Former Children’s Worker Sentenced in Molestation Case

A former Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services supervisor, who had publicly questioned taboos against sexual activity between adults and children, was sentenced Friday to 26 years in prison for molesting neighborhood youngsters and his own grandchildren.

Gerald Davis, 55, of Long Beach, said nothing as Long Beach Superior Court Judge Sheila Pokras described him as someone who “worked to protect children” but “led a double life.” In private life, Pokras told Davis, “you never protected children.”

Davis had pleaded no contest last month to 20 of 23 molestation counts involving seven boys and girls between the ages of 1 and 9 years. Pokras dismissed the remaining three counts Friday “in the interest of justice.”

With the sentencing, Davis will serve a minimum of 13 years before he is eligible for parole, officials said.

Pokras could have sentenced Davis to a maximum of 46 years in prison, the sentence that had been sought by Deputy Dist. Atty. Ken Lamb and by Debbie Alanouf, the mother of two of the molested children.

Alanouf, in an appeal to Pokras for the longer sentence, said the molestation experiences would scar her children for life.

“We were sentenced by Gerald Davis to live the rest of our lives with his nauseating memory,” Alanouf told the judge before the sentencing.

Lamb said later that the danger Davis poses to the community warranted the maximum term, but that he “can understand how she (Pokras) rendered the decision she did.”

Davis’ attorney, Deputy Public Defender Jordan Yerian, said in an interview that both he and Davis were “disappointed” by the sentence.

“We had hoped for a lesser amount of time in state prison, and after parole that he be put in a highly structured, outpatient program allowing him to live some kind of semi-normal life,” Yerian said, adding that he would appeal the sentence at his client’s request within “three or four weeks.”

Davis, who had been a social worker for 28 years, was assigned as a supervisor in the Department of Children’s Services’ Belvedere office in East Los Angeles when he was arrested July 10 at his Long Beach home. He was fired a month later.

The department later was criticized for not having taken action against Davis sooner, especially in light of letters he had written earlier to various officials, in which he said authorities are too quick to label sexual activity involving children as abuse.

“It is time to acknowledge that our norms for nonviolent, erotic experiences of young people in this society fail to reflect actual practice,” Davis wrote in one 1989 letter to county Supervisor Deane Dana. “We need to begin to move away from criminal sanctions that seem to be based primarily on our need to punish irrationally the pleasure-seeking, loving drives of mankind.”

Such letters were sent to judges, the governor and several newspapers. Many were forwarded to the Department of Children’s Services, but Davis was not fired until after his arrest.

Last week, a lawyer for four of the youngsters Davis was accused of molesting filed a $24-million claim against the county. The claim--typically, if denied, such claims are precursors to lawsuits--alleges that Davis accosted the children on county time and that officials failed to respond to warnings about him.