Retarded children neglected, abused at Sonoma Center

Sacramento Bee

Monday October 9, 1989

Retarded children neglected, abused at Sonoma center

By Ellen Robinson-Haynes

Bee Medical Writer

SONOMA -- Mentally retarded children at Sonoma Developmental Center are living in neglect and danger.

Investigative documents and interviews with parents and staff reveal that children at the state-run facility are being beaten and sexually molested by other residents and routinely deprived of programs mandated by law.

The children live in barren rooms with empty or locked closets, blank walls and bare floors. Big children live with little ones. The violent and self-abusive live with the passive. Children who can read a little and think for themselves live with those who can't.

The facility sprawls over 1,300 acres of green rolling hills, but the children have no recreation area -- no swings, no balls, no bikes. Inside, they have no toys, no personal belongings or clothes of their own.

And everywhere, they lack sufficient supervision.

"It is the return of the snake pit," said Sacramento's Marie White, president of the California Autism Society.

"And the parents are at a desperation point. Their kids are hostage in the system, and they've kept quiet hoping that their children would be spared. But now they realize that sooner or later, their child is going to get injured."

State officials agree that there are problems.

"There are a lot of people with needs that are not being adequately met qualitatively or quantitatively," said Bamford Frankland, who oversees developmental centers for the Department of Developmental Services. "We are sorry that we cannot do better than that."

Last week a teenage girl at Sonoma was seen rummaging mindlessly through the grass. A slightly older boy approached, dropped his pants and urinated. She reached out and let his urine trickle through her fingers.

No one noticed -- not the other children, not the staff. And no one intervened.

For more than a decade, state and federal policies have kept children like these -- who are young, ambulatory and not severely retarded -- out of big institutions for the mentally and medically disabled. But 18 months ago the state ran out of small community homes for them.

Since then, 38 children -- nine of them ages 6 to 12 and some from Sacramento -- have been admitted to Sonoma. And under a recent state mandate, even more children will he going there and to the state's six other developmental centers.

But no one's happy about it.

At least four families have filed formal complaints with the U.S. Office for Civil Rights in San Francisco, charging that their children's civil rights are being violated at Sonoma.

Others have complained to the licensing arm of the California Department of Health Services, which just weeks ago issued a 29-page report citing the center for violating dozens of regulations designed to ensure the safety and health of the 1,300 children and adults living at Sonoma and the 5,400 who live at the state's six other developmental centers.

"People get arrested for treating their dogs and cats like our kids get treated," said Tolley Gorham, parent of a Sonoma resident.

The California Association of Psychiatric Technicians, the labor union that represents the 1,000 psych techs who work at Sonoma, has filed grievances over staffing policy that sometimes leaves one staff member with more than 20 children to watch.

Last week, the federally appointed advocacy agency that represents Sonoma's residents completed a report documenting what its authors call the growing crisis of children's admissions at Sonoma.

"From a clinical point of view. the admissions are totally inappropriate," said Alan Kerzin, who wrote the report. "There are too many children lumped together, and there's no opportunity for children to model appropriate behaviors.

"The staff situation is terrible. . . . You have the law saying some very progressive principles about keeping the family together in the least restrictive environment, but what you have here is the failure to implement the law."

Just a week ago in a formal meeting with the Sonoma staff and state officials, a group of Sonoma parents demanded sweeping changes at the center.

"It's an abysmal situation," said Maxine Jenkins of Campbell, whose daughter Jordan lives at Sonoma. "We can't leave our kids in this intolerable situation any longer. We're not begging anymore, we're demanding; We've got to have trained staff, we've got to have increased staff, and we've got to have them now."

The state's Frankland told the parents he was sympathetic to their demands and that staffing and management changes had been made - "Within the last month to ensure lhat their children are safe.

But one day after the meeting, the 12-year-old son of a Fremont couple was sexually molested. The parents were told that the assault went unnoticed for more than 24 hours.

"Where was the staff person when this was going on?" asked the boy's father. "Why didn't anyone find what the screaming was about?"

"There's no question about Frankland had told the parents during the meeting the day before. "A large institution is the worst kind of living situation for children."

The parents, who can't find other homes for their retarded children, are learning that lesson the hard way.

William Coffelt, a father of three, admitted his 12-year-old son Billy to Sonoma on June 29. In his last year at home in Vallejo the youngster's tantrums began to threaten both his own safety and that of his 5- and 8- year-old siblings.

The victim of a rare chromosomal defect, the child is the size of a 9-year-old, can speak about 60 words and will follow simple commands. Within days of their son's admission to Sonoma, the Coffelts noticed an array of new bumps, bruises and scrapes on his already thin body.

Within three months, he'd lost 16 of his 69 pounds. And last month a janitor found him lying on the floor in the communal bathroom, bleeding from a large laceration to his head.

"Initially they told me it was a getting acquainted process," said Coffelt. "They said that because he was small and fragile, he was a target for the other kids and there was not a whole lot they could do."

Billy Coffelt ended up in the hospital for a week. Since then, he has been moved to another housing unit composed of adults who are considered more passive. But in the few weeks he has been in his new unit, Billy has been hit again by an older and much bigger resident.

"I'm concerned that he's still not safe on that unit," Coffelt said. "The staff has told me they are getting stressed out trying to protect Billy on that unit, and it's a problem trying to keep between him and the other clients. The potential is still there, and it's only a matter of time until he's going to get hurt seriously again."

Fred Valenzuela, Sonoma's executive director, acknowledged that some children have been beaten, but he said the number of such incidents has been reduced through staffing changes he has made in the last month.

"There are always going to be incidents of injuries with this population. That's why they came in." Valenzuela said. "They came in because they have behavior problems and those same behavior problems will still manifest themselves."

Health experts say the growing crisis at Sonoma and the state's other developmental centers stems in large part from inadequate funding and liability threats that are creating a shortage of privately run group homes. Even though it's $20,000 to $30,000 cheaper to keep a client in a privately run community home than in one of the state's developmental centers, there are simply too few homes.

Since 1984, the population of developmentally disabled individuals has grown hv 34 oercent to about 94,000. At the same time there has been only an 11.7 percent increase in community homes -- a net growth of 3,000 beds to accommodate about 20.000 new clients.

So children are landing in large institutions, where many parents believe that the undersupervised environment is increasing the threat of violent behavior and causing their children to forget basic living skills they had when they entered the facility.

Janice Crose of Sacramento, whose autistic 19-year-old son was brutally beaten at Sonoma four months ago, said even the noise level at the institution endangered her son, Scott, who can't talk.

A Sonoma resident since April 1988, when his residenlial program in Orangevale closed due to funding problems, Scott hates loud noise. His mother is certain he was seeking quiet when he went into an empty room at Sonoma and closed the door. But two other residents discovered him there and beat him.

Since Scott has been home, he has been as compliant as a teddy bear, his mother said. He rides a bus to and from school every day. And when he wants total silence, she makes sure he gets it.

"When he was at Sonoma, he was wetting his pants every day," she said. "And he lost most of his signing. They ignored it so he just quit doing it. And then his behavior got bad because he was around a lot of people and noise. He got hyper, so he started yelling a lot."

State and federal officials agree that staffing at all the developmental centers is a problem.

In the most recent state licensing report, Sonoma was cited repeatedly for failing to comply with regulations regarding lack of staff supervision. But DDS's Frankland said economics preclude full compliance.

"You can't just say you need a lot more staff and get them," he said.