Countywide : D.A.’s Office Seeks to Add to Child Abuse Unit Staff

The Orange County district attorney’s office, flooded with reports of child abuse and now required by state law to look into all of them, will ask the Board of Supervisors for money to hire four additional investigators, officials said Wednesday.

Bob Burton, a senior investigator in the sexual assault/child abuse unit in the district attorney’s office, said the amount of money to be requested had not yet been determined.

Burton and Bill Morrison, an administrator in the district attorney’s office, said an amendment to state law passed last September requires that all “known or suspected” incidents of child abuse be reported to the office. Previously, local police departments decided whether to refer cases to the office.

Burton said that, because of the amendment, “we estimate that there will be an additional 600 reports coming into us” each month. He said that in March, the first month the program was fully in effect in Orange County, there were 950 reports of physical or sexual abuse of children.

Burton did not say how many of the reports resulted in charges being filed, and also that although he knew that reports of child abuse had been increasing in Orange County in the past few years, he could not supply exact figures.

Burton said the sexual assault/child abuse unit was set up in October, 1982, and now has eight attorneys, four investigators and three investigative assistants.

Burton emphasized that the increase in reports of child abuse does not necessarily mean that there have actually been more assaults on children. Investigators in Los Angeles County have said that extensive publicity about the prosecution of former teachers at the McMartin Pre-School in Manhattan Beach on charges of sexual assault of their pupils could lead to more reports of abuse as parents question their children more closely about their activities and are more willing to report their suspicions to police.