O.C. to Pay $2 Million in Child-Abuse Case

Orange County will pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit that alleges the county put twins in the care of a veteran foster parent who sexually abused them and made one child use cat litter instead of a toilet.

Sandra Spangler pleaded guilty in March 2003 to four felony counts of endangering the now 12-year-old twins, Joshua and Jenna, and two other children, in exchange for having to serve no more than a year in jail.

According to the lawsuit, filed on behalf of the twins by a relative who is now their legal guardian, one police officer who was serving a search warrant on Spangler’s home in 2002 was bitten by fleas and another officer was so nauseated by the smell that he had to leave the house. The officers found cat feces among the children’s clothes, the lawsuit alleges. The four children were removed from the home in October 2002.

The settlement is the largest ever paid by the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, said Michael Riley, the department’s director. He declined to give details of the settlement.

The case, filed in December 2003, “was an aberration, to say the least,” Riley said. “The specifics of the case are fortunately a rarity.”

Santa Ana attorney Thomas Cifarelli said the twins, who were 1 to 9 years old when the alleged abuse occurred, should have been removed from the home when the county revoked Spangler’s license in 1999.

“The role of a foster parent is central to these children’s lives,” Cifarelli said. “The county needs to be very, very careful in its placements, and I don’t think that happened here.”

The lawsuit alleges that the county did not adequately monitor Spangler’s Fountain Valley home. Over 15 years as a foster parent, Spangler cared for more than 80 children, receiving financial assistance from the county for each foster child, Riley said.

Spangler could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuit also alleges that Spangler’s adult son sexually assaulted the twins and that she inappropriately touched them. Conditions of the “home were hazardous, unsanitary and uninhabitable,” according to the lawsuit. Among the allegations are that a locked gate kept Joshua from the bathroom, and that he was forced to use cat litter in his bedroom instead.

Spangler, now 55, was reported to the county for alleged abuse at least seven times in the 1990s, Riley said. Investigations into those reports were inconclusive, according to the county.

She was allowed to keep the four children because she was their legal guardian, Riley said. In that capacity, she did not need to report to foster care authorities but still had to allow county case workers to meet with the children twice a year outside the home. Cifarelli said that the other two children had been moved to new homes and that he was not aware of any lawsuit filed on their behalf.

As a result of the twins’ case, the county now requires that half of the visits to children under the care of a legal guardian be in the home where they live, Riley said.

“There was real serious, ugly stuff that should have raised enough attention to get every child out of this home,” he said. Spangler “should never have been allowed to have children placed in her care. They should have removed those kids at once. That would have prevented the abuse.”

The children, the lawsuit alleges, suffered hyperactivity, anxiety, skin rashes, diarrhea and malnutrition, and still exhibit behavior problems.