Woman Alleges Officials Didn’t Protect Her From Father : Courts: Lawsuit contends that W. Virginia authorities were negligent in not stepping in and preventing her rape, abuse. She says she was abducted from O.C. park in 1976.

A woman who says she was abducted from an Orange County park nearly 20 years ago and taken to West Virginia has filed a lawsuit alleging that officials in that state knew she was being raped and abused by her father but failed to protect her.

The case, filed in Kanawha County Circuit Court in Charleston, W.Va., accuses the Child Protective Services agency there of negligence that caused the woman severe emotional and physical distress. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

The 22-year-old woman, identified only as K.H., and two siblings were abducted by their father from Orange County in 1976, where their mother had moved after divorcing him, the lawsuit states.

The father took K.H., an older sister and younger brother to live with him and their stepmother in Nicholas County, W.Va., according to the suit, where he raped K.H. and forced her to have sex with her younger brother while the father watched.

Named in the lawsuit are Gretchen Lewis, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Child Protective Services; and two protective-services workers, a department supervisor and a department administrator.

The plaintiff learned that Child Protective Services knew of her case in March, 1994, when she sought help finding her biological mother, the lawsuit states. The agency gave her a file documenting the abuse, the suit says.

A spokeswoman for the Health and Human Resources Department in West Virginia would not comment Friday, saying she had not seen the suit.

The plaintiff’s attorney, Mary Downey, said Friday from Charleston that both parents were living in California at the time. The mother, whose identity has not been revealed and whose whereabouts are not known, turned to Orange County officials in August, 1976, for help.

She said she and the children were being abused by the children’s father, Downey said, and asked that they be placed in foster care.

The Orange County Health Department contacted child protective services workers, Downey said, and the children were placed in foster homes a month later.

K.H. and her siblings had been in foster care for about two months, the suit states, when they were abducted from a park, which was not identified.

The father then took the three children to live with him and their stepmother in West Virginia, the suit states.

Times correspondent Tom Ragan contributed to this report.