Cox family considering lawsuit against state
Feb 22, 2012, 5:31 AM | Updated: 8:43 am
It’s the question that still haunts state caseworkers, the police and family of Susan Powell: What could have been done differently to keep Josh Powell from killing his two children in that fiery explosion earlier this month?
The way the case was handled also has the Cox family asking for changes to Child Protective Services to prevent this from happening to any other family.
Though Josh Powell was denied custody of his two young boys, the state did approve supervised visits at his home.
Chuck Cox, the boys’ grandfather, believes Child Protective Services should have never allowed the visits at his home. He believes it gave Josh Powell the upper hand in plotting the murder-suicide he eventually carried out earlier this month.
“To think you can control a situation in a private residence with one person overseeing a visitation, that was unreasonable,” Cox told KING 5. “That should have never happened.”
Cox believes the policies at CPS need to be changed., specifically the policy that focuses on putting kids back with their biological parents.
“I got the feeling that was a corporate philosophy of – at all costs regardless of who the biological parent is,” he said. “I feel what it should be is that the reunification with the parents when appropriate. I think what’s best for the child should be over-guiding philosophy, not reunification necessarily with the parents because there are a lot of cases where that is not the best thing for the child.”
Cox will meet with legislators and reporters in Olympia on Thursday to talk about how changes can be made to CPS, and suing the state to make those changes happen is a possibility.
“I’ve been told, ‘You have a good case’ and ‘You should sue,’ but that’s not going to bring my grandchildren back,” Cox said. “It’s not going to bring my daughter back, but I think if we could get changes in the way things are so this doesn’t happen to anybody else, ever.”
Cox doesn’t blame the case workers for what happened. He believes they were all trying to do the right thing, but he thinks the policies and procedures that they followed are flawed.
