All This Play Needs Are Some Heroes

How many bad actors can you squeeze into one ill-fated production? For the answer, consider the three-act play that unfolded over recent months in Garden Grove. Surely it sets some kind of record for blown lines, lousy setups and horrible endings.

Unfortunately, it didn’t play out on a stage, with thespians. If only. Instead, it happened in what we call real life and joined children, parents, police and prosecutors in one giant display of societal malfunction.

Let’s call it “Mistakes Aplenty.”

The opening act came in May when three girls, two of them 11 and the other 12, told their parents and then police that one of them had fought off an attack by a transient.

The drifter had been seen in the neighborhood in the days before the alleged attack, and when authorities included a photo of him in a lineup, the girls identified him as the attacker. He then sat in jail until his trial last month.

At the trial, the girl who said she had been attacked testified that the drifter had choked her until she turned purple. I’ll skip further details, because the girls later admitted they made the whole thing up to cover up the fact they got home late from school. The drifter, who could have been looking at five years in prison if convicted, was released from jail.

The nagging question: Over that long middle act of eight months, why didn’t parents and the authorities see through the story? About the only thing worthy of praise in this whole drama was that adults believed the girls in the beginning. Cheers on that count, but isn’t it a bit troubling that in the next eight months none of the girls’ parents smelled a rat? Or that none of the girls stepped forward to set the record straight? Or that police and prosecutors could be hoodwinked by preteens?

It’s left to the parents to question their relationships with their daughters. But I’ll ask the prosecutors: What does their gullibility say about the soundness of other investigations involving children?

More questions are raised by how police handled the case after the girls’ deception was revealed: On Monday they arrested the three girls, now all 12, at school and led them away in handcuffs. They were booked on suspicion of conspiracy, and the girl who testified faces a perjury charge.

If police were looking to put the worst possible ending on this, they did their jobs. I can’t think of a better way to humiliate a 12-year-old than to handcuff her at school. Police said the idea was to highlight the seriousness of the alleged crime. No argument on that thought, but, please, wasn’t this a time to think outside the book?

These are 12-year-olds, whose names we don’t even put in the paper because they’re juveniles. And their alleged crime, while serious, is nonviolent.

Wouldn’t a quiet arrest -- at their homes -- deliver the message that this is serious business? “Scared straight” is fine, but how about an arrest that’s age-appropriate? Talk tough on crime, but don’t tell me that in this situation there’s a good reason to handcuff girls at school.

What plotlines, eh? Girls lie and leave a man languishing in jail for eight months. Parents, police and prosecutors can’t ferret out the truth from 12-year-olds. And, finally, police bring down the curtain by treating the girls like Robert Blake.

The police even said one of the girls didn’t ask for a lawyer when a cop read her her rights and began questioning her. I’m surprised the cops didn’t call TV crews to film the arrests.

Did anyone use good judgment in this whole sorry mess? Shouldn’t there be at least one semi-heroic figure in any drama?

Can anyone shut down this show?

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.