Officials to weigh fate of Pearl City rehab center

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

State health officials will study whether to keep a controversial juvenile sex-offender treatment center in Pearl City or replace it with a juvenile substance-abuse rehabilitation program.

The study may identify other uses for the 10-bed facility near Momilani Elementary and Pearl City High School, but all decisions will involve the community, said Tina Donkervoet, chief of the Health Department's Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division.

The community will have its first opportunity to hear the plan when health officials brief the Pearl City Neighborhood Board at 7 tonight in the Pearl City Public Library.

When the health department opened the juvenile sex-offender program in December 2000, neighbors protested because they feared offenders would escape and harm children.

After that initial opposition, then-Gov. Ben Cayetano said the sex-offender center would be moved if the Legislature could find another location.

Lawmakers in the 2001 session, however, could not agree on a new site, and the program remained.

That summer, two juveniles did escape, but no one was harmed.

There is no timetable for the current decision, Donkervoet said.

"The department completely understands that the community feels it didn't have an opportunity to participate in the past, and we are fully committed to working with them this time," she said.

But the state also has to think of the needs of the juvenile offenders, she said.

"The state has an obligation to provide treatment services for these youth," she said. "And the state is committed to providing that treatment in a way that takes into consideration the community concerns. The state has to balance those obligations."

Benchmark Behavioral Health Systems runs the current program and has a contract that expires in June, Donkervoet said.

Albert Fukushima, chairman of the Pearl City Neighborhood Board, said the community is under the impression that the program will be moving.

Residents are "adamantly opposed" to any kind of rehabilitation center because it is too close to area schools, he said.

"This thing is a sleeping giant," he said. "I think the community will react in anger."

Board members learned about the study when they sought an update from health officials in July. Board member James Pickard Sr. said they "nearly fell out of their chairs."

But their surprise will be nothing compared to that of the community, he said.

"They won't like it because they are going from the frying pan to the fire," he said.

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.