Review of Dependency Cases Vowed

With Los Angeles County’s Dependency Court under fire, the presiding judge pledged Tuesday to conduct a full review of the handling of 14 cases in which children were returned to homes that social workers said posed a risk of physical or sexual abuse.

Superior Court Judge Michael Nash criticized the fairness of a confidential county report that concluded that four court-appointed commissioners failed to protect children from abusive parents.

Nash said he plans to review all the cases to see if any mistakes were made, although he believes his court commissioners acted prudently.

“I’m not going to try to shade the facts,” Nash said. “If the cases were wrong, I’ll tell you.”

The report was prepared by lawyers for the county counsel’s office, who represent social workers for the county Department of Children and Family Services in cases before the judges. They alleged that the four commissioners and the children’s own court-appointed lawyers had made poor judgment calls by sending youngsters back home, where they were at great risk.

The report, disclosed by The Times on Sunday, cited one case in which a father was videotaped half-naked with his 3-year-old son, and another in which a mother drove off with her 2-year-old daughter dangling from the car.

Lawyers for the nonprofit group set up to represent children in Dependency Court cases said Tuesday that the report was one-sided. They alleged that the county counsel’s office and the county’s child welfare agency orchestrated the report as a way of covering up their own abysmal failures to protect the thousands of children who have been put through the court system in recent years.

Several characterized the report--including its graphic depictions of sexual and physical abuse of children--as patently wrong.

“The public and the board [of supervisors] need to know that this is inaccurate, as far as deciding whether someone properly sent a kid home or not,” said Robert Stevenson of Dependency Legal Services, which represents the children in Dependency Court. “The public assumption is that [the Department of Children and Family Services] always knows what is best for kids and if a judge rules against that, they are wrong. And that is just not the case. A lot of times they are wrong.”

Randy Pacheco, another lawyer whose law firm represents the children, said: “I am absolutely certain that once all the facts are known, all of them are going to be close calls, where reasonable minds can differ.”

Nash also took exception to the report, and said he has spent the last several years trying to get the county counsel’s lawyers to be more aggressive in challenging the decisions of Dependency Court judges when children are sent back to potentially abusive parents.

“If you don’t do anything, you are obviously acquiescing to the same system” that the county counsel has criticized, Nash said. “If the county counsel was so concerned about the welfare of these children, why didn’t they file writs in all of them?”

Assistant County Counsel Larry Cory said his office has sought reversals through appellate courts in only four of the 14 cases because the standard of proof needed for success in such appeals is very high.

In eight cases, including two in which writs were sought, county lawyers also sought more informal rehearings, and they are now trying to develop new information on several other cases so they can continue to challenge judicial orders returning the children to their homes.

After meeting with Nash and other judges several months ago about the lack of appellate review of controversial cases, Board of Supervisors Chairman Mike Antonovich sent a letter to the director of the Department of Children and Family Services, Peter Digre, and County Counsel DeWitt Clinton asking for “more vigorous legal representation” of children in the system.

In that letter, dated July 12, Antonovich said county social workers and lawyers responsible for protecting children “have been less than vigilant” in filing appeals of cases by judges that they thought had sent children back to dangerous parents.

Times staff writer Paul Jacobs contributed to this story.