Teen’s Past Violent Behavior Not Known By State Panels Question Management Of Group Home, State System

David Daniel Dodge, a teenager who escaped from a group home and killed a 12-year-old baby sitter, likely would not have been placed in the home had state officials known about his violent past, two legislative committees were told Tuesday.

Lyle Quasim, head of the state Department of Social and Health Services, admitted that the state did not know that Dodge had had run-ins with Island County sheriff’s deputies on several occasions, and had shown violent behavior, including resisting arrest and threatening a police officer.

Why state officials did not know, and how to improve the system to make sure they have such information, was a focus of the two hearings, one by the Senate Human Services and Corrections Committee and another by a joint meeting of the House Criminal Justice and Corrections, and the Law and Justice committees.

The panels, especially in the House, also questioned the contention that the group home that housed Dodge, Larch Way Lodge in Lynnwood, is well managed and secure. Spokesmen for Second Chance of Seattle, the private, non-profit operator of the home, offered a vigorous defense of the operation.

Dodge, 17, of Camano Island, pleaded guilty last week to charges that he raped and killed Ashley Jones as she baby-sat five children on the night of Sept. 20 in a Stanwood home. On Sept. 19, he walked away from a job site and failed to return to Larch Way.

Quasim said state Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration officials, who had found Dodge fit for the group home as opposed to jail, learned of the violent behavior only through news accounts after the killing. The officials believed Dodge, with a history of five burglary convictions, was non-violent.

“If we had known of his past violent behavior,” Quasim said, “he probably would not have been placed in that group home.”

Quasim and juvenile rehabilitation chief Sid Sidorowicz said they and Gov. Gary Locke would gladly lead an effort to figure out some way to ensure that all relevant information about a youngster who enters the justice system is passed on.

Quasim encountered some legislative resistance when he suggested the information should come from the ground up, rather than be researched by state officials.

“We don’t have the staff to conduct 1,400 to 1,500 independent investigations” of juvenile offenders, he said. Instead, local schools, law enforcement agencies and the juvenile courts should make sure all the information is passed along to state officials trying to decide where to send a convicted offender.

“I don’t agree with that at all,” said Sen. Val Stevens, R-Arlington. “The state people are the ones doing the risk assessments. They’re the ones who should go out there and get the information.”

Island County Sheriff Michael Hawley, whose staff had a long list of run-ins with Dodge, said he believed local and state officials must find ways to share information.

Ken Maaz, director of Second Chance, tried to defend his company against allegations that security and management at Larch Way were substandard.

He acknowledged that a former director of the home had been convicted of welfare fraud, a felony, during her employment. She is no longer working for Second Chance.

But he insisted the home, and two others run by the Second Chance, are secure and well-managed.

Rep. Ida Ballasiotes, R-Mercer Island, who heads the House Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee, treated Maaz courteously although the man who killed her daughter Diane in 1988 had escaped from a Second Chance facility in Seattle.

Ballasiotes said earlier she and her committee would study Second Chance’s record and, based on the findings, might recommend it lose its license and contracts to run group homes for the state.