O.C. Agency Alters Policy on Underage Marriages

SANTA ANA â€”  Orange County social workers will no longer recommend that underage girls in the county’s protection be allowed to marry their adult male sex partners, the head of the county’s Social Services Agency announced Thursday.

The new policy is a departure from the practice of some social workers who had helped a number of pregnant adolescent girls marry or resume living with their adult partners, instead of treating the minors as victims of child abuse or statutory rape.

The social workers’ role in those unions, disclosed by The Times in September, stirred a national debate among police, prosecutors and social workers over how to handle such situations.

As a result of the controversy, an agency task force was formed to investigate the practice, which also came under the scrutiny of the Orange County Grand Jury, the district attorney’s office, the state Department of Social Services and Gov. Pete Wilson’s office.

“The publicity had many facets,� said Larry M. Leaman, director of the Orange County Social Services Agency. “But perhaps the most important thing we learned from it is that there is a poor understanding of just what is and is not child abuse under California law.�

“Unfortunately,� Leaman continued, “that misunderstanding appears to extend to some of the professionals working in the field.�

According to the task force’s findings, which were adopted by Leaman, social workers will no longer “initiate recommendations� that underage girls marry adults. Instead, that decision will be left to the juvenile-court judges without recommendations from the social workers. He added that it was “outside the social worker’s role� to recommend such a marriage.

Juvenile Court Presiding Judge Ronald E. Owen said he approved of the agency’s new policy.

“Obviously, it is better than what was occurring before,� he said. “The judges have to make the ultimate decision anyway.�

Owen said the Juvenile Court judges, as they have in the past, will ask independent court mediators to evaluate the cases and provide information to assist their decisions.

“These type of decisions are best made on a case-by-case basis,� he said.

The agency’s task force made no judgment on whether the marriages are appropriate solutions in cases where pregnant, underage girls want to resume living with adult men who impregnate them, and have the blessings of their parents.

The committee found that over the past two years there have been at least 15 cases in which social workers grappled with the issue of reuniting underage girls with adult men.

Because 14 of the 15 girls were Latinas, some social workers said the arrangements were perfectly acceptable under the “cultural� mores of Mexico. Others rejected such notions, and charged in internal memos that such reasoning smacked of “racism.�

Officials in Wilson’s administration had criticized the marriage arrangements, saying they were in direct conflict with the governor’s $53-million campaign to curtail costly teenage pregnancies, by among other things, severely punishing the men who have sex with underage girls.

“This new policy appears to be more in line with the governor’s program to address the problems of teenage pregnancies and statutory rapes,� the governor’s spokeswoman, Lisa Kalustian, said Thursday.

Many social workers, however, remain divided on the issue. While some said girls and their babies should be placed in foster homes and the men prosecuted for statutory rape, others said the marriages may still be the best solution, because they at least keep the families intact and give the couples an opportunity to forge a successful marriage.

In their 20-page report, task force members said the decisions to recommend that a minor marry an adult involve complex issues that “do not lend themselves to simplistic answers or actions.�

The report stated that “assessments in these cases must continue to be made on a case-by-case basis.�

Committee members complained that the laws concerning child protection and sex crimes are confusing and occasionally appear in conflict.

While sexual intercourse with girls younger than 18 is a crime under the Penal Code, it is not necessarily considered child abuse, according to the committee’s report. Child welfare laws do not consider unlawful sex with minors 14, 15, 16 or 17 years old as child abuse offenses, the report stated.

“It is difficult for some to understand or accept that a sexual relationship between an adult and a minor can be nonabusive,� the report states. “When there is a significant difference in age between the two, it arouses many strong feelings and opinions.�

Indeed, that was the case when The Times disclosed that a pregnant 13-year-old girl under the county’s protection had married her 20-year-old boyfriend with court approval.

The couple said they were in love and wanted to get married. The district attorney, however, said he would have charged the man with child molestation had he been informed of the situation before they were married last July.

Cases like that fall through cracks in the system, authorities said, because there is little coordination among police, social workers, educators, health-care professionals and other people required by law to report suspected child abuse.

Sheer numbers suggest that the county’s social services agency is aware of only a small fraction of the underage pregnancies that occur where the father is an adult.

The task force noted that “over 900 teen births in Orange County in 1994 involved an adult male as the father.�

Even though state law does not consider many of these relationships “child abuse,� Leaman said his agency wants to be notified of them so social workers can investigate the circumstances of the relationship.

Leaman added that he wants to improve “communications� between police agencies and social workers so there is more consistent reporting of potential child abuse cases.

The controversy that erupted over the issue last summer already has heightened awareness of the situation, authorities said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Middleton, who handles the county’s sex crimes unit, said the number of statutory rape reports has skyrocketed in recent months. Initially, he said, his unit was expecting to handle 50 statutory rape prosecutions a year. Now, it is likely it will prosecute more than 180 cases.

“The cases are coming in from everywhere,� he said.