CYA Prison Forces Out 15 Workers

As a 2 1/2-year investigation of the scandal-plagued Ventura School neared completion Monday, officials at the juvenile prison said 15 employees have been fired or forced to resign for having improper relations with inmates.

Five of the workers were forced out after California Youth Authority officials concluded they had sex with inmates, Supt. Greg Lowe said. The other 10 established “inappropriate relationships” with male and female wards by bringing them food, magazines and other gifts, he said.

Sixteen more employees were either reprimanded, counseled or reassigned for a variety of lesser offenses, including failure to report suspicious behavior between adult employees and young wards, Lowe said.

“It was a big problem because of the seriousness of some of the offenses,” Lowe said, “but it was created by only a handful of our staff.”

Lowe said he just completed his recommendations Monday in 71 internal-affairs cases involving about 50 past and present school employees. In Sacramento, a youth authority spokesman said the inquiry could be concluded as early as Friday.

“These are just little things at the end of investigations,” said J.P. Tremblay, a spokesman for youth authority Director Gregorio Zermeno. “They’re the loose ends.”

Criminal charges have been filed against only one Ventura School employee, former media arts teacher Bradley Gardner, charged in January with five felony counts for allegedly having sex with two 17-year-old girls while they were his students.

County prosecutors said Monday that they may not press charges in the six remaining cases the youth authority referred to the district attorney since September.

Possible crimes in two of those cases happened so long ago that they could not be prosecuted. Investigations showed that suspects in two other cases did not violate the law, and there was not enough evidence against a fifth suspect to file a charge, Assistant Dist. Atty. Greg Totten said.

One case is still under investigation, Totten said. Tremblay said the youth authority may send prosecutors one final case for review.

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The 732-ward Ventura School, the state’s only coed youth prison, has been a center of controversy since 1997, when state lawmakers accused the youth authority of covering up rapes of inmates by guards.

The current turmoil prompted two parallel investigations over the last year, one by the state inspector general’s office and another by the youth authority and the district attorney’s office into possible criminal violations.

In a scathing analysis, then-Inspector General Lloyd Wood reported in February that the Ventura School had “a systemic problem” of lax management that allowed sexual misconduct by employees and inmates to continue and resulted in unfair treatment and sexual harassment of women employees.

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He noted “a climate of fear among employees,” a system slow to react to chronic problems, and an extraordinary 64 misconduct investigations by internal affairs in 1998 alone.

That prompted the director of the state prison system to suspend the school’s top three administrators. In March, Gov. Gray Davis replaced youth authority Director Francisco Alarcon with Zermeno.

Since then, under new management, the Ventura School has implemented far-reaching reforms recommended by the inspector general. And finally, on Monday, Lowe said his work was done.

Of the 50 employees suspected of wrongdoing, Lowe said 10 were clearly innocent. Cases against nine more employees were investigated but dismissed for lack of evidence, he said.

One of those cases involved a male white-collar employee who was accused by two girls of forcing them to model underwear in his office. The employee was suspended in January. But Lowe said the man will probably get his job back.

“Both girls have recanted their testimony and said they lied,” Lowe said. “That’s happened in a couple of cases. That’s part of the problem when dealing with these cases. They’re just based on the girls’ statements.”

Of the 31 cases where investigations found evidence of a problem, Lowe said 15 ended in termination or retirement, and 16 others were mostly spinoffs of the major cases and resulted in minor punishments or nonpunitive retraining. The workers have appealed the sanctions in six cases.

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Lowe said that ending the investigations will boost morale at the school, which used to have a sterling reputation in the 15-prison youth authority system.

“The feeling now is that the staff are happy to have these folks out of the institution,” Lowe said. “We’re kind of getting back on a normal routine.”

The Ventura School, with about 400 staff members, houses 415 male wards and 317 female wards between the ages of 13 and 25. Most were imprisoned for violent crimes.