DSHS Secrets, DSHS Failures, AG Secrets and Secrets sealed by the Courts

Your Courts, Their Secrets | Failures by state, caregiver kept secret in child-rape case | Seattle Times Newspaper

Finding this article on the internet I'm taken by the mention of The OK Boys Ranch in a state email highlighting that secrets were still being buried by the state regarding children being terrorized and violently sexually assaulted:

"Please be aware that Youth Care has a very high powered board in Seattle; it is a long term agency with a ton of community support. Not to say that changes what we do but if we think [a particular boys ranch] had connections; we have seen nothing yet!"

This time it's 2001 about a decade after the OK Boys Ranch crimes (that state licensed residential facility stayed in business for at least 23 years) were released to the public, now it's YouthCare a group home for teenagers in Seattle, Washington.  Christine Gregoire was still the Attorney General at the time of this problem as she was with the OK Boys Ranch.

From Louis Bloom's website documenting in detail the OK Boys Ranch: "Christine Gregoire is the present Washington State Attorney General (1993+). Many of her assistant attorney generals were involved in defending the Olympia Kiwanis Boys Ranch. Her department made a half-hearted attempt to prosecute some of the low-level OKBR people. The Olympia Kiwanis members are politically connected. She backed off. Christine spoke at a Jan 19, 1999 Olympia Kiwanis meeting. It's easy to forgive people involved with child abuse when they're politically connected."

The last time I re-viewed the documents on  Louis Bloom's website and reread what was done to the boys at the OK Boys Ranch I felt nauseous.

From attorney Jack Connelly's website (who got a measure of justice for some of the boys) about some of the abuse:

"Case Details The abuse occurring at the OK Boys Ranch was varied and severe.
Newcomers, as well as those who broke the rules were initiated or punished in group beatings, young boys would lay awake at night expecting to be raped by the older boys and many tried, unsuccessfully, to escape. The staff did little to stop such behavior and even beat and sodomized the boys themselves. Roughly two serious incidents, which should have been reported to state authorities, occurred per week."

In teaching a child abuse class for the last four and a half years it is clear to me the worst and most shaming of abuses that happen to children and continue into adulthood are the emotional ripping up of children's souls and sexual violation of those same souls.  Of all the categories of child abuse, it is emotional abuse and sexual violation that brings tears to the eyes of those in my class.

It's the crime we are not allowed to talk about it. It's the crime that gets hidden like it's the victim's shame. It's not their shame. Such secrets have been covered up in child day care licensing as well.

"Sexual" abuse is not about sex. It's about power and control. It's not about the perpetrator having the orgasm. The worst and most shaming is forcing the child to have the orgasm, it's the emotional control the perpetrator has over the child...well into adulthood.

As was the case for Elizabeth Lynn Dunham who was first sexually seduced and used by former Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt at the age of thirteen.  Not until her death this year (February) at age 49 years old did we learn her name.

We learned it from the Willamette Week, the Oregonian didn't honor and respect this woman, this girl who could never be healed in this lifetime. It is not her shame what Goldschmidt did to her and the control he had over her the rest of her life.

Secrets devastate and secrets kill. A thank you to the Seattle Times for investigating and investing to get records unsealed to tell this story. 

Elizabeth Lynn Dunham's story and others like the boys at the OK Boys Ranch must be honored and remembered.