Lawsuit: Washington DSHS Failing to Act- Bittersweet JusticeUPDATED
This is the third lawsuit that we have reported against Washington DSHS in the past year.
Maria Gonzales Esquivel, 47, currently faces five assault charges in King County Superior Court. She has been in jail since August 2011 on a $200,000 bond. Now six siblings (aged 7 to 19) are suing DSHS for failing to act on SEVENTEEN complaints over the past three years!
KOMO reports the following allegations “Esquivel doused one girl’s genitals with pure alcohol, beat a child until she was unrecognizable and forced the children to take hundreds of strikes from a belt to protect their younger siblings. She is also alleged to have starved the children while also denying them access to showers or proper clothing. ”
Also, “The known assaults in this case have resulted in closed head injuries, contusions, scalp lacerations, leg edemas, a macerated (or) swollen penis, broken fingers, eyes swollen shut, facial lacerations, a broken rib that punctured a lung, a detached retina, broken noses, and at least two surgeries,” the prosecutor told the court in August. ”
More: “The teen told detectives she was sent to live with Esquivel in 2006. She dropped out of school shortly thereafter and went to work as Esquivel’s personal assistant. Her parents and siblings moved into Esquivel’s home two years later.
Now 19, the young woman told detectives the abuse was constant.
“She said she was assaulted so frequently that she has a hard time separating the events,” King County Sheriff’s Office Detective Robin Cleary told the court in the criminal case against Esquivel.
Esquivel beat the eldest girl on multiple occasions, leaving her face so badly broken she was “literally unrecognizable to those who knew her,” the children’s attorneys told the court. The girl required medical attention after several of the beatings, which left her with broken bones and significant scaring.
According to the lawsuit, Esquivel threatened to hurt the girl or her siblings if she told anyone about the abuse. Still, others close to the children contacted child services years before action was taken. ”
Sex abuse: “Esquivel is alleged to have sexually abused at least one of the children by pouring alcohol on her genitals then forced her brother to kick her in the groin.”
Food Abuse: “According to the King County criminal case, Esquivel attacked the girl with kitchen appliances while denying her food and forbidding her from going to school.
While living with Esquivel, the children’s basic needs were neglected as they went without food, adequate clothing and basic hygiene. School staff noted that the unwashed children were hoarding food in their desks.
“Esquivel drastically restricted the food intake of the … children,” Kays told the court. “She would only permit them to take one shower per week, and often that ‘shower’ would consist of being hosed down outside with a garden hose.”
Workers at day care centers and schools attended by the children reported their concerns on numerous occasions, the attorneys told the court. The children remained in the home until the eldest child went to police. ”
Abuse of disabled brother and father: “Speaking with investigators, the young woman said she escaped from the home on one occasion and sought help at a church. The abuse continued, though, until she went to police out of fear that her developmentally disabled brother was in danger.
Days after the young woman came forward, King County deputies arrested Esquivel and interviewed the children’s father.
According to charging documents filed in the criminal case, their father told police Esquivel had been beating him for years.
Once, claiming the man was suffering from an infection, Esquivel beat his penis with a stick “for several hours,” according to charging documents. She is also alleged to have forced him to eat 20 hot peppers, beaten him with a mallet and blinded him in one eye.
Asked why he didn’t go to police, the man said he believed Esquivel was “possessed” but was otherwise a good person. ”
Timing of the Assaults
KOMO reports ,”Attorneys for the children contend Department of Social and Health Services workers failed to respond properly to the complaints of suspected abuse, the first of which was made in 2008.
While the eldest child moved in with Esquivel in 2006, it wasn’t until January 2008 that all six children and, apparently, their father were living in her home, which is located in unincorporated King County just east of Federal Way.
Abuse was ever-present during the children’s stay with Esquivel, Kays said.
“Esquivel’s sadistic acts of torture and abuse of these children defies comprehension,” Kays and co-counsel Lincoln Beauregard told the court. The children “were literally living in a house of horrors, and (the Department of Social and Health Services) failed to protect the children from this horrific abuse.”
KIRO reports on neighbors reaction: “Neighbors said they didn’t have a clue anything was wrong.
“Until the cops showed up, you don’t know anything was happening there,” said Mike, one of those neighbors.
Others said they saw the kids playing out in front of the house, under the watchful eyes of Esquivel.
“They had trikes and bikes out front all the time and just looked normal,” said Sherry, another neighbor.”
Sources:
Lawsuit: Kids left in ‘house of horrors’ for years despite complaints to state
[Komo News 6/26/12 by Levi Pulkkinen/Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
Lawyer: CPS ‘dropped the ball’ in child abuse case
[KIRO TV 6/26/12]
[Daily Mail 6/26/12]
REFORM Puzzle Piece
Update: “Six siblings who said they suffered 2½ years of physical abuse and neglect while living with a family friend will get a combined $8 million from Washington state as part of a legal settlement reached this week.
The King County children, who are now between 9 and 21 years old, said in a 2012 lawsuit that they were repeatedly beaten and tortured between 2008 and 2011 and that the state allowed the abuse to continue by failing to properly investigate 17 separate tips to the Child Protective Services (CPS) division of the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS).
The family friend, with whom the children were living because they would otherwise have been homeless, denied the children food and access to showers and forced them to attack each other, according to the lawsuit.
On several occasions, the suit said, the children showed up at day care with bruises on their faces.
“Countless concerned citizens — day-care workers, school counselors, even a hair-salon worker — picked up the phone and reported the concerns they had,” said attorney Julie Kays, who represented the children along with co-worker Lincoln Beauregard. “Time and again CPS failed to act on these concerns and failed to protect the children.”
The family friend, Maria Gonzales Esquivel, who lived near Federal Way, is in jail awaiting trial on multiple assault charges involving one of the children and the child’s father. She has pleaded not guilty, and a trial is scheduled for June.
Mindy Chambers, a spokeswoman for DSHS, said that “any abuse of a child is a tragedy. We are glad that the individual accused of this horrible crime is in jail and will be tried before a court.”
The settlement was reached Tuesday, one day after the department agreed to pay $3 million to settle another case in which a woman claimed officials allowed sexual abuse to continue by not adequately investigating when she gave birth at age 12 after receiving essentially no prenatal care.
The timing of the settlements appeared coincidental.
Chambers said CPS received more than 41,500 reports of abuse in 2013 alone and works hard to respond but inevitably makes mistakes.
“Any time our practice is not perfect, we have to make a good-faith effort to settle,” she said. “ We hope the settlement money will be used for the benefit of these children — for education, for treatment, for what they need as they move into and through adulthood.”
Kays said the lawsuit was never about the money but holding the state accountable.
“This settlement is never going to erase the memories of what happened,” she said. “Nothing can. This lawsuit is important because, hopefully, it will bring about a greater awareness that CPS needs to change the way it conducts child-abuse investigations.””
State to pay $8M to 6 siblings who apparently suffered abuse[Seattle Times 3/13/14 by Brian M. Rosenthal]
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