False Accusations Still Haunt Couple

The nightmare began 16 years ago, when a group of children on Planter Street in Pico Rivera accused four adults of child bondage and molestation and of threatening that spiders would attack if the children told.

Then came the sheriff’s deputies with guns drawn, who took the two couples from their homes in handcuffs to jail.

The charges were quickly dismissed as false. In January 1985, Tim O’Keefe, a law student, Helen O’Keefe, a bank employee, Jose Valentin, a bakery worker, and Myrna Malave, a nurse, filed suit against Los Angeles County, charging false imprisonment, civil rights violations, defamation and the negligent infliction of emotional distress.

Their problems had only begun.

When a jury awarded each of them about $800,000 in 1990, the county appealed on technicalities. When the suit was retried in 1995, a Norwalk jury said they deserved $7.3 million, but the county appealed that judgment, too.

About two months ago, Valentin and Malave, who did not know the O’Keefes, settled for about $2 million each. On Friday, a Norwalk jury awarded the O’Keefes about $14 million.

Now, the O’Keefes are again waiting to see if they will face another appeal.

The attorneys representing the county declined to comment. The O’Keefes’ attorneys said the county has 60 days to file a third appeal.

Tim and Helen O’Keefe, both 42, said Tuesday they expect another round in court. The county, unlike individuals, does not have to post bond in order to appeal. The case could drag on for years to come, they said.

“What the county did was wrong, and they have to take responsibility for that; but we understand how the system works,” said Tim O’Keefe, who works for an international management firm. “With an unlimited expense account of taxpayers’ money, they can appeal as long as they want.”

He and his wife, a real estate appraiser, say they both suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of the long battle.

Both said they have learned to live with recurring nightmares, flashbacks and startled responses every time they see a police car.

“It’s terrible,” said Emmett Gantz, the attorney representing Tim O’Keefe. “These people were seriously injured, yet they’ve been through court again and again. The county just doesn’t seem to want to resolve this case.”

The arrests came only a month after the infamous McMartin child molestation case hit the headlines.

In that case, seven people were indicted on 115 counts of child molestation and conspiracy stemming from allegations at the family-run McMartin Pre-School in Manhattan Beach. The McMartin case ended, six years and $15 million after it started, with a mistrial in the case of two defendants. Charges against the other five were dropped.

Tim O’Keefe said the accusations against him, his wife, and the other couple rode “the McMartin wave.”

Helen O’Keefe had just returned home from work on Friday, April 6, 1984, when she heard a bang on the front door and saw sheriff’s deputies on the porch and lawn with guns drawn, according to court documents filed in the case.

Without a warrant, one of the deputies burst through the door, grabbed her and pulled her onto the driveway and barked, “Sit down on the driveway or I will smash your face into the ground and spread-eagle you.”

Down the street, Valentin, then 48, was watching television when he heard a clamor in his backyard. Deputies had surrounded the house. He was detained for three hours before being taken to jail in handcuffs.

At the O’Keefes’ house, Helen was allowed to call her husband, who was working as a clerk in an Anaheim law firm while he attended law school. He rushed home and was arrested.

None of the accused knew at the time that they had been targeted by neighborhood children who told sheriff’s investigators horror stories about being molested. Each was booked on 19 counts of child molestation, sodomy, oral copulation and administering drugs to children to take pornographic pictures.

The O’Keefes spent 22 days in jail, where guards and prisoners jeered, spit and threw urine on them, they said. Valentin and Malave were jailed for about a week.

The case evaporated quickly, when several children said they made up the molestation charges.

“It’s a shame the way the county has treated people in our community in this matter,” Gantz said. “It shows their indifference to human beings who have been injured as a result of the conduct of the Sheriff’s Department.”