Child Abuse Cases in Antelope Valley Rise : Violence: The area led the sheriff-patrolled regions of L.A. County in most serious victims per capita in 1992.

The Antelope Valley had more serious child abuse victims per capita than any other area of Los Angeles County patrolled by sheriff’s deputies in 1992, despite growing efforts to combat the problem, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

Deputies conducted criminal investigations involving alleged abuses against 774 children in the Antelope Valley last year, more than in any of the 18 other Sheriff’s Department reporting areas. That was 13% higher than the area’s 1991 count of 683 children.

More significant, the Antelope Valley also had the highest population-adjusted rate of reported criminal child abuse, three victims per 1,000 people--a better indicator because populations vary widely among the areas.

The statistics were released amid efforts to fight the abuse problem in the High Desert. In particular, a string of seven child killings from mid-1991 to mid-1992 shocked residents and helped set in motion a series of new programs, some not scheduled to start until later this year.

“I can’t say we’ve had any reduction in child abuse. What I do see is a very concerted effort to better understand what the problem is,” said Esther Gillies, executive director of the private, nonprofit Children’s Center of the Antelope Valley, where abuse victims receive therapy.

In part because of the attention focused on the string of child slayings, the Antelope Valley is scheduled to get its own juvenile dependency court to handle abuse cases soon and a better medical treatment system. It has a new local county children’s services administrator.

The statistics do not necessarily mean that the Antelope Valley has the highest child abuse rate in Los Angeles County because sheriff’s deputies serve only about 30% of the county’s residents. Los Angeles and other cities with their own police departments do not compile comparable statistics.

The sheriff’s numbers also reflect only the most serious cases of alleged child abuse, those that lead to criminal investigations. The county Children’s Services Department received 6,893 reports of child abuse or neglect from the Antelope Valley in 1992, up 20% from the prior year, but only 11% of the reports led to criminal investigations.

The sheriff’s statistics do provide one of the best comprehensive looks at the incidence of serious child abuse among the sheriff-policed communities. The Antelope Valley area historically has been at or near the top of such child-abuse statistics.

Child abuse experts have said that isolation, drug use, dysfunctional families and even commuter stress contributes to the area’s abuse problem. But other factors are simpler: because the area has grown rapidly in population in recent years, so have its crime numbers. And because the bedroom communities have many young families, it also has a greater share of young children than the rest of the county.

In the wake of the string of child deaths, most involving parents or guardians with drug abuse and other problems, sheriff’s deputies in the Antelope Valley began taking steps to identify potential child abuse situations.

Deputies review routine criminal cases involving adult activities such as drug use, which are often associated with child abuse, and refer those families to county children’s services workers to evaluate, deputies said.

Gillies said the children’s center is gearing up to begin offering medical exams to abused children in the Antelope Valley by professionals who can testify in court. Now, children must go to Los Angeles-area hospitals, more than 60 miles away, for such exams.

Although county officials recently completed a $60-million juvenile dependency court complex in Monterey Park, they expect to open a satellite court in Lancaster soon so that Antelope Valley families do not have to travel 80 miles.

Through the children’s center, a group of medical and mental health professionals in private practice plans to begin a study soon on why the Antelope Valley has had such severe problems with child abuse.