Three Children Sue Father for Molestation : Courts: They seek $13 million, alleging long-term sexual abuse by the Fountain Valley businessman, who was convicted of their rape. Another daughter killed herself.

Three children of a Fountain Valley businessman filed a $13-million lawsuit against him Friday, alleging that he sexually abused them over the course of a decade.

The suit also names the mother of the two youngest children, accusing her of allowing her husband to mistreat them after they appealed to her for protection.

The father, Kyung Mook Cho, was convicted May 5 in Orange County Superior Court of 25 counts of rape, molestation and assault against his three surviving children, according to court records.

Cho’s oldest daughter, Young Sun Cho, 23, committed suicide in her Los Angeles apartment last October by inhaling natural gas, according to a death certificate attached to the suit.

According to a Juvenile Court report, assaults by the father against Young Sun Cho continued through Feb. 23, 1992, 10 months before her death.

Kyung Mook Cho was acquitted of two counts of sexual abuse. He is being held in the Orange County Jail without bail and is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 17.

“It was a very emotional and stressful case for everyone involved,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin Haskins.

“A lot of times in cases that involve sexual abuse involving natural children . . . it’s a longstanding thing. You get various scenarios, but one thing that happens in incest cases is it begins when kids are very young and that is what happened in this case.”

Cho’s attorney, William Kopanny, could not be reached for comment.

The Orange County Department of Social Services removed the two minor children from the couple’s home on Sept. 21, 1992, the suit alleges. The Juvenile Court ordered that the boy and the girl be declared dependents of the state, citing numerous acts of abuse against the children and their older sisters.

Harold La Flamme, a lawyer who represented the Cho children in Orange County Juvenile Court, said such conduct “regrettably, is not unusual.” He said he is familiar with a number of family rape cases with multiple victims.

Also, La Flamme said, “it is not unusual in an incest family for the woman in the family to know what is going on and not to do anything about it.”

The abuse allegedly began when the two older girls, children of an earlier marriage, were living in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, when Young Sun Cho was 14 and her sister was 9, the suit charges.

The abuse continued when the family moved to Westminster and then to Fountain Valley, the lawsuit alleges. Both older girls worked in the Cho family business in Garden Grove from 1985 to 1990, according to the suit.

During 1987-88, the suit charges, Young Sun Cho became pregnant twice as a result of rapes by her father, who compelled her to have two abortions.

The two younger children, the son and daughter of Cho’s second wife, Sun Cho, were each touched and fondled beginning at the ages of 9 and 10, according to the suit.

According to the Juvenile Court report, the younger daughter “advised her mother on many occasions that she did not like the way her father touched her and the mother witnessed many episodes . . . but the mother failed to intervene or protect” the girl.

The report also stated that the son made similar, unsuccessful appeals to his mother.

During the criminal trial, Kim Cho testified that she was unaware of any sexual abuse, Haskins said.

The father’s acts, the suit alleges, involved “despicable conduct” and “were committed intentionally and maliciously with the objective and intent to oppress, vex and harass” the children.

The damage inflicted on the children, the suit charged, included “depression, shame, humiliation, embarrassment, guilt, alienation, insecurity, lack of trust, loss of dignity, loss of self-esteem, self-blame and self hatred.”

Times staff writers Rene Lynch and Eric Young and correspondent Shelby Grad contributed to this report.