Brea Proceeds With Plans for Park Restroom Despite Residents’ Fears

Residents near Greenbriar Park in Brea describe it as a little neighborhood park that other people would have little interest in. But now they fear the park will turn into a “haven for child molesters.”

With the city’s commitment this week to upgrade the three-acre site, the neighbors lost their battle against an improvement that they worry will attract molesters: a restroom.

“A bathroom is a good place for people to hide--literally, to hide. A bathroom brings on many dangers to our children,” said Barbara Haluska, who lives across from the park and who is one of 341 members of the Glenbrook Homeowners Assn. to sign a petition opposing the restroom.

Described as Shield

Despite arguments against the proposed public restroom, the City Council on Tuesday night voted 4 to 1 in favor of the project.

Councilman Carrey Nelson, who opposed it, said Wednesday that the restroom would “provide a shield for undesirable people.” During Tuesday’s often-emotional council meeting, and after Haluska noted that a councilman’s daughter had been molested in the same park, Nelson surprised the audience when he said it was his daughter, Ruth, who had been attacked several years ago.

Nelson said Wednesday that his daughter, who died last year at the age of 26, was in her late teens when she was assaulted. He said Ruth, the eldest of seven children, was mentally retarded.

A bathroom in the park would create “a haven for child molesters,” wrote Jim Mead, a Glenbrook resident and co-founder of For Kids’ Sake, a group of about 200 volunteers whose work is related to child abuse.

Pat A. Mead, the group’s co-founder, said the city’s promise to keep the bathroom locked at night would not make a difference.

“There isn’t a pedophile I know who cares what an ordinance says. If they want to get in, they’re going to get in,” she said. In a letter to Nelson, her husband asserted that 90% of all molestations that take place in parks occur in restrooms.

But Nancy Harrigan, the Brea Police Department’s crime prevention specialist, said no significant problems have been reported at Greenbriar Park or at any other park in the city.

Mayor Clarice Blamer said that “the land there belongs to the entire community” and that the improvements, which include a new tot lot, picnic tables and lights, would benefit all Brea residents.

“The world is changing. I hate to see it, but you just don’t send children to the park without any supervision at all,” Blamer said.

Mead, who takes care of six mentally handicapped foster children and whose home overlooks the park, said the only people who use the park are neighbors’ children and those who cross it to reach the Glenbrook clubhouse. The park, which Nelson described as “nothing more than a wide greenbelt with a ditch running down the middle,” is too small to attract families who want to hold picnics or toss a ball around, the residents say.

$85,000 in Improvements

“You’re putting a lot of money into restrooms that are not going to be used--except by the wrong people,” Mead said.

The city plans to spend up to $85,000 for the improvements, which have been modified to meet neighbors’ demands. The number of picnic tables and barbecue pits, for example, was reduced from 15 to seven.

Haluska commended the city for its work but said the problem remains. “It is a very low-key property. . . . If this were a large park where kids are playing soccer, baseball--where they are supervised--bathrooms are a necessity. But this is a little neighborhood park and they can get home very quickly.”