Written by Kathryn Lyon in "The Wenatchee Report" copyright 1995
Do not reproduce without written permission.
Status with DCFS: Background.
Interviewed Juana Vasquez on August 15, 1995 and videotaped the interview. Ms. Vasquez told me that when she was very young she had been a migrant seasonal farmworker along with her parents. Her family followed the crops, working in Oregon and California until they decided to stay in Washington when she was five. Her immediate family has lived in the Quincy area, immediately neighboring Wenatchee, to this date.
Ms. Vasquez graduated from Quincy High School in 1969. She attended community college in Moses Lake and then transferred to the University of Washington. She worked during summers to help support her education. In addition, teachers and counselors assisted her in attending community college, where a professor assisted her in getting a Ford Foundation scholarship.
Ms. Vasquez worked with Employment Security in Moses Lake while attending community college. In summers she worked full time. Between 1979 and 1981 she was employed by CPS in Ephrata. She has also worked for CEDA Assessment Center as a vocational counselor, dealing with the disadvantaged and other qualified clients. Ms. Vasquez was employed for approximately six years by Gonzaga University as Director of Minority Affairs and as Assistant Dean of Admissions. Although she found this to be a prestigious and enjoyable position, and although she felt she had gained the trust and confidence of the staff, Ms. Vasquez decided that she "could assist the community better," in the capacity of social work. She worked in the Walla Walla DSHS office between 1979 and 1989, when she transferred to the Wenatchee Office. Ms. Vasquez said that she returned to the Wenatchee area because she is a first generation American citizen and has no relatives in Washington except her nuclear family. Although her mother died in 1989 she considers it important for the rest of her nuclear family to "retain a closeness."
Ms. Vasquez told me that she experienced a discriminatory attitude almost immediately upon coming to work for the Wenatchee office. Within six months of her employment a supervisory position opened up within CPS and she applied for it. One of the senior CPS social workers, Dean Reiman, approached her and told her that other office employees were much more qualified than was she, including his wife, Pat Boggus, also a CPS social worker. "During that conversation, Dean Reiman told me. that he would never allow himself to be supervised by a Mexican."
During the course of her employment, Ms. Vasquez experienced many discriminatory comments, attitudes and practices by DCFS employees. When she attained the position of CPS supervisor she indicated that she wouldn't tolerate such activities. Her statements were resented or ignored. She felt that she was a supervisor in name only, unable to impact discriminatory practices. She felt that she was being "set up" through the vehicle of the families that she served. "that really upset me, that families and children were being used and manipulated to make me look bad. They didn't care what was happening to these kids and these families as long as I was looking bad." Because of these concerns, Ms. Vasquez said that she had no choice but to file a racial discrimination lawsuit. She named CPS and DCFS and individual caseworkers including Dean Reiman, Tim Abbey, Pat Boggus. After she filed she encountered anger and resentment. She said that she would implement policies and they would be returned to her desk with the large letters "B.S." written on them.
The lawsuit was successful. The trial resulted in an unanimous finding of discrimination by an all white jury. She received sixty thousand dollars, but she didn't feel that the suit had been about money. She had believed it would send the message that the office's discriminatory practices would no longer be tolerated. The contrary was true.
Senior DCFS caseworkers continued to ignore her authority. They continued to manipulate families to get to her. For example, Pat Boggus removed only two of four children from an obviously abusive and dangerous home environment and left behind the two who were on Ms. Vasquez' caseload. Ms. Vasquez said that she had got into' serious trouble because of the criminal charges against Robert Devereaux. She had heard comments around the office by Dean Reiman, Pat Boggus and Tim Abbey, referring to rumors about abuse at his home. None of these rumors were substantiated although many of them led to investigations. She felt that the rumors and DCFS actions toward Mr. Devereaux represented a policy of gender discrimination. However, she took the position that if the staff believed the rumors, the Devereaux home should be shut down. This was refused because there wasn't enough evidence. When Mr. Devereaux was charged, Ms. Vasquez asked for documentation of any CPS investigation of these events, because some of the children in the home had been under her supervision. She learned that no one could produce a referral of alleged abuse, that no caseworker had been assigned to the situation.
