Child care audit alarms L.A.

Los Angeles County officials said Thursday that they would begin their own checks of child-care facilities and foster homes after a state audit found 49 instances in which convicted sex offenders appeared to have lived at the same address as such facilities.

The audit found that although child-care operators and employees must submit to criminal background checks, no such requirement currently applies to people who live in the same house or apartment where the facilities are located.

Auditors cross-referenced the addresses of 8,000 sex offenders on parole from the California Department of Justice against 75,000 locations of licensed foster- and child-care facilities. At least 30 matches were made in Southern California: 25 in Los Angeles, four in San Diego County, and one in San Bernardino County.

There is no evidence so far that the offenders harmed children at the facilities.

After further investigation, state Department of Social Services officials moved to temporarily suspend the licenses of at least eight facilities in Los Angeles County -- including five in the city of Los Angeles and one each in Compton, Lancaster and Pomona -- and one in Rialto in San Bernardino County.

In those cases, authorities discovered offenders with criminal convictions that ranged from rape and sexual battery to lewd acts on a child, and oral copulation with a minor under the age of 14, according to documents released Thursday detailing the state’s revocation proceedings.

In the Compton case, investigators allege that Jerome Tillman, who was convicted of four counts of rape in 1977, lived in a foster family home on Maie Avenue. (The foster parents could not be reached for comment.)

Officials with the county Department of Children and Family Services said Thursday that they had removed two children from a Los Angeles home after being informed Wednesday of the audit’s results.

Director Patricia S. Ploehn said county officials “were in a state of shock” about the audit and were already discussing ways that L.A. County could check all child-care facilities to make sure no sex offenders were living there.

State officials have spent the last few days examining the child-care facilities cited in the audit. In 24 of the cases, officials said they found that the facility in question was not currently operating. But it was unclear whether the homes had at some point served children while offenders lived there.

Director John Wagner of the Department of Social Services expressed concern about the audit’s findings. But he said his agency did not have the legal right to access criminal data gathered by Department of Justice that could flag potential conflicts between facilities and sex offenders.

There is already a push in Sacramento to change the rules.

Assembly members Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco), who originally called for the audit, and Anthony Adams (R-Hesperia) said they would introduce legislation that would make it illegal for sex offenders to live in child-care facilities or foster homes.

They also vowed to make changes that would require the state Department of Justice to better communicate with the Department of Social Services concerning sex offenders.

“Government has absolutely failed in this regard,” Adams said Thursday at a news conference in Sacramento detailing the audit’s findings. “The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.”

State laws already require certain sex offenders to register their addresses and other information with law enforcement agencies, and prohibit them from living near areas where children congregate, such as parks and schools.

Ma said she believes a further examination of licensees would produce far more cases.

“I wonder out of 75,000 licenses from social services how many have really undergone due diligence to ensure there are no concerns about child safety,” she said.

L.A. County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said he plans to introduce a motion Tuesday for the creation of a countywide system that would flag sex offenders if they tried to settle down at any location that provided child care. Local officials would conduct such checks on a regular basis, he said.

There is evidence that some of the information cited in the audit was not current.

Morris Family Day Care on Carl Street in Pacoima was listed in state documents as the address of a convicted sex offender. But the offender’s father said his son hadn’t lived at the house for nine years. The offender’s parents started the day care in 1986 and shut it down about five years ago, he said.

The state audit also dealt with another controversial issue: Large groups of sex offenders living at one location.

Auditors found that although the law prohibits sex offenders on parole from living with each other in a “residential facility” or single family residence, 2,038 sex offenders on parole were listed as living in 332 hotels or apartment buildings, including several in which two or more shared the same room. The law does not address hotels and apartments.

In Los Angeles County, 78 hotels or apartment buildings were home to 620 sex offenders on parole.

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andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Molly Hennessy-Fiske contributed to this report.