Legislator Will Study Boys Home Did State Fumble Investigation Of Abuse At Olympia Facility?

Thu., July 20, 1995

Hal Spencer Associated Press

Assertions that the state fumbled or stifled probes of sexual abuse at a boys group home will be studied by a bipartisan panel, a Republican House leader said Wednesday.

“The more I get into the O.K. Boys Ranch situation, the more it becomes a tangled web. We need to know, for starters, who knew what when and who did or did not do something about it,” said House Law and Justice Committee Chairman Larry Sheahan, a Rosalia attorney.

“There has been an awful lot of confusion about what really went on here,” responded Fred Olson, a spokesman for Attorney General Christine Gregoire.

But Olson said he is concerned that legislative hearings, at this stage, could jeopardize an attorney general’s criminal investigation into what happened at the Olympia home for troubled boys.

The O.K. Boys Ranch was closed last fall after the state agreed to pay $4.3 million to 16 boys to settle lawsuits alleging they had been abused physically and sexually there.

The state Department of Social and Health Services, which had the non-profit facility under contract, and Gregoire’s office both are investigating what happened at the group home and why.

DSHS is the final stages of an administrative inquiry, while Gregoire is midway through the criminal probe.

In a report released a few weeks ago, DSHS detailed a long history of reports of sexual abuse at the group home - from 1987 to mid-1994.

The scores of alleged incidents, many reported to high-level DSHS officials, concerned abuse both by adult staffers and by older boys victimizing younger ones. Both rape and consensual sex were alleged.

DSHS investigators found 326 “reportable” incidents of alleged sexual or physical abuse between 1990 and mid-1994. They also found that only 20 of those incidents were reported to all the required agencies.

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