Jury Awards $7.3 Million to 4 Charged With Abuse : Court: Former Pico Rivera residents sued the Sheriff’s Department over their 1984 arrests on child molestation counts that were later dropped.

A Norwalk Superior Court jury awarded $7.3 million in damages Tuesday to four former Pico Rivera residents arrested by sheriff’s deputies 11 years ago on child-molestation charges that were later dismissed.

The award came a day after the jury ruled that deputies did not have probable cause to arrest Timothy and Helen O’Keefe and Jose Valentin and Myrna Malave in April, 1984. The two couples once lived on the same block in a tight-knit neighborhood of the town.

Today the jury is scheduled to consider whether to award punitive damages to the four plaintiffs, in addition to the general damages awarded Tuesday.

Despite Tuesday’s award, and a judge’s dismissal of the criminal charges in 1985, a haggard-looking Valentin said he will never escape the stigma of being arrested for child molestation.

“It’s been a nightmare,” he said. “There’s no words to describe it. After so many years, it never goes away. Once you’re labeled with a charge like the one I was labeled with, it stays with you.”

The O’Keefes, who have since moved away from Pico Rivera, declined to speak with a reporter and hurried from the courtroom after the verdict.

The O’Keefes, Valentin and Malave were longtime residents of Planter Street in Pico Rivera when they were arrested on suspicion of molesting neighborhood children. Valentin and Malave once lived together but have since separated.

Prosecutors charged the couples with sexually abusing four boys, all 7 or 8 years old. The accusations included conspiracy, sodomy, oral copulation, kidnaping and false imprisonment.

The case inflamed the neighborhood, with at least one resident threatening to attack one or more of the defendants. At the time, Helen O’Keefe had lived in the same house since birth.

Several children later said they made up the molestation charges. At a preliminary hearing in July, 1984, one 8-year-old boy admitted under cross-examination that he had lied about the case.

Whittier Municipal Court Judge Patricia Hofstetter accused another 8-year-old boy of lying because of inconsistencies in his testimony, and dismissed the charges against the defendants.

The O’Keefes, Valentin and Malave later sued the Sheriff’s Department, then-Dist. Atty. Robert Philibosian and others, alleging false imprisonment, civil-rights violations, defamation and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

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The four plaintiffs argued that deputies entered their homes without proper search warrants and arrested them on unsubstantiated evidence.

“It was during the heat of the McMartin case,” said the O’Keefes’ attorney, Peter M. Gwosdof, referring to the notorious 1983 arrest of Raymond Buckey and six others on suspicion of child molestation charges that were later dismissed by prosecutors or thrown out by a jury.

“There was no evidence, but people were up in arms in the city and demanded that somebody be arrested,” Gwosdof said.

In 1990, the plaintiffs won $3.7 million in damages, but county attorneys appealed and a jury trial was ordered.

Peter Glick, a lawyer representing the sheriff’s deputies, said Tuesday’s even bigger award was unjust.

“They did have probable cause to arrest and did act reasonably and responsibly,” he said of the arresting deputies. “We feel the officers, with information they had, did the lawful thing.”