Article by Armin Brott
writing for Knight Ridder
copyright 1995
Do not reproduce without written permission
Who is Abusing the Children of Wenatchee
Thousands of residents of the state of Washington live in fear of explosive
force of Mt. St. Helens, one of the few active volcanoes in this country.
But the residents of the small, central Washington town of Wenatchee are
afraid of a power they believe is much more dangerous: Detective Robert
Perez of the Wenatchee Police Department.
Claiming to have uncovered a series of local "sex rings," Perez and
prosecuting attorney Gary Riesen have charged over 80 adults with having
weekly orgies with as many as 50 children. Thus far, over 20 have been
convicted or pleaded guilty to various offenses. In most communities,
getting so many child abusers off the streets would be a cause for great
celebration. But many in Wenatchee feel that Perez, Riesen, and several
Child Protective Service (CPS) workers are conducting what amounts to a
massive witch-hunt, using unethical and illegal methods to prosecute
innocent people.
Those complaints are gaining wider attention. Recently, over 2,000
community residents petitioned the governor to launch an independent
investigation. The governor and the speaker of the Washington state house
of representatives have in turn written to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno
asking the Justice Department to intervene. Given Reno's controversial
involvement in child abuse cases, first as a local prosecutor in Florida and
more recently at Waco, many fear her involvement could make things worse.
But there's no doubt Wenatchee's problem can no longer be involved.
It all started with a ten-year old girl named Donna Everett, who had been
taken from a physically abusive home by CPS workers and put into foster
care. Donna was angry, frequently violent, unruly, and disobedient. In
March, 1994, her foster father, Robert Devereaux, got so fed up that he
asked authorities to remove the girl from his home as well. This request
was granted, and Donna was placed in the home of Wenatchee's newly appointed
(and one-and-only) sex-abuse investigator, Robert Perez.
On July 29, 1994, in a seemingly unrelated incident, Robert Devereaux told
another foster daughter, fifteen-year old Annie Weishoff, that she couldn't
have sex with her boyfriend in his house. Furious, Weishoff--who suffers
from fetal alcohol syndrome and has an IQ of 60--tried to kill Devereaux by
giving him a cup of soda laced with iodine. Devereaux was unhurt, but
reported the incident to the authorities and Weishoff was arrested and taken
to the Chelan County Juvenile Center.
Four days later, Perez visited Weishoff in custody. After interrogating
her--all alone, in violation of CPS protocol--for several hours, Weishoff
told Perez that her foster father had been abusing her for years. That same
day, Perez arrested Devereaux and charged him with numerous counts of sexual
abuse.
The next day, however, Weishoff's juvenile caseworker, Paul Glassen,
visited her. "I feel really bad," she told Glassen. "This police officer
was, like, trying to set Dad up or something. He made me say a whole bunch
of lies." Alarmed, Glassen wrote up a report of Weishoff's allegations
against Perez and submitted it to his supervisor, who in turn passed it on
to Perez. Early the next day, Perez arrested Glassen for "tampering with a
witness." Official charges were never filed, but Glassen was immediately
placed on "administrative leave," and later fired.
Just a few weeks later, Donna Everett began telling her new foster father
(Perez) that she, her sister, and her three brothers had all been sexually
abused by their biological parents, Idella and Harold Everett. Based on
Donna's disclosures, the detective arrested the Everetts, charging Idella
with an astounding 6,422 counts of abuse. After more than four hours of
interrogation, she signed a confession and agreed to testify against her
husband in exchange for having most charges dropped. But when she asked for
a lawyer, Perez told her she didn't need one. Detective Robert Perez was
starting to make a name for himself.
The Second Player
As the spiritual leader of the Pentacostal Church of God, House of Prayer,
Pastor Robert Roberson has known the Everetts and their children for several
years. In fact, after the Everetts' arrest, Pastor Roberson and his wife
petitioned the court to become the foster parents of Harold and Idella's
oldest son. Roberson, who has a lot of experience counseling victims of
sexual abuse, felt confident that none of the Everett kids children showed
any signs of molestation. Even after Idella signed her confession, Roberson
remained deeply suspicious of the charges--especially given that Idella is
illiterate and has an IQ of only 68.
