Saturday, February 26, 2000
11 child sex cases dismissed
Foster dad still faces 32 charges
BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
BATAVIA — A judge dismissed 11 child sex charges against a former foster parent, saying time limits expired be cause state or local officials knew about the crimes but failed to prosecute them in the 1980s.
Nevertheless, Stephen P. Billand remains accused of eight other sex offenses and two dozen obscenity counts involving boys whom Butler County Children Services had placed in his care. In a decision filed Friday, Judge William Stapleton said authorities didn't know about those offenses or had only “general ized” evidence about them.
The judge also issued a gag order, barring Mr. Billand's lawyers, Clermont County prosecutors or other involved parties from commenting on the case. A pretrial hearing is set for Tuesday in Clermont County Common Pleas Court.
In making his decision to throw out the charges, the judge said: “The court finds that the state of Ohio, its agents or agencies had both knowledge of the acts and the criminal nature of the acts prior to 1989.” Therefore, the six-year time limit for prosecution of the alleged 1985-89 offenses had expired well before Mr. Billand's indictment in 1998.
The decision raises several questions, including whether anyone can be charged for failing to act on the alleged crimes.
Kathy Vallance, acting director of Butler County Children Services, says she doesn't have those answers yet.
“I'd have to see exactly where is the evidence that our workers or our agency knew,” she said. “Then we would have to further discuss that.”
By law, workers in agencies such as Children Services are required to report to police anything that could constitute a crime against children, Ms. Vallance acknowledged. But she says her agency's records show information was sent to Clermont County Children Services and Clermont County's Union Township Police for investigation.
In fact, at least 10 agencies generated documents that “cover questions of abuse and neglect, foster care licensing problems, sexual abuse allegations and alleged drug involvement” from 1986 to 1989, the judge's ruling says.
Whatever happened in the 1980s, nearly everyone agrees that the case was brought to prosecution only after Victoria Reden, a detective in San Diego, Calif., dug deep enough.
She began investigating Mr. Billand, now 51, in 1997, after two teen boys in California reported he had sodomized them at gunpoint. The boys had moved from Ohio to California with Mr. Billand in 1991, and Ms. Reden said Butler County Children Services officials got in her way more than they helped her.
Ms. Reden found 1,000 photographs of nude boys on Mr. Billand's property. She said there are about 75 different faces among the photos, and many are unknown. But Ms. Reden tracked down four Ohio victims who identified themselves in the photos, forming the basis of the 43-count Clermont indictment against Mr. Billand.
The sex charges that remain in force — four counts of rape and four counts of gross sexual imposition — involve two of those four victims.
Ms. Reden says she identified 20 potential victims and she's concerned about the human cost of failing to stop Mr. Billand and his companion — who still hasn't been charged — in the 1980s.
The victims' lives, she said Thursday, “were made a living nightmare by two prolific sexual predators, acting under the cover and protection of a system that is supposed to protect children from these awful experiences.”
After Mr. Billand's case is prosecuted here, he is to return to California to face 24 sex charges.
He had served 18 months in federal prison in San Diego for transporting 47 pounds of marijuana from Mexico into San Diego, Detective Reden said.
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