Sending Abused Youths Back Home Draws Fire

Hundreds of children each year are returned by the county’s Juvenile Court system to homes that social workers believe pose a serious danger of physical injury or sexual abuse, according to Los Angeles County officials who have prepared a stinging critique focusing on four of the court’s commissioners.

A confidential report by the county counsel’s office describes in detail 14 recent cases where Dependency Court commissioners ignored warnings of future abuse and sent children back to their troubled families.

In one case, two children were ordered back to their home even though a confiscated videotape showed the father lying on a bed, nude except for a T-shirt, and asking his 3-year-old son to demonstrate how an older cousin had sexually abused him.

The report, obtained by The Times, escalates a long-standing battle between the Dependency Court and county officials who contend that certain commissioners sometimes reunify families at the expense of the children’s safety.

The findings are being used to support the county’s hiring of two legal specialists, who are expected to file hundreds of additional appeals of “adverse rulings” each year.

The 13-page document, dated Aug. 29, provides a window into a system that operates out of public view because of the sensitive nature of the proceedings. Without naming either the children or their parents, it highlights a variety of recently contested decisions by the commissioners, who determine when children from disrupted and abusive homes can be removed or returned to their families.

Other examples in the report:

* A 2-year-old was returned to her home despite an episode in which her mother “decided to teach her daughter a lesson” by driving with the child dangling from the outside of the car.

* A 1-year-old girl was released to the care of a father who “is a registered sex offender with a rape conviction and a diagnosis of ‘antisocial personality disorder with physical and sexual aggression.’ ” During a contentious hearing, the commissioner apologized to the father, saying, “You are a victim” of overzealous county attorneys.

* A mother was allowed visits with her four children--ages 3 to 13--after serving a prison sentence for killing her 2-year-old child.

* While awaiting trial for physical and sexual abuse of their children, parents were given permission to take their 3-year-old daughter on a cross-country van trip to attend a grandfather’s funeral in Arkansas.

In all 14 cases, attorneys appointed to represent the children concurred with the decisions to return them to their homes. In most cases, the county counsel has filed appeals.

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Court officials are reluctant to discuss individual cases because of confidentiality concerns. But they say they are simply following the law and using the evidence to make the most prudent decisions they can. They also contend that the case summaries included in the county counsel’s report distort many of the facts.

“Putting up a one-sided document and giving it to the L.A. Times, I don’t know how that will change the decisions,” said Superior Court Judge Michael Nash, the supervising judge of the Dependency Court. “Each party has its own perspective. It is an adversary system. That’s fine. That’s how the system works.”

Robert Leventer, one of the commissioners identified in the county counsel’s report, said:

“We all dread sending a child to a home when they can be abused or killed, but that’s going to happen. We have to be cautious and prudent. But the law requires us to pursue reunification with the families that have problems.”

Leventer contends that the county counsel’s report leaves out important facts that were presented to the court and takes other information out of context.

The Dependency Court, which operates out of 17 courtrooms in Monterey Park, is a division of the county Juvenile Court system. The commissioners are civil servants appointed by Superior Court officials.

Tensions between the court and county have been growing in recent years, especially since the killing of Lance Helms, a 2-year-old North Hollywood boy beaten to death by his father’s girlfriend after being returned to his father’s custody.

The county counsel’s report, the first of a series of monthly reviews, grew out of concerns that there were “vast inconsistencies” in how the different commissioners apply the law, said Peter Digre, director of the county’s Department of Children and Family Services.

Digre and Supervisor Mike Antonovich have called for systematic tracking of cases before the Dependency Court.

“We decided to take a very aggressive approach to tracking court by court and case by case and seeing where we have problems, where kids were being reunited with families in dangerous situations,” Digre said.

While the department believes in reunifying families, Digre said, it is obligated to put the physical safety of the children first. “A lot of parents we encounter are too violent, too addicted, too impulsive ever to be entrusted to raising children.”

In the month of May--which was emphasized in the county counsel’s report--the Dependency Court held 11,651 hearings, he said. In 321 cases--about 3%--the court ruled against the position taken by the department.

The county counsel’s report focuses on the most egregious. “We picked up the ones we thought demonstrated a pattern and were the most serious cases,” said Assistant County Counsel Larry Cory, who said he could not discuss the individual cases or court commissioners.

Cory said part of the problem is that court-appointed attorneys representing the children too often ignore their duty to represent the child’s best interests and instead “represent what the child desires.” Abused children, he said, often say they want to return home--either because they have been coached or threatened by their parents, or because it is the only home they know.

“If you send those children home,” Cory said, “they will be abused.”