"It's extremely doubtful that anyone with an IQ that low has the capacity
to understand what she's signing," says Dennis Sheppard, a forensic
psychologist and expert in confessions and trial competency. "And if she's
admitting to something that could put her in jail for life, she'd better
have a pretty good idea of what the consequences are."
Idella Everett recanted almost immediately after signing her confession,
contending that Detective Perez had pressured her into it. At that point,
Pastor Roberson spoke out, questioned the coercive tactics being used by the
Wenatchee Police to obtain confessions, and the possible conflict of
interest raised by Perez's being the foster father of the accuser.
Sometime in the middle of October, though, Roberson realized for sure that
something more sinister was happening. "I got a call from one of the CPS
workers," remembers Roberson. "She told me that if I stayed involved in the
Everett case or tried to have any contact with the Everett kids, Perez would
arrest me immediately."
The Circle
Meanwhile, Donna Everett's foster placement in the Perez home wasn't going
well. According to a January, 1995 report by an outside therapist, Donna
was "getting very angry and during her fits of rage she would destroy
property, throw things, and become unmanageable." Things were so bad that
the Perezes warned her that they were "about ready to have her removed."
Three days after the therapist's report, Perez claimed that Donna suddenly
made a new round of disclosures of abuse. This time, according to Perez,
Donna alleged that she, her brothers and sister, and at least six other
children, were the victims of group sex in her parents' home and the homes
of several friends. She called it "The Circle." In addition, Donna now
claimed--more than five months after Robert Devereaux's arrest--that
Devereaux had raped her and several of his other foster daughters upstairs
in their bedrooms.
On January 30, 1995, Pastor Roberson made an appearance at the courthouse
to speak at Idella Everett's sentencing hearing. With Perez sitting just a
few rows behind him, Roberson accused the detective and various CPS workers
of mishandling sex abuse cases. Two days later, Perez claims, Donna made a
new round of startling new charges, adding more alleged perpetrators and
more victims. According to Donna, six kids would go upstairs in Devereaux's
house with a group of adults and "the kids had to get on the beds and the
adults would like up and take turns with us. They did everything to us and
would make us do it to each other while they watched." Although she'd never
mentioned him before, Donna allegedly told Perez that Paul Glassen, the
caseworker who had accused Perez of coercing his client, was one of the
abusers. "He did the same things as everyone else and sometimes, he was
there when everyone else was there and molesting me," Donna said.
When Glassen heard that he had become Perez's latest target, he wasted no
time; he took his Canadian-born wife and their 5-year old son and moved to
Canada. "I knew what they could do to my son," says Glassen. "And I wasn't
going to let Perez or anybody else start brainwashing him or God knows what."
By this time, the unsuccessful poisoner, Annie Weishoff had been released
from the Chelan County Juvenile Center and placed in a new foster home. One
Tuesday night, in late February, her new foster mother, Janet Rutherford
received a call from a CPS social worker, Kate Carrow. "We need some
information," Carrow reportedly told Rutherford. "And we'd like Annie to
help us." Rutherford agreed to bring Annie in for questioning, but demanded
that she and her husband be allowed in the room with Annie. Carrow refused.
Rutherford then asked if her lawyer could be there for the interrogation.
"There was this long silence," she remembers. "And then Carrow says 'It
sounds like you have something to hide. Should we be investigating you?'
It was clear to me that she was threatening me."
Despite their misgivings, the Rutherfords brought Annie for her Friday
appointment, carrying with them a copy of a Washington state law that reads,
in part, "Prior to commencing the interview the department of law
enforcement agency shall determine whether the child wishes a third party to
be present for the interview and, if so, shall make reasonable efforts to
accommodate the child's wishes." They showed paper to Perez, who ignored
them and whisked Annie away.
