CNN report on Wenatchee
Copyright 1995 Cable News Network, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CNN
SHOW: NEWS 7:34 am ET
October 20, 1995
Transcript # 181-5
GUESTS:
GARY REISEN, Chelan County Prosecuting Attorneysceptre
Det.
ROBERT PEREZ, Wenatchee Police
Mayor EARL TILLY, Wenatchee,Washington
Rev. ROBERT ROBERTSON, Pentacostal Church of God
HONNAH SIMS, Sunday
School Teacher;
BYLINE: DON KNAPP
HIGHLIGHT: After over 50 children were taken away from their parents,
some residents of Wenatchee, Washington, have begun to doubt charges
of sexual victimization of a large number of children.
BODY:
ANDREA ARCENEAUX, Anchor: When a [unintelligible] year old makes an allegation that he or she has been sexually molested by an adult, authorities usually take the charges very seriously.
BILL HEMMER: And that's happened in the State of Washington and many of the accused were prominent citizens. But as CNN's Don Knapp reports, the investigative tactics of the state's Child Protective Services Agency and one police investigator are also suspect.
DON KNAPP, Correspondent: A storm of allegations of child sexual abuse rages in the remote mountain sheltered community of Wenatchee, Washington. Accusations, prosecutions and convictions based on remarkable, some say, incredible stories of a few children.
GARY REISEN, Chelan County Prosecuting Attorney: We had several homes where there was incestuous behavior going on, those people happened to know other people and the kids kind of crossed the line from house to another.
DON KNAPP: Beginning with charges against two families, investigators charted sex rings of adults and children, naming more than 100 adults in incidents dating back five years. They tallied thousands of charges, 3,200 incidents of child rape charged to one woman alone. Child protective services has sent 50 children to foster homes since the investigation got underway in early 1994.
Det. ROBERT PEREZ, Wenatchee Police: There were so many- so many children that they had to make them stand in wait their turn to get in- to- to begin the sex acts with the adults.
DON KNAPP: The enormous scale of accusations and charges stunned Wenatchee area citizens. Some began to question investigative tactics of the police and child protective services. Volunteers gathered 2,000 names on petitions calling for an independent outside investigation of Wenatchee's Police Department and child protective services. Washington's governor asked U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno for a federal investigation. But some Wenatchee leaders don't want outside meddling.
Mayor EARL TILLY, Wenatchee, Washington: People in Wenatchee are troubled by all of these outsiders coming in with allegations, only taking one side of the case. There's- there's great concern. We wonder what's really- what's trying to be orchestrated here.
GARY RIESEN: We followed the Constitutional and legal process all the way through. We have- in my office, we have not charged every person that has been arrested. The only cases we've filed were cases where there have been corrobative evidence, not, you know, an accusation based on one child, it's based on multiple children, it's based on adult witnesses corroboration, it's based on medical corroboration.
DON KNAPP: Police in two counties have arrested an estimated 41 people, 22 were convicted or pleaded guilty. Charges were dismissed against eight, two were found not guilty and nine others await trials. Pastor Robert Robertson laughs about the nine hour police search of his church. The state crime lab reported finding no evidence of sexual acts. Still, Robertson and his wife Connie were jailed on charges of molesting their own four year-old daughter and other children. The allegations were made by a young girl from their church who told stories of regular Friday night orgies at the church. Now out on bail, their daughter taken away from them, the Robertsons await trial on multiple counts of child rape.
What does it do to you to hear that your church has been used as a place of torture and torment, rape of children?
Rev. ROBERT ROBERTSON, Pentecostal Church of God: It's torture. It's tortured, tormented and raped us. How could you-
DON KNAPP: Robertson contends he was arrested after he spoke out in defense of a former church member charged with child sex abuse. Sunday school teacher Honnah Simms claimed she was arrested after she spoke out in defense of Robertson.
HONNAH SIMS, Sunday School Teacher: If somebody doesn't stop them soon, they'll be nobody here in Wenatchee. We'll all be in prison.
DON KNAPP: Simms was embraced by the foreman after the jury found her not guilty.
HONNAH SIMS: What do you say, ooops? Sorry, I ruined your life. No.
DON KNAPP: One fact troubles many here. Two children from one of the early sex abuse cases lived in the home of the chief sex crimes investigator, Detective Robert Perez as his foster children. By some accounts, they've accused as many as 50 people of abusing them. Back in April of this year, one of the girls was taken by Perez and two case workers from Child protective services on a ride to identify places where she was allegedly assaulted. She pointed out 23. A jury in another case convicted the parents of five of abusing their ten year-old daughter and sent them to prison for 11 years.
SARAH 'SAM' DOGGETT, Runaway: They've ruined my family. They've ruined my life.
DON KNAPP: Sam, a 16 year-old foster home runaway, claims child protective services pressured her younger sister to testify against her mother and father.
SARAH 'SAM' DOGGETT: He knew my dad raped me so why didn't I just admit it and-
DON KNAPP: Did your dad rape you?
SARAH 'SAM' DOGGETT: No, my dad never raped me and I said that I said I'm a virgin. You can take me to the doctor, give me a physical examination. That'll be proof and he said, we don't need to do that. We already know the truth.
DON KNAPP: Sam claims child protective services sent her to a mental institution to persuade her to testify.
SARAH 'SAM' DOGGETT: I was supposedly making suicide threats and so they wheeled in a gurney and put me in- restraints and strapped me to the gurney and put me in the ambulance and drove me to Pine Crest, a mental hospital in Idaho.
DON KNAPP: A spokeswoman for Washington's Department of Social and Health Services defended child protective services, saying ' It would not surprise me to have some of these children need mental health treatment, considering the severity of the abuse that they've had.'
Sam's attorney accuses the State of Washington of kidnapping his client and says he'll file a civil rights suit.
SARAH 'SAM' DOGGETT: An now, it's like, it I see a police car, it's like, you know, are they looking for me, it's like, hide and I don't want to live like that. I mean, I feel like I'm a fugitive or something, like I'm a runaway, which I am, but I never did anything wrong.
DON KNAPP: The prosecuting attorney says the investigation is closed. Now the county may be bracing for some retaliation in the form of lawsuits brought by those accused but never tried or tried and found not guilty of sex crimes against children. Don Knapp, CNN, Wenatchee, Washington.
The preceding text has been professionally transcribed. However, although the text has been checked against an audio track, in order to meet rigid distribution and transmission deadlines, it may not have been proofread against tape.
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