Father Sues Church in Alleged Sexual Abuse of Girl, 3

The father of a 3-year-old Anaheim girl filed suit Monday against an Anaheim church, its former pastor and its preschool, claiming they failed to protect her from sexual abuse by a transient and withheld information about the attack from her parents.

The girl, who will be 4 at the end of the month, claims through her father that the First Assembly of God Church and its Town Church Pre-School & Kindergarten failed to take “reasonable precautions” to protect her from attack.

The suit also claims that the church and school later “sought to withhold . . . information from (her) parents, sought to mislead (her) parents and sought to deny the (incident) ever happened.”

An unknown assailant sexually abused the girl April 20, the suit alleged. Anaheim police are still investigating the case.

According to the suit, filed in Orange County Superior Court, the defendants knew about previous criminal conduct by “indigents, felons, vagabonds and homeless individuals” who came to the church and school for food and shelter.

The church and school, which operate out of the same address, 1759 W. Broadway, owed “a special duty” to the girl “to take reasonable precautions . . . to protect her” from transients who had “unrestricted” entry to the premises, according to the suit.

The suit separately named as a defendant the Rev. Donald Bibler, who was pastor of the church and chief administrator of the school at the time.

Neither Bibler nor the attorney for the church could be reached for comment Monday. Officials at the district office of the Assemblies of God in Newport Beach declined to comment on the case.

Detective Jack Jessen of the Anaheim Police Department’s Sexual Assault Unit said that the criminal investigation of the incident, while “still active,” was “at a standstill, technically,” because he had yet to receive a copy of the girl’s medical report.

“We can’t prove or disprove her statements,” Jessen said. “It’s an isolated incident with no witnesses--an alleged, isolated incident with no witnesses.”

According to the girl’s father, both parents dropped the youngster off at the preschool. When they picked her up that afternoon she seemed upset, but a teacher told them that a boy in the class had hurt himself, requiring stitches, and that this caused some anxiety among the children.

That evening the girl complained to each parent individually and had difficulty sleeping. The following morning, according to the suit, there was evidence of internal bleeding. The parents took the girl to UCI Medical Center and, on the advice of the examining physician, Anaheim police were notified.

Detective Jessen said Monday that there are “no known suspects” in the case, that no criminal complaint had been filed and that the odds were “very strong against filing one. That’s a problem with having small victims.” Because the girl had just turned 3 at the time of the incident, he said, “I don’t think she’d qualify as a witness.”

However, the girl’s parents are convinced of their daughter’s account of what happened. They say that she was on her way to the women’s lavatory, unaccompanied, when a man waxing cars on the grounds seized her and dragged her into the men’s lavatory, where he assaulted her.