CENTRALIA — The state of Washington has agreed to pay over $2 million in settlements to 10 plaintiffs who suffered sexual abuse while they were in state custody at Green Hill School, a juvenile detention center for male juvenile offenders in Chehalis, between 1976 and 2008.
The case reached a settlement in Pierce County Superior Court, where several of the plaintiffs currently reside, on Aug. 30.
Payouts will range from $40,000 to $350,000 per plaintiff, said attorney Darrell Cochran, of Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala, the personal injury law firm that represented the plaintiffs.
When asked what it meant for him to reach a settlement in this case, Cochran said, “It starts with having been able to shed light on a sexual abuse situation at Green Hill which received very little interest and evaluation. This was a dark secret within the juvenile rehabilitation administration that sexual abuse by staff members is perpetrated at an alarming rate, so in terms of the results, what is the most gratifying, initially, is we got to open this up and have it exposed with the hopes that it continues to fortify the state’s efforts to ensure that it doesn’t happen in the future.”
The complaint accuses the state of Washington, Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration and Green Hill School of negligence “for their systematic failures to protect plaintiffs” and claims the state “actively endangered them and sacrificed their wellbeing to protect itself from liability.”
The complaint alleges that Green Hill School “has fostered a culture of sexual abuse and cover-ups” since the ‘80s. And because of that “culture,” which the complaint alleges “allowed and even fostered sexual abuse of residents of Green Hill School, plaintiffs and many, many other Green Hill School residents were repeatedly sexually abused while in state custody.”
While only 10 plaintiffs are named in the case that was settled Monday, Cochran has stated that he has found records of at least 70 residents who have experienced sexual abuse at Green Hill.
Lawsuits were initially filed with five plaintiffs against the state of Washington and DSHS in September 2009, but more plaintiffs have come forward in the years since. In addition to the case that was settled last week, the law firm is handling several active lawsuits concerning sexual abuse at Green Hill School.
“As witnesses have been contacted during the course of the litigation and records are reviewed, we find more people who have encountered sexual abuse situations at Green Hill so they eventually learned, inquired about them, and then people would say ‘yeah, that did happen to me, I didn’t realize I could bring up a claim for that,’” said Cochran.
Of the 10 plaintiffs named in this case, two were placed at Green Hill in the late 70s and early 80s, two were residents in the early 90s, three were residents in the mid to late 90s, and three were residents in the early to mid 2000s, and one was a resident in the late 2000s.
Each plaintiff resided at Green Hill for periods ranging between one and four years and all were between the ages of 15 and 18 when the abuse occurred.
According to the complaint, “the state knew or should have known that a culture of sexually inappropriate behavior pervaded the Green Hill School” and out of “grossly negligent and negligent conduct of its agents,” the state “created an unreasonable danger for, and caused irreparable harm to, the boys sent to Green Hill School.”
Some of the plaintiffs reported abuse at the hands of other Green Hill inmates and some reported suffering abuse at the hands of former Green Hill staff members, several of whom are named in the complaint.
Among those named is Dr. Isaac Pope, a current Chehalis City Councilor. Pope is accused of repeatedly assaulting one of the plaintiffs from 2001 to 2002 while Pope was working at Green Hill as a contracted medical provider. The plaintiff was 15 at the time.
Pope did not respond to The Chronicle’s request for comment.
Because this case is settled, the allegations brought by the plaintiffs will never be challenged in a courtroom.
To date, no disciplinary action has been taken against any of the individuals named in the suit and none of the individuals named by plaintiffs in the complaint are listed as defendants in the lawsuit. The complaint instead accuses the state, DSHS, the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration and Green Hill of being “negligent in their hiring, monitoring, and supervising of both their staff and residents by allowing sexual predators to have unlimited, unsupervised access to vulnerable children at Green Hill.”
The complaint also alleges that the defendants “ignored evidence of sexual abuse of youth at Green Hill School by staff” and what investigations they did make into allegations of abuse “were inadequate and were quickly closed.”
The state began implementing policies mandated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), a federal law that prohibits sexual misconduct in correctional settings, in 2013, following the release of national standards for state compliance the year prior. The initial law was signed by President George W. Bush in 2003.
A federal audit of Green Hill that was published in May 2019 — shortly after the facility was transferred from DSHS to to the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), which currently manages the facility — found a number of areas that didn’t meet PREA standards for staffing, according to previous Chronicle reporting.
At the time, DCYF told The Chronicle it was working to bring the facility up to full compliance. Green Hill has not been audited since.
“These claims all stem from events that occurred between 1976 and 2008 — 15 to 40 years ago, and do not reflect DCYF’s current practices, policies, or procedures,” said the department in an official statement. “DCYF hopes these settlements are a start to the healing process for these 10 individuals.”
Per DCYF’s recent statement, the department “continually reviews its practices and policies in order to keep youth in its care safe and meet the standard of care.”
Several former Green Hill staff members have been convicted in recent years on charges relating to sexual misconduct at Green Hill.
Most recently, Samantha N. Washington, 31, of Lacey, was convicted in April of this year for second-degree assault and fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation charges stemming from a 2017 incident where Washington had a sexually-explicit phone conversation with a Green Hill inmate.
