Part of our ongoing investigation into the Southern California rehab industry.
The woman’s voice trembled.
She was being treated for addiction at the rehab center Hope by the Sea, she told the 911 operator, but her counselor was showing her porn and pressing his body against her. She reported him to management, she added, but no one believed her.
Now the counselor is angry, she wept, saying he might lose his job because of her. She didn’t know what to do. If she left, she’d go to jail. But if she stayed….
Then she hung up, according to emergency call logs.
“Jane Doe” came from Riverside to San Juan Capistrano in August of 2016 for four weeks of healing. Instead, she suffered sexual assault, sexual battery, sexual harassment and negligence, according to the lawsuit she filed in October against Hope by the Sea.
“She left the facility traumatized – a shell of her former self – and continues to suffer,” the suit says. “In addition to the problems she was there seeking assistance for, she left Hope by the Sea with humiliation, depression, and other mental anxieties.”
Hope by the Sea has denied any wrongdoing, and it is certainly not alone in facing such allegations. Sex crimes are reported with alarming regularity from the nearly 1,900 rehab centers that form California’s loosely-regulated drug and alcohol treatment industry, according to lawsuits, complaints to the state and police records.
Sex crimes rampant
The number one client complaint involving the rehab industry is sexual misconduct, according to a 2013 investigation by the California Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes. The title of the state’s probe: “Suspect Treatment: State’s lack of scrutiny allows unscreened sex offenders and unethical counselors to treat addicts.”
Allegations of sexual misconduct remain common. Since 2015, state regulators have investigated and closed 78 complaints of alleged sexual misconduct at rehabs, according to the Department of Health Care Services, the state agency that now oversees the recovery industry.
The Southern California News Group found that at least 32 sex crimes, including rape and sexual assault, were reported to police in recent years from a sampling of treatment facilities in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Additionally, the news group found that nearly 75 statewide complaints of sexual harassment, sexual assault and inappropriate counselor-client relationships were made to the California agency that regulated addiction treatment centers between 2009 and 2013, before Health Care Services took over.
Experts say the statistics probably represent just a fraction of the actual problem. Reports of sex crimes are often are low, and experts say that’s particularly true when the victims have a history of substance abuse.
“People who are struggling with addiction are at a very high risk for sexual assault… This happens in institutional settings, where an assailant takes advantage of isolation and access to the victim,” said Laura Palumbo, communications director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center in Pennsylvania.
“There’s a perception by these individuals that they’re a forgotten population, that their stories in some way matter less because they struggle with substance abuse,” Palumbo added.
“In order to change that, we need to ensure that they feel as though their stories matter, that they’ll be supported and believed, and that they have the right to be in a safe setting.”
Such experiences are not strictly the purview of women, according to court records.
Joseph Dickerson also chose Hope by the Sea in 2012, when he checked in to kick an addiction to prescription painkillers, opting for the center’s “Christian track” course of treatment as a way to get clean.
But a few days into his rehab, sick and weak, Dickerson awoke in the early morning to find the house manager, a convicted felon, in his bed, “pressing his groin and erect sexual organ against (Dickerson’s) back and buttocks,” according to a lawsuit.
Dickerson jumped out of bed and screamed at the house manager, according to the suit. But over time the groping was repeated on several occasions. Dickerson also caught the house manager doing the same thing to a roommate, and Dickerson was attacked by yet another house manager as well, the suit said.
When he finally informed other managers what was happening, Dickerson was told not to play the victim, according to the suit. Dickerson had paid $43,500 for treatment. Despite that investment, he left and sought treatment elsewhere. He did not get a refund.
“This abuse was the foreseeable result of (Hope by the Sea’s) conscious decision to staff the facilities with an insufficient number of qualified, trained staff and employees and to hire unqualified persons with criminal and/or felony backgrounds,” said the suit, charging the center with sexual harassment, sexual battery, negligence and fraud.
Hope by the Sea has denied any wrongdoing in that case, as well. The Dickerson case settled; the Jane Doe case is pending.
Missing paper trail
The state is working on the Southern California News Group’s request for details on sexual harassment complaints since 2013.
In the interim, SCNG obtained a database detailing complaints to California’s Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs – which has since been absorbed into the Department of Health Care Services – from 2009 through 2013.
The nearly 75 sex-related complaints reported during that time included allegations that workers engaged in sexual and inappropriate relationships with clients at facilities in San Francisco, Yucca Valley, Lawndale, Sacramento, Coloma, Shasta, Napa and numerous other places; that a counselor in Fresno County had a sexual relationship with a client and sent that client explicit videos of himself; that an employee of a Compton facility inappropriately touched a 13-year-old student while driving her home in agency van after a group session (and that the facility’s management failed to report the incident to law enforcement); and that a counselor at a treatment center for youths in Los Angeles watched porn on a laptop in full view of children.
In addition, the Southern California News Group reviewed thousands of police emergency calls made over several years to treatment centers in Southern California.
