La Palma : Suit Says Girl Was Put in Custody of Molester

A $1-million lawsuit was filed Thursday against the Orange County Department of Social Services for allegedly placing a 4-year-old girl in the custody of her father when it was known that he was a convicted child molester.

Denise Pattison claims that her daughter was molested continuously for almost two years while living with her father, John Jacobs, and that the Department of Social Services did nothing to remove the child from the home.

Pattison, who was divorced from Jacobs, had legal custody of the child. But social workers removed the girl from her mother’s home in 1984 after Jacobs reported to police that the child had been sexually molested by his ex-wife’s boyfriend, the suit said.

The suit alleged that social workers learned during their investigation that Jacobs had been convicted of molesting another daughter in 1975 and had received three years’ probation. Yet social workers recommended that the child be placed in her father’s custody in 1984.

Two years later, the child, who was then 6, was returned to her mother. The child later admitted to her therapist that it was her father who had molested her and not her mother’s boyfriend.