A sad place

Over at Vancouver's friendly local newspaper, The Columbian, they have an article about child abuse in Washington State:

Over the past 10 years, an independent state agency has investigated the deaths of hundreds of children who were in state custody or under state supervision when they died.

The reviews by the Office of the Family and Children's Ombudsman, housed in the governor's office, have revealed serious flaws in the way Child Protective Services investigates child fatalities

I've got to dispute their numbers--I think that this would have been a much bigger story far earlier if hundreds of kids truly had died while under state supervision. I'd never heard of the Ombudsman's office that they cited, though, so I went there to have a look.

It's not an easy place to read.

Whenever a child dies this is the office that has to do the fatality reviews; the one on Sirita Sotelo is upsetting to anyone who cares about children. This is from another report, on the deaths of Justice and Raiden Robinson:

On November 14, 2004, 16 month old Justice Robinson and six weeks old Raiden Robinson were found dead in their home. The children died of malnutrition and dehydration, despite food in the refrigerator and pantry. Police officers had been summoned to conduct a welfare check on the children, and a two year-old child assisted the officers in opening the front door. Uncooked food was scattered throughout the home, indicating that the two year-old child had been foraging for good for some time. The responding officers found the children's mother, Marie Robinson, intoxicated and passed out in a bedroom. Police officers also discovered over 300 empty beer cans in the mother's bedroom.

You can read more about their case here.

Part of the problem in Washington is that many people still have the Wenatchee Child Abuse Debacle fresh in their minds, wherein 43 people were charged with sex abuse in a case that showed the real power of one overzealous detective to ruin lives. DSHS still hasn't come up with a satisfactory answer for Wenatchee, and it's a lightning-rod word that'll get the media's attention for better or worse.

I'm so happy to teach at the school I do, with the kids I have, and the parents we do. The people who have to spend their time day in, day out working on child abuse claims deserve respect for the good they accomplish, which is awfully hard to remember sometimes. There can't be a perfect system; the hope is that, with daylight and honesty, we can come as close as possible.