In the city of Riverside, these included five reports of sexual assault, two of rape and one alleged child molestation. In Pasadena, there were 16 registered sex offenders at treatment facilities, as well as two reports of indecent exposure. In Long Beach, there were three reported rapes, five indecent exposures and four reports of child abuse.
Sex crimes connected to rehab centers sometimes lead to arrest and prosecution, though such cases are apparently rare.
Civil lawsuits accused “Rehab Mogul” Christopher Bathum — who ran Community Recovery, a chain of centers in Southern California — of targeting women to prey on their addictions. One suit alleges that Bathum regularly moved women to isolated hotel rooms and remote locations, encouraged them to use drugs with him, and sexually molested them when they were high and incapable of consent.
Bathum was arrested in 2016 and charged with three counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object, two counts of forcible oral copulation, one count each of forcible rape and rape of an intoxicated person, 27 counts of sexual exploitation and 12 counts of furnishing controlled substances, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney. A separate case alleges insurance fraud of $176 million. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Code of ethics
Last January, a woman — also called Jane Doe in legal papers — filed suit against Dual Diagnosis/Sovereign Health, a rehab entity headquartered in San Clemente.
While at the center’s Amado House, an employee preyed on her vulnerability and made sexual advances, repeatedly professing his love and saying he wanted to run away with her, according to the suit.
A sexual relationship ensued, ultimately causing the woman “severe emotional distress, physical injury and permanent mental injury,” it said. This wasn’t a first: The same employee had engaged in sexual relationships with a number of other female patients at the Amado House, and Dual Diagnosis/Sovereign Health knew about it, or should have, according to the suit.
Another suit filed against Dual Diagnosis/Sovereign last year described a tragic ending.
Selena Vincent entered rehab at its Culver City location in 2016, seeking help for opioid addiction as well as mental health issues including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. She had a history of trauma, including a previous rape.
Sovereign “utterly failed to provide Selena with any mental health services,” it said. She was offered, and used, drugs on several occasions while in treatment, and reported being suicidal, the suit says. Sovereign also failed to address her safety by allowing her to be re-traumatized by a new sexual assault, it says.
As a result of these repeated failures, she was found unresponsive in a bathroom and pronounced dead on March 13, 2016, from multiple drug intoxication, the suit says. She was 19.
Sovereign Health disputes the allegations in both cases, said a statement from Haroon Ahmad.
“Because these matters involve ongoing litigation, it would be inappropriate to comment further about them,” he said. “Sovereign Health is widely recognized by industry organizations and patient advocates as one of the nation’s top providers of behavioral health and chemical dependency treatment, and our treatment outcomes are among the best in the industry.”
A code of ethics is supposed to govern the industry and prevent even consensual sexual encounters involving staff and patients.
The National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors – Association for Addiction Professionals says counselors and others are prohibited from engaging in relationships with friends or family members with whom they have an inability to remain objective, and may not engage in or condone any form of harassment, including sexual harassment.
The organization’s Ethics Committees can conduct investigations, issue rulings, and invoke disciplinary action for violations. Officials were unable to detail how often that happens by deadline, or describe what discipline might mean in a largely unregulated industry.
Easy prey?
Numerous studies have found that people who experience trauma, including rape, are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. They are also more likely than others to be re-victimized.
Those who commit sexual violence often target people who lack power in the community, such as those with addictions and disabilities, as well as women, elders, immigrants and children, according to a study by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape.
Perpetrators deliberately target such people because they are less likely to report an assault, and if they do, they are less likely to be believed, the study said.
Researchers at New York University surveyed 164 young adults who were regular users of heroin and other drugs. Forty-one percent of the women and and 11 percent of the men reported being forced to have sex without their consent.
In California, lax rules made it possible for people seeking help for addiction to be treated by registered sex offenders and other serious felons, or by counselors facing current drug and alcohol charges, and those already revoked for misconduct, the investigation by the Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes found in its 2013 report.
“California is one of only two states among the nation’s 15 largest that makes no attempt to review counselors’ criminal backgrounds,” the report said. “Even within California, drug and alcohol counselors are the only health-related profession not required to undergo these checks.”
For three decades, the state and the treatment industry couldn’t agree on a framework to give the state the authority to credential counselors, so California created a public-private hybrid “that precludes criminal background checks and leaves gaps that can be exploited by counselors who move between … private organizations that register and certify them,” it said.
Acupuncturists, dental hygienists, optometrists — even veterinarians — must pass criminal background checks to work in California, but nearly five years after the report was issued, addiction counselors still get a pass.
“There have been legislative attempts to mandate counselors to comply with finger-printed criminal background checks,” said the state Department of Health Care Services in December. “These legislative attempts did not pass.”
Last week, Sen. Pat Bates introduced legislation to start addressing dangerous practices in California’s poorly-regulated addiction treatment industry. The bill, SB 902 is still a work-in-progress, with language to be crafted. It is unclear if background checks will be included.