Supervisors act in wake of boy’s abuse

Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday proposed a radical shift in the way the county monitors children who have been reported neglected or abused, saying “opportunities were missed to intervene earlier” in the recent case of a 5-year-old boy who allegedly endured ritualistic torture at the hands of his mother and two other women.

Supervisors ordered county officials to create a system under which various agencies -- including children’s service, probation, Sheriff’s Department, court system, health and welfare -- would formally share with each other information about children and their parents who had been reported to the Department of Children and Family Services.

Until now, the agencies have worked independently -- in part because privacy rules strictly limit such cooperation.

Supervisors Gloria Molina and Mike Antonovich co-wrote the motion, saying the case of the 5-year-old highlights failures to communicate properly. Molina said dealing with county and state agencies that had information on the boy and his mother was like trying to unravel a bowl of spaghetti.

“That’s how tangled this mess is,” Molina said.

The new process was described as a “one case management system” and was imagined by some officials as a type of private online database where social workers and case managers from the various departments would post important information on children and their parents who had been reported to the children’s services agency.

According to the motion, “what would have been extremely beneficial” in the boy’s case was “if the county had an automated ability to verify all of the local and state agencies that are serving or monitoring a client at the same time.”

Officials said they were incensed that the boy’s mother, 24-year-old Starkeisha Brown, had been receiving welfare payments from a social service agency while being sought by state parole authorities.

Molina and other supervisors acknowledged that there were hurdles to be cleared and that confidentiality laws had hindered similar efforts in the past.

Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said he did not have enough information about the current proposal to make an informed decision. But in the past, civil liberties groups have challenged efforts by the county government to synthesize what they said was often private information.

The proposal incorporates similar parts of the Skid Row Demonstration Project, Molina said, a program that began after county officials passed a motion in 2004 and declared zero tolerance for families living on skid row.

In that project, officials with several different social service agencies work together to identify children that are at-risk.

“There’s a document we all have access to,” said Beyond Shelter President Tanya Tull. “You can’t just say, ‘Well, somebody checked them out. They don’t look that bad; we’re not going to follow them,’ ” Tull said. Molina and other supervisors said they were concerned that after the children’s services agency first contacted the 5-year-old in 2005 -- and found allegations of neglect and substantial risk to be inconclusive -- there was no follow-up until a stranger at a Green Line station this month reported the apparent abuse.

Authorities allege that Brown’s son was subjected to extreme abuse for more than a year, including being malnourished, burned with cigarette butts on his body and genitals, hung from a doorjamb by his wrists and whipped, left to sit in his own urine and feces, and severely burned on his hands, which were held to a hot stove. According to a confidential report to the Board of Supervisors last week that was obtained by The Times, at least two of the three women arrested in connection with the alleged abuse case also had been dealing with other social service or law enforcement agencies.

At one time Brown was a dependent of the court, had previously been with the Department of Mental Health, and was briefly involved with a community agency for a substance abuse assessment.

Brown’s live-in girlfriend, Krystal Matthews, had an open case with the children’s services agency in 1993 and 1994 and from 1995 to 2005 and was also a ward of the Juvenile Probation Department because of grand theft auto criminal charges. Brown and Matthews also were convicted of other crimes.

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andrew.blankstein@latimes.comari.bloomekatz@latimes.com

Times staff writer Jack Leonard contributed to this report.