VOODOO FOSTER CARE SUIT MAY END IN SETTLEMENT.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

The Los Angeles County Claims Board on Monday recommended a $1 million settlement for six children who allegedly were abused and exposed to voodoo rituals in a cockroach-infested foster home, according to county officials.

The lawsuit, filed more than five years ago, also has cost the county $557,792 in attorney fees and other expenses.

As the case moved toward trial later this year, the lawyer for the children discovered that some of the children's county files from the Department of Children and Family Services could not be located. This makes it harder for the county to establish that social workers had made mandatory face-to-face visits with the children over the years to ensure their safety, Principal Deputy County Counsel Roger Granbo wrote in a letter to the Claims Board in which he recommended the county settle the lawsuit.

``The disappearance of plaintiffs' DCFS files may be the result of foul play on the part of one or more county employees,'' the children's attorney, Linda Wallace Pate of Century City, wrote in the lawsuit.

From June 1991 to January 1998, DCFS received nine child abuse reports involving the six children at the La Puente foster parent's home, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, severe neglect and insect infestation of the home, Granbo wrote.

Some but not all of the reports were investigated by DCFS, but none were substantiated. The lawsuit claims that if the county had conducted thorough investigations into early child abuse reports, the injuries they suffered would not have occurred or would have been minimized, Granbo wrote.

The Board of Supervisors will decide Aug. 12 whether to give the proposed settlement final approval.

Troy Anderson, [phone]

troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com