County Bar Assn. Clears Children’s Court Jurists

The Los Angeles County Children’s Court and four of its commissioners were unfairly attacked last year for allegedly making decisions that endangered children, the county Bar Assn. concluded in a report released Thursday.

The lawyers’ group lashed out at the Los Angeles County counsel’s office, saying that the office wrote a confidential memo last year “to mislead and inflame the reader” into believing the commissioners were careless about children’s safety, when they were not.

The August 1996 memo was supposed to be confidential but it was leaked to the media and unfairly eroded public confidence in a system that is designed to protect abused and neglected children, the county Bar Assn. concluded after a three-month investigation.

The county counsel memo attacking the commissioners became a cause celebre last year, with County Supervisor Mike Antonovich calling for a “thorough housecleaning” at the court. The Juvenile Court responded with a report of its own, rebutting the allegations against Commissioners Robert Leventer, Debra Losnick, Marilyn Martinez and Preciliano Recendez.

And Richard Montes, then presiding judge of the Juvenile Court, lodged a formal complaint with the state Bar of California against Larry Cory, the assistant county counsel who signed the memo.

“The memo was really dead wrong on almost every point and almost every case, and the committee clearly felt it was prepared for some reasons other than just internal county use,” said Sheldon Sloan, president of the county Bar Assn.

The motive for the attack on the court and four bench officers remains unclear, Sloan said. Administrators at the Children’s Court in Monterey Park had previously said they believed the memo was written and leaked to the media as part of a campaign by county lawyers to take over legal representation of endangered children, who the memo implies were being poorly served by private attorneys.

The four commissioners who were criticized in the memo could not be reached for comment Thursday. But Michael Nash, recently appointed presiding judge of the Juvenile Court, said: “Obviously, I am satisfied and agree with the bar’s conclusions. It is what we said all along.”

County Counsel DeWitt Clinton’s office did not comment on the report, referring questions to Cory. He did not return repeated phone calls.

The 1996 memo was supposed to be the first in a series of regular reports by the county counsel’s office to the county Department of Children and Family Services, which employs the social workers who oversee the care of children who are taken from their parents.

The 13-page document said egregious errors were found in 14 separate cases. It was quickly rebutted by Judges Nash and Montes. In the report:

* The county counsel said a 2-year-old girl was returned home to her mother despite an episode in which the mother “decided to teach her daughter a lesson” by driving away while the child was dangling outside the car. A stepfather actually was appointed as primary caretaker and he was ordered never to leave the toddler and the mother alone, the judges noted in their rebuttal.

* The county counsel said that a 1-year-old girl was placed with her “rapist, sex offender father despite an expert’s opinion that the child was at extreme risk. . . .” The file in the case confirmed that the girl’s father was a convicted rapist, the judges said, but it also showed that a county social worker had stated that the father provided “a safe and loving home” for the girl and that she was not at risk.

Gary Klausner, the presiding judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, asked the lawyer’s group to review the entire controversy. Bar officials appointed a 20-member committee, which took three months to review the county counsel memo, the court’s rebuttal and the files in all 14 cases. Klausner had no input into the group’s investigation or findings, Sloan said.

The committee concluded that the four court commissioners’ actions showed “care and concern” for children. Only once in 14 cases, the panel said, did a commissioner make a decision that was “erroneous under the law.” In that case, which was not identified, the commissioner was overturned on appeal. The county counsel in its memo had described one case in which a father was videotaped as he appeared to sexually abuse his son. The appellate court in that case admonished Commissioner Losnick that the “purpose of Juvenile Court law is to protect minors.”

The bar committee went on to say that the county counsel’s memo contains “material misstatements and omissions” so pervasive “as to belie any suggestion that they are a result of mere carelessness or negligence.”

The panel said it concluded its inquiry despite remaining questions because it does not have the power to compel testimony or to order the production of evidence.