Parents Erect Sign Alleging Molestation

An 8-by-4-foot sign alleging that a 13-year-old child molester is living in the area has been removed from the front yard of the modest home of Tim and Cina Stasik, but the turmoil in the east Oceanside neighborhood is far from over.

“I have sympathy for both sets of parents, but I think that this public display of a personal problem has hurt both of the youngsters involved,” said a neighbor who asked not to be identified. “This should have been handled among the two families and the authorities, and not in the press.”

The Stasiks put up the sign, which read: “Caution Parents. Watch Your Children. Thirteen-Year-Old Admitted Child Molester In This Neighborhood” Tuesday and removed it Wednesday night.

Cina Stasik said she and her husband erected the sign as a way to alert other parents to a dangerous situation. She said they also went door-to-door in the immediate neighborhood, telling parents of small children that their 6-year-old son had been sexually assaulted by the neighborhood youth.

Tim Stasik said the sign and publicity were intended to “alert other people to the fact that it isn’t just adults that they have to be afraid of, that kids can do this sort of thing, too.”

He said the incident “has changed my boy’s life. He has to face this kid every day. . . . He’s afraid.”

The Stasiks said they have talked to the parents of the 13-year-old, but, Tim says, the only real answer is “for them to move out of the neighborhood or for us to do it.”

“It would be a great financial burden for me to move, but I am thinking about doing it anyway,” he said.

Oceanside police confirmed that they received a complaint Dec. 10 from the Stasiks, had investigated the alleged assault and had sent their findings to the county district attorney for possible prosecution.

The Stasiks say that the teen-ager, while baby-sitting, had fondled their son’s genitals and had attempted anal intercourse with the boy during a game of hide-and-seek.

Police spokesman Bob George said he could not comment on the incident or on the Stasiks’ unusual campaign to publicize the matter.

Police and the district attorney’s office said a similar situation, while unusual, has occurred before.

“This is a highly charged, emotional situation in which anything can happen,” said Carlos Armour, chief of the district attorney’s juvenile crimes division. In the other incident, in El Cajon, the accused youth was released from Juvenile Hall and sent home, only to be returned “for his own safety” after neighbors picketed his parents’ home and threatened him, Armour said.

Stasik said he received no response from police or from county juvenile authorities concerning his efforts to have the youngster prosecuted or to undergo psychiatric treatment.

George, the police spokesman, said the youth was 12 years old when the alleged assault occurred, and that a juvenile of that age is not deemed to have the ability to form criminal intent. In such cases, it must be shown that the youth was aware that his actions constituted a crime, George said.

The sign was removed from the Stasiks’ Magnolia Road yard after city code enforcement officers informed the couple that it was in violation of ordinances banning such signs from residential neighborhoods.

David Stadtlander, a Marine who lives nearby, called “the whole thing a wacky scene with television cameras parked in front of my house and news people running around. I think somebody’s gone crazy. This isn’t news, this is a tragedy.”