For Juditha Brown, the Kids Come First

My choice for Orange County Mother of the Year is Juditha Brown of Dana Point. She dropped everything about her life to devote herself to her two grandchildren when their mother--her daughter--Nicole Brown Simpson, was murdered on June 12, 1994.

She got them into good schools, provided them a loving home and put them ahead of everything in her own life. Perhaps most admirable of all, family members have made clear throughout this tragedy, Juditha Brown never once shared with the children her true feelings, that their father, O.J. Simpson, had murdered their mother.

She and her husband, Lou Brown, and their three other daughters scurried all over the area--to drugstores, supermarkets, barbershops--to make sure tabloid pictures of Simpson were face down during his trial for the murders of his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman. The Browns spared those children every pain possible.

After a jury acquitted him of those murders, Simpson, never short on gall, asked Juditha and Lou Brown to keep Sydney and Justin while he took a few months to get his life together--his golf game had gotten rusty during his 15 months in jail.

*

When Simpson didn’t need the Browns as baby sitters anymore, he fought them in court for custody. And won, of course. Simpson has had a long history of not being held legally accountable for his actions, his critics would say. (Think of how often he walked away from police after abusing his wife without so much as even an arrest, they would say.) We won’t know until the appeals are concluded whether that streak has ended with this year’s $33.5-million civil wrongful-death judgment against him, brought by the Brown and Goldman families.

The judge in the custody battle said Simpson and the Browns should work out fair visitation rights among themselves. But this informal arrangement hasn’t worked out at all. The Browns say Simpson quite often finds an excuse why the children can’t spend more time visiting with them. The other day, Sydney called Juditha Brown: “I’ve got a half day [from school], you want to come up?” Her grandmother didn’t have to think twice about scrapping her own afternoon plans to be there.

This is not to say that Sydney and Justin are not devoted to their father; they are. He is their father, after all. And they have little knowledge of the events surrounding their mother’s death.

But the two Simpson children will always know that when they need their grandmother Juditha--even if it’s just for half a day--she’ll be there for them.

Three for the Cause: Merritt McKeon of Laguna Beach has good reason to care what happens to battered women. She was once among them. And when her ex-husband ran off to his native Iran, she says he surreptitiously took their three children with him. For now, the best she gets is to talk to them by telephone once a week.

Francois Dubau is a pastor connected with the Calvary Chapel church in Capistrano Beach. He’s seen domestic violence up close as a counselor to parishioners.

Together with Lou Brown, they’ve written a new book called “Stop Domestic Violence.” They call it an action plan for saving lives. It’s unlike any of the slick, huge-advance commercial books that have emerged from the O.J. Simpson trial. Prosecutors, defense lawyers, jurors and journalists have made various bundles of money feeding the public’s interest in the Simpson case. Lou Brown could have done the same thing. Instead, he chose to put his name on this primer, and I asked him why.

“Because it’s so needed,” he said. “Like most people, I used to always think that domestic violence was something a couple had to work out themselves. I know better now.”

The book’s first words are from Lou Brown, who said it brought him to tears when he first learned Nicole was a victim of domestic violence: “I wept to think of my little girl cowering in terror as her husband raged.”

*

The last part of the book is largely based on McKeon’s own experiences at shelters for battered women here in Orange County. Often, she says, women are reluctant to leave a batterer for fear of what he will do in response. McKeon appeals to these women: “I know how terrified you are . . . but by staying for fear of the unknown, you are condemning yourself to a prison that will destroy your spirit.”

I’m no expert on these kinds of books. This one seemed to me a lot of common sense you’d think most people would already know. But the authors are receiving rave reviews from where it counts most: battered women. A San Juan Capistrano woman wrote them: “I see my soon-to-be ex-husband on every page. The only thing the book leaves out is his shoe size.”

Wrap-Up: Throughout the O.J. Simpson saga, you couldn’t help but notice the contrast between Fred Goldman, Ron’s father, and Lou Brown, father of Nicole. Fred Goldman is an emotional, aggressive man not at all intimidated by a press conference microphone. Brown, on the other hand, was rarely heard from in public.

*

While his daughter Denise Brown became a well-known public advocate on domestic violence issues, Lou Brown was quietly behind the scenes putting together the Nicole Brown Simpson Charitable Foundation in Dana Point. Though it had some early management problems, those have been resolved, and the foundation has raised some $270,000 for battered women’s shelters across 40 states.

Lou Brown recently gave me a tour of its small office quarters. Everything--carpeting, lighting, wall paintings, furniture and computers--had been donated. Including the people. Bea Wenzel, for example, walked in the day of the O.J. Simpson acquittal and asked, “What can I do?” She’s been there since. Lou Brown, the foundation’s president, serves without pay.

I spent two hours at the foundation recently, listening to Brown, McKeon and Dubau talk about domestic violence. Brown spoke in his usual quiet tone. But at one point his voice cracked.

He was telling me about a South County woman who had walked into the foundation off the street. Her husband was abusing her and their children and she was at wit’s end, feeling she had no one to turn to. Brown got her to someone who could help and protect her legal rights.

“It just felt so good to know that I could help even just one person,” Brown said.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by call-ing the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823, by fax to (714) 966-7711 or by sending e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com