A group home in Descanso that treated youths with drug and alcohol problems under a contract with San Diego County abruptly closed last fall, following a series of incidents involving staff and residents that led child welfare officials to stop sending children there for treatment.

Records show that Phoenix House Academy, a group home located on about 90 acres of what was once a ranch in bucolic East County backcountry, was told a year ago that county officials had become concerned for “the safety and welfare of dependent and probation youth” placed in the home.

In a February 2015 memo, the county demanded a plan to correct 11 areas, including supervision and training, “appropriate staff-to-youth ratio” and improving the “timeliness and accuracy” of reports that are required to be submitted to the county when someone is hurt, property damaged or some other incident occurs.

Phoenix House submitted a 60-page plan to correct the flaws in March. But by September, the group informed the county it was closing down, citing a change in funding and regulations, as well as an increase in the severity of the case referrals of adolescents.

That decision came after a series of incidents dating from October 2013 detailed in the records, which included incident reports and complaint investigations. They included:

In April 2014 a female staff counselor was found to have engaged in sex acts with a male resident on at least two occasions, and providing the youth with methamphetamines.

A male staff member in October 2013 gave pornography to residents, purchasing a magazine on the way to work and leaving it in a place male residents would find it, according to a redacted report of the incident. The report indicated the staff member had been disciplined once before and “had issues with inappropriate boundaries with residents at Phoenix House.”

On Jan. 31, 2015, five male residents got into a brawl in one of the residential cabins on the site, leaving one with a broken hand. One of the fighters threatened to stab another, and was found with utensils that had been fashioned into weapons.

On Aug. 30 last year, about a week before the announcement to close, two female youths walked away from an outing at the Mission Valley mall and were missing for hours. They were found that night in Poway and later tested positive for drugs.

The program’s closure was not announced at the time. The San Diego Union-Tribune came across the situation as part of an unrelated request for public records.

Ann Bray, executive director of the organization that operates 120 programs in California and nine other states, declined to comment on the specific incidents detailed in the reports. She said in an interview that the string of incidents did not factor into the decision to close the Descanso facility, which the organization had operated for more than 25 years.

The rural location and expense of maintaining the home led to the decision to no longer accept youth under the contract, which was set to expire in 2017, Bray said. Phoenix House still provides rehabilitation services for county youth — but they are sent on a case-by-case basis to a facility in Lake View Terrace in Los Angeles County.

“We made the decision it was better to deliver care in a more contemporary health care setting rather in a facility in a remote location, that was built in the 1940s,” she said of the Descanso campus.

The referrals to Los Angeles are done under an amended annual contract that could pay Phoenix House up to $600,000 per year for treating youths, said Dale Fleming of the county’s Health and Humans Services Agency.

She said the county continues to contract with the organization because it is one of the few that offers the kind of specialized care that some youth need. Until it closed, Phoenix House in Descanso was the only place such youth could go to within the county, Fleming said. She said the county stepped in when it became aware of the problems there last year.

“We worked closely with Phoenix House Academy to take appropriate steps to prevent these types of situations from recurring,” Fleming said in a written response to questions about the facility. She said the county stopped referrals there from Feb. 18 to March 13 last year.

In all, the county has paid $2.8 million to Phoenix House since 2014 under two separate contracts.

Candi Mayes, the executive director of the Dependency Legal Group which represents children in child welfare cases, said she was unaware of the problems detailed in the county reports. The relatively small number of clients placed out there had concerns other than reports of misconduct by staff there.

“They didn’t feel like it was helping them, or the group counseling was consistent,” she said. “They were raising concerns with their attorneys that they were in the inpatient programs, and they didn’t feel they were getting the intensive services that they needed. For us, the issue was it was more about it wasn’t a good fit.”

Bray said that the organization now plans to convert the Descanso site from a licensed treatment program for youths, to a post-treatment recovery retreat type facility for families. The new program would require county development approvals, but there is no plan to take county referrals.

That may not sit well with residents of the area, some of whom have long complained about problems with the facility, which is not a locked or secured camp.

There have been problems with youth trespassing on private property, thefts and traffic hazards from vehicles traveling down the winding road to the camp, said Maggie Leavitt, a resident and former chairwoman of an association of property owners in the area. One resident committed suicide there in 2010, according to the medical examiner, which said the youth had a history of depression and making suicidal threats.

“Ever since they opened the doors it’s had problems,” Leavitt said, “Kid-created problems, staff-created problems.”

She said placing any kind of rehab facility in the area is “highly inappropriate in our rural, residential community.”

The county said that since 2014 it had placed some 107 youths at the Phoenix House campus, 84 in 2014-15, and 23 from July 2015 until it closed down. Since the closure, the county has placed 10 children in the Los Angeles Phoenix House facility.

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Fleming said county officials visited the facility in January and were “comfortable with what we observed.” She said the county did not know of any problems at that location.