura School Assistant Supt. Charles Kubasek would discuss the case of the male peace officer notified Friday that he was being fired. Kubasek said the dismissal is part of the ongoing investigation of sexual misconduct at the school.

So far, nine teachers, counselors and peace officers at the California Youth Authority’s only coed facility have now been fired since an internal affairs investigation into sexual misconduct with inmates began in June.

County prosecutors last week arrested a vocational teacher on charges of having oral sex with two 17-year-old inmates. Criminal cases against seven other employees have been forwarded to the district attorney for prosecution, investigators say. Two other cases are being reviewed and may be sent to Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, they said.

Kubasek said the inquiry is winding down. “Any staff member that has engaged in any improper conduct with wards has been identified by internal affairs, and the investigations are coming to a conclusion,” he said Friday.

But Lee said he thinks the state’s cases--mostly against members of his union local--are built on the word of violent criminals who love attention and have nothing to lose by fabricating stories to harm employees they want to hurt.

“You have to remember the clientele we have here,” Lee said. “They are very manipulative and criminally sophisticated, and they know this fishing expedition is being substantiated based on hearsay.

“There’s a group of investigators that came down and questioned every last ward,” he said. “They’d ask [the wards], ‘What have you heard today?’ And what’s an employee to do? There’s nothing he can do except go through the appeal process.”

The officer whose firing was confirmed Friday has five days to ask for a hearing before a manager from another CYA facility. If his termination is upheld, he will lose his job after that hearing. He can then appeal to the State Personnel Board, but that usually takes months.

Lee’s union represents the 165 correctional officers, youth counselors and parole officers on the staff of the 400-employee school. He said his members are demoralized by the broad brush with which employees have been painted since the scandal broke this week.

“We in no way condone any type of [bad] behavior from any employee, but there needs to be a balanced, fair, impartial process to decipher all of the evidence,” Lee said. “That hasn’t happened. What has happened is that wards can have their five minutes of fame and accuse a sworn officer, who does a dangerous job, of anything.”

Several misconduct cases now being pursued date back years, Lee said. They are being dredged up now to mollify lawmakers who blasted CYA administrators before a legislative committee in 1997 for failing to deal with sex among male and female wards and between female wards and male employees, he said.

Investigators confirm that all of the current cases deal with misconduct between June 1996 and 1998.

Kubasek said thorough investigations were not done earlier because he didn’t have the investigators to do them. Only after state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) and others accused the CYA of a cover-up did the department hire eight new investigators to conduct independent inquires of CYA facilities.

The Ventura School is the only male-female facility among the 15 prisons run by the CYA. Its 415 male inmates average 19 years of age, while its 317 female wards are 17 on average. More than two-thirds are imprisoned for violent crimes, more than 50 for murder.