Ex-Parks Worker Gets 3 Years for Molestation

A former city employee at Reseda Park was sentenced to three years imprisonment Friday for molesting a 6-year-old boy.

Lars Juden, 38, who coached young people in athletics at the park since 1983, pleaded guilty Friday to child molestation. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors dropped a second child molestation charge.

Juden and another man, Ronald Ray Rudd, a 39-year-old volunteer at the park, molested the boy last July and August in the park office and in a van across the street. They were arrested in August, and Juden was fired.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Kathryne Ann Stoltz could have sentenced Juden to up to eight years in prison, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Eduards R. Abele. But Abele said he was “quite satisfied” with Juden’s sentence because the guilty plea saved the boy the pain of having to take the stand. Juden has no prior convictions for child molestation, he said.

Rudd, who admitted that he has twice before been convicted of child molestation, was sentenced in September to 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to three counts of child molestation.

At Juden’s preliminary hearing, Los Angeles police Detective Joseph Diglio quoted Juden as saying, “If the kid didn’t come to the park alone, these things wouldn’t happen.”