State Seeks to Revoke Licenses of Care Firm’s 14 Facilities

State officials have moved to revoke the licenses of 14 homes and day care centers for developmentally disabled adults operated by an Anaheim company accused of allowing some clients to be sexually and physically abused.

In documents filed Thursday, the California Department of Social Services accused Westview Services of a variety of health and safety violations at the facilities, which are licensed to serve about 530 people in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

“These people are very vulnerable,” Blanca Barna, a spokeswoman for the state agency, said of the clients. “They need to feel safe. If the staff is not protecting them, then we have a problem. This is a serious case.”

The state agency’s action came one month after the company, responding to what a spokesman described as legal and financial pressures, announced that it would sell or close its six residential facilities by the end of June.

The company still operates a number of adult day care centers. Mary James Radecki, Westview’s chief executive, declined to be interviewed, but she issued a written statement this week.

“The process that has begun is a lengthy one,” she wrote. “Westview welcomes the opportunity to review our programs. . . . We understand the seriousness of this process, and we foresee working . . . to ensure the well-being of those we serve.”

The company has 15 days to appeal the state’s action and begin talks with the Department of Social Services about possible alternatives, Barna said.

Westview spokesman William Furlow said such an appeal has already been filed.

The care company came under fire in April when a 30-year-old mentally disabled woman at one of its facilities--Camden Westview Care Home in Santa Ana--gave birth to a stillborn child, allegedly after being raped by a staff member. The home was quickly closed by the state, and the caregiver, Robert Regelio Rios, was arrested and charged with the crime.

In the documents filed this week, state official alleged other abuses at the company’s facilities: a male resident sexually molested by a staff member at the company’s Westmoreland House in Los Angeles; a woman at Maywood Home in Santa Ana who suffered a burn to her right forearm and was denied medical aid; a woman who was padlocked to her wheelchair at Anaheim’s Westview North; and a woman who had latex gloves attached with masking tape to her hands at Daystar Education Center in Fullerton.

Other facilities mentioned in the documents are the Salta Home, Westview-St. Anne Place and Westview Starbright in Santa Ana; Westview-Maverick, Westview Community Arts Program and Windsong Senior Center in Anaheim; Basswood Home in Fountain Valley; Westview Vocational Services-Starlyte Program in Westminster; and Westview Senior Activity Center in Huntington Beach.

“All the facilities had histories of noncompliance,” Barna said.