Girl who was
reunited with father sues L.A. County
July 17, 2006
Associated
Press
LOS ANGELES
- A teenage girl who had a
much-celebrated reunion with her father last year
after a decade in foster care is now suing the
county for taking so long to find him.
Los Angeles County
supervisors said last September that the meeting of
Melinda Smith, now 17, and her father Thomas Marion
Smith, was the result of a "groundbreaking effort,"
and congratulated county agencies for locating the
father.
But the lawsuit
alleges that the Department of Children and Family
Services failed to use "due diligence" to locate
Thomas Smith as required by law. It claims the
agency never notified Smith that his daughter was in
foster care and never gave him a chance to claim
her.
"He's a registered
voter with a valid driver's license and an open
child support case," said Smith's attorney, L.
Wallace Pate. "All they had to do, at any time
during those 10 years, was pick up the phone and ask
the L.A. County Child Support Services Department,
`Do you have a contact on this man?'"
County officials
would not comment on the case because of the pending
litigation.
In July of last year,
Melinda Smith saw her father for the first time in
more than 10 years, and by November she had moved
into his home in Pine Valley near San Diego.
Starting in 1989,
Thomas Smith made child support payments to
Melinda's mother for his 1-year-old daughter. When
Melinda was 4, her mother moved and left no
forwarding address.
Two years later,
Melinda was turned over to foster care officials
after the county received complaints of abuse.
Thomas Smith
continued to send payments to L.A. County Child
Support Services, and said he never knew his
daughter had been sent to foster care.
Melinda Smith was
shuffled through several homes and institutions for
years until she met Peggy Crist in March of 2005.
Crist, a retired
social worker, had been brought in by the county to
help find permanent placement for teens in foster
care. After hearing Melinda's story, Crist agreed to
try to find her father.
It took one day.
Smith's whereabouts
were listed as unknown in court documents filed on
the case, though department records show that
Melinda's caseworker knew Smith was paying child
support to the county and his address was on file
with the agency that collected the payments.
The Smiths' lawsuit
seeks unspecified damages from the county, the
social workers who handled the case and the private
agency that provides attorneys for children in
foster care.
"What would Melinda's
life have been like if she'd had the chance to know
her father, who looked for her, loves her and wanted
to know her?" Pate said. "For the county to pat
itself on the back for finally getting them together
after all these years that's like freeing the
slaves, then saying `Oh, well.'"