Inside the interrogation room, Perez asked Annie why she though she was
being interviewed. According to Perez's police report, Annie replied, "To
help you guys lock Bob [Devereaux] up." Perez then repeatedly asked Annie
to confirm that Devereaux had abused her, telling her that other children
had already confirmed it. But each time Annie denied that anything had
happened.
Toward the end of the interview (again, according to Perez's own police
report), Annie turned to Perez and said, "My foster parents told me that you
are not supposed to talk to me without anyone present for me. You should
have had someone with you when you talked to me in juvie." Perez told
Weishoff that "her foster parents had given her some misinformation" and
that he tries to "have another person present during interviews" even though
it is "not a requirement of the law." (Later, Perez claimed that he had
excluded the Rutherfords from the interview because they were, as promised
by Kate Carrow, suspects.)
Perez next made several threats of his own. "I then told Annie that if the
statement she had given me in August was a lie, I would send a report to the
prosecutor for him to consider the filing of charges for false reporting...
I then asked her [if] what she had told me in August was the truth or not.
She looked down and after a few seconds said, 'I was lying.'"
With the case against Devereaux unraveling, Perez and two CPS caseworkers
took Donna Everett on a drive through Wenatchee and asked her to identify
all the locations at which she was molested. Over the course of several
hours, Everett pointed out 22 places--including the home of her grandparents
(who, she claimed, raped her regularly from when she between the ages of 2
and 6), and Pastor Roberson's church.
With the number of alleged perpetrators and victims growing by the day,
many of the accused began to compare Perez's investigations to the Salem
Witch-hunts. Looking for help, they turned to a group called VOCAL--Victims
of Child Abuse Laws--a national organization that supports people falsely
accused of abuse. On March 23, at a meeting of the local chapter of VOCAL,
Pastor Roberson spoke angrily against Perez and his investigative methods.
Only five days later, Roberson and his wife were jailed, accused of running
weekly orgies for several years on the church altar and in the church basement.
Police investigators spent 13 hours searching the church. Using infrared
lights to help them locate evidence of semen or other bodily fluids, they
also neatly snipped out dozens of "suspicious"-looking sections of carpet,
pulled up pews, and cut out several sections of the sheetrock walls. A week
later, the lab reported that all of the items taken from the church had
tested negative. But this didn't help the Robersons, who languished in jail
three more months, unable to make the $1 million bail.
Donna Everett is not the only child making accusations of abuse. Melinda
Everett, Donna's natural sister--coincidentally, another of Perez's foster
children--has also implicated a number of adults. And Andrea Southard, a
former foster child of Devereaux has also accused him of molesting her. She
also presented Perez with a list--which her new foster mother helped her
prepare--of 18 alleged molesters, including Paul Glassen. Several days
later, Southard changed her mind about some of the alleged abusers,
including Jon Carpenter, whom she had repeatedly identified as having
committed dozens of rapes. According to a police report, Southard said that
she "knew Jon was a friend of Devereaux's and due to the pressure of the
case, she had thought he might be involved, so she named him."
So far, 15 adults, besides Idella Everett, have made confessions--most in
exchange for a reduced sentence for naming others. But nearly all have
since recanted. They share some other characteristics as well. Many are
illiterate; most are on welfare; almost all live in extreme poverty.
According to court records and an independent investigation by Kathryn Lyon,
a public defender from Tacoma, five have IQs in 60s or 70s, two others have
severe emotional problems, two suffer from physical handicaps, and two more
have other serious mental problems.
Those conditions don't exclude the possibility that all are guilty of child
abuse, but they certainly underscore the fact that Perez and his cohorts
have been targeting particularly vulnerable people. So far, in addition to
16 guilty pleas, they have obtained 11 convictions and suffered two
acquittals and eight dismissals. Trials for ten more are still pending.
Even the convictions, however, don't necessarily support the prosecutors'
claims about sex rings. Steve Lacy, a local attorney for one of the
defendants, points out, "Everyone who's in jail because of these alleged
'sex rings' was actually sentenced for one-on-one molestation--not with the
more sensational-sounding group sex they were originally charged with." The
only case in which the defendant was actually tried on group sex activities
resulted in a dismissal.
