San Clemente Police Accused Them of Molesting Their Baby : Couple File $2-Million Suit Over Sex Charges

A Massachusetts couple arrested last summer on a crowded San Clemente beach for kissing their toddler’s rump filed a $2-million federal lawsuit Wednesday against the city and Police Chief Kelson McDaniel.

Eduoardo and Yvonne DiAngelis were arrested June 15 on suspicion of oral copulation and held for 14 hours before being released. No charges were filed against the couple.

In July, they filed a $5-million claim of false imprisonment against the city, but San Clemente officials rejected it last month.

San Clemente police arrested the DiAngelises after a witness said she saw them molesting their 13-month-old son. The parents were booked into the city jail and the boy, Cairo, was taken to Orangewood, the county’s shelter for abused and neglected children.

Yvonne DiAngelis, 20, who was a nursing mother, claims that she was ordered to remove her clothes and was left in a “bare cell in a soaking wet paper smock for over 12 hours,” according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.

The suit alleges that the police “roughly manhandled” the couple and treated Yvonne DiAngelis in a “callous and uncaring fashion.” It also alleges that the Police Department “falsely, publicly, wickedly and maliciously accused them of child molestation and abuse and sexual crimes.”

The DiAngelises are seeking a minimum of $2 million in damages for civil rights violations, defamation, false arrest and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Police Chief McDaniel could not be reached for comment on the suit. A police spokeswoman said no one else on duty Wednesday evening could comment on the case.

“I’m not aware of the suit and couldn’t comment on it,” said San Clemente Mayor Kenneth Carr.

George S.L. Dunlop, the couple’s attorney, said this is a “classic civil rights violation” indicative of the “kind of nonsense that goes on down here.”

“They (the police) treated them abominably in jail,” Dunlop said.

He said police officers accused the DiAngelises of being vagrants, when, in fact, the couple presented valid driver’s licenses, passports and a savings account passbook that showed they had $10,000 on deposit at a Bank of America in San Clemente. Yvonne DiAngelis is a native of Germany, and her husband, 38, is a carpenter and landscaper, Dunlop said.

He said the couple had planned to move into the area and were staying with friends before they were arrested. After the incident, they changed their minds and are living elsewhere, but he declined to say where.

After he was released from jail, DiAngelis told The Times that he and his wife did nothing wrong.

“There were surfers all over the place, people standing around. Am I going to do something illegal and a felony out in public in front of everybody? Come on. . . . We did nothing wrong at all. Any parent right now is probably empathizing with us,” DiAngelis said in a June 17 interview.

In a June 30 interview, McDaniel said he believed that the parents were guilty of “deviant behavior” because they kissed their child on “an orifice.”

However, he said the Police Department lacked enough evidence to prosecute the couple. He also defended his department’s actions, saying there were no detectives on duty that night and only detectives can question suspects.