Paul Glassen advised her that he had spoken to a child who recanted to him her previous statement that Mr. Devereaux had molested her. Ms. Vasquez felt that Mr. Glassen had acted appropriately. She became aware that the police were investigating this situation Although she believes that she went out of her way to cooperate with the police, they perceived that she wasn't facilitating them in talking to Mr. Glassen. (See attached, 83)
The following day, Ms. Vasquez was called into a meeting with Carol Billesbach, DCFS Area Supervisor, and Dee Wilson, acting Regional Administrator. Mr. Wilson told Ms. Vasquez that he was going to give her a Personal Conduct Report for misconduct in regards to her failure to facilitate the police investigation of Mr. Glassen. The report was given to her; it was written and signed by Dean Reiman. Ms. Vasquez, in turn, tried to tell Mr. Wilson of her concerns, including those about the discriminatory actions of her office. Mr. Wilson told her, "shut up about that, Juana. You're not to talk to anybody about that and you're not to talk to me." On September 15, 1994, Ms. Vasquez met with Carol Billesbach who advised her she was on home assignment. Ms. Vasquez was told her only responsibility was to remain by the phone during office hours. She was barred from speaking to the media, DCFS clients, and from approaching the DSHS building. At the date of my interview, Ms. Vasquez remains on home assignment. She finds home assignment to be very oppressive. "You feel like you're a prisoner. Now you can't leave your work at home and you can't leave your troubles and your work at the office. I don't know when I'm gonna get a call about another allegation or if I'm gonna be fired."
Ms. Vasquez says that she hasn't simply resigned because, "I'm entitled to a non hostile working environment. I'm entitled to pursue a living, and I'm entitled to help people. That's what I got an education for. That's what I'm entitled to work for And I'm entitled to live." Ms. Vasquez says that she is concerned about the fairness of the OSI investigation that is underway. She says that the investigator, Ross Carmen is rumored to dislike Hispanics and to be a close friend of Dean Reiman.
Observations of Discriminatory Practices.
Ms. Vasquez said that as soon as she came to the Wenatchee DCFS office she heard a lot of discriminatory comments from senior caseworkers about Hispanics and Native Americans. They would mimic Native Americans and say "how." These caseworkers apparently resented the laws governing Native Americans, although Native American advisors came to the office to ensure that laws governing DCFS practices toward Native American families were followed. She said that certain DCFS caseworkers ignored these practices. She heard the comment, "I don't know why we need to do this. We know what to do with Native American kids."
Ms. Vasquez said: "The attitude was the Native American kids shouldn't be placed within their own culture. That the white culture would give them many more advantages than their own culture." She said this attitude was also reflected in the practices of the DCFS employees. She said that their recruitment of Native American and Hispanic homes was "nonexistent." She said no efforts were made to find culturally relevant foster or adoptive homes.
This practice greatly concerned Ms. Vasquez. "Its so traumatic, just in moving kids from their home environment regardless of the fact they've been physically abused or often quite seriously abused. They still had specific needs that that environment provides for them, food is one, the language too. Many of these children would come out speaking Spanish and they were in non Spanish-speaking homes and it was just very difficult for these children to communicate their needs, or communicate their state of mind, how they were feeling about having been uprooted from their family and placed in entirely strange situations for them."
Ms. Vasquez said that services to such children were completely lacking as part of dependency actions. She would see court reports that required only that the state provide medical, dental and foster care. These reports ignored many of the needs of the child might have, or services that were essential for reunification, such as visitation, relative placement, counseling, religious needs.
