Mothers Testify in Ex-Councilman’s Molestation Trial

Two mothers testified Tuesday that they did not believe their daughters had been molested by former Palmdale City Councilman Kevin Carney when allegations against him first arose.

Both women now believe that Carney, a sheriff’s sergeant who served on a sexual assault unit, repeatedly molested their daughters. The women were subpoenaed by the defense in Carney’s criminal trial.

One mother, a child abuse investigator for the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services for the last 12 years, said she had repeatedly asked her daughter whether Carney had ever inappropriately touched her, and she had believed her daughter when the girl always said no. At the time, the mother said, she thought her daughter was telling her the truth.

“I would not believe that Mr. Carney would do such a thing,” testified the woman, who also said that because of her profession, she has interviewed thousands of children and considered herself “very good” at detecting all forms of abuse, including molestation.

She and another mother who lived across the street from Carney were subpoenaed to the downtown courtroom of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant to testify for Carney’s defense, in a bid to bolster his contention that the alleged incidents never happened.

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Carney is charged with 16 counts of molestation-related offenses, ranging from lewd acts to unlawful sexual intercourse. In the past two weeks, four girls from the Palmdale-Lancaster area have testified against the 49-year-old defendant, who is also a former school board president in the Antelope Valley.

The alleged victims included the social worker’s daughter, now 15, who testified that Carney molested her repeatedly over an eight-year period in his car, at her home, and even in the office where he once worked as a sergeant supervising a child abuse unit for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Another was an 11-year-old neighbor who claimed Carney had improperly touched her “about a hundred times” while she played with his pet turtles in an upstairs room at his house while his wife was downstairs.

Carney’s defense attorney, Milton Grimes, contends the girls fabricated the stories and suggested that the charges may have been politically and financially motivated.

The allegations of the 11-year-old and another neighbor girl, now 10, arose during Carney’s 1997 campaign for Palmdale mayor, which turned out to be unsuccessful. The 15-year-old reported Carney to authorities just days before his election last year to the Palmdale City Council, a post Carney later resigned to focus on his criminal defense.

When questioned by Grimes on Tuesday, the social worker said she and her daughter have filed a civil lawsuit against Los Angeles County. The lawsuit seeks damages for the alleged molestation, according to Carney’s defense attorneys.

The social worker said she had hoped her daughter would confide in her and be truthful, but they sometimes fought and the girl confided more in Carney. Carney had been a father figure to the girl, said the unmarried mother.

When questioned by Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Dver, the mother of the 15-year-old also said that, in her experience as a social worker, children sometimes don’t confide in parents about molestation, and that the offending adult is often someone very close to the child.

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The mother of the 10-year-old said she didn’t believe her daughter when the girl first accused Carney of molestation in 1997 because she was in denial. At the time, the mother told police that her daughter must have been mistaken and that any “touching” must have been innocent or misunderstood.

“When I heard she had been done wrong, I didn’t want to think about it,” the mother of the 10-year-old said tearfully. “I didn’t want to accept it.”

Though Carney was investigated in 1997, charges were not filed until after the 15-year-old girl reported him in October 1999.