Do the Ends Justify the Means?
As for the nearly 50 alleged victims of the Wenatchee "sex rings," who have
been named by the three child accusers, most strongly deny that they were
abused by Devereaux, Roberson, or anyone else. Diana C., another of
Devereaux's foster daughters, would have told Perez--or any other
investigator--that Devereaux never went into any of the girls' rooms without
knocking, never spent time alone with them, and that adults rarely came to
the house. Jamie B., Laura D., Shawna G., Melissa K., and many others,
would have said the same--if anyone had asked them. But Perez and CPS never
bothered.
Those people whom Perez DID interview generally paint a picture of him as a
coercive, unrelenting investigator. Eleven-year old Kim A. was
interrogated--alone--by Perez for over four hours. After repeatedly denying
that she was abused by her mother or anybody else, Kim claims that Perez
picked up a phone and told her if she didn't admit she'd been abused, he'd
have her mother arrested.
Tracy H. also says Perez interrogated her alone, threatened her, and
actually told her that she couldn't leave the room until she told Perez that
something had happened of a sexual nature in her foster home. Amy F.,
Melissa H., and her brother Brian, also claim that Perez repeatedly
threatened them, ignored their requests to have their parents present, and
accused them of lying when they refused to admit that they had been abused.
But perhaps the most shocking story comes from Sara Marie "Sam" D., who had
left Wenatchee and was living in California with her legal guardians. While
Sam was out of state, her parents were arrested and Perez came to California
to bring her back to Wenatchee to testify against them. Sam denied that
she--or the other members of her family--had ever been abused by her
parents. And after spending several days back in Washington, Sam was told
by several CPS workers that she was "suicidal and dangerous." "They
strapped me down to a gurney and drove me--four hours--to a mental hospital
in Idaho." She spent five weeks at Pinecrest, forbidden from having contact
with her family, and undergoing daily counseling and therapy sessions.
"Then never once mentioned anything about suicide--all they wanted to talk
about was whether I'd been molested. And when I said I hadn't, they told me
I was in denial and that I'd come around soon."
According to many critics, many of the techniques Perez and CPS use to
elicit information from alleged victims are in direct violation of the CPS
Child Interview Form Guidelines. "What's really amazing," says former CPS
caseworker Paul Glassen, "is that Perez is using these strong-arm tactics to
elicit information from alleged victims of abuse--not from perpetrators."
Another complaint is that by not video- or audio-taping his interviews,
Perez deliberately makes it difficult to verify the allegations he claims
are made by the accusers. "Just a few years ago, law enforcement actually
advocated taping because they never even considered that what they were
doing was inappropriate," says Dr. Terrence Campbell, a consulting
psychologist to the Macomb County, Michigan courts. "But when other people
finally got a chance to see the tapes--such as during the McMartin
trials--they saw that zealous 'professionals' were distorting the children's
memories by asking leading questions."
Perhaps even more disturbing to Perez's critics is that he rarely takes
notes during interviews he conducts, instead relying on others to do so.
But whether the notes are taken by a CPS caseworker or Perez himself, the
detective admits that he destroys them after writing his reports. According
to his own statement, Perez started doing this after learning a rather
unpleasant lesson while testifying in a previous case. The lesson? "[T]hat
you can be played with on the stand, and your notes can be attacked."
Nevertheless, Perez claims that he "cannot recall" any inconsistencies
between notes taken by CPS caseworkers and his own reports. The facts,
however, tell a very different story. According to the notes taken by a CPS
worker during the interview of Jacob B., Jacob identifies one of his abusers
as a "Mexican" woman named Janette. In his report, the word "Mexican"
doesn't appear and Kathy Lancaster--clearly not Mexican--was arrested.
Although Perez declined to be interviewed for this article, he claims--in
statements taken by defense attorneys--that there's nothing wrong with his
interviewing techniques and that he's been wrongfully accused of misconduct.
