2nd Ex-Hospital Worker Guilty in Sex Case

A second former employee of Pine Grove Hospital has been prosecuted for having sex with an underage patient he met at the mental institution, which is under investigation by county officials because of a number of other sexual misconduct allegations.

Former mental health counselor Angel Vargas, 38, pleaded guilty in September to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old girl he propositioned while she was being treated at the private West Hills facility, according to court documents.

The incident is the fourth police have investigated since 2000 involving former Pine Grove employees accused of sexually molesting patients or former patients.

The Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health launched a probe to determine whether the hospital is safe after a separate incident in August in which a 17-year-old patient raped a 13-year-old girl in her room in the adolescent ward.

Vargas’ sexual encounter did not occur on hospital grounds, but he told his victim he wanted to have sex with her while she was being treated at Pine Grove in August 1999, according to the girl’s account to authorities.

Vargas gave the girl his pager number, and a few months after her release from Pine Grove the two met at a Santa Clarita park and had sex in Vargas’ car, the sheriff’s report said.

At the time of the incident, the girl, who has been diagnosed as bipolar, was a patient at another area mental institution, staying there five days a week and going home to Santa Clarita on weekends, according to police reports and her mother.

The girl told her parents and authorities about the incident in March 2001. Vargas was arraigned the following month. He is now serving a four-month sentence in Los Angeles County Jail, and faces three years’ probation after his release.

“There was a serious issue of breach of trust involved in this,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Warren Greene said at Vargas’ Sept. 24 sentencing. “While [Vargas] may not have been actively working as a counselor at the time the sexual relationship occurred, [the trust] clearly was there at some earlier point in time, in that capacity through which he met the victim.”

Pine Grove administrators told sheriff’s investigators that Vargas was terminated on June 25, 2000, but said the firing had nothing to do with allegations of sexual misconduct, according to court documents.

Pine Grove Administrator Larry McFarland declined to comment on the case, but said the hospital has made a number of rule changes since 2000, including instituting stricter background checks for prospective employees.

State records show the hospital also imposed new rules limiting contact between male staff members and female adolescent patients after the 2000 arrest of mental health worker Quincy Crawford, who was later convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old girl in a Pine Grove bathroom. He is serving three years in state prison.

That girl’s mother is suing Crawford, the hospital and its parent company, Doctors Community Healthcare Corp., alleging administrators failed to adequately protect patients. The suit also claims the hospital failed to conduct adequate background checks and training of employees.

Richard Ryan, an attorney for the hospital and its parent company, denied the allegations, but declined further comment. A trial date is set for January.

Two other Pine Grove male employees were accused of sexually molesting patients in 2000, according to depositions and hospital documents produced during the discovery phase of the lawsuit.

Los Angeles police detectives investigated the men, but prosecutors declined to file charges--in one case due to insufficient evidence, in the other because the victim did not want to revisit the incident in interviews. One of the employees was fired and the other resigned during separate internal investigations, according to hospital documents.