Orange County Changes Policy on Underage Marriages

SANTA ANA —  Orange County social workers will no longer recommend to Juvenile Court judges that any underage girls brought under the county’s protection as possible abuse victims be married to their adult male sex partners, the head of the county’s social service agency announced Thursday.

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

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 best 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, that misunderstanding appears to extend to some of the professionals working in the field,” he added.

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 a notion, and charged in internal memos that such reasoning smacked of “racism.”

Officials in the Wilson administration had criticized the marriage arrangements, saying they were in direct conflict with the governor’s $53-million campaign to curtail teenage pregnancies, by among other things, 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 remain divided on the issue. While some said teenagers 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.

Task force 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 non-abusive,” the reports 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 been married to 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 in 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.