Plea for Counseling Denied : Teen-Age Robber Given Youth Authority Sentence

Convicted teen-age bank robber Mark Berman was sentenced to the California Youth Authority on Thursday, despite an emotional plea by his mother and defense attorneys that the judge send him instead to a maximum-security center for intensive counseling.

Berman, 17, wiped tears away with the sleeve and collar of his gray sweat shirt as Sylmar Juvenile Court Judge Burton S. Katz recommended that he serve his term at Ventura School for Boys, a Youth Authority facility in Camarillo. Youth Authority officials make the final judgment on where Berman should be sent.

Martin Berman, the youth’s father and co-defense attorney, gripped the boy’s hand during much of the sentencing. Berman’s mother and two brothers, who hugged him tightly before he was led away, sat behind him during the sentencing and wept.

Youth Authority Judgment

Although the maximum custody time for Berman’s crimes is 12 years and eight months, Youth Authority officials make the final judgment on when Berman should be released. By law, they cannot keep him in custody past age 25. Youths who commit crimes of the same magnitude as Berman’s are paroled after an average of 18 months with the Youth Authority, witnesses testified during the boy’s three-day sentencing hearing.

“I feel I am fighting for my son’s life,” said A. J. Berman, the boy’s mother, as she implored Katz not to formalize the sentence he had said Wednesday he would impose. “I woke up this morning and I felt as if I had lost someone very dear to me. I felt that Mark had been killed, murdered. . . . By sending Mark to CYA, you are pronouncing a death sentence. You are sending him to the wolves.”

Berman and 17-year-old Michael Morrison, both of Tarzana, were charged with the May 23 armed robbery of $4,000 from Encino Savings & Loan Assn. and the theft of three cars at gunpoint during May.

Other Case Postponed

Berman pleaded guilty to the charges on Aug. 2. Proceedings in Morrison’s case have been postponed until the state Court of Appeal can rule on Katz’s order closing his pretrial hearings.

A. J. Berman told Katz that her son had spent the last six years watching his parents endure a painful divorce.

“We did abandon him,” she said. “We were there physically but we weren’t there emotionally. We were busy with our own lives.”

She said the intensive individual and family therapy available at county-operated Dorothy Kirby Center in the City of Commerce would be the best sentence to rehabilitate both Mark Berman and his family.

But Katz said the California Youth Authority sentence would force Berman to be “more accountable” for his acts.

‘Terribly Hard Decision’

“He has to appreciate the enormity of the evil he has done,” Katz said. “It was a terribly hard decision to make, the most difficult I’ve made from the bench.”

Katz, who said he believed Berman “is a giving person,” told the boy: “You’re not a bad kid. Prove to everybody you can do well.”

When Katz asked him if he believed he would be hurt by a Youth Authority commitment “or come back stronger,” Berman hesitated before replying: “As I look at it now, I’m going to come back strong, but I don’t know what to expect. . . .”

“Make up your mind you’re going to come back strong. Make up your mind and don’t let your mother and your father lose you,” Katz said.