Parents Sue Facility Over Child’s Death : Courts: Couple says daughter was raped, suffocated at Garden Grove home for disabled. Official defends security.

SANTA ANA — A Garden Grove home for the developmentally disabled is being sued for damages by parents who contend their 6-year-old daughter was molested, raped and suffocated there last August.

Jimmy Ko and Judy Chang Ko filed suit this week in Orange County Superior Court against Hy-Lond Home and Beverly Enterprises, former owner of the Garden Grove facility, for allegedly failing to provide adequate supervision and protection for their daughter.

The Kos’ lawyer, Paul Glass, said Tuesday that they had reluctantly placed their only child, Joanie Yu Heng Ko, in the nursing facility last July because Judy Chang Ko, who had been caring for the girl at home, had to go to Taiwan to look after her ailing mother.

The couple, who live in Garden Grove, allege that Aug. 23, three weeks after the girl arrived at Hy-Lond, she was raped and killed by an “unknown person,” described by Glass as a possible intruder who had entered the facility because of lax security.

Tom Beach, lawyer for Beverly Enterprises, declined to comment on the lawsuit because he had not seen it. He said that organization is still investigating the circumstances of Ko’s molestation and death.

“We are trying to determine exactly what caused the death and sexual assault, when it happened and who did it,” he said.

Mike Cutchshaw, Hy-Lond’s administrator, denied that the home has any security problem.

“I have been here for five years and we have had absolutely no problem with any security-type issues,” he said. “I am extremely comfortable and confident with the security we provide here and what happened specifically with this case.”

Glass said that about 9 a.m. Aug. 23, a housekeeper found the girl “slumped over” and no longer breathing. He said staff members at Hy-Lond administered CPR and called for paramedics.

The girl was pronounced dead at Garden Grove Hospital and Medical Center, where an emergency room nurse discovered evidence of sexual abuse, according to Glass.

Glass said the autopsy surgeon, Joseph J. Halka, stated during a deposition last week that he believed the girl had not died from her disease, Reye’s syndrome, a severe neurological disorder.

Glass also said Halka stated that he believed she had been molested within two hours of her death.

However, the Orange County coroner’s office and Garden Grove police, after investigating the death, were unable to determine conclusively that it was a homicide or that the girl’s molestation occurred at Hy-Lond, Garden Grove Police Detective Mark Hutchinson said Tuesday.

Hutchinson said the county’s chief pathologist, Richard I. Fukumoto, overruled Halka’s estimation that the last molestation occurred shortly before death.

Also, the final coroner’s report, while determining that the girl had died from asphyxia, did not say how that occurred.

Neither Halka nor Fukumoto could be reached for comment.

Jacqueline Lincer, district administrator for the state Department of Health Services, which licenses boarding facilities for the disabled, said her agency also investigated the case.

Lincer said that although she did not have immediate access to the results of the investigation, she believed Hy-Lond had not been found responsible for the girl’s death or molestation.

“There are no pending citations or deficiencies” filed against Hy-Lond, she said.

Records show no citations against Hy-Lond over the seven years of inspection reports kept on public file at the Anaheim office of the regional licensing agency.

“They have had a good compliance history,” Lincer said. “They have gotten better every year we’ve been back” for routine inspections.

Among lawsuits on file in Superior Court against the facility was one alleging that a 19-year-old woman with cerebral palsy was raped and impregnated by a trespasser, giving birth to a boy in August, 1990. The suit was settled privately.

And in August, 1990, according to court records, Beverly Enterprises paid $275,000 to settle a lawsuit brought on behalf of a blind and retarded 9-year-old girl who allegedly had been raped at Hy-Lond.

Lincer said that in the mid-1980s, Hy-Lond had a problem with intruders but since then a sophisticated security system has been installed.

Hy-Lond’s administrator, Cutchshaw, said he is worried that the Kos’ allegations could unfairly harm the reputation of the facility, which cares for 147 severely disabled people, including 50 who are of school age. Beverly Enterprises sold the home in May to Res-Care Inc. Cutchshaw said the only access to the building is “through the door by a buzzer system.”

“This building has more security than any other similar facility I have been in and that is because we do have a lot of children,” he said.

Times staff writer Sarah Klein contributed to this report.