Lawsuit Puts Child Welfare Agency Under Scrutiny

The first time Marc Lafer was accused of molesting his son, he felt the deck was stacked against him.

After all, his former wife was a child abuse investigator for Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services, the very agency probing the allegations. It took months in court before the charges were dropped.

Lafer sued the county, though the case ultimately was dismissed; then the whole thing started over again.

His former wife, Sheryl Becker, took the son to another therapist who reported similar findings. The county took Lafer to court and curtailed his visits with his son on the eve of Lafer’s second wedding. Again, documents say, the allegations proved groundless and Lafer sued--this time in federal court, alleging retaliation and violation of his civil rights.

Now county attorneys are recommending settling the second suit for $550,000 in a case that raises new questions about the county’s child welfare agency.

After the first allegation, Lafer wrote angry letters to the agency’s head, Peter Digre, warning him about the case.

Nearly a dozen memos or notes about Lafer were written by Digre or others on his staff, though Digre later filed a court declaration saying he had no personal involvement in the case and could not remember being briefed on it by his staff.

“I never in my wildest dreams would have thought they were this unprofessional,” Lafer said. “They knew it hadn’t happened and they proceeded with this thing.”

Digre was traveling Friday and unavailable for comment, but agency officials said he receives and writes thousands of notes annually and cannot be expected to remember one case. Gene Gilden, chief of the agency’s quality assurance division, denied that there was any malice toward Lafer. Gilden said the department has put in place new procedures to prevent similar mistakes in the future.

“This was two people who were in a bitter divorce and custody struggle. It was one person’s word against the other,” Gilden said. “The fact that one of those people happened to be a social worker for us had nothing to do with it. We wanted to stay out of it as much as possible and leave it in the hands of the court.”

John Goudge, Becker’s attorney, said the molestation allegations all came from therapists who were examining the son rather than from his client.

The settlement recommendation comes as Digre is under investigation by the county’s auditor-controller and, sources say, the Sheriff’s Department for his alleged assistance of a political ally, who was accused of child abuse.

The county’s claims board Monday will consider recommending not only a settlement in the Lafer case, but also in another involving the agency.

A $1.75-million settlement has been recommended in that case, in which a 2 1/2-year-old girl with multiple birth defects suffered brain damage after being placed in the home of a foster parent who was neither licensed nor adequately trained to care for her. The girl, now 7, has no motor functions or communication skills, according to a memo to the claims board by Assistant County Counsel Louis Aguilar.

Aguilar said it is merely a coincidence that the two cases are proposed for settlement simultaneously. In the Lafer case, he wrote: “While we believe that DCFS was at all times acting in the best interest of [Lafer’s son], Marc L[afer] will be able to produce evidence that will show that the mistakes made on the case by DCFS appear to be prejudicial to him.”

In an interview, Aguilar said Lafer would make a sympathetic plaintiff in a jury trial and probably win higher damages.

“It’s obviously a highly sympathetic case,” Aguilar said.

Lafer and Becker separated in 1990 after five years of marriage and finalized their divorce the next year. Becker had primary custody of their 2-year-old son; Lafer had visitation rights.

In the summer of 1992, a social worker contacted Lafer and told him he was under investigation for allegedly molesting his son.

The initial call to the county had come from Becker’s therapist, according to county documents, and Becker had the initial social worker replaced with another investigator, who referred the case to a psychiatrist friend for evaluation.

In an undated memo to Digre, Bruce Rubinstein, then the agency’s deputy director, said, “[T]his appears to be a conflict of interest.”

The department sent the case to Dependency Court, where a judicial officer would determine whether Lafer should continue to see his son. (The agency does not handle criminal cases, and a criminal investigation into the allegations by the police in Costa Mesa, where Lafer lives, was dropped.)

The case was dismissed in November 1992, and a county lawyer said he believed Lafer posed no threat to his son.

She wrote in the formal report recommending dismissal of the charges: “It is the opinion of this children’s social worker, as well as other mental health professionals involved in assessing this minor and his family, that sexual abuse has not occurred.”

But that report was not placed in Lafer’s file and was not available as evidence in Lafer’s lawsuit against the county. Nor could it be consulted later, when new molestation allegations were made.

County officials say social workers, overwhelmed by blizzards of paperwork in the nation’s largest child welfare agency, simply misplaced the document. In court papers, they had argued that the report was merely the opinion of one social worker.

In 1994, Becker took her son to a new therapist, who forwarded abuse allegations to the agency.

Lafer again began to send angry letters to Digre, outlining his old case and warning of further litigation.

Despite the various earlier findings that Lafer had not molested his son, the agency again referred the case to Dependency Court. At the time Lafer--his credit destroyed by mounting legal fees--was preparing to remarry, but his son, scheduled to be his best man, was not allowed to attend the ceremony, he said.

The court again dismissed the allegations and ordered that Lafer be allowed to see his child as arranged by a county social worker.

But, according to county documents, that social worker broke her leg and failed to arrange regular visits.

A Superior Court judge had thrown out the part of Lafer’s first lawsuit that dealt with the county, ruling that the child welfare agency had simply been performing its legal responsibilities.

But, in the second instance, Lafer filed a $10-million federal civil rights lawsuit, and the U.S. District Court judge would not dismiss it.

Lafer says he and his son, now 10, have a strained relationship after years of limited visitation, often under the eye of a social worker.

“I don’t know what he thinks,” Lafer said. “He’s missed the formative years with his father. I feel like I didn’t have a kid.”