Woman Held in Neglect Case

A 25-year-old mother was arrested Monday for allegedly leaving her three toddlers drenched in urine and covered in feces for hours in their Los Angeles apartment--a case of the kind of child neglect that social workers say is becoming far more common in Los Angeles County.

Last year alone, there were 24,707 cases of serious child neglect in the county--an average of 2,059 a month--many of them similar to this case. The number is nearly double that from 1990.

“I wish I could say its a very rare case, but it’s not,” said LAPD spokesman Eduardo Funes. “Unfortunately, a lot of people leave their kids unattended in dangerous conditions that are unfit for human habitation.”

The residents at Patricia Quiroz’s Western Avenue apartment complex say they warned the woman for two months that they would go to police if she continued to leave her children alone in squalid conditions.

Shortly before midnight Saturday--after the children had been crying for hours--they did just that.

“I told the police there was no food in the apartment, the children have no clothing and the apartment stinks,” said apartment manager Delia Lopez, who called authorities.

Quiroz was taken into custody Monday morning after she called authorities to turn herself in. The woman, who is four months’ pregnant, was being held on suspicion of child endangerment.

“[The children] were frightened, they had a severe case of head lice, they were drenched in urine and stained with human feces,” Funes said. “There was no milk or food in the refrigerator for the kids.”

Inside the apartment, police found scraps of paper, trash and clothing strewn about. Uncovered, urine-drenched mattresses were scattered on the floor.

In the otherwise bare kitchen, there were several empty cereal boxes.

A few kernels of cereal were on the floor, and the refrigerator contained a pot of spoiled beans. A bed cover had been pinned over a window.

The children--a 15-month-old boy and 2- and 3-year-old girls--were placed in temporary custody of Los Angeles County child care workers, Funes said.

The police squad car used to bring the youngsters to the social agency was taken out of service. A hand-lettered sign on a back window read: “Lice infested.”

The situation that had left Quiroz’s children in such a state was one that had been worsening over the past two months, neighbors said.

Quiroz, who reportedly worked in a bar, had left the children alone for up to three days at a time in the past, residents at the apartment complex said.

“They would be crying but the door was locked,” said neighbor Nora Galindo, 21. “The children were left for days by themselves. I warned her, ‘Don’t do that or one day someone will call the police on you and you will go to jail.’ But she didn’t stop.”

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Added Lopez: “My daughter would take care of the kids, but she couldn’t do it all the time. She told [Quiroz] to find somebody else, but she didn’t.”

The Quiroz case is the one of 10 child neglect cases the LAPD’s 77th Division has responded to this month, police said.

“[Child neglect] is more common than people think,” said Sgt. Laura Thomas, a watch commander at the 77th Division.

“A lot of times parents have several children and they have to work and children are left by themselves. . . . One of the worst I’ve seen was six months ago. You couldn’t walk on the floor because of all the crunched-up food. All the bedding was on the floor. You didn’t want to sit down for fear a cockroach would run up your shirt.”

Driving the rise in caseloads, social workers say, are drug abuse and socioeconomic factors such as low-paying jobs or unemployment, making it difficult for parents to care for their children.

And the only way social workers learn about many of the cases, they say, is when neighbors get involved, as in the Quiroz case.

But many people have trouble defining what constitutes child abuse, said John Ruggles, a social worker who works at the county’s child abuse hotline.

“So many people are not educated . . . [or] informed about what constitutes child abuse,” Ruggles said. And some people are afraid to report suspected neglect, he said.

‘They are afraid to become involved,” Ruggles said. “They are afraid of retaliation. They are afraid of someone finding out that they made the report [to authorities] even though we . . . keep the identities anonymous.”

Given that reluctance, Ruggles said, he and other child protective workers encourage anyone who even suspects a case of neglect or abuse to report it and then let their suspicions be investigated by experts.

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“Let us make the decision on whether it really is abuse or whether or not we should intervene,” Ruggles said.

The U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse reported last year that battering and neglect by parents are the leading causes of death for young children in this country.

Out of the 3,000 children who are murdered each year by a parent or caretaker, 90% are under the age of 4.

Although in this case the neglect was considered dramatic, in many cases the warning signs are far subtler, according to Dianne Benveniste, director of foster care services for the Children’s Bureau of Southern California, a private nonprofit child service agency.

Children who appear underweight, dirty, or are constantly tired may be victims of neglect, she said, adding that children who fail to show emotion or who lie and steal might be showing signs that parents are not supervising them.

Benveniste said that if a neighbor or friend suspects a child is being neglected, he or she should call the Los Angeles County Child Abuse hotline at (800) 540-4000 or inform a schoolteacher of their suspicions.

Times staff writers Greg Krikorian and Paul Johnson contributed to this story.