Agency Helps Some Girls Wed Men Who Impregnated Them

Faced with what its director calls a terrible social dilemma, the Orange County Social Services Agency has helped some adolescent girls under its protection marry the adult men who impregnated them, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Times.

The marriages effectively preclude prosecution of the men on charges of child molestation or statutory rape and appear to be in sharp conflict with Gov. Pete Wilson’s $52-million campaign to curtail costly teenage pregnancies by, among other things, severely punishing adult men who in California are responsible two-thirds of the time.

The situation has raised a host of moral and ethical questions among social workers, police and prosecutors over how best to protect vulnerable teenagers, such as a pregnant 13-year-old Anaheim girl who was allowed to marry her 20-year-old boyfriend six weeks ago.

The practice has also created a schism within Social Services, where some supervisors are challenging the underlying reason why the agency is not using its considerable clout to block the marriages: that the girls will be better off having a father for their children.

“It is difficult to fathom the rationale for this Agency’s contributing to the ongoing exploitation of a minor by an adult perpetrator, who should in fact be arrested, not rewarded with [these girls’ hands] in marriage,” one Social Services supervisor complained in an internal memo to her boss.

“Many of these girls are physically abused and then deserted by these men, left to raise 2 or 3 children alone at age 17 or 18 [and] are totally unprepared to care for themselves or their children, having been deprived of an education,” the supervisor’s memo states.

Under California law, county welfare agencies bear the greatest responsibility for protecting children from abuse. Their social workers are empowered to take into custody youngsters they believe to be victims of statutory rape, which occurs when an adult has sex with someone 17 or younger, or the more serious crime of child molestation, when the minor is under the age of 14. In both crimes, consent is not a legitimate defense.

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The recommendations of these social workers carry great weight with the Juvenile Court judges who ultimately decide whether the abused children should be taken away from their parents, kept in a children’s home such as Orangewood, assigned to foster parents, or--as in the cases of these girls--permitted to marry.

Larry Leaman, the head of the Orange County Social Services Agency, disclosed that over the past two years social workers have helped make it possible for at least 15 underage girls to marry--or resume living with--their adult male sex partners. Most of them were pregnant at the time, or already had children with the men.

Leaman and a top assistant investigating the cases would not disclose exactly how many of the 15 girls were actually married, but said it was “about a dozen.” They also declined to reveal the specifics of all the cases, such as the ages of the girls and the age disparities with the men they married.

Leaman also declined to discuss the specific actions his agency took in each case “to accommodate”--as he termed it--the marriages. But he said that such actions can include affirmative recommendations to a Juvenile Court judge that a pregnant underage girl be married to the father of her child, or that the judge rule the girl is no longer a dependent of the court.

In other instances, Leaman said, his social workers can drop their opposition to the reunification of the girls with the adult men.

In each of the 15 cases, he said, the actions were taken with the full knowledge that the girls would either marry the men or resume living with them.

“This is an impossible social dilemma and there’s really no right answer,” said Leaman, who has headed the Orange County agency and its predecessor, the Human Services Department, since 1981.

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As a result of the agency’s actions--or inaction--some seemingly egregious cases of child abuse have gone without prosecution.

In one case, Santa Ana police arrested a 22-year-old man on suspicion of statutory rape for having sex with a 14-year-old girl. The man was never prosecuted, however, in part because social workers succeeded in getting a judge to terminate her dependency status, freeing her to marry the man, according to Social Services Agency supervisors.

Leaman said a variety of factors are taken into consideration when the agency takes actions that help the minors get married to their adult sex partners.

These factors, he said, generally include: consent from one or both of the minor’s parents; the minor’s desire to continue the relationship; the county’s concern over splitting up a couple who might become a functioning family; and the minor’s unwillingness to testify against her adult partner, if police and prosecutors could be persuaded to bring criminal charges.

The handling of such cases has caused a great deal of frustration and some degree of finger pointing among prosecutors, social workers and police. They are asking some troubling questions: Are the men getting away with child abuse? Are the girls too young to get married?

Prosecutors say they can’t pursue statutory rape and child molestation charges against some of the men because they haven’t received criminal referrals from the police. Police complain that when they do arrest these men and refer their cases to prosecutors, social workers allow them to get married to the minors and this, in turn, has caused prosecutors to drop the cases. Social workers complain they are now having trouble removing abused minors from their homes, because police refuse to assist them.

“It’s goes around and around,” Leaman said. “It’s a problem.”

Compared to the volume of cases his agency handles, Leaman said, the number of times social workers recommend that the couples be allowed to continue their relationships is relatively small.

