Lawmakers Out To Change Sex Abuse Investigations
Some state lawmakers are planning changes to the law in the wake of a newspaper investigation that documented violations of state policies and constitutional rights in the Wenatchee child sex-abuse trials.
“I intend to go forward with a bill that I will call the Wenatchee Act,” said state Sen. Val Stevens, R-Everett. “There are quite a few places where the law needs to be changed.”
Stevens, a member of the state Senate’s Law and Justice Committee, said she was especially disturbed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s findings that Child Protective Services ignored federal warnings not to send children to an out-of-state psychiatric hospital, Pine Crest in Coeur d’Alene. The P-I found that some of the children involved in the sex-abuse investigations were admitted to Pine Crest under inappropriate diagnoses.
“Was CPS not aware of the federal warnings? And if they were, were they ignoring them? I want to know what did they know and when did they know it, and what did they ignore when they found out,” she said.
In 1994 and 1995, 43 adults were accused of sexually abusing a total of 60 children in the Wenatchee area, including a network of 28 adults accused of participating in alleged child sex rings in Chelan and Douglas counties. Of the cases, six people were convicted at trial, 16 people pleaded guilty to sexual abuse, six pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges, four were acquitted and 10 had their charges dropped for lack of evidence or discredited witnesses, according to the P-I’s figures. In addition, a seventh conviction was overturned by an appeals court.
The city of Wenatchee, Chelan and Douglas counties and several state agencies face more than $100 million in civil lawsuits from people who claim they were wrongly arrested. The lawsuits are scheduled to go to trial April 6 in King County Superior Court.
A Spokane County judge on Monday denied a motion to move the trial out of King County. The motion had cited concerns that the recent P-I series might have tainted the potential jury pool. Superior Court Judge Michael Donohue ruled the trial will proceed as scheduled.
Meanwhile, state Sen. Pam Roach, chairwoman of the Law and Justice Committee, said she is seeking subpoena powers from the Senate rules committee, which will tailor the parameters of what the committee can investigate.
In general, she said, she wants to explore “CPS and its accountability or lack thereof,” and focus on “possible overreactions by the government.”
While the focus of such an investigation would be on the state agency, such a probe “would help clear the name of that very good, small town,” said Roach, R-Auburn. “If there’s a smudge at all, it’s because something has happened and there’s no justice in it.”
Roach conducted hearings in Wenatchee on her own in 1995, which rankled some colleagues.
However, Sen. Joe Zarelli, who chairs the subcommittee on civil rights in Roach’s committee, said the state’s role in the Wenatchee cases deserves to be explored.
“Wenatchee has the potential to bust this state’s coffers and to create a sundry claim debt that we’ll have trouble funding for years to come,” said Zarelli, R-Vancouver.
xxxx WENATCHEE TRIALS In 1994 and 1995, 43 adults were accused of sexually abusing a 60 children in the Wenatchee area. Six people were convicted at trial, 16 people pleaded guilty to sexual abuse, six pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges, four were acquitted and 10 had their charges dropped for lack of evidence or discredited witnesses, according to Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s findings. A seventh conviction was overturned by an appeals court.