Youth Volunteer Is Charged With Molesting Boys

A Van Nuys man charged with molesting three boys and suspected of molesting four others used his position as a youth volunteer to prey on inner-city Latino boys in a methodical, well-organized series of sexual assaults, police said Friday.

Landreth Harrison, 53, is the target of a widening investigation by detectives who searched his Van Nuys trailer home and found lists of children’s names, forms from parents giving him permission to take their children on trips and photos of children on weekend excursions, police said Friday.

“This has been going on a long time,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Dale Barraclough, who said police turned up another box of evidence in a second search of Harrison’s property Friday.

Harrison, a cashier at a Northridge hardware store, was arrested April 19 after a pizza delivery man reported seeing naked boys in his Van Nuys trailer. Neighbors said they saw boys camping out in a tent near the trailer or leaving on excursions with Harrison nearly every weekend for almost two years.

“The children that stayed with him seemed to be happy,” a neighbor said. “Harrison worked on their bikes. They used their skateboards around here.”

Harrison was charged last week with five counts of molestation and two counts of sexual assault involving three boys ages 7 to 11. Detectives also plan to seek charges involving four other boys, including two he met as a volunteer at the Boys & Girls Club of the San Fernando Valley in Pacoima, based on new evidence of abuse that occurred during the past year, authorities said.

All of the victims are Latino boys from poor neighborhoods, Barraclough said.

“He put himself out as a good neighbor, a good guy who wanted to take the kids and get them out of the violence in their neighborhoods,” Barraclough said. “He had parents sign permission slips and medical releases in case the kids got hurt.”

Harrison pleaded not guilty and was being held in the Los Angeles County Jail in lieu of $210,000 bail. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for May 22 in Van Nuys Municipal Court.

Harrison was fired from the Boys & Girls Club in May of last year and then worked as a volunteer from June to August at a youth center in Harbor City, police said. A preliminary check there found no reports of problems with Harrison, but the investigation continues, Barraclough said.

He would not identify a third youth organization where Harrison reportedly volunteered.

Harrison was dismissed by the Boys & Girls Club in Pacoima a year ago when officials learned that he took two club members, ages 11 and 12, on a weekend camping trip that was authorized by the boys’ parents but not by the club, Executive Director LeRoy Chase said Friday.

Harrison, who had worked as a volunteer at the club since September, 1989, had once asked and been denied permission to take children on an overnight trip, Chase said.

Chase said he contacted the commander of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division, Capt. Tim McBride, and on McBride’s advice questioned Harrison, the boys and their parents. Officials determined that Harrison had not abused the boys, so there was no police investigation, Chase and McBride said Friday.

Chase said he then dismissed Harrison and alerted parents that Harrison was no longer affiliated with the club.

But club officials said they did not know whether the children were examined for signs of abuse by a doctor or their parents.

The case has prompted club officials to review their screening procedures for volunteers, which Chase acknowledged were “not as formal as we would have liked them to be.”

It was not until last month that Harrison came to the attention of police again, in the report by the pizza delivery man.

Harrison took children to Disneyland and beach campgrounds, providing tents and camping gear, police said. His records and photos of the trips are now a key to the investigation.

The next-door neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said he asked Harrison why so many children came on weekends and Harrison told him that he was a Boy Scout master. The neighbor said the boys who stayed at the trailer never wore Boy Scout uniforms.

But police believe that Harrison “has been involved in Boy Scouts his entire life,” Barraclough said. Lou Salute, an administrator with the organization’s Los Angeles Area Council, said Harrison is a former Scoutmaster but has not been registered with the Scouts for at least two years.