Moreover, Leaman noted that Juvenile Court judges and commissioners sometimes permit the unions, even though social workers have recommended a different course of action.

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The simmering controversy was first brought to Leaman’s attention in June, after he wrote in the agency’s newsletter about the plight of a pregnant 13-year-old who had sought help from the agency. She had been abandoned by the 29-year-old man who had made her pregnant, and then kicked out of the apartment where she had been living by the man’s brother. Although Leaman assured his readers that the girl would be provided for, “she will forever be a victim of exploitation.”

After reading the newsletter, two senior social workers fired off a memo to Leaman, telling him that one of his own agency’s divisions “has in the past made arrangements to marry these children to the adult perpetrators. We thought you might be interested in the unorthodox handling of these situations by your own agency. The exploitation continues.”

Leaman’s reaction was swift, and he agreed that the concerns the two social workers had outlined in their memo “most certainly warrant investigation.”

But when Leaman informed the two social workers three weeks later that he still had not turned up any evidence that the agency was facilitating such marriages, five of his supervisors jointly wrote him back, citing specific cases and complaining that “it is illegal and unethical for our agency to be involved in any way in the marriage of minors to adult perpetrators.”

“Workers may encounter difficulty in the future obtaining police cooperation in detaining minors if police believe either the agency or juvenile court will turn around and marry the minor to the perpetrator,” their memo stated.

Placentia police spokeswoman Corrine Loomis said the practice of some social workers to reunify the minor with the adult has become an issue for officers in her department.

“The question for us became, ‘Why do we [make arrests] when social services allows them to get back together in the end?’ ” she said.

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One of the cases that triggered the social workers’ outrage involved the pregnant 13-year-old, Isabel Gomez, who was married six weeks ago to the 20-year-old man, Juan Pineda, with whom she had been living.

The marriage was approved by a Juvenile Court commissioner, the girl’s court-appointed attorney and her mother. The Social Services Agency initially sought to keep them separated, but later went along with the marriage, according to participants at the court hearing.

“The whole thing, I’m sorry to say, smacks of racism and sexism,” one social worker complained in a memo to Leaman. “I would venture to say most of the girls involved [in these marriages] are Hispanic and the justification for allowing them to continue to be abused is that it is ‘cultural.’ ”

Leaman, however, rejects the notion that racism played a part in the agency’s handling of the 15 cases, even though all but one of the girls are Latina.

“Every case is handled individually,” he said in an interview. “These are very difficult situations. No alternative looks good. We’re trying to find the best solutions, but it’s not easy.”

Because of the controversy simmering within his agency, Leaman has ordered a review of the way his staff handles cases involving pregnant minors and their adult sex partners. Currently, there are no governing policies, Leaman said, and each case is determined on its specific circumstances.

Leaman said the policy review has also called into question a legal opinion his agency has relied on in assessing child abuse cases. The opinion from the county attorney’s office, he said, concludes that children 14 and older are not victims of child abuse if they consented to have sex with an adult.

The county counsel is reexamining its opinion in light of the current controversy, Leaman said.

The county counsel’s office, citing attorney-client privilege, refuses to comment on the legal advice it gives county agencies.

At the urging of some social workers, the district attorney’s office looked into the marriage of the 13-year-old girl but decided not to become involved.

“This is an unusual situation,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Middleton, who heads the office’s sexual assault unit. “I’m not sure we would have done anything differently even if we knew about [the marriage] before it occurred.”

Middleton said these cases are not as black and white as they might appear.

He said the minors often refuse to testify against their adult partners if they are charged with statutory rape or child abuse. Other times, the couple gets married before the charges can be brought against the adult. In those cases, Middleton said, the prosecution gets “derailed.”

“No jury would convict under those circumstances,” he said.

Marriage laws, Middleton said, are somewhat vague, but generally allow minors to be wed if they get the consent of their parents or guardians.

Furthermore, Middleton said, his office takes into consideration what is best for the minor when evaluating cases for prosecution. “Is it best for the father and provider of her child to be put in jail?” he asked.

Sometimes, instead of pursuing charges in court and seeking jail time for adult offenders, Middleton said prosecutors will attempt to get the men to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of probation, which makes it easier to punish them if they continue to abuse minors.

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Generally, the girls come under the county’s protection when doctors and school officials who encounter the pregnant teens notify the Social Services Agency, as they are required to do by law. In other cases, police officials alert social workers when they discover the minor’s seemingly unlawful living arrangements.

