Bittersweet Justice: Washington

Occasionally there is justice for those negatively affected by the child welfare and adoption systems. Unfortunately, it is usually bittersweet and much too late. This will serve as REFORM Talk’s justice files.

From Olympia, Washington, Melinda Everett, now 28 years old, was awarded $600,000 after a ” jury on Monday found that the state Department of Social and Health Services and a former DSHS counselor, Connie Saracino, were negligent in failing to act more quickly to remove the then-11-year-old girl from the home of a former Wenatchee police detective after allegations of neglect came to light.” DSHS is responsible for paying $595,000 of the award, and the DSHS counselor Connie Saracino ,who passed information to a mental health counselor that led to Melinda being taken away in pajamas, is responsible for $5,000.

She was seeking “$4.5 million in damages from DSHS, about $1 million for each year she spent in its care.” “However, after four full days of deliberation, the jury failed to find that Everett was entitled to damages except for about a three-month period in late 1995, when she lived in the Perez home.”

Jury in Olympia awards $600,000 in DSHS civil suit

[The News Tribune 3/7/11 by Jeremy Pawlowski]

This is part of the 1994-1995 case that sparked 60 adults being “arrested on 29,726 charges of child sex-abuse involving 43 children. Many of the accused were poor or developmentally disabled.

Many cases were settled on the strength of confessions taken down by Wenatchee Police Detective Bob Perez.”

“Melinda’s family was at the center of the storm of allegations of sexual abuse in Wenatchee after she and her younger sister, Donna, accused dozens of adults of molesting them. At the time, the girls were foster children in the home of Wenatchee Police Detective Bob Perez, the chief investigator of the allegations.

Melinda, placed in nearly a dozen foster homes and treatment centers after leaving Perez’s home in late 1995, later recanted the accusations and said Perez pressured her to make statements.
 
Her recantations were subsequently found believable by a fact-finder for the appellate court, Whitman County Superior Court Judge Wallis Friel, who was harshly critical of Perez’s investigative methods.
 
Melinda subsequently has been called as a witness in civil cases against the state and Perez, who is no longer a police officer.”

Melinda’s parents were freed from prison in 1998 after their convictions were overturned, but it took two more years until 2000 to officially reverse the 1995 order that took away the Everett’s rights to Melinda, aged 17 at the time.

A sad run-down of what happened to Melinda’s siblings is described in a 2000 article.

“The oldest, Richard, 19, who always insisted on his parents’ innocence, grew to maturity while they were in prison, after being adopted out to a Wisconsin family. Donna lives in a Spokane mental health treatment center.

Another son, now 14, was adopted in the Wenatchee area, while his twin ran away from a foster home last November and has yet to be located.”

Now Wenatchee Girl Can Call Parents ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ Again
[Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter 1/14/00 by Mike Barber]

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter Series The Power to Harm discussing these abuse-accusation cases in depth is still available on the internet at  The Power to Harm .