Patient’s Mother Seeks Answers in Rape, Abortion : Camarillo: The suit on behalf of the retarded woman claims that state hospital officials sought authorization 10 days after the operation.

Eighteen months after her mentally retarded daughter was forced to undergo an abortion after she was allegedly raped at Camarillo State Hospital, Emma Marquez is still looking for answers from the state bureaucracy about the incidents.

Marquez, 62, a resident of San Diego’s Logan Heights barrio, said the abortion left her daughter, Rosemary Terraza, 34, traumatized and asking questions of her own. Terraza has been a patient at Camarillo off and on since Nov. 19, 1971. A Camarillo staff report put her IQ at 19, equivalent to that of a 2 1/2-year-old.

“Whenever I visit her, she holds her stomach and asks me, ‘Mom, where’s my baby?’ It’s been almost two years since the abortion, but she still remembers the pregnancy,” said Marquez, a widow and native of Mexico.

Camarillo is home to 1,100 male and female patients who are mentally ill or developmentally disabled. According to medical records made available to The Times, Terraza’s pregnancy went unnoticed by Camarillo officials until she was six months pregnant.

Marquez acted on her daughter’s behalf and sued Camarillo State Hospital in January, after the state rejected a claim that she submitted for damages resulting from the abortion. The state attorney general’s office, which is representing Camarillo, has asked that the lawsuit be heard in Ventura County, and a change of venue hearing is scheduled later this month in San Diego Superior Court.

The medical records show that the abortion was supposedly authorized by Marquez and Camarillo officials. However, this was contested by Marquez, who is her daughter’s guardian. She said she has tried unsuccessfully to learn how the state obtained authorization for the abortion, which hospital records show occurred during the 24th week of pregnancy.

Terraza’s medical records show that the abortion was done at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks after a sonogram revealed that the fetus was deformed. However, Marquez and her attorney, J. Manuel Sanchez of San Diego, argued that state officials never provided her with compelling evidence of the fetus’ deformity.

The stage at which the abortion was performed is also disputed by Marquez, who said a state social worker told her Terraza was actually seven months pregnant at the time of the abortion. The social worker declined to comment and asked that his name not be disclosed.

Legally, state law allows doctors to perform abortions through the 27th week of pregnancy, but most doctors seldom perform abortions beyond the 24th week unless the mother’s life is in danger or the fetus does not stand a chance of surviving, according to medical experts interviewed by The Times.

Marquez said she refused to authorize the abortion, despite intensive pressure from officials at the San Diego Regional Center for the Developmentally Disabled, who wanted her to sign an authorization form.

According to the claim filed by Marquez with the state, officials from the regional center told her on Dec. 3, 1988, that her daughter was pregnant and needed an abortion. Records from Los Robles show that Terraza’s abortion took place on Nov. 23, 1988, 10 days before Marquez said she was notified of Terraza’s pregnancy.

In the claim, Marquez said regional center officials informed her on Dec. 5, 1988, that an abortion had been performed on her daughter but did not say when.

Los Robles spokeswoman Kathy Flaherty said privacy laws and the hospital’s policy prohibited the release of patient information or comment about the abortion.

The regional center is the California Developmental Services Department’s local clearinghouse for dealing with developmentally disabled people and provides services for retarded people. Center officials failed to return repeated phone calls to their offices.

A Camarillo report noted that Terraza was confined to one particular area and was not allowed to roam the hospital grounds. In a telephone interview, Don Bowling, a Developmental Services spokesman in Sacramento, said Camarillo officials “were under pressure from us to try to find out who the father was.”

“Genetic tests were done on the fetus to help us determine who the father was. Particularly with DNA research, once a sample is taken it’s not difficult to get a match. We made it very clear to the facility that the father had to be located,” Bowling said.

Greg Sandin, another Developmental Services official in Sacramento, said the agency is still investigating to find out who impregnated Terraza, but the results have not been encouraging.

“The investigation is still open, but nothing has been solved in this respect. We still don’t know who the father is,” Sandin said.

According to state records, Terraza has been a patient at Camarillo on and off for almost 20 years. There have been times when Marquez took her home for several months, but Terraza would always return to Camarillo.

Marquez said she visits her daughter two or three times a year and usually brings her back to San Diego to spend a week or two with her. A Camarillo report noted that “Rosemary looks forward to visits from her mother and sister.” In addition to the 22-year-old sister, Terraza has a teen-age brother who is in high school.

“My daughter had never had any problems at Camarillo until this happened. I never dreamed something this terrible could ever happen to her. I went to see her two months ago and she was fine. They let me bring her home for four days,” Marquez said.

The woman, whose husband died in an auto accident in Mexico seven years ago, said she debated over suing the state. She said she finally acted at the urging of her other daughter and went to the Chicano Federation, a Latino activist group in San Diego, which put her in touch with attorney Sanchez.

State officials are tight-lipped about the alleged rape and the abortion, except to acknowledge that Terraza was pregnant and her fetus aborted. A state report written after the abortion said Terraza is now required to take birth control pills, along with her daily medication.

Last July, the California Board of Control rejected a damage claim submitted by Marquez over her daughter’s pregnancy. Her attorney, Sanchez, filed a civil lawsuit against the state in January.

Marquez and her other daughter, who did not want to be identified, said they were told by regional center officials in San Diego that Terraza’s abortion was necessary because the fetus was deformed. Bowling and other Developmental Services officials refused to disclose the reason for the abortion.

However, medical records show that some time in early November, 1988, Terraza began “complaining of enlargement of her abdomen.” X-rays were taken of the “mass” in her abdomen and Camarillo officials realized that Terraza was pregnant. A subsequent sonogram “revealed a single viable intrauterine pregnancy.”

Further examination of the sonogram revealed problems with the fetus, medical records show. An entry in Terraza’s “Personal History and Physical Examination” records noted that the fetus’ head was too small at 24 weeks.

A post-abortion analysis of the fetus showed that its organs were normal but that it had suffered serious injury when the skull failed to fully enclose the brain.

Sanchez said he remains unconvinced that the fetus was in fact brain-damaged.

“They haven’t given us any evidence that the baby had to be aborted. There were no checks or balances here. They did as they wanted with her,” Sanchez said.