Fan ees co # TING FE 4 ¢$ 0 politician has to lecture Betty Lou Lamoreaux about deteriorating family values. As a superior court judge in Orange County, Calif., the Weber State alumna has been watching the American family come apart in California courtrooms for the past 16 years. “People tend to think that court work is mostly crime-related,” says Ms. Lamoreaux, 68, Class of 44. “But even more serious is our work relating to dependency issues — child abuse, sexual abuse and physical abuse. Courts devote a great deal of time to taking children from abusive homes and working to rehabilitate families.” Ms. Lamoreaux’s involvement with family issues began in 1976. “When I became a superior court judge, I couldn’t believe the things I read in police reports about the physical and sexual abuse of children,” Ms. Lamoreaux said. “I just kept saying to myself, ‘This sort of thing doesn’t really happen.’ I guess that was the natural reaction of a woman with a nice, normal Utah-Mormon background. “T was naive. I had no idea how bad things were becoming for children. Judges who haven’t handled abuse cases are still naive about these problems. The public is totally lost. They don’t know anything.” Ms. Lamoreaux spent five years on the superior court bench ruling on custody issues, contested adoptions and petitions to remove children from dangerous homes. She also spent seven years judging civil, criminal and appeal cases, and four years as presiding judge of Orange County’s juvenile court. Ms. Lamoreaux has worked tirelessly to trim Orange County’s slow-moving social-service bureacracy, obtain better mental-health and substance-abuse treatment for delinquents, and increase public awareness and support for abused children. Her most notable success was a campaign to replace inadequate juvenile court facilities in Orange County with a new $24 million, seven-story courthouse that now bears her name. Thirty-five years in courtrooms also have given her an acute appreciation of real and perceived biases against women. “Even in court — where everyone’s rights should be equal under the law — it’s easy to understand why women believe they are at a disadvantage,” Ms. Lamoreaux says. “When a woman walks into a courtroom, what does she see? Most likely, she sees a male prosecutor, a male defense attorney, a male bailiff and a man sitting on the bench. The only women in the room are likely to be the court clerk and perhaps the recorder. So the woman has to ask herself: Am I going to get a fair shake from all these men?” Ms. Lamoreaux says she is proud that her public image as a judge BY O & may have helped to reassure women that they will receive fair treatment in court. But she didn’t have that role in mind when she graduated from Weber State. “T never intended to be a lawyer or a judge,” Ms. Lamoreaux says. “T was going to be an opera singer.” After attending Weber College from 1942 to 1944 on a music scholarship, she moved to California to pursue a stage career. While continuing to study music part-time, she completed a political science degree at UCLA in 1947. She then devoted five “frustrating” years to a music career. “T sang with the Ice Follies for a year and continued studying music, but it obviously wasn’t meant to be,” Ms. Lamoreaux says. “Eventually, you get older and realize that you’ve got to do something with your life.” In 1953, while working as a secretary in San Francisco, Ms. Lamoreaux decided to go to law school at night. Four years later, she landed a job with a Los Angeles law firm, the first woman in the organization. Ms. Lamoreaux quickly became a female pioneer in California legal circles. She was one of five women practicing law in Orange County in 1962 and the only one doing trial work. In 1975, Ms. Lamoreaux became the second woman to serve as judge in the Harbor Municipal Court in Newport Beach, Calif. A year later, she became the first woman on the superior court bench in Orange County. “A lot of early feminists were very critical that there weren’t a lot of woman judges 20 years ago,” Ms. Lamoreaux says. “Most female lawyers just weren’t qualified for the bench. To be a municipal court Judge, you had to have five years’ experience practicing law. To qualify for the superior court bench, you had to have 10 years’ experience. Women weren’t going to law school in great numbers back then, and many of those who did chose not to do trial work.” But times have changed. Ms. Lamoreaux now has 13 female colleagues on the bench in Orange County. Ms. Lamoreaux retired in 1989, but has been called back to the Juvenile court bench every year for special assignments. “A lot of people seem to think that I was able to accomplish things because I was a woman judge,” Ms. Lamoreaux says. “I don’t feel like a woman judge. I’m a judge. I wear black robes and I hear cases. All judges do these things. “But even my male colleagues seem to feel that my ‘female perspective’ made a difference. Maybe there are just some things that women can do very well — and perhaps focusing attention on social problems is one of them.” GHARELIE 2G RILL