Would-be Rapist of Autistic Stepdaughter, Alleged Sex Attacker of Rehab Patients

This week brings a guilty plea by someone who had been charged with raping his autistic stepdaughter.

There's also the many charges, including sexual assault, filed against the owner and operator of 13 substance abuse recovery and rehabilitation facilities, including one in Orange County.

Joseph Seion Schuler has copped to trying to rape his autistic stepdaughter, who is 27 but has the mental capacity of a 13-year-old. A report of a sexual assault in progress the night of July 31 sent police to the 49-year-old's apartment in the 200 block of South Highland Avenue, where he remained holed up for about two hours before surrounding. Schuler is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 20 after pleading guilty on Wednesday.

Christopher Bathum, the operator of drug rehabs in Anaheim, elsewhere in Southern California and Colorado, has been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting former clients, and detectives believe there may be more victims. The Community Recovery Peralta House, which was at 144 Peralta Hills Drive, Anaheim, was slapped with an unlicensed facility cease and desist order on June 10, according to online records. Anyone who believes they were victimized is asked to call the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Special Victims Bureau at 877.710.5273. After more than a year of investigations by the LACSD, FBI, Los Angeles Police Department, California Department of Health and insurance companies, Bathum was also popped for alleged fraud, money laundering and grand theft and sexual assault. Before the arrests of the 55-year-old, so-called “Rehab Mogul” of 13 Community Recovery treatment centers, Bathum had been the subject of intense reporting by our former sister newspaper LA Weekly, which detailed many of the allegations that later led to charges against him. He and his chief financial officer Kirsten Wallace are accused of shepherding substance abusers into investment programs that had the Community Recovery officials obtaining health insurance without clients' knowledge, billing insurance companies for treatment after the patients had left the facilities and performing identity theft in what authorities claim was a $176 million fraud. Many former Community Recovery facilities now go by Commonwealth Global, which is run by Wallace.

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