Young Accusers Arrested, Led From School in Cuffs

Three Orange County girls who sent a homeless man to jail for eight months after telling police and prosecutors he had attacked them at a park were arrested Monday at school and taken away in handcuffs for making up the story.

The 12-year-old girls were booked on suspicion of conspiracy and taken to Juvenile Hall until a court hearing Wednesday.

“They handcuffed her, with her arms behind her back. She was scared and started shaking,” said Veronica Mendez Ochoa, the mother of one of two girls arrested at James Irvine Intermediate School in Garden Grove. “She’s a little girl, but they handcuffed her like she was a murderer.”

The schoolyard arrests marked another twist in a case that rekindles debate over how severely authorities should punish children.

Last spring, the three girls allegedly concocted a story so their parents would not punish them for coming home late from school: A homeless man lying near a bush motioned them over and then grabbed one of them. The girl managed to escape only after her friend bravely fought off the assailant.

The girl took the witness stand last month, testifying that Eric Nordmark, a 36-year-old drifter, “started choking me. And then I turned purple ... I couldn’t breathe, and I felt like I was going to black out.”

Nordmark, who police said generally matched the description given by the girls, had spent eight months in jail awaiting trial. He could have faced five years in prison if convicted in the attack.

After her tearful testimony, however, the girl confessed to her mother that the story was not true. In addition to a felony charge of conspiracy, the girl who testified also faces a charge of perjury.

“Everybody was duped by these girls,” Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Heather Brown said at the time. She later asked for all charges against Nordmark to be dismissed.

Authorities said the arrest of the girls was intended to send a message about the consequences of lying to police.

“They did something very serious,” said Garden Grove Police Lt. Mike Handfield. “They put [an innocent] guy in jail for eight months.”

An attorney for one of the girls said Monday that police could have asked the parents to bring their children to the police station, rather than make a show of their arrest on campus.

“This alleged crime is not a violent crime,” said Shirley MacDonald Juarez, the attorney. “These girls have been totally cooperative with police. There was no need for this.”

Mendez, the girl’s mother, said police did not allow her daughter, who is diabetic, to bring along her medical kit containing insulin and syringes. When she called police to complain, Mendez said, “they didn’t care. They told me she was being interrogated by an investigator without a lawyer present.”

Handfield said the girl was read her Miranda rights but did not ask to have her attorney or a parent present during questioning. He added that police were finished questioning the girl by the time Juarez, her attorney, called the station to invoke the girl’s right to remain silent.

Mendez said her daughter was returning to school Monday after spending five days at Children’s Hospital of Orange County for treatment of her diabetes.

Curtis Lavarello, executive director of the National Assn. of School Resources Officers, said handcuffing students is generally considered appropriate if they are a flight risk, or if they were armed.

“It sounds like this was uncommon,” Lavarello said. “I’m not sure [police] weren’t doing more harm than good.”

The girls live in an apartment complex in a neighborhood off of Euclid Street, made up mostly of blue-collar families.

The building stands in the shadow of the Garden Grove Freeway. Traffic rumbles by day and night.

Garden Grove police were called to the apartment May 16. At the time, the three girls were students at Woodbury Elementary School; two of them were age 11, and one was 12. They told a detailed story, police said, describing their assailant as a white man, about 6 feet tall, weighing 190 to 200 pounds and wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and white sneakers.

Two brothers, ages 10 and 12, who also lived at the complex, had reported being harassed by a homeless man two days earlier. Police said their description of the man was similar to the one given by the girls.

Handfield said police at the time feared there was a sexual predator in the neighborhood.

Nordmark had been arrested earlier that week for public drunkenness. Police created a photo lineup consisting of Nordmark and five other men.

The first girl picked him out, and, police allege, coached her friends to also identify Nordmark as the man who had attacked them in the park.

The two brothers also identified Nordmark, and police arrested him May 20. After declaring his innocence, Nordmark said, he spent his months in jail doing crossword puzzles and playing chess with other inmates.

“It is scary how powerless you are when you are faced with something like this,” the North Dakota native said in an interview last month.

He has filed a claim against the Garden Grove Police Department for botching the investigation.

Nordmark’s attorney, David Swanson, said the department could have uncovered the lie had it been more careful.

He said, for example, that the department should have shuffled the order of the photo lineup so that the first girl would not have been able to coach her friends.

Defending his department’s practices, Handfield said last month that it was difficult to imagine veteran detectives and prosecutors being fooled by three young girls.