Child Abuse Los Angeles County

Dozens of additional felony child abuse charges were filed this week against a Pasadena dentist who is now accused of over-sedating 39 children during routine dental procedures, according to court documents. Dr. Drueciel Ford, who is free on $380,000 bail, faces 45 felony and 19 misdemeanor counts related to alleged misuse of chloral hydrate, a syrup administered orally to calm children during dental procedures such as filling cavities.

A baby-sitter's husband caught on videotape beating a toddler left in her care was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years to life in prison. Richard Leonard, 30, of Orange was convicted in July of torturing and sexually assaulting the 14-month-old girl. Leonard's wife, Lisa, was caring for the child May 16, 1997, in her home when she left to pick up Richard's and her daughter from school. But a video camera she had set up taped what happened next.

A Canoga Park nanny was ordered to serve 45 days on a Caltrans crew after she pleaded guilty to abusing a 7-month-old West Hills child under her care, the city attorney's office announced Friday. Claudia Martha Rodriguez, 24, was sentenced after she entered the plea in Van Nuys Municipal Court to two counts each of child abuse and inflicting illegal corporal punishment on a child.

An unpublished study compiled within Los Angeles County's Department of Children's Services has found that black children are five times more likely than Anglo children and seven times more likely than Latinos to be referred to agencies as possible victims of abuse and neglect. Child abuse experts who have reviewed the figures are not sure what to make of the controversial findings.

Los Angeles County's child welfare agency moved Wednesday to sever its relationship with a private foster care operation in whose care two children have died over the past three months. As a so-called foster family agency, Grace Home for Waiting Children got its funding by receiving children from the county Department of Children and Family Services and placing them in individual foster homes. Grace Home certifies those homes as safe and is supposed to monitor them.

A toddler who was allegedly beaten to death by his caretaker in West Covina had been moved to the home along with his sister just three weeks earlier when his own mother was suspected of abusing the two children, authorities said Monday.

Bill (Rocky) Moore, boys' basketball coach at Pasadena Muir High, was cleared Friday of allegations that he physically and verbally abused two of his players. At a meeting Friday morning, Gary Talbert, Muir's principal, and Vera Vignes, superintendent of the Pasadena Unified School District, agreed that internal investigations by the school and district yielded no substantial evidence of wrongdoing.

The parents of two young children were arrested on suspicion of child endangerment after police found the youngsters bound and gagged with duct tape in a Montebello motel room, authorities said Sunday. According to police, the couple's 2-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son were bound and placed in a bathtub of water. The boy managed to get out of the tub and bang on a wall for help, police said. Police found the restrained youngsters alone in the motel about 8 p.m. Saturday night.

Murder and child-abuse charges are expected to be filed today against the parents of a 4-year-old Palmdale girl whose lifeless body was covered with bruises when she was found in the family's mobile home, authorities said Wednesday. Deedra Hunter had been dead several hours by the time her mother realized she wasn't breathing and called sheriff's deputies, said Deputy Michael Scott, who described the apparent child-abuse case as one of the worst he has seen.

A Los Angeles County sheriff's sergeant and his school principal wife were charged Tuesday with abusing their teenage son, allegedly forcing him to sleep outside on a dog mat, preventing him from using the bathroom and pouring water on him as he slept. Orange County prosecutors said the Yorba Linda teenager was abused over five months as punishment for such behavior as not finishing his math assignments or failing to come home from school when told.