O.C. to Allow Son to Rejoin ‘Messy’ Parents

The Huntington Beach boy, taken from his parents by social workers worried about his unkempt surroundings, could go home as early as next week, county administrators said Friday.

Larry Leaman, director of the Orange County Social Services Agency, said his staff would not appeal a ruling by a state appellate court ordering the 4-year-old released from a Buena Park foster home, where he has lived since April. A lower court judge had previously ordered the boy taken from his home after social workers determined that his parents kept a messy house.

This week, the 4th District Court of Appeal reversed that decision, saying that mere messiness isn’t enough to justify taking a child from his parents. An appellate judge labeled social workers’ concerns--an exposed electrical outlet and a wading pool with dirty water, among others--”trivial.”

Leaman said his staff had done its best in a tricky situation, and that they all learned something from the unusual case.

“Things have to be worse than we thought to remove a child,” Leaman said. “This was a judgment call in a gray area.”

The law gives county officials 30 days to appeal the court order. During that time, they could continue to hold the boy in the foster home.

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But Leaman said lawyers for the social service agency would tell Superior Court Judge Gary G. Bischoff next week that they will not fight the higher court ruling. The judge could reunite the boy with his family then, he said.

The boy’s parents cheered the decision Friday. They said they planned to celebrate by taking their son, who is developmentally disabled, to his favorite jungle gym at a nearby Burger King.

“I felt we were going to lose him,” said the boy’s father, Stephen, who asked that family members not be identified to protect the child, who was known only as Paul E. in court papers. “I had really given up hope.”

Paul’s father conceded that he and his wife weren’t the best housekeepers when social workers showed up last year and started taking pictures. He said the incident quickly grew into an ordeal that he could not understand.

“To be honest with you, when they first came out, the house was a real mess. Papers everywhere, dishes in the sink, boxes on the floor. It took us two days to clean up,” the father said. “But it was never unsanitary. We did everything they wanted us to do. It was looking real nice.”

Paul E.’s case landed squarely in the middle of a recurring social dilemma: How to balance families’ rights to rear their children as they see fit against the community’s interest in protecting children from neglectful parents.

Add some unusual details--a developmentally disabled son and mother, a father with a felony conviction, and a bankrupt government stretched to the limits--and there were all the ingredients of a precedent setting court decision.

The case began in July, 1994, when police responded to a call about an argument at the family’s home. Police, stunned by the mess they found, called social workers. Along with the wading pool and shorted electrical socket, the social workers said they were concerned about an exposed boat propeller.

Said the father: “The house would get real messy, and we would clean it up, and then it would get messy again, and we would clean it up.”

Indeed, the boy’s father said that he and his wife cleaned up the house just the way the social workers had ordered. Whatever the case, social workers returned in April of this year with a court order allowing them to take the child into custody.

Leaman, the head of the county’s social services agency, said his staff is often forced to make snap decisions in circumstances that are less than clear. In this case, he said, social workers were concerned that the mother’s disability put the child at risk.

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“There did not appear to be intentional abuse. It was just serious neglect,” Leaman said. “What you have is a family where one of the parents was developmentally disabled, and so is the child. The house was dirty and unkempt and cluttered. You could not say it was unsanitary, but it was close.”

The justices of the appellate court didn’t buy it. They found that Paul E.’s parents had cooperated fully with social workers, and that their house was not unusually hazardous to the child.

“While we certainly hope that conditions improve in Paul’s household, chronic messiness by itself and apart from any unsanitary conditions or resulting illness or accidents is just not clear and and convincing evidence” to take the child away, the three-judge panel wrote.

Leaman said the court ruling would make similar decisions easier in the future.

“This is a very defining case as to when you fight child abuse and neglect and when you back off,” he said.

Stephen said he visited Paul on Friday to tell him he was coming home.

“I don’t know if he understood,” Stephen said. “But he’s doing really good. He was just happy to be with us.”