Child Deaths Rise in Antelope Valley : Neglect: Geographic isolation, a lack of services and drug use are blamed for the alarming increase in fatal abuse cases.

It is a nightmarish roster even in Los Angeles County, where violent crime has become commonplace.

A 9-month-old boy is shaken to death; a 5-month-old girl is fatally drugged; a newborn is killed and left in a dumpster; a 13-month-old girl dies after being raped and sodomized; another newborn is killed and left in a trash bag, and a little girl is beaten to death.

These cases might seem like the work of a maniac on the loose.

But in fact, prosecutors say, all the children were killed by their parents or guardians. And all died recently in one community: the Antelope Valley.

In the past 14 months, authorities say, as many as seven Antelope Valley youngsters have died at the hands of their guardians. The deaths represent about 10% of the child abuse homicides annually in Los Angeles County, in a region that has only 2.8% of the county’s residents.

“We’re stunned at the numbers,” said Stephen Cooley, head of the district attorney’s Lancaster office.

Although experts are hesitant to draw conclusions about what contributed to the deaths, they point to several important characteristics of the area and the individual cases:

* Even before the latest spate of killings, the Antelope Valley had what some authorities consider the worst child abuse problem in Los Angeles County, in part, experts say, because of the region’s geographic isolation.

* Services for abused children in the area have declined at a time when the incidents of child abuse and child abuse homicide have been rising.

* In at least five of the seven child death cases, the accused killers have histories of methamphetamine use. Experts say the drug sometimes triggers violent behavior.

In many respects, records show, the parents or guardians in the Antelope Valley deaths fit the national profile of adults who are likely to abuse their children.

They tend to be poor, underemployed or unemployed, substance abusers, have criminal records and are involved in unstable relationships.

The Antelope Valley cases, experts say, also reflect a nationwide crisis of child abuse.

Two years ago, the U. S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect called the problem “a national emergency.” Last week, the federal panel reported little progress. At a news conference Thursday in Washington, panel leaders blamed this, in part, on a lack of government action.

About 2.7 million children in the United States were reported abused or maltreated in 1991--4,200 per 100,000 youngsters. And nearly 1,400 children, slightly more than 2 per 100,000, died from abuse, according to the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse.

In Los Angeles County, 125,702 children, 5,353 per 100,000, were reported abused in the year ending in June. An expected high of at least 60 children (2.5 per 100,000) will be classified as child abuse homicides for 1991, county officials said.

But grim as those numbers are, the rate of deaths and abuse in the Antelope Valley are grimmer for a community with only 250,000 residents, about 78,000 of them children.

The region had 6,347 children reported abused during the last fiscal year (8,137 per 100,000), about 50% above the county’s average. The seven deaths from June, 1991, to last July (about 8 per 100,000) is more than three times the county’s annual rate.

Complaints of child abuse filed with authorities in the Antelope Valley also have been increasing faster than in the county.

The 125,000 children reported abused in the county in the 1991-1992 fiscal year marked a 17% increase compared to two years earlier. But the Antelope Valley’s 6,347 children was a 26% increase, the second highest among 15 county Department of Children’s Services offices.

The per capita number of reported abuse incidents in Antelope Valley that ended up as criminal cases was the highest among the 18 sheriff’s station areas in 1991--nearly 2.9 per 1,000 residents.

Some experts believe that the remoteness of the High Desert--about 70 miles from downtown Los Angeles--plays a significant part in the community’s child abuse trend.

Isolated and developing areas where families may not have a nearby network of relatives, and where neighbors may be distant, appear to have higher levels of abuse, said Deanne Tilton, executive director of the Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect.

“You have a real ripe environment for victimization” in such remote communities, said Tilton, who is also vice chairwoman of the federal child abuse advisory board. The interagency council is a coordinating body established by the Board of Supervisors in 1977.

“We joke about the sand and the wind causing the cases. But we joke because we’re frustrated,” said Lt. Joe Surgent, head of the Sheriff’s Department child abuse detail.

Experts say another contributing factor to the Antelope Valley’s child abuse problem is the region’s lack of medical and other services compared to the rest of the county.

The Children’s Center of the Antelope Valley, run by a private, nonprofit organization, was supposed to help remedy that with new and broader services when it opened in July, 1990. But the center has failed to maintain the services that existed before its arrival.

Esther Gillies, who took over as the center’s executive director in September, 1991, said its officials feared that the operation might collapse if it tried to take on too much at first, especially because raising money always has been a concern. The center receives little government money.

But Gillies said her predecessor at the center did not continue two programs that Gillies acknowledges were crucial. One involved volunteers helping evaluate abuse victims brought to hospitals. The other had volunteers making presentations on abuse at the schools.

Both programs had been run by Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center, a public hospital in Lancaster. But officials there decided in the late 1980s that the number of abuse victims was becoming too large. So they helped spur the creation of the center to handle the task.