Prosecuting attorney Gary Riesen agrees: "Just look at the convictions
we've got. If Perez wasn't going by the book, the courts would have had
something to say about it."
Riesen does concede, however, that "inconsistencies with many of the
statements" obtained by Perez, and the recanting of confessions made by
several adult witnesses have caused charges to be dropped against several
alleged perpetrators, most notably Robert Devereaux. Riesen also
acknowledges that there is little if any physical evidence to support the
accusations of abuse. Nevertheless, Perez's efforts are applauded by
Wenatchee's Mayor, Earl Tilly and Police Chief Ken Badgley.
Despite their supporters, Perez and CPS have recently come under sharp
attack from many experts in the field of child abuse investigation.
According to Kathryn Lyon, who recently completed a three-month-long
independent investigation of Wenatchee's alleged sex rings, Perez and CPS
may have "violated the civil rights of children, families, and of adults,
vulnerable because of poverty, mental retardation, mental, emotional, and
physical limitations." In addition, she says, because of coercive and
abusive nature of the investigations, "The reliability of all statements
thus achieved might have been seriously compromised."
Sadly, many critics feel that what's happening in Wenatchee is,
unfortunately, not unusual. "Nationwide, there have been well over 150
'multi-perpetrator-multi-victim' cases that fit the same basic pattern,"
says Carol Hopkins, who, as deputy forman of the 1991-1992 San Diego Grand
Jury, led an in-depth investigation of alleged sex ring cases across the
country. "There's an initial denial of abuse by the children, followed by
invasive questioning, resulting in increasingly bizarre allegations of
molest, and the alleged perpetrators (men and women) have no previous
criminal history or record of sexual deviancy. Hundreds of innocent people
have been charged, many convicted and imprisoned for years, all for events
which never happened."
In her Report, Kathryn Lyon makes several suggestions for reform. First,
she says, "The use of videotaping and the development of a thoughtful child
interview protocol might all but eliminate the problems now existing" in
Wenatchee. In addition, because independent investigators have been unable
to obtain important documents, and because of the "arrogant disregard for
the law and humanity" tolerated on "many levels of government," Lyon feels
that a thorough federal investigation is essential.
Carol Hopkins, who has given expert testimony on child abuse issues before
Congress and in several state legislatures, also wants Federal intervention.
She wants Congress to begin hearings aimed at ending the kind of
institutional abuse seen in Wenatchee, "before we stop believing true
allegations of molestation." And she has called on Congress to "expose the
huge amount of federal money which has been spent training social workers,
law enforcement, therapists, and others in how to find 'evidence' and
prosecute these cases which were then created out of whole cloth."
In California, Republican Assemblyman David Knowles this year carried a
so-called Qualified Immunity Bill to modify one area of the law which
critics say have opened the door for situations like Wenatchee. Knowles'
bill would greatly reduce the immunity from civil liability enjoyed by law
enforcement and social workers -- and immunity that applies not only to
mistaken or negligent reports but also, the courts have ruled, to "reckless,
or intentionally false reports."
Although passed with strong bipartisan support in the California
Legislature, social worker associations and welfare directors are urging
Governor (and former presidential candidate) Wilson to veto it.
In Wenatchee, meanwhile, Bob Devereaux has had to sell his house to pay his
legal bills. None of his old friends will talk to him anymore. Pastor
Roberson and his wife are still awaiting trial, but ever since their arrest,
their church has been all but empty. "They've either been arrested or
they're too scared to come any more," he says.
Paul Glassen, now safe in Canada, believes that the children--especially
those he feels were coerced into making false allegations--have suffered the
most. "I've seen lots of real child abuse in my 30 years of counseling, but
I've never seen any psychological abuse as bad as this," he says. "And the
worst thing is they've been abused by the very people who are supposed to
protect them."
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Armin A. Brott
armin@parentsplace.com
http://www.parentsplace.com/readroom/authors/brexcerp.html
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