ER - Former deputy DA speaks out

Former deputy DA speaks out
by Glenn Franco Simmons, 5/12/2006

A former deputy district attorney terminated by Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos claims the DA is mismanaging the Child Abuse Services Team.

CAST is a multidisciplinary team that investigates child abuse cases. If child abuse is determined to have occurred, CAST refers the cases to the District Attorney’s Office for prosecution.

Allison Jackson, who is supporting Worth Dikeman in the June 6 election for district attorney, called Gallegos’ management style “appalling.”

Decline In Cases

“The decline in (child abuse) cases filed can be attributed to Paul’s lack of leadership and expertise,” Jackson said. “This is not the attorneys; this is Paul. It is Paul’s utter lack of vision.”

In a Thursday e-mail to The Eureka Reporter, Gallegos made one thing clear: “If there are any stones to throw, which there should not be, they are to be thrown at me. The people in my office work far too hard to be involved in politics as well.”

Based upon documentation obtained by The Eureka Reporter, the number of cases being referred to CAST from law enforcement agencies has not dramatically dropped off, but the number of cases accepted by the DA’s Office and the number of cases filed by the office have seen dramatic declines.

For example, based upon the documents’ first-quarter figures for 2006, there were four cases accepted by the DA’s Office — gleaned from 40 CAST interviews. Of those four cases, one was filed, two cases were rejected and one case has been received and was pending a filing decision at the end of the first quarter.

For the year previous, according to the documents, there were 155 CAST interviews of children. Cases received by the DA’s Office numbered 35 with 17 cases filed.

In 2000, for comparison, the documentation said there were 194 CAST interviews of children with 66 cases accepted by the DA’s Office and 48 cases filed.

Maggie Flemming

Deputy District Attorney Maggie Flemming — who is the main person at the DA’s Office who prosecutes persons accused of child abuse — said the numbers The Eureka Reporter obtained did not reflect the work she has done so far this year.

However, because of The Eureka Reporter’s deadline and her schedule, she was unable to provide current information by press deadline.

Jackson and Wes Keat of the District Attorney’s Office praised Flemming for her hard work and commitment. Jackson said her criticism of Gallegos should in no way reflect on Flemming.

“I believe that you will find that Maggie’s work, her skill and dedication, is universally acknowledged as being beyond reproach,” Keat said. “She has 20 years of successful experience as a prosecutor, including a substantial background in sexual assault, not to mention homicides. Maggie is simply the best.”

“I can tell you there is no other attorney I admire more in the world than Maggie Flemming,” Jackson said.

CAST Breakdown

Keat submitted a breakdown of cases going back into the 1990s, but they were not all broken down into years as requested by The Eureka Reporter. Keat sent the total numbers for 2002-2006. The program has been in existence since the 1990s.

When asked about declining prosecution rates earlier this week, Gallegos said, “As for a decline in prosecutions, if there are declining prosecutions, that’s because there are declining cases. If there are declining cases, we have certainly looked into that.

“... Now some will say it’s law enforcement, that law enforcement doesn’t think you are going to do anything with it, which is perverse to me, because here you have a child victim and they are saying they are not going to bring it (the case to the DA’s Office)? That’s crazy, but that’s the sort of stuff you will hear.”

Gallegos has his own explanation for the decreasing totals.

“... We broke it down and looked at the numbers and saw that where the decrease has been is in the stranger offenders,” he said. “So the next question is why, and we don’t have a good answer for that yet. The theory in my head, even though we don’t have enough data yet, but it’s probably public education and education of parents.

“It may have a certain amount to do with Jessica’s Law, to do with notification. A certain amount is probably the general neurosis or fear in society about law officers because they get so much air time because people are less certain about the safety of their kids these days.

“My suspicion,” he continued, “even though we don’t have enough data, is that there is self-policing activity on the part of individuals that is probably reducing the stranger (cases). Most of your repeat offenders are your stranger offenders. … The data that we get, that we see is that most familiar offenders — those are the people less likely to re-offend — there is a whole dynamic involved in that, but it’s the stranger (on child) that is the most recidivistic. … Some people, and this may sound sick to you or I, but some people actually molest out of different feelings, some times out of feelings of love.”

Gallegos said most child molestations are perpetrated by people a child knows.

“It’s family or friends of family, extended family,” he said. “It is an unfortunate reality.”

Jackson said there are different dynamics at issue.

“Something is happening at the center and something is happening in the DA’s Office,” she said. “There is a huge problem here. This looks like an utter system breakdown — irrespective of the fact that you have great people, and they are some of the most fantastic people I’ve ever met who work in this field.”

“When you have 40 interviews going in (through the first three months of this year), and you extrapolate that out for the year, you are looking at about the same number of cases (being brought in by law enforcement), but you sure don’t have the same number coming out and the same number filed. Paul runs the program and he runs that office in name only.

“This all comes back to priorities. It’s not just incompetence, but it’s also an utter lack of priorities. These statistics are directly attributable solely and absolutely to Paul Gallegos. They are not attributable to anyone else. … This program used to work. ... These children aren’t slipping through the cracks. These children have been marched up to the Grand Canyon and kicked off. There is a huge difference when you only have one case that is prosecutable (through the first three months of this year).”

Gallegos issued a rebuttal to Jackson’s charges.

“We are absolutely committed to the success of CAST and the discovery and prosecution of child abusers,” he said in an e-mail to The Eureka Reporter, Thursday. “To claim otherwise is an outrage, as it is first of all false, second, (it) creates false fear in our community, third, (it) creates false fear in the victims and witnesses in our current cases, and fourth, (it) creates the impression in the community — which includes potential offenders — that they may have the opportunity to offend in this community.

“No one (who) is committed to children and their families would act with such disregard for the truth, the interests of victims, the interests of the office and the interests of the community.”

Jackson said she has a solution to what she said is a broken system:

“You need a DA in there who is committed to put CAST back together and make that a priority,” she said. “You need to bring back the physical abuse and neglect cases as opposed to cutting them out of the process there. You need someone who is fully committed to looking at these things every month. You need to look at the entire system again, because it is broken, and it’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of commitment. These things don’t run on their own. They just don’t. Somebody needs to pick up the ball and administer these programs.”

Jackson said she doesn’t understand how Gallegos’ supporters “can remotely think this is OK, that this change in philosophy is OK. I don’t see that with these numbers. How can anyone buy this any longer? Those figures are not (campaign) rhetoric.”

(Editor’s note: This is the first part of a two-part series.)
Copyright (C) 2005, The Eureka Reporter. All rights reserved.

Read:
ER - Former deputy DA speaks out
Be sure to look at the statistics chart
ER - Candidates spar over child abuse team
ER - DA's Office yet to respond to request for child abuse records
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ER - CAST needs support Gallegos is not providing