Policy Lets O.C. Agency Ignore Some Sex Crimes

For the past two years, the Orange County Social Services Agency has been guided by a policy that allows its social workers to ignore certain sex crimes that prosecutors say should be pursued in court, according to documents released Thursday.

Under a legal opinion prepared by the county counsel, social workers have been told they do not need to report findings of unlawful sexual intercourse between girls 14 to 17 years old and adult men of any age whether it is consensual or not.

The opinion is in sharp conflict with the position of the Orange County district attorney’s office, which says it has intensified its prosecution of such statutory rape cases involving adults who have sexual contact with underage girls.

The agency’s stance is also at cross-purposes with a current statewide campaign, launched by Gov. Pete Wilson, to curtail teenage pregnancies in California. The state has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the country, and officials say those pregnancies contribute to the state’s staggering welfare burden.

The issue has also created a schism within the Orange County agency, which bears the greatest responsibility for child protection. Matters came to a head six weeks ago, when the agency helped a pregnant 13-year-old girl marry the 20-year-old man who impregnated her.

It was later learned that the agency had similarly helped “about a dozen” adolescent girls under the its protection marry the adult men with whom they had had children, or had made them pregnant.

Some social workers have argued that making it possible for the girls to get married was preferable to consigning them to foster care and putting the men in jail, effectively destroying any chance that they might become a functioning family unit. Others, however, insist that the men deserve to be arrested and face punishment for violating the state’s statutory rape or child abuse laws, not rewarded with the girls’ hands in marriage.

Under California law, doctors, nurses, teachers, family counselors and police officers are obliged to report suspected cases of sexual abuse of a minor to county social welfare agencies, which in turn are required by law to bring such cases to the attention of the local district attorney.

But apparently because of an amendment to a state law in 1981, the definition of sexual abuse of a child no longer includes statutory rape, according to the county counsel’s opinion. Following the issuance of this opinion in August 1994, Orange County social workers have been told they can disregard statutory rape cases, unless “additional facts indicate the minor is not engaging in voluntary sex, but is the victim of abuse.”

The opinion further states that the mere fact that an underage girl is found to be pregnant or to have a sexually transmitted disease “does not constitute a basis for reasonable suspicion of child abuse,” according to the opinion.

Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Middleton, who heads the office’s sexual assault unit, said “it appears there is a loophole in the law” that allows social workers to view statutory rapes one way, while the state’s Penal Code requires that prosecutors view it differently.

“To us, unlawful sex with a minor is child abuse,” he said. “There seems to be a double standard. There’s a problem here. This whole issue, to me, contradicts the goals of the governor. There are some real inconsistencies.”

Middleton said the policy has effectively allowed some statutory rapes to not be prosecuted. He said he believes there has been a legal breakdown in the juvenile protection process.

“Parts of the team are not working together,” he said.

Larry Leaman, director of the Orange County Social Services Agency, said he has asked the county counsel to reexamine its 1994 opinion in light of the controversy over recent revelations that Leaman’s department has assisted some adolescent girls under its protection get married to adult men who impregnated them.

“We’re grappling with this [opinion] this very minute,” he said Thursday.

Leaman also said that the opinion may not be followed by all the social workers, all the time. “Mostly, they look at these things on a case-by-case basis,” he said.

Although Leaman doubted that the opinion itself was shared with the police officers, doctors and educators who have a legal obligation to report suspected child abuse cases to his agency, he said the county’s interpretation of the law was probably relayed to them in some fashion.

He added that he did not know how many such statutory rape cases may have gone unreported.

Gilbert Geis, a visiting professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said the agency’s policy is bad public policy.

“It offends me,” Geis said. “What if the girl is 15 and the man is 52? They ought to look at these cases. This is not a very good policy.”

Supervisor William G. Steiner, however, said he supports the county counsel’s conclusions.

“In a perfect world, you’d like to protect children from all crimes,” said Steiner, formerly the director of the Orangewood Foundation for abused and neglected children.

But, he said, “with more than 45,000 cases going through the system every year, you have to prioritize. The system can get so overwhelmed that the children are not being served. I agree that in cases where the minor is 15 years or older and where the sex is consensual, that there should be no response by the social workers.”

The issue of whether or not to report statutory rapes has confounded Orange County social workers, police, doctors, teachers and others in recent years. In 1992, social workers and law enforcement officials met to discuss whether it was appropriate to file child abuse reports when they encountered suspected instances of statutory rape.

According to a policy drafted for doctors, hospitals, educators, police and other so-called “mandated reporters” in 1992, the Social Services Agency advised that child abuse reports were to be filed when adults were discovered to have had sex with minors of any age.

A year later, Leaman asked the county attorney to review the matter and offer its legal opinion on the issue. The agency’s handling of statutory rapes is being revisited now, following the revelation that the agency helped pregnant teenage girls under its protection marry or continue living with their adult male sex partners.