Schools Sued Over Alleged Abduction of 2 Children

An Orange County couple have sued the Placentia Unified School District for allegedly directing abductors to their children’s classrooms--even though the district knew the two boys had been abducted before, according to court documents.

Because of the earlier incident in a family custody dispute, the boys’ school records were “red tagged” to show that they were not allowed to leave John Tynes School in Placentia unless accompanied by their father or stepmother, according to the suit filed Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court.

Frank A. Valencia and Martha Valencia are “devastated” over the disappearance last October of Frank, 9, and Robert, 7, said M. Terry Kling, their attorney. Although the boys have been located in Northern California, they have not been returned to the couple.

The Valencias could not be reached for comment, and Kling would say only that the family lives within the Placentia Unified School District. The district serves the north Orange County city of Placentia and portions of nearby Yorba Linda, Fullerton and Anaheim.

Ongoing Dispute

Only sketchy details were available about the alleged abduction last October, Kling said, and less is known about the one that occurred three years earlier. However, both are linked to a complicated, ongoing custody dispute.

According to the lawsuit, an unidentified man and woman who were looking for the boys visited Ruby Drive School in Placentia last Oct. 21 and asked school employees where Frank and Robert could be found.

A school employee found out that the boys attended John Tynes School and told the couple, the lawsuit said. About noon, Robert apparently went to his brother’s classroom and told Frank’s teacher that their aunt was on campus and wanted to talk to them, according to the lawsuit.

Frank’s teacher then “allowed the minor child to leave the classroom, after which both minor children were abducted from the schoolgrounds,” the suit says.

Kling said school officials reported the incident to the Placentia Police Department. A police spokesman refused to comment on the case, but Kling said that “the police have located the children and a custody battle has arisen as a result of this.”

This is not the first custody dispute in the Valencia household. Kling said the children apparently were with their father in 1984 when their mother took them. Kling said she didn’t know who had custody at the time. The mother has since died. Frank Valencia got the children back last August, only two months before they were taken again.

“The maternal grandmother of the children wants custody of the children,” said Kling, who would not reveal the woman’s name or place of residence.

Not only were the boys taken from school while classes were going on, but school officials apparently had been warned not to let the children leave campus with anyone but Frank or Martha Valencia, she said.

The school district has not been served with the suit yet, and a district spokeswoman refused to comment Thursday. But the spokeswoman did say that children have to be signed out through school offices if they leave schoolgrounds.

Be Signed Out

“Whenever a parent comes to pick up a child, they would go to the school office, and there they would identify themselves,” said Dona Bylund, a district spokeswoman. Parents would have to be listed on an emergency card, and children “do have to be signed out,” she said.

But that procedure broke down, Kling said.

“The school had been notified that there had been a previous problem,” Kling said. “The children were not to leave the school with anyone other than Mr. or Mrs. Valencia or both. . . .

“With the existing problems in and around schoolgrounds today, the divulging of information relative to the location of particularly young children like this is extremely dangerous,” she said.