Hospital Investigated After Sexual Assaults

Prompted by two separate sexual assault cases involving 13-year-old patients, the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health is conducting an investigation into allegations of other sexual misconduct at a West Hills psychiatric hospital, officials said.

The investigation of Pine Grove Hospital began after a girl was raped Aug. 13 by a 17-year-old male patient at the private facility, said David Meyer, chief deputy director of the county mental health agency. The investigation is expected to be completed within a month, he said.

“Ultimately, should we validate that there are patient-care issues, we’ll take vigorous action to protect people,” Meyer said, adding that the investigation is part of a broader review of the 80-bed hospital’s entire operations.

Pine Grove Administrator Larry McFarland declined to comment.

The teenage boy arrested in the rape case has pleaded guilty to one count of a lewd act with a child and is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 30.

In an inspection conducted after the assault, the state Department of Health Services determined that no one was monitoring the hallways of the adolescent unit, allowing the boy to enter the girl’s room unnoticed, a violation of the hospital’s own policy, according to department documents.

The hospital has since ordered its staff to adhere to the rules and has separated male and female patients in its adolescent unit, according to state records.

In August 2000, another 13-year-old girl was sexually molested by Pine Grove employee Quincy Crawford, 28. He is serving a three-year prison term for his conviction on charges of performing lewd acts with a minor.

That incident also prompted changes at Pine Grove. Male staff members were banned from working with adolescent girls with a history of sexual problems and prohibited from escorting young girls without a female staffer present, according to hospital documents. More detailed employee background checks and orientation programs also were adopted.

Prior to the change in policy, two other male mental health workers were accused of molesting Pine Grove patients in 2000, according to hospital documents and sworn testimony produced in a civil suit brought by the mother of Crawford’s young victim.

One of the employees was fired and the other resigned during separate internal investigations, according to hospital documents and depositions conducted with former employees in the civil suit. Neither one was charged with a crime.

In the lawsuit filed last year in Los Angeles Superior Court, Crawford, Pine Grove and its Arizona-based parent company, Doctors Community Healthcare Corp., are all named as defendants. It seeks damages for negligence and emotional distress, and alleges the hospital failed to conduct adequate background checks and training of employees.

The suit also contends the hospital failed to put a stop to the incidents, even though administrators knew workers were “taking advantage of female patients, including troubled girls.”

Richard Ryan, attorney for Pine Grove and its parent company, denied the accusations. He declined further comment.

Los Angeles attorney David Ring, who is representing the family of Crawford’s victim, said he is disturbed by allegations made by former employees that the hospital encouraged intimate conversations between adolescent patients and mental health workers with little psychological training. He said this added to an unsafe atmosphere in the adolescent unit.

Crawford and the two employees suspected of molesting patients were all classified as “mental health workers,” according to documents and depositions. These workers are unlicensed by the state and their qualifications vary from institution to institution.

At Pine Grove, they were not required to have a college degree, according to the deposition of Christopher Luke Jackson, an assistant nursing director fired in 2000 for failing to adequately supervise a problem employee.

Adolescents at the hospital were encouraged to engage these workers in brief “staff talks,” in which the patients discussed their “feelings, emotions and problems,” Jackson said. A successful talk could help a patient earn privileges like TV time, he said.

Ring’s complaint alleges that the hospital took “inadequate steps to educate and train [mental health workers like Crawford] to recognize and control their emotional involvement with child-patients.”

As a result, the suit contends that when the high school-educated Crawford had sex with the 13-year-old in a hospital restroom Aug. 25, 2000, it was “an outgrowth of his fulfilling his duties and responsibilities as a counselor/attendant.”

Three days after the Crawford incident, another teenage patient told Pine Grove administrators that she had sex with one of Crawford’s co-workers, according to hospital documents. The hospital contacted police and launched an investigation, and the employee was eventually fired.

The individual later filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination. The case was settled out of court.

The employee was not charged with a crime, because prosecutors said the victim did not want to relive the incident and refused to cooperate with the investigation, according to the district attorney’s records.

Los Angeles Police Department detectives investigated a third worker after he was accused of forcing a 49-year-old patient to perform oral sex on him in April 2000, according to hospital documents. Police records show semen was found on the victim’s clothing, but prosecutors said they had insufficient evidence to go to trial.

The worker resigned shortly after the incident. The woman who was allegedly molested filed a civil suit against Pine Grove and Doctors Community Healthcare Corp. in March 2001. The case has since been settled, according to court records.