California state mental hospitals plagued by peril

A costly federal effort to reduce heavy drugging and improper restraining fails to improve care and help patients control violent impulses. Instead, assaults by patients mount and confinements grow longer.

Garth Webb, with his parents during a recent visit, was tormented by a patient in the room next door who later strangled a psychiatric technician. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

When Garth Webb was sent to Napa State Hospital, his parents were relieved.

The bellboy and amateur composer from Sebastopol had been in the throes of bipolar disorder when he was charged with threatening the lives of co-workers. His family encouraged him to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, thinking that in a mental hospital he would get the treatment he needed.

Instead, Webb and his parents say, he was repeatedly brutalized. His main tormentor, a patient in the room next door, assaulted him several times, wrapping him in a headlock and sexually abusing him.

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