$10-Million Claim Says Irvine Officer Molested Scout on Summer Trip

The parents of a 15-year-old Explorer Scout filed a $10-million claim against the City of Irvine Wednesday, alleging that a police sergeant who was an adviser to a police-sponsored Explorer post sexually molested the boy on an outing last summer in Northern California.

Less than an hour after the claim was filed, the Irvine police announced that Sgt. Robert E. Kredel, 39, had been suspended from duty with pay. According to a prepared police statement, the department “was contacted by investigators of the Orange County district attorney’s office notifying the department that their office was conducting an investigation alleging misconduct between a sworn member of our department and a member of our Irvine Police Department Explorer post.”

Lt. Mike White, head of the department’s internal affairs division, said the district attorney’s office informed him that it was “taking the lead in this investigation,” but he said the department’s own investigation would begin immediately.

Deputy Dist. Atty. David L. Himelson, chief of the county’s sexual assault and child abuse unit, declined to confirm that Kredel, a special events coordinator for the department who oversees activities at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, was the subject of an investigation.

A source close to the case said that four other members of the Explorer post were scheduled to be interviewed by district attorney’s investigators Wednesday.

In a brief telephone conversation, Kredel also declined comment, saying: “I think until the investigation is complete it would hinder the investigation if I offered any direct statements.” He added that he had not been interviewed by investigators but had discussed his status with Irvine Police Chief Leo Peart.

The claim against the city also names the Police Department and Kredel as an individual, alleging that the boy’s “civil rights have been violated and that a certain police officer/police officers and the municipal entities are involved in a civil conspiracy, and that having become aware of the sexual molestation of the minor child claimant, they have conspired together to hide the true facts of said incident.”

The city must respond within 30 days to the claim. If the city rejects the claim, the family can proceed with a civil suit.

According to the claim, the youth was “sexually molested” the first week of August, 1986, at Angels Camp, during a water-skiing trip with at least one other Explorer. The alleged Calaveras County incident, said R. Q. Shupe, a Santa Ana attorney representing the family, began with Kredel’s offer to give the boy a back massage.

The boy did not mention the incident to his parents when he returned from the trip, but the couple “witnessed the very immediate deterioration of their relationship with their minor son after said sexual molestation,” the claim says.

As a result of the experience, the claim says, the boy was unable to sleep and began doing poorly in school, dropping from a 3.3 grade-point average to 1.75. Eventually, he became suicidal and was referred by his parents to the emergency response section of the county’s social services department, which placed him in a south Orange County shelter.

A counselor at the facility subsequently informed the boy’s parents that she believed that the boy had been sexually molested and, within three days of that determination, the counselor also informed the district attorney’s office, Shupe said.

The claim also alleges that Kredel subsequently threatened the boy “with great bodily harm should he divulge the facts of said molestation, including his parents.”

Kredel is an 11-year veteran of the Irvine police force, according to a sworn deposition he gave in an unrelated civil suit in 1986. He began working for the Costa Mesa Police Department in 1968 and remained there until 1975, when he joined the Irvine department.

When not coordinating special events, he is a supervising sergeant assigned to the department’s traffic bureau, Kredel said in the deposition. He said he completed the three-month Orange County police officers’ academy at Golden West College and later attended Orange Coast College and graduated from UC Irvine with a bachelor’s degree in business.