Program to Battle Teen Pregnancy Targets Men : Crime: The county vows vigorous prosecution of statutory rape cases. The pilot project is part of an effort to make fathers responsible.

With more than two-thirds of the children born to teen-age mothers in Ventura County fathered by adults, officials are stepping up prosecution of statutory rape cases as part of a growing effort to turn back the rising tide of teen pregnancy.

The new program advances a wide-ranging countywide campaign to hold fathers more responsible for the babies they help create.

Based on a growing number of teen-age pregnancies, Ventura County is among 16 counties statewide selected to participate in the one-year pilot program, which promises vigorous prosecution of adults who have sexual relations with minors at least two years younger, regardless of whether pregnancy results.

“I think people have gotten away from viewing this as a crime,” said Lela Henke-Dobroth, a chief deputy district attorney.

“We see this as an approach [to teen pregnancy] that really hasn’t been used before,” she said. “Certainly these adults--and they’re adults at 18--need to be made aware of the consequences when they are dealing with minors.”

Ventura County’s growing focus on the role of fathers in the teen-age pregnancy issue reflects state and nationwide trends.

Until recently, the problem has largely been viewed as a female concern. And young mothers have suffered most, often falling into poverty and dropping out of school.

At the same time, fathers have traditionally been left out of programs designed to strengthen parenting skills or educate new parents about the responsibilities of child rearing, social services providers say.

But as teen-age birth rates have risen, so has the effort to make fathers more responsible for their actions. In Ventura County, the number of births to girls 17 and younger rose 33% between 1986 and 1993.

As a result, efforts to establish paternity and collect child support from fathers of babies born out of wedlock have increased.

In Ventura County, officials have been building on the idea of responsible fatherhood, heralding the benefits of fathers investing financially and emotionally in the lives of their children.

“We realized that it was very difficult to do anything when we were only looking at half the picture with teen-age girls,” said Jerome Evans, administrator of a four-month project to foster responsible fatherhood. Funded by the Ventura County Public Social Services Agency, the project included interviews with teen-age mothers, and with fathers in Juvenile Hall, as well as a program to teach basic parenting skills.

“There really isn’t a lot of support or encouragement for young men to take part in the lives of their children,” said Evans, with the Ventura-based Landon Pediatric Foundation, which administered the project. “We decided to try something a little different instead of the same old thing of cornering teen-age girls, shaking a finger at them and saying, ‘Don’t get pregnant again.’ ”

A key finding of the project, which ended last month, was the need for more vigorous prosecution of adults who exploit teen-age girls, including older men who have sex with minors.

However, beefed-up prosecution is a concept that is not universally embraced. Children’s advocates and health officials fear that such strong-arm tactics could serve to drive away fathers at a time when authorities’ focus should be on securing emotional and financial support for children.

“I think it poses a very tough dilemma,” said Lois Salisbury, executive director of the Oakland-based advocacy group Children Now.

“Adult fathers who impregnate teen-age girls is a troublesome phenomenon that is widespread and unacceptable,” she said. “But we have to be very careful here. We’re talking about someone who has a baby to raise, and she needs resources to help her raise that baby, and she needs a father to help her raise that baby. And I don’t see where it’s human logic or nature that would motivate her to send that father to jail.”

Dr. Gary Feldman, county public health officer, also questions the wisdom of such a program.

“I can see some benefits . . . but in the end, I’m concerned that it might be counterproductive,” Feldman said. “I don’t think it gets to the root causes, and it may also inhibit our ability to provide services to teen mothers who need them. I can see what they are trying to do, but to me it just doesn’t seem like the best solution.”

While officials debate the policy issues, they agree on this much: Something must be done about so many children having children.

Locally, the number of 15- to 19-year-olds having babies has increased from 45 births per 1,000 in 1988 to 54 per 1,000 in 1993. Those births represented just 8.8% of the total in 1988, but 10.2% in 1993. The statewide figure was 11.7%.

About 1,200 Ventura County teen-agers become pregnant each year--accounting for one of every 10 infants delivered in the county. About two-thirds of those teen-age mothers are Latinas. And contrary to popular belief, two-thirds of all children born to teen-age mothers have fathers who are 20 or older.

“Dealing with teen-age pregnancy is a very difficult social problem,” said Stanley Trom, director of the district attorney’s child support division. “We know in our own work, there is no one answer. Sometimes you have to hit somebody over the head, sometimes you just need to say please.”

Trom’s department participated in the four-month project, broadening its traditional hard-line approach to child support. The department staged a series of basic parenting classes, designed to forge family unity or, at the very least, encourage fathers to become more interested in their families.

Although the young parents said they were interested in the program, few actually attended the sessions, Trom said. But he said he is undaunted.

“Our traditional approach is to serve them with papers and force them to come to court,” he said. “I’m not sure that’s not where we ultimately wind up, but we’re looking for different ways of involving parents who want to be involved.”

While the trial project ended in October, officials say they are evaluating the program and looking for more money to continue the effort. The state’s new, one-year pilot program will help.

The district attorney’s office is already shifting gears from its child-support effort to its prosecutorial role.

Prosecutors will soon receive $150,000 from the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning to help press cases of statutory rape and provide services to pregnant teen-agers.

The money will be used to pay for an additional deputy district attorney, a victims’ advocate and an investigative assistant, Henke-Dobroth said.

The program will inform pregnant girls where to go for parenting classes and how to seek child support. It will also pay for community outreach and education on the laws against statutory rape and the necessary steps to report that crime.

District attorney officials estimate they will be able to prosecute 40 to 50 more cases a year. The office currently prosecutes 20 to 25 annually.

“This will give us an opportunity to put some real teeth in our prosecution,” Henke-Dobroth said. “We’re trying to make these fellows more accountable, more responsible, to pull them into the whole process. They need to know that they just can’t turn around and walk away from this.”