Van Nuys Jury Studies Liability : Blame in Molestation Weighed

As a police matter, the facts of the case seemed clear.

A 6-year-old boy reported that he had been with two elders from his Torrance church on a Sunday afternoon mission to Harbor Convalescent Hospital when a man he had never seen before lured him into a treatment room and sexually molested him.

The boy said he will never forget his attacker--a toothless, bearded man with horribly swollen legs that were covered with open sores.

That description pointed investigators to Alfred Ray Hatch, a mentally disturbed patient at the hospital, who admitted that he molested the boy, sheriff’s detectives said.

That was more than five years ago, and authorities say the 52-year-old schizophrenic, who was committed to a state mental hospital for an indefinite period after a competency hearing, probably will never face criminal charges.

But the question of who should be held accountable for the assault has not been entirely resolved.

Van Nuys Trial

A Van Nuys Superior Court jury last week began deliberating the question of whether the administration and staff of Harbor Convalescent Hospital should share the blame for the assault. No verdict had been reached by Friday; deliberations will resume Monday.

In closing arguments Tuesday, lawyer Richard Farnell asked the jury to award more than $10 million in damages to the boy, now 12, and his mother. Farnell argued that the hospital was negligent because it let the boy wander unattended down its hallways on Jan. 22, 1984.

The boy “is going to have to live with this for the rest of his life,” Farnell said. “This is probably the most horrible series of events you will ever hear about.”

But Ray Moore, representing the hospital, argued that the attack could not have been foreseen and that the hospital could not properly treat patients if it had to constantly police its visitors. “The real question is: Did the hospital properly balance security with its therapeutic duties?” Moore said. “This was an open facility, not a prison.”

No Warning Given

Moore said Hatch was transferred to Harbor Convalescent Hospital from another facility that gave no warning that he might be dangerous.

Moore also contested assertions by the boy’s mother that he was a normal child before the attack. Moore said he presented witnesses who said the boy had a history of behavioral problems and learning disabilities that dated back to the age of 2.

The lawsuit filed by the boy and his mother, who now live in Huntington Beach, originally included a second defendant, Faith of Our Fathers Church in Torrance.

On the day of the alleged attack, the youngster went to the convalescent hospital with two church members for a regular Sunday prayer meeting with patients. The lawsuit charged that the church, now called the Living Word Fellowship, was partly liable for the assault because the two parishioners left the boy unattended while they conducted the prayer meeting.

The mother sometimes left the boy in the care of other parishioners.

But the church was dropped from the lawsuit last month when it agreed to a settlement, without admitting liability. The church will pay the boy and his mother $200,000 each immediately and guarantee that the youngster will receive at least $600,000 more. The future payment will be reduced by any damages that the convalescent hospital is ordered to pay, said the church’s lawyer, Tony Serritella.

Serritella had argued that the Torrance congregation could not be held liable because the hospital visits were the personal ministry of the two men and not church-sanctioned events.

Church Denies Liability

“The church still denies any liability in this matter,” Serritella said. “The settlement was a financial decision by the church’s insurance carriers.”

Farnell argued Tuesday that Harbor Convalescent Hospital, 21521 S. Vermont Ave. in the Harbor Gateway near Torrance, had been negligent in several ways.

He said that the hospital was not licensed to provide special care for a mental patient like Hatch and that administrators failed to properly research the patient’s background. Hatch was admitted to the hospital on the recommendation of a physician. A background search would have shown that Hatch had previously been committed for 10 years to a state mental hospital and had previously been accused of child molestation, Farnell said.

Hospital employees lost track of Hatch for at least 45 minutes on the afternoon of the alleged assault, Farnell said. “If they had supervised him properly, this never would have happened,” he argued.

Farnell said the hospital should have been on notice that its supervision was inadequate because of two previous incidents: A month earlier, police picked up a patient who wandered away from the hospital undetected and, just four days before the alleged assault, a state inspector told administrators that they needed more supervisors on duty.

Farnell said the damage to the youngster cannot be calculated. The boy has been hospitalized for severe depression and anxiety and has attempted suicide 10 times.

The youngster attends public school but requires tutoring and has trouble communicating with other children, Farnell said.

He said the boy should be put in a residential treatment program for at least six months and then given outpatient counseling, along with his mother. Farnell asked the jury to award about $400,000 to cover past and future costs of therapy and hospitalization and $10 million for pain and suffering.

The youngster “looks at himself as spoiled goods,” Farnell said. “The quality of his life will never be what it should have been.” He is “permanently scarred.”

Moore asked the jury to put aside such emotional pleas and to judge the case logically.

He said the hospital had provided a reasonable amount of security without jeopardizing its goal of providing a “homelike therapeutic atmosphere” for patients. “Foolproof security can’t be provided,” he said. “The standard for licensed nursing facilities does not require a foolproof system.”

Moore conceded that the boy had been molested but said the hospital could not have foreseen the crime. The facilities where Hatch lived before gave no indication that he had been violent or sexually active, and he did not show those tendencies in his first 13 months at Harbor Convalescent Hospital, Moore said.

‘Interfering With Recovery’

Further, an outside doctor who ordered Hatch, a Medi-Cal patient, admitted to the hospital did not order that he should be restrained or kept away from other people, Moore said.

Moore also charged that after the incident, the boy’s mother had failed to bring him to psychotherapy appointments and had not given him drugs ordered by his doctors.

She “has actively been interfering with the recovery of the boy from the time of this incident,” Moore said. “She has actively interfered with his therapy from the beginning.”