Michael R. Blood
Calif.: Site broke labor law by taping octuplets
LOS ANGELES — California authorities slapped an online site Tuesday with four child-labor law violations for videotaping two of Nadya Suleman’s octuplets without safeguards to protect their health and welfare.
State Labor Commissioner Angela Bradstreet said RadarOnline endangered the newborns, Noah and Isaiah Suleman, by failing to get required state permits, videotaping the infants at hours and for periods of time banned by regulations, and for failing to provide a monitor to watch over them during taping sessions.
“These babies were put at risk and exposed to conditions that violated California labor laws,” Bradstreet said about the ongoing investigation. “In this case, we are dealing with premature babies.”
RadarOnline said in a posting on its Web site that like other newsgathering organizations, it is not required to obtain permits and is not restricted to certain hours in its newsgathering operations.
Bradstreet countered that the interviews went far beyond incidental news coverage, which would not trigger child-labor issues.
“We do not believe by any stretch of the imagination this amounted to some news interview,” Bradstreet said. “This was a … whole production that was controlled, and has been controlled, by RadarOnline.”
RadarOnline can contest the citations, which name only the Web site and carry possible penalties totaling as much as $3,000.
Calls to Suleman’s lawyer, Jeff Czech, were not immediately returned.
The violations deal with a single day, March 17, when the two infants were the first of Suleman’s octuplets to be brought to her home in La Habra, a Los Angeles suburb. They were greeted by a crush of photographers, neighbors and onlookers.
Suleman, an unemployed, divorced mother, gave birth to the octuplets nine weeks premature on Jan. 26. She already had six children, ages 2 to 7. The births set off media frenzy, with public adoration soon turning to scorn with revelations that Suleman was not working and had conceived all her children through in vitro fertilization.
It’s the second time in recent weeks that reality media has had a run-in with regulators.
Last month, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor began looking into whether the hit show “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ is complying with child labor laws. The TLC series follows Jon and Kate Gosselin as they raise their eight young children, including 8-year-old twins and sextuplets who just turned 5.
RadarOnline has posted more than 100 items about Suleman and her octuplets to their Web site, many of which include video. The footage ranges widely, from her squabbles with her mother, to a trip to Disneyland with her daughter in tow, to her vow of celibacy and other details of her personal life.
Suleman signed a confidential contract with RadarOnline in April that bars her from providing interviews with other information outlets. She is not allowed to say anything disparaging about RadarOnline for two years, according to the contract, which was reviewed by The Associated Press.
Suleman’s fee, to be held in escrow, was redacted from the copy.
The agreement said Suleman wouldn’t get paid until she provided material at least five days a week, for at least 30 minutes a day, over seven weeks. A separate fee would be paid for access during the homecoming for the last newborn released by the hospital, according to the contract.
Chris Myers of RadarOnline said he hadn’t seen the citations and had no immediate comment. The site’s executive vice president, David Perel, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.
Suleman has faced public scrutiny in the past. Her workers compensation files were revealed through a public records request, and RadarOnline revealed that child welfare inspectors had visited the home based on a complaint.
The octuplets — who at birth weighed from 1 pound, 8 ounces to 3 pounds, 4 ounces — spent their first weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center.
Associated Press Writer Shaya Mohajer contributed to this report.
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