Temporary Office Aids Victims of Child Abuse

In an unusual move designed to make it faster and easier for child abuse victims to receive state aid for their therapy bills, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office opened a temporary field office this week at a church in Manhattan Beach.

Six representatives from the district attorney’s victim-witness assistance program are helping to process requests to the state Board of Control from families involved in child molestation cases at five closed preschools in the South Bay.

“Rather than have 500 people tromp over to the Torrance courthouse, we thought we would send the staff to a neutral site in the South Bay,” said Mia Baker, victim-witness assistance program director, explaining the establishment of the field office. “These are very sensitive cases. We don’t want to make the process of providing victim services anymore traumatic than it has to be.”

The Manhattan Beach Community Church was selected to provide a relatively private and unimposing environment for families, many of whom have been reluctant to go to the courthouse or county offices to file claims, Baker said.

Sixty-nine families, armed with receipts from clinics and private therapists, have made appointments since the field office opened Monday. It will remain open through the end of next week.

Parents of 500 children who were pupils at the five preschools at the time the offenses allegedly occurred there received letters notifying them of the field office, Baker said. Not all the pupils may have been victims, and they might not have sought therapy, she said.

The families are seeking compensation under California’s Victims of Crime Program, a service administered by the Board of Control that provides up to $23,000 per person to crime victims and their families. Parents of victims are also eligible for assistance, under a separate $23,000 ceiling, for expenses related to the case.

The state money comes from a restitution fund consisting of fines and penalties assessed against criminal offenders and is used to pay for psychotherapy, medical and funeral bills, lost wages and other out-of-pocket expenses associated with crime.

The district attorney’s field office was established too late for most families associated with the McMartin Pre-School molestation case. The state already has approved 225 claims from them, has rejected four and is processing about 20, according to Lane Richmond, executive officer of the Board of Control in Sacramento. Although it will be several weeks before the paper work is completed and compensation awards are mailed to McMartin families, the state has already authorized payments exceeding $100,000, he said.

The field office is expected to cut the amount of time new applicants wait for money by at least half. Etty Garber, a child abuse consultant hired by the City of Manhattan Beach who helped set up the field office, said applications made at the church should work their way through the state bureaucracy in five months--about five to 10 months less than it took for most of the McMartin claims.

Authorities said families from Rolling Hills to El Segundo have run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in therapy bills for treatment related to the South Bay child molestation cases since early last year. The Child Abuse Resource Exchange of Manhattan Beach, one of several groups that assist victims, estimated that the bills for South Bay families could be as high as $8 million for 1984. An estimated $1.6 million of that total might be reimbursable through private insurance, according to the exchange’s report.

Applications Triple

Last year, statewide applications for aid stemming from child molestation cases tripled, increasing from 446 in 1983 to 1,431 in 1984, Richmond said.

More than 15,000 requests for compensation are expected this year from all crime victims, and the processing of applications has become a massive bureaucratic task. An estimated $26 million to $36 million will be available for such payments in 1985, according to the Board of Control.

The long delays have led to cries for help that have echoed in the state Legislature, the offices of the governor and the district attorney and in city halls throughout the South Bay.

“If this were to be compared to a natural disaster such as a landslide, an earthquake or a flood, aid would most certainly have been more immediately appropriated,” 11 South Bay mayors wrote in a letter to Gov. George Deukmejian that requested faster state action. “We ask you to see our disaster in this same dimension. Families, homes, businesses, schools and most importantly our children are suffering.”

The shorter wait for families who use the field office will stem in part from the fact that employees of the victim assistance program just completed a training session with the Board of Control that enables them to verify as well as accept applications, Baker said. The process involves checking with physicians, insurance companies and law enforcement authorities to determine if the applicant is eligible for the aid and if receipts for expenses are legitimate, she explained.