Ms. Vasquez said that the lack of such services was a definite factor in terms of the reunification of families. "I'll tell you the attitude that I...saw in the office was just, lets just get these kids out of this home, place them in foster care and basically lets see how fast we can terminate parental rights...I've seen instances where some social workers would have even made up referrals if they felt that some children need to removed to a foster home." Ms. Vasquez said that these practices usually involved Hispanic families or families that were low income, mentally or otherwise disadvantaged.
Ms. Vasquez said that she understands that the Wenatchee area had the highest rate of termination of the child and parent relationship statewide.(84) "People all over the state would be amazed at how many terminations we did. Termination for minority parents went very quickly, within a matter of six months, six to nine months. ~h, as far as low IQ people, I would see the same pattern. There was just no positives for these families. There was just like, we've got the children. We know what's best for them and what's best for them is not to return to this environment. It was regardless of the abuse and neglect."
According to the observations of Ms. Vasquez, discriminatory expectations included the extended family of the child. Ms. Vasquez said that such practices did not occur with all cases. If a social worker liked an individual immediately he or she might work very hard to reunify the family. The majority of such clients were not minorities, however. Regarding the non favored families, Ms. Vasquez said that the practices would often persist even if the parent were successful in meeting court ordered conditions. "There's an example of a father who was in court, but a court report stated he was not in court. The same individual would come into the office on a regular basis to visit with the caseworker or the supervisor, who in this case was Mr. Tim Abbey, would come in consistently and try to talk to him. And sometimes he would get to talk. And I would see a report by Mr. Abbey saying the person has not maintained any contact with the department. They were just being railroaded. I mean, no matter what they did they would not be acknowledged. In fact it would be stated that they didn't do it."
Ms. Vasquez stated that at dependency hearings, although an attorney for the parent would be present in court, often an interpreter would not. Given little choice of the parent's position, there was often insufficient information not to terminate the parent-child relationship. Ms. Vasquez described her observation that this practice of termination of parent rights related to ' community wishes regarding adoption and foster care. "I tell you what really surprised me when I was in the Wenatchee office, and I couldn't really do anything about it when I was just a social worker. I would see these big signs placed there all over the office. And sometimes they would place a candy bar, like, you know, fastened with a piece of tape. And the sign would read, 'Whoever gets me a child, a baby, first can have this candy.'" Hispanic kids were viewed as "cute" and the comments were that it was too hard to get blond, blue-eyed children.
A child might be taken from the home and placed for adoption within three to six months. "These people knew that the parental rights would be terminated and this child would remain there as their child. They knew this up front...because the social worker would tell them that was the plan." The existence of prospective adoptive parents played a role in how the Wenatchee DCFS pursued reunification of children and families. "If they had someone to adopt the children then, or they wanted to help a foster parent or an adoptive family get the kids, then their attitudes would change toward the clients and the termination. And I mean that these clients would never be able to do anything to satisfy the social worker so they could reunify the family. This was just a fast, one track route."
Ms. Vasquez said that the Office of Civil Rights mandated a policy that prohibited DCFS employees from reporting matters of immigration policy.(85) Immigration status cannot be a factor when caseworkers deal with clients, according to this policy. Many DCFS staff members chose to ignore that policy as they had in the past. She was aware, for example, that DCFS caseworker Laurie Alexander called the Immigration and Naturalization Services to report a client's illegal alienage. The immigration officer came to the DCFS office and took the parent into custody.
"And that practice really bothered me. Because a lot to the practice was if there was some parent who was in any kind of trouble, or there was a warrant for the arrest or something, the workers would schedule a visit for that person with the children. And the police would come in or immigration would come in and these children would see their parents being arrested. These kids were just, they would wonder what the heck was going on. They were surprised and they would cry and it was just traumatic. You could see it was traumatic for them. It was just totally unfair, unfair to put these kids in this situation. I mean, if these parents had done something wrong, set them up somewhere else. Don't set them up in front of their children...I don't know why they would put aside the feelings of these children."
Return to: Home Page