U.S. Judge Refuses to Seal Lawsuit Over Children’s Slayings

A federal judge refused Monday to seal the lawsuit of a man who accuses Los Angeles County social workers of contributing to the deaths of his two children, despite arguments by county lawyers that information on the case should be kept confidential.

Although they lost their bid in federal court, county attorneys have filed another motion in Juvenile Court asking that all records involving the bitter custody dispute between the children’s mother and father remain sealed.

The attorney for Rafael Lopez says that the county is more interested in keeping its own mistakes secret than in trying to protect the confidentiality of the two dead youngsters, 8-year-old Victor Lopez and 4-year-old Judith Lopez. They were allegedly killed by their mother, Martha Lopez, who is being held in Patton State Hospital until she is deemed mentally competent to stand trial.

The children’s decomposed bodies were found in their mother’s East Los Angeles home.

“Victor and Judith should be entitled to the same dignity and privacy in death as they would be accorded had they been living,” the county argued in its motion.

Some records on the custody dispute, which allegedly led to the killings, are in the federal court file, which the county had sought to seal. But the Juvenile Court file would be far more comprehensive.

The Lopez case has become a test of the county’s position that all juvenile records must remain confidential, even after children have died.

The lawyer who sued the county on behalf of the children’s father sought Monday to expand his case into a class-action suit, requiring the county to make public all juvenile records regarding dead children.

Attorney Michael Stone said it was crucial that the public be able to inspect those records to ensure that government did not contribute to the deaths.

In the Lopez case, Stone alleges that county social workers curtailed his client’s visitation rights and kept the children with their mother while she was on psychiatric leave from her county job. She is now charged with the children’s slayings.

“Public officials who are doing their jobs have nothing to fear from the public knowing what they’re doing,” Stone said.

Some children’s rights advocates agree, saying that cases such as the Lopezes’ should be made public if children die under questionable circumstances.

“Anybody looking out for children’s interests would say it’s more important to look in the file than to protect the privacy rights of dead children,” said Tom Lyon, an associate professor of law at USC.

“When the reason for the child’s death is possibly due to some negligence which can be found in the file,” Lyon added, “then the interest in disclosure should outweigh the privacy rights.”

Virginia Weisz, an attorney who handles children’s issues, added: “By giving the public the access to their files after their death, it gives us the ability to see what could be done to prevent” future deaths.

But County Counsel Lloyd W. Pellman said he feared people may not confide in social workers once they discover that their statements could become public if the child dies.

“It’s in the children’s best interest that whatever information is maintained and passed along to the judge remain in confidence,” Pellman said.

If there is wrongdoing in these closed proceedings, Pellman said, the public should trust the Board of Supervisors to fix any problems.

Pellman met with the supervisors in closed session last week but declined to say what he told them about the Lopez case.

After that meeting, Supervisor Mike Antonovich placed on today’s board agenda a motion directing the county to seek a change in state law to allow the files of dead children to be inspected to determine if government errors led to their deaths.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said she believes records should remain sealed during lawsuits and other legal proceedings.

Afterward, she said, the public perhaps should be able to inspect the records.

In the Lopez case, the county had moved to seal the federal lawsuit because it contained psychiatric and other personal information on Martha Lopez, a former county financial analyst.

County lawyers argued that after a story by the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal newspaper, Lopez’s right to a fair trial might be jeopardized by more publicity.

The $50-million lawsuit by Rafael Lopez alleges that county social workers misled Juvenile Court and unfairly kept him from seeing his children after Martha Lopez made a groundless claim of sexual abuse against him.

Attorneys for The Times and the Daily Journal were in court Monday to oppose the county’s motion, but U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian issued a tentative order denying it without hearing oral arguments.

The county late last week moved to keep the juvenile file sealed, in the wake of a 3-month-old motion from the Daily Journal to view those records.

The county’s motion argued that release of the records would have “a chilling effect” on future investigations into child abuse.