Sexual Abuse Charges Dropped Against Ex-Operator of Home

Orange County prosecutors, frustrated by attacks on the competency of a retarded man who was to be their star witness, agreed Friday to dismiss sexual abuse charges against former home-care operator Norlan Machado.

Superior Court Judge James A. Jackman found that the witness, a 25-year-old mentally retarded man who lived in one of Machado’s facilities for six years, could not tell fact from fiction, making his contradiction-riddled testimony against Machado essentially useless in court.

“I am vindicated,” said Machado, 29, of Cypress. “This whole ordeal has had an extreme emotional and financial toll on my family, and we’ve been subjected to ridicule and embarrassment, distortion and false allegations.

With the criminal charges against him dropped, Machado is still pursuing a $50-million defamation suit against the Development Disabilities Center of Orange County, the watchdog agency for retarded people that in mid-1987 first raised the charges that Machado sexually abused two residents.

He and his mother, Maria, once ran six small residential facilities for the mentally retarded in Orange and Los Angeles counties, but they were forced to close five of the homes after a state Department of Social Services investigation found that residents had been sexually exploited.

Maria Machado, 48, of Cypress runs two facilities in the Los Angeles area, Norlan Machado said, but he is prevented under an agreement with the state from taking any role in the operations because of the accusations against him.

Those allegations centered on Machado’s alleged coercion of several residents into performing sexual acts with him in 1985 and 1986.