Father Accused of Homicide in 10-Month-Old Girl’s Death : Child abuse: Autopsy shows Santa Ana baby died of skull fracture. The infant’s mother was present but has not been cited, police say.

A young father was charged with homicide and child abuse after an autopsy report showed his 10-month-old daughter died of a skull fracture, police said Wednesday.

Paramedics found Kristal Monique Pantaleon in full cardiac arrest at her parents’ apartment on East Pine Street Saturday evening. She was taken to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana and put on life support, but she died Sunday afternoon, Sgt. Art Echternacht said.

Investigators arrested her father, Octavio Pantaleon, 22, Sunday on suspicion of attempted murder and child abuse. The attempted-murder charge was changed to homicide following the autopsy report, Echternacht said.

Pantaleon is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail at Orange County Jail, the police spokesman said.

Echternacht declined to say exactly how Kristal was injured, noting that the investigation is continuing. The infant’s mother was present, police said, but she has not been cited.

While saying that abusing a child to the point of death is rare in Orange County, child advocates note that infants and preschoolers are the most vulnerable to mistreatment because there are fewer witnesses, such as teachers.

Officials said they are studying programs throughout the country to find an effective way to monitor treatment of this age group.

A variety of government and volunteer groups are in place to deal with child abuse. The Orange County Child Abuse Registry was established in 1975 as the central reporting location for the county to keep records of child abuse.

And recently, “it has been very busy,” according to the registry’s supervisor, Ray Gallagher. “Over the last four or five years, the number of calls to the Registry has almost tripled.”

These increases have prompted the opening of a number of new facilities in Orange County, including several for the care and examination of child sexual abuse cases.

The county’s Child Abuse Service Team (CAST), which investigates sexual abuse and is based in Orange, opened a second, 18-room facility this year in Laguna Hills to serve South County.

CAST’s program director, Cathy Campbell-Singletary, cited three reasons for the county’s increased figures: population growth, a greater willingness to report abuse and increased economic stresses.

This stress, Campbell-Singletary emphasized, is evident “at all economic levels.”

“I think the vast majority do not want to be abusive or neglectful to their children, and don’t want to be labeled as an abusive parent,” said Nathan Nishimoto, program manager for Emergency Response Services for the Orange County Social Services Agency’s Children’s Services.

“It is not their choice to be abusive, but the only learned way they have experienced.

“The infants and preschool kids are the most vulnerable because of lack of exposure outside the home,” Nishimoto said. “We’re dependent on family and extended families and physicians and neighbors. Neighbors play an important role.”

Like the Child Abuse Registry and other organizations, CAST has also been affected by reductions of state and local funding, particularly in the area of prevention programs.

A nonprofit group, the Child Abuse Council of Orange County, sponsored a number of panels this year at high schools and colleges to explain how to detect and prevent child abuse. There are numerous other groups, such as Parents Anonymous, a self-help organization for parents who have physically, sexually or emotionally abused their children. Other recently formed groups exist in Tustin and Laguna Hills, some sponsored by private therapy practices.

Times staff writers Leslie Berkman and David Avila contributed to this report.