Once the center opened, however, the two volunteer programs died as the center’s original director focused instead on providing psychotherapy to sex abuse victims. That remains the center’s main function, although Gillies said she is hoping to branch out.

Another program for which the center drew much early praise--hiring a specially trained doctor to assess child sex abuse victims locally rather than sending them more than 70 miles to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center--also lasted only a few months after the facility opened.

Gillies said the restoration of the medical program for sex abuse victims is her top priority, something she hopes to have in place later this year. She said she also hopes to restore both volunteer programs, but has no timetable.

The center gets about 50 calls a month from Antelope Valley residents seeking therapy services, Gillies said. But she said her staff can only handle about one-fourth of those, and tries to refer the others elsewhere.

Helen Meyers, a social worker who coordinated the hospital’s volunteer programs, said she also supported the shift to the center. But Meyers said she later dropped her ties to the center as the hospital’s programs, aimed at better prevention and diagnosis, died.

Among others, Meyers and Dr. Astrid Heger, director of the county’s Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect Program at County-USC Medical Center, agree that the lack of services in the Antelope Valley has contributed to its abuse problem and perhaps even the deaths.

“Is that why we’re picking up these kids dead, because we haven’t caught them earlier?” Heger asked.

Exacerbating the lack of services is a reluctance by private physicians to get drawn into legal fights over child abuse cases, said Dr. Fred Auerbach, co-director of the emergency department at Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center.

The situation has not gotten better since July, when the closest county Dependency Courts, which hear abuse cases, moved from Van Nuys to a facility more than 70 miles from the Antelope Valley in Monterey Park. For private doctors and therapists, the prospect of a long commute to Monterey Park is another disincentive to get involved.

At first, Peter Digre, the director of the county’s children’s services department, did not agree that the Antelope Valley should be a top priority for child abuse programs. He said he would rank the region behind other areas with larger numbers of cases.

Thus, a county program, scheduled to start this year and aimed at helping keep families together before abuse can result in the removal of children, will be tested in six other communities: South-Central Los Angeles, Compton, Long Beach, Boyle Heights, Pacoima, Echo Park and Pico-Union.

Emery Bontrager, a department spokesman, later said those communities were chosen based on the numbers of children in foster homes and not on the number of abuse reports. Bontrager also said the Antelope Valley has a new, similar program for Latino families.

Yet after reviewing the department’s abuse statistics, Digre appeared surprised by the Antelope Valley’s numbers.

“It looks to me it’s rising there much faster,” he said. Later, Digre ordered a program to better publicize the county’s child abuse hot line number in the region, Bontrager said.

Tilton, of the Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, said she knew of little the county had done in recent years to improve abuse services in the Antelope Valley.

“It’s like it’s so far out there, it’s out of sight and out of mind,” Tilton said. “It’s really hard to sustain interest in something we don’t see and people we don’t talk to every day. We don’t hear a lot of people yelling from the Antelope Valley that we need stuff.”

One other thread runs through many of the Antelope Valley abuse cases--methamphetamine use. The drug was a factor in five of the seven recent child deaths, and in at least four earlier child deaths since 1986, court records show.

The violence involved in the cases--infants sodomized and children horribly beaten by their guardians --has convinced Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz that drug use is a key factor in the deaths. Foltz is the prosecutor who has handled most of the region’s child death cases since 1985.

Known as crystal, crank, ice or speed, methamphetamine is a stimulant that can be snorted, injected, smoked or swallowed. It is strong and cheap, and authorities say it has become the drug of choice for working-class people in rural areas of Southern California.

The drug provokes paranoia, rage, distrust and psychosis among heavier users, said Ronald Siegel, a psychopharmacologist at the UCLA School of Medicine who studies the effects of drugs.

Users often become gaunt because the drug inhibits their appetite and irritable because of lack of sleep. Siegel said the drug also makes people oversensitive to loud sounds and sudden movement such as crying babies or scampering children.

“Methamphetamine users have a lot of psychological problems that make them particularly prone to violent and criminal behavior,” said Siegel, who has been a consultant for federal law enforcement agencies.

Foltz said most parents and guardians in the recent death cases are part of a drug-addicted fringe element in the Antelope Valley, and that the drug often is part of a range of dysfunction affecting the families.

“There’s a great deal of otherwise inexplicable conduct. The only thread that runs through them is meth,” he said.

Elsewhere in Southern California, particularly in remote areas of the Inland Empire and San Diego County, authorities say the drug has surfaced in their child abuse cases as well.

Sgt. Toby Tyler of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said children’s services workers should not let children remain at home with methamphetamine-addicted parents.

“Right now, we already gamble with our children. As far as returning them home where meth is involved, I think the risk is too great,” Tyler said.

Los Angeles County officials at one time removed infants born to mothers on drugs, but now there are too many such children to handle.

