People and the News

Times Orange County edition reporter Matt Lait revealed that county social workers helped some adolescent girls under their protection marry the adult men who impregnated them. His series of articles prompted the Orange County Social Services Agency to change that policy.

AWARD

Orange County Bar Assn Media Awards

1st Place: Series

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A Social Dilemma

By MATT LAIT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Sept. 1, 1996

SANTA ANA--Faced with what its director calls a terrible social dilemma, the Orange County Social Services Agency has helped make it possible for some adolescent girls under its protection to 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 the 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 the Social Services Agency, 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 with 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 wrote in an internal memo to her boss. . . .

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 . . . or the more serious crime of child molestation.