Los Angeles County officials said Thursday that they would begin their own checks of child-care facilities and foster homes after a state audit found 49 instances in which convicted sex offenders appeared to have lived at the same address as such facilities.
The audit found that although child-care operators and employees must submit to criminal background checks, no such requirement currently applies to people who live in the same house or apartment where the facilities are located.
Auditors cross-referenced the addresses of 8,000 sex offenders on parole from the California Department of Justice against 75,000 locations of licensed foster- and child-care facilities. At least 30 matches were made in Southern California: 25 in Los Angeles, four in San Diego County, and one in San Bernardino County.
There is no evidence so far that the offenders harmed children at the facilities.
After further investigation, state Department of Social Services officials moved to temporarily suspend the licenses of at least eight facilities in Los Angeles County -- including five in the city of Los Angeles and one each in Compton, Lancaster and Pomona -- and one in Rialto in San Bernardino County.
In those cases, authorities discovered offenders with criminal convictions that ranged from rape and sexual battery to lewd acts on a child, and oral copulation with a minor under the age of 14, according to documents released Thursday detailing the state's revocation proceedings.
In the Compton case, investigators allege that Jerome Tillman, who was convicted of four counts of rape in 1977, lived in a foster family home on Maie Avenue. (The foster parents could not be reached for comment.)
Officials with the county Department of Children and Family Services said Thursday that they had removed two children from a Los Angeles home after being informed Wednesday of the audit's results.
Director Patricia S. Ploehn said county officials "were in a state of shock" about the audit and were already discussing ways that L.A. County could check all child-care facilities to make sure no sex offenders were living there.
State officials have spent the last few days examining the child-care facilities cited in the audit. In 24 of the cases, officials said they found that the facility in question was not currently operating. But it was unclear whether the homes had at some point served children while offenders lived there.