Experts in the field agree that intervention and prevention before child abuse occurs is the best solution. But such programs are a difficult sell when the billions spent nationally on the aftermath of abuse cannot keep pace.

One much-touted proposal, which the federal advisory board calls neonatal home visitation, would involve volunteers and social workers visiting the homes of new mothers to help monitor and counsel them on child-rearing. The advisory board called that its most important recommendation.

Such a program exists in the Antelope Valley on a tiny scale, with staff members of the nonprofit Children’s Bureau of Southern California aiding about 35 families at a time. The group also operates its Family Connection program in several other areas, including El Monte and Central Los Angeles.

But Judy Nelson, executive director of the bureau, said the program has waiting lists and tries to focus on less severely troubled families where children have not been taken from the homes. Tilton said similar programs are needed for families with the most severe problems.

There is some sign of progress. County officials are planning a computer network that would tell a hospital doctor if a child had been a victim of abuse.

But the overall news from the front remains depressing. “I would say that sadly, the emergency still exists. We’re doing far less well than we should be,” Tilton said.

High Desert Abuse Cases

Authorities say as many as seven Antelope Valley youngsters have died from child abuse in the past 15 months. Authorities are still investigating the most recent case, the July 12 death of 6-month-old girl, so no details were available.

Edwards Case

The Case: Edwards is accused of murder in what authorities say was the fatal June 3 shaking of his girlfriend’s 9-month-old son, who was pronounced dead the next day. No charges have been filed against the infant’s mother.

Status: Edwards, who remains in custody, is awaiting trial after a judge last month ordered him held on the charge. If convicted, Edwards would face a sentence of 15 years-to-life in prison.

Background: About a month before the death, Malcolm Scott was taken to a hospital with a leg fracture. Sheriff’s deputies investigated possible child abuse, but closed their case after the couple said it was an accident.

*

Daugherty / Przybyszewski Case

The Case: Daugherty is accused of killing his 5-month-old infant daughter, who died Feb. 20 of methamphetamine poisoning and chronic physical abuse. The infant’s mother is charged with felony child abuse.

Status: Daugherty, who admitted using methamphetamine while caring for the baby, is in custody awaiting trial for murder. Przybyszewski, who also used the drug, is free awaiting trial on the abuse charge.

Background: The coroner found Sabreena (cq) Przybyszewski had bruised wrists suggesting she had been tied, a burned leg, scars on her feet, and evidence of 12 rib fractures.

*

Patalsky Case

The Case: Patalsky, a reputed methamphetamine user, is accused of raping, sodomizing and killing his girlfriend’s 13-month-old daughter by violently shaking her Nov. 30.

Status: He is in jail awaiting trial on one count of murder. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty because the child’s death occurred during an alleged sex crime.

Background: Brianna Lee Schmidt was examined at the hospital for injuries six weeks before her death but they were not ruled child abuse. Patalsky was wanted on criminal charges and had lost custody of his two sons.

*

Conley / Wesselmann Case

The Case: The couple allegedly killed their newborn, Baby John Doe, between Feb. 7 and 16 by wrapping the body in a plastic bag and leaving it in a trash dumpster. They also are accused of killing a prior newborn in February or March 1987.

Status: Conley, a methamphetamine user, and Wesselmann are in jail awaiting a Sept. 21 preliminary hearing. They are charged with two counts of murder and one of child abuse, and could face the death penalty or life in prison.

Background: Authorities believe the couple may have killed other of their newborns in the past. The county had complaints against the couple back to 1974. Their children had been twice taken from them and later returned.

*

Towles Case

The Case: Towles was accused of killing her newborn baby girl on Aug. 1, 1991. After birth, Towles kept Baby Jane Doe’s body in a plastic bag in her bedroom for a day. An autopsy later blamed the death partly on Towles’ use of methamphetamine.

Status: Towles was charged with murder, but pleaded no contest in March to involuntary manslaughter. After undergoing a psychiatric review, Towles was sentenced Aug. 10 to three years in state prison.

Background: Towles, who had spent years in a foster home, was arrested in November 1990 for being under the influence of the drug. Towles previously had been abandoned by her drug addict mother, her foster mother said.

*

Leach / Hunter Case

The Case: The couple were accused of the June 11, 1991, beating death of their 4-year-old daughter, who suffered injuries from her head to her ankles in what authorities described one of the Antelope Valley’s worst abuse cases.

Status: Leach, a methamphetamine user, and Hunter pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and were sentenced Oct. 16, 1991, to 15 years-to-life in state prison. Fourteen other felony counts were dismissed in a plea bargain.

Background: Deedra Hunter’s body was covered with bruises, cuts and human bite marks. The girl’s 2-year-old stepbrother was found with similar injuries. As a juvenile, Leach had an extensive criminal record.