O.C. Drug Rehab Center Investigated

An Orange County drug-treatment center is under investigation for a series of problems uncovered after a counselor was arrested on suspicion of having sex with a 16-year-old patient.

Med Pro Treatment Center owns live-in and outpatient programs in southern Orange County. Company officials agreed with state regulators to shut down one facility, a live-in treatment center for teens in San Clemente, after the arrest in June.

But the company then transferred the home’s five patients to a center it owns in Dana Point -- one previously reserved for adults, said Rapone Anderson, a spokesman for the state Department of Social Services, which regulates group homes for children.

Finding that the Dana Point center was not licensed for minors, the department cited Med Pro for a second time on Aug. 20. After Med Pro declined to close the center, the department referred the case to the Orange County district attorney’s office, which can seek a court order to close it.

The Dana Point center also is under investigation by the state Department of Alcohol and State Programs, which regulates drug treatment programs. “If this guy is operating a facility where he has youth in an adult treatment facility, that’s against the rule of his license,” said department spokeswoman Lisa Fisher.

Leon Desimone, Med Pro’s owner, declined to discuss the company’s problems in detail, but said: “We did everything we were supposed to do” to check the background of the worker whose arrest triggered the investigations and to alert authorities when allegations were made against the employee.

Med Pro’s San Clemente home was licensed Jan. 15, 2003, to serve six youths ages 9 through 17 who are “dual diagnosed,” which means they suffer chemical dependence and a psychological problem, such as manic-depression or attention deficit disorder, said Blanca Castro, a spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services.

Sheriff’s deputies received a call from the treatment center on May 27. A 16-year-old patient had told a friend she was having sex with counselor Michael Escarcida, said Jim Amormino, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman. The friend told supervisors at Med Pro, who called deputies.

Amormino said Escarcida, 33, has denied the allegations.

He said deputies researched Escarcida’s name that day and found no criminal record. When they returned the next day to question him, Escarcida, who had been fired by Med Pro, was gone, Amormino said. He was arrested near Bellingham, Wash., on June 5 and sent to the Chino Institution for Men for violating his parole on a fraud conviction. No charges have been filed in connection with the 16-year-old patient.

State authorities said Med Pro Treatment Center never ran a required fingerprint check on Escarcida which would have revealed his criminal history.

Escarcida went to state prison in 1991, after he received a four-year sentence for transportation and sale of drugs, according to records from the state Department of Corrections. In what appears to be overlapping prison terms, Escarcida was sentenced to three years for a similar offense, and then was released from prison on July 21, 1997.

Escarcida was soon in trouble again. He arrived at the Chino Institute for Men in June 1998, sentenced to two years for fraud after trying to pass a stolen check in Huntington Beach. He was paroled in 2000.

Records indicate Escarcida was returned to prison six times for parole violations.

Before getting the job at Med Pro, he was a maintenance worker in Dana Point, said Michael Aros, a spokesman for the Parole Division of the Department of Corrections. “We don’t know how he got the [Med Pro] job,” he said. “We didn’t know he was a counselor. I don’t know we would have allowed him to work as a drug counselor.”

Castro said that people working in children’s group homes are required to have their fingerprints checked by the state Department of Justice. Someone with a criminal record can still work in a home if the offense is nonviolent, Castro said. But he or she must request an exemption from Social Services.

Investigators for Social Services, which licenses facilities where minors live, found that Escarcida was not the company’s only oversight. Two other employees hadn’t been fingerprinted, and the Department of Justice had notified Med Pro that follow-up was needed for two other employees, Castro said.

“This is just an egregious thing that occurred,” Castro said.