Panel Hears Citizen Tales Of Injustice State Social Workers Vilified At Hearing Some Call Witch Hunt

Thu., Aug. 7, 1997

Associated Press

Citizens packed a hearing room Wednesday to tell a Senate panel that their civil rights had been trampled by state social workers.

Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Vancouver, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Civil Rights, said he did not invite social services officials to defend themselves against the complaints, but would allow them to do so at a later date.

“It would be unfair to expect them to respond today,” he said before hearing from people who contended they had had children taken from them without cause and had been committed for mental treatment against their will.

Zarelli’s tiny panel, a subcommittee of the Senate Law and Justice Committee, has been criticized by some fellow senators as conducting a “witch hunt” and pursuing rumor.

“To me, this is an abuse of power. They’re willing to use their power to follow any kind of rumor. It’s frightening,” said Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Seattle.

“I don’t know what you would call this other than a witch hunt against the Department of Social and Health Services,” said Sen. Darlene Fairley, D-Lake Forest Park.

“All we’re after is the truth,” Zarelli, a first-term senator, responded in an interview prior to the hearing.

“There is so much animosity building between government and the general public. It is time to give it all an airing. If that’s a witch hunt, so be it.”

Among those testifying was Christy Broven of Olympia, who told the panel that she and her husband’s foster-parents’ license was revoked after the couple challenged a state social worker’s decision to consider removing a child from their home in order to send the child to live with his biological father.

The couple said their license was revoked after they hired a private investigator to gather evidence to show the biological father would not be a proper placement for the child.

“We saw it as retaliation,” Broven told the panel, which asked several sympathetic questions.

Beth Harris of Seattle told the committee that in 1996, she was committed against her will to Eastern State Hospital without good cause. She said the 72-hour commitment, all that is allowed without a court hearing, turned into twice that long.

She said the experience scarred and “labeled me for life.”

Gordon Schultz, a Social and Health Services spokesman, said the department would not comment but stood ready to respond to any committee questions that might be asked.

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