D.A., County Counsel Resist Reforms, Grand Jury Says : Child Abuse: Panel says they have failed to join in measures to ensure fairness and prevent the unnecessary breakup of families.

Many county agencies have embraced wholesale reforms in the way authorities treat abused or neglected children, but the district attorney’s office and the San Diego County counsel’s office seem to be resisting change, the county grand jury said Monday.

In what amounted to a status report on the county’s child protective system, the grand jury said the County Board of Supervisors, the Department of Social Services and other agencies have taken a fresh look in recent months at their policies. The panel called last February for “profound change” in the system, saying families were too often being torn apart unnecessarily.

Only the district attorney’s office and the county counsel remain holdouts, the grand jury said Monday. District attorney spokesmen disputed that characterization, saying prosecutors are reviewing the process they use to bring to court those cases of alleged abuse. Officials at the county counsel’s office could not be reached for comment.

The update issued Monday by the grand jury marked the latest in its string of reports this year on the child-protective system, which is designed to identify, then safeguard children who are abused or neglected.

In February, the panel said county officials--from social workers to lawyers to judges--had developed a “mind-set” that abuse was everywhere. Frequently, it said, an accused parent was assumed guilty of molesting a child until proven innocent.

The grand jury probe was sparked by the case of an 8-year-old girl whose father was wrongly accused of raping her. He was absolved last December, only after DNA tests confirmed that he could not have been the attacker.

Prompted by the February report, the County Board of Supervisors in April approved a wide-ranging reform package. The board ordered better training for social workers, fairer rules of investigation and a greater emphasis on keeping families together whenever possible.

Other agencies have also seen fit to change, the grand jury said Monday, detailing a long list of reforms. The Juvenile Court has new suggestion boxes, the panel said. The Department of Social Services has begun training that emphasizes ethnic and cultural awareness in the placement of foster children.

But, the grand jury said Monday, neither the district attorney’s office nor the County Counsel’s office has “accepted any responsibility” for problems in the system nor “critically examined existing policies and procedures.”

In addition, the panel said, the district attorney’s office, which decides whether to bring criminal charges against suspected child abusers, has been “less than objective and consistent” in picking the cases it takes to court.

Rather than prosecuting those cases with strong proof of a molestation beyond a reasonable doubt, the office has pursued “weak” cases that seem likely to generate only a guilty plea to a lesser offense, knowing that both the penalties for conviction and the costs of a defense are high, the panel said.

Mike Pent, chief of the district attorney’s special operations section, said those allegations lack substance.

Ethical rules bar the government from bringing a case that can’t be proven in court, Pent said. Prosecutors do assess the evidence in a case as “weak,” “average” or “strong,” but those labels reflect tactics, not the merits of the case, he said.

Prosecutors do concede there were problems in the case of the 8-year-old girl, named Alicia, said Pent.

There has been, and still is, “a lot of reflection on the (Alicia) case,” with an eye toward review of the way supervisors and deputies exchange information, he said. “If (those policies) need to be corrected, they will be,” though there is no deadline for finishing that review, he said.

The county counsel’s office represents the Department of Social Services at Juvenile Court. Earlier this month, the grand jury said the county counsel’s office had sought to block its investigation of the child-protective system by making access to witnesses and records as difficult as possible.

On Monday, the grand jury again called for the county counsel’s office to hire more minority members and women, saying it has an “insufficient cultural and ethnic balance” among its Juvenile Court staff.

In a related report issued Monday, the grand jury repeated a warning that it has sounded before, that prospective foster parents should be carefully screened to ensure that they are interested in the temporary care of a child, not permanently adopting one.

Placing an infant or young child with foster parents hoping to adopt creates an “irreconcilable conflict” with biological parents seeking reunification, the jury said.