Marjorie Kelly, deputy director of the state Department of Social Services, said she is aware of Orange County’s handling of such cases and is monitoring the situation closely.

“People need to get together and talk about this. It’s an academic discussion that should be held at many levels,” Kelly said. “I don’t think there is any easy answer. This is a very complicated situation.”

Although statistics on teenage pregnancies caused by adults would seem to indicate that the problem goes well beyond Orange County’s borders, Kelly said she is unaware of other counties handling cases in a similar manner.

Social services officials in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties said they weren’t aware of cases in which they recommended that teenage girls as young as 13 or 14 be allowed to marry adult men. However, they said they would not be surprised if some teenage marriages had been given their blessings, especially if the disparity in age between the two was only a few years.

Many social services officials said they have started linking teenage pregnancies to adult partners only in the past couple of years. Before then, it was incorrectly assumed that teenage girls were getting pregnant by teenage boys, they said.

“This is new information,” said Judy Tanasse, a deputy director with Orange County Social Services Agency. “The whole of society is trying to come to terms with this.”

Leaman said his social workers try to fully investigate cases to determine whether girls who have relationships with, or children by, older men need protection.

“The simple question is, ‘Is this child abuse?’ But there is no simple answer,” Leaman said.

In some cases, Leaman said Latina girls produce marriage documents from Mexico to legitimize the union. In others, he said, the girls and their families enlist the help of the Mexican Consulate to get married.

Leaman said he recalled the case of one young teenager who had been removed from her home and sent to the Orangewood Children’s Home because of a relationship with an older man. While there, she started making plans for her wedding ceremony.

“Some of the other girls there helped her plan it,” Leaman said.

Harold LaFlamme, the attorney whose firm represented the 13-year-old who was recently married, said he has seen many such cases during his career, including one that involved a 10-year-old girl who became pregnant by a man. That case, he said, resulted in a child abuse prosecution.

“But it’s impossible to draw the line or generalize for these cases. You have to treat them case by case,” LaFlamme said.

LaFlamme said he and the county’s social workers carefully examine each case separately and are on the lookout for men who may try to marry the minors to avoid prosecution.

“I don’t think that occurs,” he said.

Some social workers who reluctantly condone the marriages have suggested that there is a “cultural” difference between the way the United States views the marriages of young girls and the way in which such unions are viewed in Mexico.

Indeed, Leaman was under the impression for a short time that the age of consent in Mexico was 12.

But an official with the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles said the marriage laws in Mexico state that the age of consent is 18, unless the minor has the written consent of her parents or guardian--similar to California.

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Even in the United States, the age of consent varies. In some states, it has been as low as 14.

William G. Steiner, the former executive director of the Orangewood Foundation and now a member of the Board of Supervisors, learned about the controversy from some of the social workers.

“I’m appalled about this situation,” Steiner said. “It’s inconsistent with our role to protect children. I’m not happy about this. The bottom line is, I don’t think this should be happening under any circumstances, especially when the girls are so young.”

Teen pregnancies have long been viewed as a serious problem, and state studies have shown it is most acute among teenage Latinas. Statistics from 1994 show 28,065 babies were born to girls 17 and younger, giving California the highest per-capita rate of teenage pregnancy in the nation.

As many as half of all teenagers who give birth are prior victims of sexual molestation or rape. Statistics also show that babies born to teens are more likely to be abused or neglected children.

To counter teenage pregnancies, Gov. Wilson this year launched a program aimed at reducing their number by initiating a public awareness campaign, expanding intervention programs for “at-risk” girls, and strengthening prosecution of statutory rape offenders.

In Orange County, the district attorney has been presented with 40 cases of statutory rape in the past year. Of those cases, 52% were pursued as felonies, 27% were handled as misdemeanors and 22% were rejected for prosecution.

Because of the governor’s campaign, Middleton said the district attorney’s office has been more focused on prosecuting statutory rape cases. Nonetheless, those cases are still considered a lower priority for county prosecutors than crimes of violence.

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Teen Mothers

Some statistics on teenage pregnancies in California:

* Teenage mothers are considered to be among the groups with the “highest risk” of long-term welfare dependency.

* Mothers who gave birth as teenagers are more likely to be poor, remain poor and need welfare in the future.

* Welfare and medical costs for one teen pregnancy, including birth and the first year of support, exceed $10,000.

* Teenage mothers are likely to have another child before they are adults.

* Births to unmarried Latina teens more than doubled from 1985 to 1994 and now constitute 62% of all unwed teen births.

* More than one-third of babies are born to unwed mothers.

Source: California Department of Social Services