County Seeks to Seal Case Files on 2 Slain Children

Martha Lopez was on psychiatric leave from her job with Los Angeles County when she accused her ex-husband, Rafael, of sexually molesting their two young children.

County social workers swiftly curtailed Rafael’s visitation rights, court documents say, but the unthinkable happened: Martha Lopez allegedly killed both 8-year-old Victor and 4-year-old Judith.

Today, county lawyers are scheduled to argue in federal court that details of the case should remain confidential as they move to seal Rafael Lopez’s $50-million federal lawsuit against the county.

In court papers, attorneys for the county said that sealing the case file is necessary not only to protect the confidentiality of past legal proceedings involving the dead children but to ensure a fair trial for the defendant.

Michael Stone, the lawyer representing Rafael Lopez, said there is no reason to seal records in a case where both children are dead except to hide the county’s conduct.

“They would like to operate a government agency free from oversight or criticism,” said Stone, who will argue in court against sealing the file.

Roger Grabo, an attorney in the county counsel’s office, denied that there is any cover-up. “That allegation is ridiculous,” he said, declining further comment.

Still, some children advocates agree that the move to seal both the existing file and all future documents raises serious questions.

“We are talking about children who have [essentially] been placed under the care of the people of Los Angeles,” said Andrew Bridge of the Alliance for Children’s Rights. “It’s hard to imagine a situation where it’s more important for the public to know than in the death of a child” whose case was handled by the county.

County officials entered the bitter case of Lopez versus Lopez in the fall of 1994, soon after a judge had granted Rafael Lopez visitation with his two children during divorce proceedings.

Martha Lopez, a financial analyst for the county on involuntary disability leave, soon alleged that Rafael Lopez had molested their children, according to court documents. She filed a complaint with the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, which moved the case to dependency court.

Martha Lopez filed a second complaint at a Los Angeles County sheriff’s station where, court papers say, her sister worked as a desk sergeant.

Rafael Lopez was arrested and spent five days in jail. He was never charged with a crime.

The dependency court appointed a psychiatrist to examine the Lopezes.

“This whole situation strikes me as . . . the typical ‘bitter divorce, custody dispute . . . [rather] than as a case of severe abuse and neglect,’ ” the psychiatrist wrote, according to Lopez’s lawsuit.

That psychiatrist, the lawsuit alleges, recommended liberal visitation rights for the father, but county social workers pushed the court to restrict visits. Although an earlier psychiatric evaluation of Martha Lopez had found her “a possible borderline picture of psychosis,” the social workers took her side, court papers allege. As a result, Rafael Lopez was only allowed to see his children a few times a month, under the watchful eye of a court-appointed psychiatrist.

The dispute ended tragically in May 1996, when sheriff’s deputies went to Martha Lopez’s East Los Angeles home after neighbors complained about strange smells.

Inside they found two corpses so badly decomposed that one was initially thought to be Martha Lopez’s. But the corpses were the children’s.

The following week, Martha Lopez and her mother were arrested in Orange County after officers stopped them because the car they were in had been reported stolen, court records say. Martha Lopez was charged with the killings and is at Patton State Hospital. She has not yet been determined to be competent to stand trial.

Rafael Lopez filed his suit in 1997. But it wasn’t until a legal newspaper, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, wrote about the case in September that county lawyers sought to seal the case file.

The county’s motion in the Lopez case states that some records that would be entered into the case file come from confidential dependency court proceedings. Others would be county records, which should remain private to protect the slain children, the lawyers wrote.

The motion also warns that additional coverage of the case could taint juries in both the federal civil case and any criminal case against Martha Lopez.

“This court can be sure that public access to this information would . . . be used for the ‘improper purpose’ of painting a negative picture in the media that could result in a biased jury pool,” county lawyers wrote last month.

The county’s motion will be opposed by lawyers for the Daily Journal and The Times.

County Supervisor Mike Antonovich also is scheduled to introduce a motion at next Tuesday’s board meeting calling for the county to seek a change in state legislation to remove confidentiality requirements in dependency cases when children have died.

K.C. Sheehan, an associate professor at Southwestern University School of Law, said fear of a biased jury was an “odd reason for sealing the proceedings. It’s sort of going about it backward.”

Sheehan, who teaches courses on federal civil litigation, said that shifting trials to different counties is the preferred method of ensuring an unbiased jury.

And Bridge, of the Alliance for Children’s Rights, said that unless the county can show “a very specific, concrete, particularized harm that is going to result from the release of this information” the case should remain open.

“One is left with the inevitable question of whose interests preventing this information from being disseminated protects,” Bridge said, “and whose it does not.”