Shawn Vestal: The state slow-walked horrific abuse reports and three children will pay for a lifetime

On Jan. 3, 2016, social workers received two reports that Taliferro B. Williams, a violent felon whose record includes assaulting two Seattle police officers with a pair of scissors, had bitten his 4-year-old daughter.

Bitten her. Like an animal.

Sadly, these reports could not possibly have come as much of a surprise to social workers.

Two of Williams’ three young children – now a 7-year-old girl, 5-year-old boy, and 3-year-old boy – had been removed from his home before. He had been in and out of a dependency case to determine whether the state should remove the kids from his home again, for more than two years.

It had been reported to the agency that he was “very violent” and abusive toward the children’s mother, including choking her and gouging her eyes, and wasn’t complying with a treatment plan for domestic violence.

The Department of Health and Social Services even had a warning for its employees about Williams, according to a lawsuit filed against the state this week in Spokane County Superior Court: “Extremely dangerous. Do not approach on your own.”

All that came before the biting reports on Jan. 3, 2016. DSHS workers never went to court to have the children taken away from Williams. They were eventually removed, 209 days later, by sheriff’s deputies investigating an assault by Williams against his mother.

Imagine the lives of these children for the 209 days.

Imagine those 209 days, living with a man for whom biting was just the beginning.

Two hundred and nine days in which credible abuse reports flowed in to the state, in which social workers had disturbing and threatening encounters with Williams, but in which no judge was asked to remove the kids from his care, according to the lawsuit.

Two hundred and nine days during which the children’s mother reported that they had bruises, bite marks, broken or mangled toes and eyes that appeared to have been scarred by gouging.

Two hundred and nine days during which Williams refused to allow social workers to interview the children or have them seen by a doctor.

Two hundred and nine days during which the DSHS risk manager overseeing the case decided, according to the lawsuit, “there was not enough concern to ask for court involvement.” The manager advised the case worker to “continue asking Williams to take the children to the doctor, and to close the investigation if he refused.”

When these kids were taken from the family by deputies on July 30, 2016, their injuries included bruising, bite marks, untreated lacerations on the head, corneal scarring and oozing wounds, according to the lawsuit’s citation of the sheriff’s report.

The daughter had 18 visible injuries. The oldest boy was “completely covered” in bruises. He had a broken tibia (lower leg bone) that Williams had splinted with a Pringles can. A pediatric nurse commented, “This type of abuse meets the criteria for child torture.”

More than 2 1/2 years later, Williams has not been charged with a single crime relating to those injuries. The sheriff’s department and prosecutor’s office say, astonishingly, they are still reviewing the case.

That better be one hell of a review. Because if it’s not, what’s clear is that this horror show of child abuse just dropped off their radar.

These kids didn’t fall through the cracks. They fell through canyons – canyons in the child-welfare system, canyons in law enforcement and prosecution.

It’s worth keeping in mind that it’s very, very difficult for social workers to deal with such families. It’s often easy from the outside to look at a horrific situation and simply seek individuals to blame, when most of the individuals involved were trying their best and working within limits of the law and the system, working to protect kids and keep families together even when it seems that the two goals might not converge.

And because most of the details of this case are now based on a lawsuit filed on behalf of the children by their special court-appointed guardian for the case, there has not yet been an answer or a defense, publicly or in court, from state officials.

But I find it impossible to imagine a mitigating argument here. Impossible to see the case as anything but an utter, complete failure.

Williams and the children’s mother, Lasca Pulley, have been involved with social workers for years. In 2013, when there were two kids, the state took those children from his care.

In 2015, the kids were removed from Pulley’s great-grandparents and placed again with Williams. When the third child was born, he lived with only Williams because Pulley was in drug treatment, according to the lawsuit.

In April 2015, DSHS outlined Williams’ history of “very violent” behavior over a four-year period toward Pulley, including trying to strangle her, gouging her eyes with his fingers, threatening to kill her, and failing to comply with a domestic-violence treatment program.

Also in August 2015, DSHS received a report that Williams had backhanded the youngest child, who also had severe diaper rash. A couple of weeks later, another report came in: The boy had a goose egg on his forehead, fingertip bruising on his arm and leg, and an infected penis due to poor hygiene.

A couple of months later, a report came in that Williams had pulled out a patch of hair from the middle child’s scalp, and was biting and choking the boy.

And all of that came before those final 209 days, in which state officials chose not to go to court to have those children taken away from Taliferro B. Williams.