Sparing Kids Courthouse Pain

For four hours, 10-year-old Amy sat in a Santa Ana courtroom Friday while her father waited to appear before a judge on burglary charges. Amy is a good girl, her mother said, but the long wait made her fidgety. She asked dozens of questions and was uneasy seeing her father in handcuffs.

“It makes me sad,” Amy said after her third morning in court. “I don’t like seeing him this way. I don’t want the judge to be too hard on him. I miss him.”

Because parents often have little choice but to bring their children along on court business, next week Orange County officials will consider a plan that would make the situation easier on youngsters. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors is set to vote on whether to increase civil court filing fees by $5, to $193, and use part of the proceeds for a children’s waiting room in the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana.

Creating children’s chambers is part of a decadelong statewide campaign to make courthouses more user-friendly. In 1991, the Judicial Council of California, the agency that oversees courts, began requiring all new courthouses to have them. Last year the state enacted a law allowing courts to pay for such facilities by raising civil filing fees.

Backers say the rooms spare children the trauma of seeing loved ones on trial and keep them from disrupting proceedings.

“This would provide a safe place for, primarily, children of defendants who have to participate in court proceedings,” said William Brennan, a court administrator overseeing the effort in Santa Ana. “It’s in their best interest for them to have a separate room.”

The Lamoreaux Justice Center in Orange and North Justice Center in Fullerton already have children’s waiting rooms, but the Santa Ana courthouse, by far the county’s largest, does not.

On busy days there, benches outside courtrooms are filled with women, some with two or more children. Amy’s mother could not find a baby-sitter for her daughter, so for the past few months she has taken the child by bus from their North Hollywood home to Santa Ana when her father is due in court. Though her situation is bad, she said, others have it worse.

“There are mothers with three or more children. Some are 3, 4 or 5 years old,” she said. “I see a lot of them, and sometimes the kids feel sad watching their fathers in court.”

If the supervisors approve the fee increase, it would take effect July 1 and bring in about $250,000 annually for children’s rooms at all three courts. In Santa Ana, it would furnish and staff 400 square feet recently vacated by the district attorney. It would likely serve 40 to 50 children a day for stays ranging from half an hour to all day, said Susan Perdue, who runs children’s chambers as part of the county Community Service Department’s Victim Assistance Program. It would accept children 2 1/2 to 17 years old.

“It will keep kids from hearing things they shouldn’t hear and seeing the things they shouldn’t see,” Perdue said.

The room would be locked, she said, and parents who drop off children would be the only ones allowed to retrieve them. Two adults would supervise. Cookies, juice and toys would be donated by churches and other groups.

Throughout the state, thousands of youngsters use children’s chambers, said Ron Hulbert, who supervises family law cases in Riverside County. One of the first such facilities was there: a 1,600-square-foot supervised area at the courthouse, staffed by two adults and some volunteers.

The need for such a service is great, Hulbert said. “Many people who use courts can barely afford bus fare, much less child care.”