Daughter Turned In Couple : Parents in Cocaine Case Can Keep Girl

Bobby and Judith Young, who still face drug charges filed after their 13-year-old daughter turned them in to police for allegedly having an ounce of cocaine, were cleared Monday of allegations that they were unfit parents.

The ruling by Orange County Superior Court Judge David O. Carter, dismissing a petition filed by the county Department of Social Services, means that Deanna Young, who was to begin ninth grade today at Tustin High School, can remain in the permanent custody of her parents.

“We’re just all very happy to be all back together,” said Judith Young, smiling broadly after the short hearing in Orange County Juvenile Court in Orange.

Looking composed but self-conscious, the couple had walked arm in arm through a pack of television cameras and reporters before entering the courtroom. The press, generally barred from Juvenile Court proceedings, was allowed to attend Monday’s hearing with the agreement of attorneys for the county, the girl and her parents. Deanna was not present.

Bobby Young smiled when Carter announced his ruling, and he smiled again when asked in the court parking lot how Deanna has been doing since Aug. 21, when a Juvenile Court referee ruled that she could return home temporarily from the county children’s shelter while the Social Services Agency continued its investigation.

“She’s doing fine,” Bobby Young said. “She’s doing great.”

It was the first time either parent has spoken to the media since Aug. 13, when Deanna, their only child, carried a trash bag containing cocaine with an estimated street value of $2,800, a small amount of marijuana and drug-packaging material into the Tustin police station and claimed that it belonged to her mother and father.

The family has been hounded by reporters from across the country ever since, and at least 30 Hollywood producers have contacted their attorney, Gary L. Proctor of Santa Ana.

Proctor told reporters after the hearing that the family was not interested in a television movie based on its unusual experience--at least not now.

“At this point in time, we haven’t even discussed those issues,” Proctor said. “Right now, they’re interested in taking care of their daughter and solving the problems within the household. . ., rebuilding the family. We have to deal with the legal issues first. A lot has to do with how Deanna feels. Is this a message she feels strong enough about to lose a lot of privacy over? Right now, the privacy is really important to her and her family.”

Deanna and her parents have been staying at the home of friends, who were not identified, and Proctor said the members of the family have spent all their time together the last few weeks, traveling and meeting with attorneys. Neither of the Youngs has been able to return to work because of the media attention.

“It’s been too much,” the father said quietly.

Proctor said the Social Services Agency “was persuaded” that the family could resolve its own problems without intervention by county authorities. He said the family is undergoing private counseling but would not allow the couple to respond to questions about it.

“If they’re good people,” Proctor said, “they can resolve those problems.”

Proctor curtailed the couple’s remarks Monday, saying he was concerned about the criminal drug charges they still face.

Charged With Possession

Bobby Young, 49, a bartender at a Santa Ana tavern who also runs a masonry business from the family’s rented home, and his wife, 37, a federal bankruptcy court file clerk, have been charged with possession of cocaine.

They were arrested a few hours after their daughter told police she had “decided to do something about drugs in her home.” They later were released from jail on their own recognizance. They are scheduled to appear in court again Sept. 23.

But James J. Mulgrew, the deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, has said that he may recommend that the parents attend a drug diversion program, in which case the charges would be dismissed.

Both Proctor and Susan O’Brien, the attorney who represented Deanna in the custody proceedings, said they believe that the girl is thrilled to be reunited with her parents.

“It is our desire . . . to have this case dismissed without prejudice,” Wanda S. Florence, a county attorney for the Social Services Agency, told the judge in court. She said there was not sufficient evidence that the parents had provided an unfit home for their daughter to warrant prosecuting the case. Florence did not return reporters’ phone calls Monday.

Proctor said the social worker’s investigation into the Youngs’ home life concluded that Deanna believed the alleged drug use was causing marital problems.

He said the report concluded that many children “negatively experience divorce conflicts and negatively experience their parents’ fighting.”

Intervention by county authorities is warranted only in cases of neglect or abuse that don’t exist in the Young family, Proctor added, not “day-to-day problems that all families have.” The social worker who investigated the Youngs’ home life concluded that “they were good parents,” Proctor added.

“Whenever I have been around the child and her parents,” O’Brien said, “they have been very loving, very supportive.”

Initially ‘Apprehensive’

Deanna was initially “apprehensive about how her parents would take the news” that she had turned them in, O’Brien said. But after the family was reunited for a 10-minute meeting Aug. 15, O’Brien said, the girl was able to “make sure everybody was going to be OK.” She was “relieved and then wanted to go home,” the attorney said.

Although police who interviewed Deanna and then arrested her parents said she understood she would have to spend some time at Orangewood, the county children’s shelter, O’Brien said: “I don’t think she realized that she would be taken there . . . or have to stay that long.”

Five days after she arrived at the shelter, attorneys and other sources involved in the case said, Deanna was allowed to attend a four-day cheerleading camp at UC Irvine--in part to return some normalcy to her life, O’Brien said. It was on the last day of the camp, known as Tall Flags, that a Juvenile Court referee ruled that Deanna could go home to her parents until Monday’s decision.

Before she left the shelter, said one source who asked not to be identified, Deanna offered to help care for younger children at Orangewood.

“She ended up volunteering in the toddler unit,” the source said. “The staff loved her. . . . Social workers and those who had contact with them felt this family had more going for it than 99% of the families they come across. This family had enough going for it to heal the wounds.”