Child Abuse Charges Called Witch Hunt In Wenatchee Town Divided By Investigation Of Minister, Congregation
This Columbia River orchard town, which in the last year has been scandalized by stories of a doctor liberally prescribing Prozac and two 12-year-old boys who shot a homeless man to death, now faces a series of accusations of child abuse that have divided the town.
The worst blow to the psyche of this community came when a minister and his wife, much beloved by their congregation and the founders of a celebrated food bank, were jailed and charged with being part of a child sex ring involving dozens of adults and a number of children.
According to police, Pastor Robby and Sister Connie, as the Rev. Robert Roberson and his wife, Connie, were known, would conduct a regular Friday Bible class in their small Pentecostal church and then line up the children downstairs with selected adults to have sex.
The couple’s lawyers and supporters say the charges are outrageous and note that they, like several others, became targets of investigation or were arrested on the sex charges only after they had spoken out against the police.
“People are finally starting to wake up, shake their heads and wonder what the police are up to,” said Eric Christianson, a lawyer representing the Robersons. “It’s scary, it’s extremely scary - anyone who speaks out is being charged. It’s the new McCarthyism - call someone a child abuser and destroy their life.”
But Wenatchee police say that this sort of thing has gone on for years, involving about eight other couples. In many cases, parents are accused of incest, and of sharing their children with other parents for sexual purposes. So far, 19 people have been charged.
“The thing that’s unusual is this involvement of couples - you hardly ever see that with child sex abuse cases,” said Chelan County prosecutor Gary Riesen, who is handling most of the cases.
Unusual is also a word that is now being applied to police in this case. The lead investigator, the Wenatchee police detective, Bob Perez, has relied on a 10-year-old girl who is in his foster care as his lead source for many of the cases. She has pointed out numerous adults, who have then been questioned and arrested. Perez would not return repeated calls for comment.
People are so afraid of having a finger pointed at them, afraid of going to jail, and afraid of having their families broken up, that some have fled town, according to critics.
“The church members, some of them, have just packed up and left, saying this place is Salem, and they want to get out before the witch hunt gets them,” said Bob Kinkade, a former police officer who has formed a group that has been openly critical of the police.
Police say Kinkade, who works part of the year as a commercial fisherman in Alaska, lacks credibility as a critic because he himself was once accused of sexually abusing his daughter.
But a jury found him not guilty on some of the charges, and failed to reach a verdict on others. He says he got into verbal fights with his teenage daughter, and she got her revenge by accusing him of abusive behavior.
Wenatchee is a town of 20,000 in a valley dwarfed by the Cascade Mountains on one side and rustcolored basalt cliffs on the other. Apple orchards, just starting to blossom, surround the town in a sea of pink.
All of the attention is starting to bother the town leaders. Last week, the mayor and City Council had police and prosecutors brief them on the cases, and some people have called for an outside investigation of the police.
Either something truly awful has been done by a host of adults against their own children, people here say, or the police and prosecutors are running amok, following the lead of a rogue cop and his foster child.
Christianson and others point to the case of a state child protection worker, Paul Glassen, who said his own investigation found children contradicting the police in at least one instance. When he reported these contradictions to the authorities, Glassen was arrested for obstruction of justice. His case was dismissed.
In another case, a woman has been charged with 3,200 counts of first-degree child rape - a number so high it has raised numerous questions.
To all of that, the prosecutor shakes his head and smiles. Riesen acknowledges that many of the cases defy logic - the high number of incidents, the fact that couples are involved, the fact that much of this never came to light until children were questioned by Perez.
But he said there are easy, if hard to accept, explanations for everything that has gone on. “Some of these people we’ve charged are not parents like you or I understand parents to be,” he said. “They are people who lived in a house with no rules. There was alcohol, no food for the children, cockroaches in the cupboards. One thing followed another.”
As for the 3,200 counts filed against one woman, he said that number was determined by figuring out the frequency of a given sex abuse. For example, if a child said it went on twice a week for five years.
Riesen also pointed out that in at least seven of the cases, people have either pleaded guilty or taken Alford pleas, a negotiating tactic in which they maintain their innocence. There have been two convictions, he said.
But there have also been a number of cases where people have recanted their confessions, saying they were forced by fear of losing their family into giving a statement.
Most of the people arrested have been poor, on welfare, and so low in intelligence that they are borderline retarded, according to their lawyers. They have pleaded guilty, in some cases, because they fear going to jail for 20 or 30 years if found guilty at a trial. And, their lawyers say, they have been intimidated by Perez.
But the arrest of Roberson and his wife two weeks ago has been particularly upsetting to people on both sides of the issue. The pastor is known throughout the community for cajoling merchants and others on behalf of people who are hungry.
“He is absolutely beyond reproach,” said Kinkade. “The only reason they went after him is because he criticized the police for being overzealous.”