Church Volunteer Indicted in Molestations

A La Mesa man who volunteered as a child care worker at a Spring Valley evangelical church has been indicted on charges of molesting 10 preschool-age boys and girls who attended the church, authorities said Monday.

Dale Anthony Akiki, 33, is scheduled to be arraigned today on 50 charges, including child molestation, child abuse, rape with a foreign object, kidnaping and inflicting corporal injuries on a child.

However, prosecutors said that while Akiki is the primary suspect, he is just one of a group of former child care workers at the church who are being investigated. Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Avery said none of those under suspicion still work at Faith Chapel, a 3,500-member church in the 9400 block of Campo Road.

“They worked in a similar child care capacity but were also asked to leave the church,” Avery said, noting that the alleged incidents involving Akiki took place between May 15, 1988, and Nov. 15, 1989. “I don’t want anybody to get the impression that church is (now) not a safe place. They’ve done a lot to make sure those children are safe.”

Akiki, who is a civilian employee at the Naval Supply Center in San Diego, is being held without bail at County Jail downtown. Avery said Akiki has no criminal record.

Thomas Malowney, Akiki’s lawyer, said that when church officials initially confronted his client with the abuse allegations in December, 1989, Akiki volunteered to take a lie detector test and did “exceptionally well.”

Malowney said that since then, Akiki had not been contacted by authorities until Friday, when police searched his house and arrested him. Earlier that day, the grand jury had returned an indictment after hearing testimony from 33 witnesses, prosecutors said.

“I’ve got a client who feels like he’s falsely accused,” said Malowney, who said Akiki is married and has no children. “And I’ve obviously got a scared client.”

Prosecutors contend that Akiki preyed on the very young: All of the alleged incidents involve children between 2 and 5 years old.

Avery alleged that some of the abuse occurred at the church, particularly in the Sunday school room and its adjoining bathrooms during Sunday evening services, when Akiki baby-sat the children of churchgoers. On other occasions, when parents left their children in Akiki’s care, she said, he took them to other locations.

“Some people left their children there for as long as 2 or 2 1/2 hours,” Avery said. “The presumption is he drove some of the children away from the premises.”

The Rev. Charles Gregg, senior pastor at Faith Chapel, said Akiki had joined the church about six months before he began volunteering with the children. Akiki soon became involved with preschool classes, which Gregg described as a mixture of playtime and religious lessons in which teachers imparted “something of Christian truth.”

Often there were two adults supervising the class, Gregg said, but sometimes Akiki was alone.

Gregg first learned of possible wrongdoing in the fall of 1989, when he was approached by a parent who was concerned by his child’s unusual “fearfulness,” he said. It was the first such incident in the church’s 35-year history, Gregg said.

Soon, Avery said, a couple of parents noticed that their children were exhibiting similar “unusual” and “regressive” behavior. The children had not yet said they were abused, Avery said, but the parents observed a pattern.

“In thinking it over, they realized the one thing the children had in common was they went to the same church,” she said.

The church asked a licensed social worker to assess whether there was reasonable suspicion of abuse and, after talking to a few families, he reported the case to the authorities.

Avery began investigating in February, 1990. Since then, she said, the district attorney’s office has kept Akiki under periodic surveillance, “to make sure he was not working with children during the week or involved with child care in any way.”

Avery said her case is strengthened by the fact that it relies on the children’s behavior as well as their testimony.

“It will focus on behavior that was observed prior to the initial disclosure” of the alleged abuse, she said. “So there cannot be a contamination issue regarding behavior that occurred prior to anyone ever mentioning this to the children.”

Unlike other child molestation cases that rely largely on the testimony of the victims, the Akiki case is “one which can be cleanly and coherently presented to a jury for their determination,” said Steve Casey, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.

Casey rejected the suggestion that the Akiki case resembled the McMartin Pre-School molestation case, which involved 41 children, dragged on for six years and ultimately resulted in no convictions.

“That’s probably a natural parallel for people to leap to. But it’s one that doesn’t bear up under scrutiny,” he said.

Gregg, the pastor, said that immediately after the discovery of the alleged abuse, the church canceled all children’s activities.

“We brought all of the children into the sanctuary to be with us in service,” he said, saying such steps were necessary “to enable us to have time to pull together our own plan for any kind of healing that needed to take place.”

The classes resumed more than a year ago, he said, but in a very different environment. Gregg said there are more teachers now, and all adults in the classroom are scrutinized by a review committee.

Cameras have been installed in the Sunday school, and the room itself has been rearranged. Where tall cabinets once hid some sections of the room from view, there are now plexiglass partitions, he said.

“We’ve removed everything that is a visual obstacle,” he said. “Anyone even walking down the hall can see into all areas of the Sunday school . . . just so we as parents can have a sense of confidence that our children are safe.”