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California law regarding such cases would change if Gov. Pete Wilson signs two bills passed by the Legislature. One sponsored by the county and Sen. Hilda Solis (D-El Monte) explicitly requires commissioners, judges and attorneys to put the protection of the child ahead of the child’s expressed wishes.

“Existing law provides that children shall not be returned home to parents/guardians when the court finds, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the return would create a substantial risk of detriment,” according to a county summary of the legislation. “The bill clarifies that the risk of detriment is a risk to the safety, protection, and physical or emotional well-being of the child.”

The other, by Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles), would make it easier for the courts to put abused children up for adoption when a parent or guardian has caused the death of another child or has been convicted of a violent felony.

The county report points to decisions made by commissioners that the county counsel’s office believes to be contrary to existing law. The commissioners identified in the report are Leventer, Debra Losnick, Marilyn Martinez and Preciliano Recendez.

Another commissioner, Bradley A. Stoutt, was not included in the county counsel’s review of cases. As The Times reported last month, the county counsel’s office, using a rare legal maneuver, has refused to take new cases to Stoutt because it says he has a “pattern of making orders which endanger children.”

In one case detailed by the county counsel, the evidence included a videotape made by the father, who later said that he was trying to get his son to demonstrate how he had been sexually abused by a cousin.

The father “is shown directing his son to play with the father’s erect penis over 40 times during this half-hour period,” according to the county counsel’s summary of a hearing before commissioner Losnick.

Throughout the taping, the child “repeatedly pleaded with his father to stop,” according to the report. Present during the taping was the boy’s 1-year-old sister.

“Unbelievably, even after viewing the tape, Commissioner Losnick found the father’s actions with his son were not sexual abuse, merely ‘poor judgment,’ ” the report states.

Losnick concluded that there was no risk to the two children and released them to their home.

On Aug. 27, the state Court of Appeal served notice that it would overrule Losnick and send the case back to another judge. The order admonished the lower court that the “purpose of Juvenile Court law is to protect minors.”

Losnick also was the commissioner who sent home the 2-year-old girl who was thrown to the pavement when her mother drove off with the child as she was dangling outside the car. According to the county counsel, the mother “turned the car around and drove back toward the child. Police officers, fearing she would run over the baby, placed their car so the mother could not run over the baby.”

The mother was arrested for child endangerment. She later explained her actions by noting that her own grandmother had died recently and that the child had thrown a temper tantrum and needed to be taught a lesson.

In an interview, Losnick said she could not discuss any individual cases, but added that she disagreed with the appellate court ruling. “This is very frustrating, but I’m ethically bound not to discuss this case.”

Losnick did describe the difficulty of making such decisions. “Do I think I make good calls? Yes. Do I think I make mistakes? Yes. All I can do is look at a case and determine if there is a clear and convincing risk to a child. And that is a very high standard. Many times you have a gut feeling, but you have to look at the evidence and follow the law.”

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Another commissioner, Leventer, released a 1-year-old girl to a father who was a registered sex offender and convicted rapist with a 30-year history of sex crimes against women. The child was born addicted to cocaine and placed in the custody of an aunt.

Leventer granted the father monitored visitation rights a year ago and then, over the objections of the Department of Children and Family Services, placed the little girl in his care.

During the hearing, Leventer told the father: “I apologize [that] we are treating you so shabby and putting you through this, when there is simply no reason or no evidence to underlie the concerns that the department is raising. You are a victim.”

In an interview, Leventer declined to discuss specifics of the case or any others but said, “Criminal history is always a relevant factor and something you certainly have to consider. But that alone is not enough . . . for the government to take a child from a parent, especially if social workers testify on his behalf that he is not a risk.”

The county counsel’s report cites four other decisions in which Leventer released youngsters to households despite evidence of child abuse by parents or guardians.

Commissioner Martinez was criticized for her handling of five cases, including one in which she allowed four children unmonitored weekend visits with a mother who had recently served time for beating to death her 2-year-old. She also released 2-year-old twins to their parents for a 60-day visit even though the parents had “abused them so severely that one child had skull, rib and leg fractures, and her twin sister had rib fractures,” according to the county counsel’s report.

Martinez refused requests for an interview.

Commissioner Recendez, over the objections of the county, permitted a 3-year old child to travel across country with her parents--a father on trial in the sexual abuse of his stepdaughter, and a mother facing charges of abusing a child by hitting her with a plastic jump rope and belt.

Recendez allowed the mother to monitor the conduct of the father as they drove to a funeral in a van. The county obtained a stay of Recendez’s order and kept the child from going on the trip.

Another case allowed a 3-year-old to have visits with his parents, despite a medical examination showing that the child had been repeatedly sodomized.

Recendez, who was on vacation, could not be reached for comment.