Atheist inmate settles for $1.95 million over 12-step drug rehab

Barry Hazle, an atheist, was declared in violation of parole and sent back to prison for 100 days for refusing to participate in a religious treatment program. Barry Hazle, an atheist, was declared in violation of parole and sent back to prison for 100 days for refusing to participate in a religious treatment program. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Atheist inmate settles for $1.95 million over 12-step drug rehab 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Barry Hazle was paroled after a one-year prison term for methamphetamine possession in 2007 and was ordered to spend the next 90 days in a residential drug treatment program. When he arrived, officials told him it was a 12-step program, modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous, that required participants to confess their powerlessness and submit to a “higher power” through prayer.

Hazle, a lifelong atheist, had asked for a secular treatment program. He said he was told this was the only state-approved facility in Shasta County, where he lived, but that it wasn’t a stickler for compliance.

“They told me, 'Anything can be your higher power. Fake it till you make it,’” he recalled.

Hazle refused and was declared in violation of parole and sent back to prison for 100 days. Seven years and two federal court rulings later, he and his lawyers announced a $1.95 million settlement Tuesday of a suit against the state and its contractor, WestCare California, for wrongful incarceration in violation of his religious liberty.

The money, which includes attorneys’ fees, wasn’t his main object, Hazle said. “I just want to make sure that somebody else doesn’t have to go through this kind of thing,” he said.

That’s apparently not guaranteed, despite the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s efforts to have its parole agents respect parolees’ diverse religious views. In November 2008, the department ordered agents to refer paroled drug and alcohol offenders to nonreligious treatment programs if they objected to religiously based 12-step regimens. The order followed a federal appeals court ruling that said Hawaii had violated another parolee’s rights by ordering him to take part in Alcoholics Anonymous.

But in an August 2013 ruling in Hazle’s case, the same federal court quoted WestCare, a contractor for the department in Shasta County and several Central California counties, as saying it continues to refer all parolees to 12-step residential programs. WestCare said it never received the corrections department’s order and doesn’t understand the term “alternative non-religious program.”

The settlement provides $1 million from the state and $925,000 from WestCare. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Tuesday it “does not require a 12-step program as a condition of parole.” An attorney for WestCare declined to comment.

Hazle, a computer network administrator, initially pleaded guilty to drug possession in 2004, was placed on probation, and then was ordered to prison in 2006 for violating probation by continuing to use methamphetamine.

After his release a year later, he said, he told parole officials of his atheism and was assured he wouldn’t be sent to a religiously based treatment program. But the leaders at Empire Recovery Center in Redding, where WestCare referred him, told participants they could recover only by submitting to God, Hazle said — “if we don’t find God, we’re doomed to repeat till we die.”

That might work for some people, Hazle said, but the way he sees it, “I have to become powerful to overcome problems in my life. ... A higher power, to me, is a fiction.”

A federal judge in Sacramento ruled in 2010 that the state had violated Hazle’s rights by revoking his parole and returning him to prison. A jury declined to award damages, but last year the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Hazle was entitled to some financial compensation for his “loss of liberty” and ordered a retrial. The court also said WestCare was potentially liable for referring Hazle to a religiously based program. All those claims were resolved by Tuesday’s settlement.

Hazle, 46, now farms his family’s 10-acre plot in Redding. He said he’s handled his drug problems on his own.

“Everybody falters here and there, but I’m committed to that” recovery, he said. “I’m no longer a user.”

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko