Haidl’s Plea for Transfer to Private Facility Denied

An Orange County judge Monday refused to transfer rape suspect Gregory Haidl from jail to a private mental health facility, despite a doctor’s claim that care for the teen had been inadequate.

“I’m reluctant to take him outside of the 24-hour surveillance that he’s under at the present time,” Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno said during the daylong hearing in his Santa Ana courtroom. “Leniency can only go so far.”

After Briseno announced his ruling, Haidl started crying, dabbing his tears and mopping his brow.

Haidl’s attorneys had asked that he be placed at College Hospital in Costa Mesa, where he could receive group counseling, private psychiatric sessions and medication monitoring that they believed he was not receiving in jail.

“He needs a friend. He needs TLC,” said Dr. Jeff Barke, Haidl’s physician for six months, who has visited Haidl in jail twice each week. “That’s not what the jail is equipped to give him.... It’s as far from a therapeutic environment as one can imagine.”

Along with two friends, Haidl, 19, is charged in the 2002 rape of a then-16-year-old girl prosecutors say was too drunk to consent. The incident took place at the Corona del Mar home of Haidl’s father, who has since resigned from his position as an Orange County assistant sheriff.

Jurors deadlocked in the first trial in June. A retrial is set to start Jan. 31. Haidl’s bail was revoked in November after he was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, which violated a judge’s order not to break any laws.

Briseno denied Monday that Haidl had been promised mental health care in jail that would be equivalent to a private clinic. He said his only requirements had been that the defendant could not take his own life or face danger from other inmates.

If the judge had granted Haidl’s motion, Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Gurwitz said, any inmate in the jail’s mental health ward would be able to make the same argument to be placed in a hospital.