State to pay four abused foster kids $6.2 million

SEATTLE – A King County Superior Court jury ordered the state to pay $6.2 million Tuesday to four siblings who were repeatedly abused in foster care for six years, the latest in a string of legal troubles for the state Department of Social and Health Services.

The jury deliberated for three days after the three-week trial, which centered on whether the state was negligent in licensing and monitoring the Seattle and Tacoma foster homes where the children stayed.

Most of the Williams siblings’ abuse occurred between 1993 and 1998, while they stayed at the Seattle home of Pearl Hall, evidence showed. Hall, now deceased, beat the children with extension cords, belts and shoes. Her son Paul, a teenager at the time, sexually abused the three oldest children, said Kathy Goater, an attorney for the children.

In 2001, Paul Hall was convicted of child rape and child molestation in the case.

Robert Williams, now 16, ran away to a supermarket to avoid another of Pearl Hall’s beatings in July 1998, when he was 7 years old. Police found him there and a few days later the four were moved to a home in Tacoma.

They stayed at the Tacoma home from 1998-99, and were beaten there as well, court documents showed. After 1999, the children were removed from foster care and sent to live with relatives.

The siblings – two boys and two girls – are now 13 to 19 years old.

“It is deeply regrettable that these children had to suffer abuse in a home that should have been a safe place,” DSHS spokeswoman Kathy Spears said.

The state attorney general’s office is weighing whether to appeal, Spears said.