COUNTY BLUNDERS LED TO DEATH BOY PUT BACK WITH ABUSIVE DAD, REPORT FINDS.

Byline: Michael Gougis Staff Writer

Incompetence and a lack of oversight led county social workers to return a 22-month-old boy to his Lancaster family where his father - a convicted wife batterer and child abuser - beat him to death, a confidential county report found.

The county auditor/controller report obtained by the Daily News concludes that a series of blunders by the Department of Children and Family Services contributed to the April 23 death of Isaac Lopez, whose burned and battered body was found in a duffel bag in the back of his father's van.

Among other things, the report found that caseworkers failed to read files detailing the violent past of the boy's father and did not inform Juvenile Court officials about the mother's inability to provide for or protect her children.

Children's advocates who reviewed the report said the case ranked among the nation's worst examples of incompetence by child-welfare workers.

``There are a million policies here that weren't followed,'' said Carole Shauffer, executive director of the Youth Law Center, a statewide association of advocates for disadvantaged children. ``This is really bad. Have they given up entirely on protecting children there?''

According to the report, Lopez and his six brothers were placed in foster care in July 2001 after being found homeless and starving in the Covina area. Just 16 months later, they were returned to a mother so unable to care for them or herself that she'd shown up, on one occasion, to visit her children with bruises on her face and an eye swollen shut.

A DCFS spokesman said the agency could not immediately respond to the report because it had not yet received the document, dated Oct. 31. He was not sure whether anyone had ever been disciplined for the series of incidents that cost the boy his life.

A copy of the report has been sent to the county Board of Supervisors for review.

Isaac's parents, Anthony Lopez, 35, and Sylvia Rolon, 41, each has pleaded guilty to charges of murder, assault on a child causing death and child abuse.

The DCFS investigation stated that Lopez - who used a number of aliases - and Rolon had been accused of child abuse and neglect several times since 1992. At the time the child was returned to his parents, the DCFS also had reports showing Lopez had been convicted of spousal abuse, as well as of abusing Isaac's older brother.

An autopsy concluded that Isaac died from asphyxiation and multiple internal and external injuries. Investigators also found that the boy's face and head had been severely burned after he was killed, a county coroner spokesman said.

Among the report's findings:

--Rolon had a decade-long history of unresolved issues of domestic violence, homelessness and the inability to protect her children from the physical abuse of their father.

--A psychiatrist advised that Rolon's seven children could eventually be returned to her, but only after several conditions had been met. Caseworkers read only one paragraph of the lengthy report, misinterpreted the doctor's recommendations and returned the children before the mother had met the conditions.

--Caseworkers didn't tell the psychiatrist or the Juvenile Court judge that Lopez and Rolon had a 10-year history of neglect and abuse. Caseworkers admitted to investigators that they hadn't read the case file. The judge said ``significantly different orders'' would have been made had the court been aware of this information.

--Rolon failed to comply with previous court orders and DCFS recommendations to obtain domestic-violence counseling, yet her children were returned to her anyway.

--When the family relocated from the Covina area to Lancaster, the Covina-based social worker tried twice to transfer the case to a DCFS office in the Antelope Valley. Both times, DCFS officials in Lancaster refused to take the case, citing overwhelming caseloads. That meant the family was being supervised by a caseworker almost 100 miles away. The caseworker did not visit the family as often as required by DCFS policy.

--Social workers failed to run a fingerprint scan on the father, which would have revealed his prior arrests and convictions.

--When the caseworker last visited the family, just three days before Isaac was found dead, the children told the social worker the father was still living in Iowa. However, the social worker failed to ask neighbors - a routine check - whether the father was around. Had they knocked on the next apartment door, they would have found that Lopez had been living in the apartment for at least a month.

``Clearly, the boat was missed here,'' said Deanne Tilton-Durfee, executive director of the county's Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect.

Michael Gougis, [phone]

michael.gougis(at)dailynews.com