L.A. County drops charges of criminal neglect against mother with AIDS
By Charles Ornstein
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office said Friday that it would not file criminal neglect charges against prominent HIV skeptic Christine Maggiore, whose daughter died last year of what the county coroner ruled was AIDS-related pneumonia.
But in a related development, the Medical Board of California filed an accusation this week against one of the 3-year-old girl's doctors, citing gross negligence in his treatment.
Los Angeles police had been investigating whether Maggiore and her husband, Robin Scovill, were negligent in not testing or treating 3-year-old Eliza Jane Scovill for human immunodeficiency virus before her March 2005 death.
Maggiore, who is HIV positive, has said she did not take antiviral medications during her pregnancy and did not have her daughter tested for the virus after birth.
District Attorney Steve Cooley's office said it didn't have sufficient evidence to proceed against Maggiore, 50, or Scovill, 37.
"We are all oftentimes moved by our own sense of what's right and what's wrong, but we are governed by the law," said Victoria Adams, head deputy of the office's family violence division.
A separate investigation by the medical board led to an accusation filed against Dr. Paul Fleiss. The agency claims Fleiss exhibited "gross negligence" in not taking steps to ensure Eliza Jane was tested for HIV or, in the alternative, noting in her chart that her parents refused.
Fleiss also did not recommend that Maggiore stop breastfeeding until the child's HIV status was known, the accusation said, and did not offer to treat the girl with antiviral therapy to reduce the risk that the virus would be transmitted through breast milk.
Fleiss gained some publicity in the 1990s as the father of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss. He was sentenced to three years' probation for conspiring to shield the profits from his daughter's call-girl ring from the IRS, among other things.
Fleiss was out of the office Friday and could not be reached for comment. Last year, he said he could not understand why Eliza Jane died and had never seen her seriously ill.
"I don't believe I could have done anything to change this outcome," he said. Fleiss said he could be "convinced either way" on whether HIV causes AIDS.
Adams of the district attorney's office said it would have been difficult to prove that the parents were criminally negligent because Maggiore had sought medical advice when Eliza Jane became ill and appeared to follow that advice. "The legal theory was just not there," she said.
Maggiore said Friday that she learned about the district attorney's decision when contacted by a reporter from the Los Angeles Times.
"My heart is still beating from when you called," she said. "There's been this tremendous cloud of suspicion and allegation and suggestion always lurking somewhere but never overt ... It's never very far out of my mind."
Maggiore is founder of Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives, a nonprofit that challenges "common assumptions" about AIDS. Her group's Web site and toll-free hotline cater to expectant HIV-positive mothers who shun AIDS medications, want to breast-feed their children and seek to meet others of like mind.
Maggiore said the evidence from the coroner's autopsy does not support the conclusion that Eliza Jane died of AIDS. A toxicologist she commissioned to review the death attributed it to antibiotic poisoning. She said the coroner's office has refused her request for the laboratory evidence collected during the autopsy.
The coroner stands by its findings, Capt. Ed Winter said Friday. He declined further comment, citing a claim for damages filed in March by Maggiore and Scovill against the county.
The county Department of Children and Family Services last year investigated whether Maggiore and Scovill should keep custody of their other child, Charlie, now 9. They closed their investigation after reviewing test results from three labs showing he did not have HIV.
