All Charges in Sex Case Dropped

Prosecutors dropped all remaining charges Monday against Kevin Carney, the former Palmdale city councilman, school board president and veteran child abuse investigator.

Carney, acquitted by a jury of several charges last month, was elated at his victory, angry at his accusers and relieved, most of all, that the criminal case is finally over.

“Today is a day to be thankful,” Carney said Monday, squeezing the hand of his wife, Kathleen, during an interview.

Carney, 49, credited his Catholic faith for strength throughout the 3 1/2 years since molestation allegations first surfaced against him in 1997 when he was running for mayor of Palmdale.

At that time, Carney was also the sergeant in charge of supervising all child abuse cases in the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, from which he eventually had to retire. After charges were filed against him in 1999, just days before his election to Palmdale City Council, Carney decided to resign from that post, too.

“Everything that I had, I worked for my entire life, except for my friends and family, has been taken away from me,” Carney said. But, he added: “When you place your trust in God, He will see you through.”

Prosecutors announced Monday they would not retry the father of three.

Carney had been charged with 16 molestation-related offenses ranging from lewd acts to continuous sexual abuse to rape. But in November, a jury acquitted him of four charges and deadlocked, 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal, on the remaining counts.

During his trial, four girls told inconsistent and sometimes contradicting stories. The girls were also laughing, seemed happy and showed a complete absence of trauma while on the witness stand, said Carney’s defense attorney Marie Alex.

Sensing a retrial would be doomed, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Dver recommended dismissal. Chief Deputy Curt Livesay, the new second-in-command at the district attorney’s office, approved.

“It was a very intelligent and wise decision by the new district attorney not to pursue this case,” said Carney’s defense attorney Milton Grimes, who compared Carney’s prosecution to the infamous McMartin preschool molestation case, which ended with no convictions after a long and costly trial and retrial.

Carney steamed over what he believed to be prosecutorial zeal that “went too far.”

“I knew I was innocent . . . but to some people, the question of guilt or innocence is irrelevant,” Carney said. “[Prosecutors] took the philosophy of, if you threw enough charges at the wall, maybe something would stick.”

His chief accuser was a 15-year-old girl who was raised by a single-parent mother, a friend of Carney’s. According to testimony at trial, the girl looked up to Carney as a father figure. He bought her gifts, took her to the movies, picked her up from school and became her confidant.

“Who would’ve known it would be twisted around into something so ugly,” Carney said. “I am who I am. . . . I like people and I reach out to people.”

His wife said her husband is “just so good to everybody.”

Neighborhood children frequented the Carneys’ house to see pet turtles in a backyard pond and an upstairs den.

Now, Kevin Carney said, “we’re just going to have to be very careful about being nice to people.”

In his experience supervising more than 7,000 child abuse investigations, false allegations by children sometimes happened, Carney said. But typically his investigators would either not turn the case over to the district attorney’s office, or prosecutors would decline to file charges.

The former councilman, who said Monday he would never again run for office, declined to speculate on why he had been charged. The allegations in 1997 and 1999 were made shortly before election day while he was campaigning for public office.

“I’m not going down that road to accuse somebody until I have proof . . . and do what was done to me,” Carney said.

Now retired from the Sheriff’s Department, Carney has been trying to make ends meet and pay off his legal bills, which he said total more than $100,000 (His attorney said more than half of that was for bail), by selling vintage license plates and plastic model kits on the Internet.

He also plans to write a book about his experience to educate the public about false accusations by children, Carney said.

“It’s going to be called ‘Framing the Turtle Man.’ ”