Didn’t Expect Arrests : Girl Not Sorry She Turned In Parents

The 13-year-old Tustin girl who made headlines when she turned in her parents to police for drug possession said Thursday that she would do it again.

But she said she has advised other children who are thinking about following her example to “talk with their parents first.”

Deanna Young, a freshman at Tustin High School, spoke in the Santa Ana office of her parents’ attorney after a judge allowed Bobby and Judith Young to enroll in a drug diversion program rather than face charges of cocaine possession.

They are scheduled to return to court May 8 when a judge will review their progress. At that time, the drug possession charges could be dropped. “I’m glad they didn’t get a hard sentence--jail time,” Deanna said later. It was the first time she had discussed the case with reporters.

She said she had not expected her parents to be arrested when she carried a bag containing about an ounce of cocaine and a smaller amount of marijuana into the Tustin police station Aug. 13 and told officers it belonged to her parents.

“I thought the drugs would be taken away and that would be it,” said Deanna, seated next to her mother and father. “I didn’t want them to go to jail.”

The arrests of Bobby Young, a bartender and self-employed contractor, and Judith Young, a clerk in the federal Bankruptcy Court, captured national headlines and prompted at least four other California youths to turn in their parents for alleged drug use or sales.

Deanna said she has corresponded with youngsters who did what she did. “Some of them wrote to me; some of them I wrote to” after reading about their cases, she said. “I wanted to understand how it was for them.”

Some letters were from children who were considering informing on their parents but have not made a decision yet, her father added.

Deanna’s advice to them: “They should talk to their parents and try to solve it with them first.”

Asked about police statements that Deanna had pleaded with her parents to stop using drugs, Deanna said: “It didn’t get me anywhere.”

Talking to reporters outside Orange County Municipal Judge C. Robert Jameson’s courtroom earlier in the day, Bobby Young said he and his wife “didn’t use drugs. We’ve never been seen using drugs; we were charged with drugs in our home.”

Neither the Youngs nor their attorney would discuss what the cocaine was doing in the family’s home.

After her parents’ arrest, Deanna was placed in a shelter for abused and abandoned children and while there, she said: “I had my doubts” about having gone to the police.

But with her parents out of jail and the family “much closer” as a result of the much-publicized case, Deanna said, “I’d do it again” if it were necessary.