2 Molestation Cases Prompt Fingerprinting

After two recent child-molestation cases in city facilities, Los Angeles plans to fingerprint 2,000 part-time day-care and recreation workers and is considering fingerprinting volunteers to determine if they have criminal records that disqualify them from working with children.

Two part-time workers in an Echo Park day-care center were arrested in October on molestation charges. Councilwoman Gloria Molina revealed the arrests Tuesday, complaining that the two Los Angeles men, as well as some other day-care workers, had never been fingerprinted.

In August, a volunteer and a part-time coach at Reseda Park in the San Fernando Valley were charged with molesting a 6-year-old boy. The volunteer, who pleaded guilty, admitted that he has twice been convicted of child molestation.

Elliott Porter, head of personnel for the Department of Recreation and Parks, said Wednesday, “We decided that in order that something like this will never happen again, or at least so that we will not hire anyone who has a sex offense or any other serious offense, to go ahead with the fingerprinting.”

Fingerprints, which already are required of all full-time workers, would be used to determine if an existing or prospective employee has a criminal record. City police this week began training designated employees in the Department of Recreation and Parks to do the fingerprinting. The process will begin in three weeks and take until the end of the year to complete at a cost of about $35,000, Porter said.

Porter conceded that the city failed to get prints on the two latest suspects, as well as on 10 other employees working in nine state-funded day-care centers run by the city. The state requires that all day-care workers--full- and part-time--be fingerprinted before they can begin work.

“There’s no question that we were at fault,” Porter said.

He acknowledged, too, that the city failed to notify the state Department of Social Services of the most recent molestation case, as required. Centers that get state money must notify the department within 24 hours after an incident or allegation.

The case, Porter agreed, has left the city with “tremendous” legal liability.

Porter also revealed that the city is investigating whether to take disciplinary action against the two supervisors responsible for fingerprinting day-care workers and reporting the molestation case at the Echo Park Recreation Center.

When employees are hired, they are instructed to get fingerprinted and the supervisors should make sure that it is done, Porter said.

A lawyer for the state, Daniel Garcia, said the violations involved in the Echo Park case are “very serious” and the penalties to the city could include fines and loss of license for the center.

Los Angeles has more than 50 other centers that are not state-funded, Porter said. In the past, the 2,000 part-time employees at these facilities were not fingerprinted, but in light of the recent molestation cases, all will be required to go through the process, he said.

Ten day-care workers were fingerprinted on Wednesday. They all work in state-funded centers run by the city, which means they were supposed to have been fingerprinted when they were hired, Porter said.

He noted that checking for criminal backgrounds is not a fail-safe way of protecting children against being molested by an employee.

When Molina raised the molestation issue, she complained that one suspect in the Echo Park case had a prior arrest record.

Charles Chavez, 33, a van driver for the facility, was charged with four felony counts of performing lewd acts upon children under 14. He pleaded not guilty Oct. 20.

According to court records and police, Chavez was arrested in 1985 for investigation of lewd conduct with a prostitute. Records filed with the current case state that disposition of the 1985 case is “unknown.”

Even if Chavez had been fingerprinted when he began working at the center in 1987, the print check probably would have turned up negative because these searches only reveal a criminal conviction, not a mere arrest.

Chavez’s lawyer, Lair Franklin, declined to discuss the case, and the second man arrested at the center, Simon Bermudez, 37, could not be reached for comment.