WA to pay $15 million to 3 sisters who were sexually abused in foster home

The State of Washington has agreed to pay $15 million to three sisters who faced sexual abuse at a foster home in Centralia.

The settlement means the state will avoid a three-week jury trial that was scheduled to begin July 22 in Thurston County Superior Court.

The three sisters — going by the acronyms J.P., R.P., and S.P. — claimed the abuse spanned between 1990 and 2000. According to Pfau, Cochran, Vertetis and Amala (PCVA) Attorneys at Law, the firm representing the sisters, they were ages four, five and six when the sexual abuse began. It lasted until they were teenagers.

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Two teenage sons of the foster parents are accused of carrying out the abuse.

“At the time our clients were placed in the home, the Pittmans (the foster parents) had seven biological children, and at times there were as many as 12 children in the home,” PCVA Attorneys at Law stated after the settlement. “Two of the Pittman’s biological children were witnesses in the lawsuit and described the home as a ‘compound’ with an isolated and insular ‘cult-like’ environment with extreme religious views, particularly as it came to the oppression of women, and severe, physically abusive disciplinary practices.”

In addition to the sexual abuse the three sisters faced by two of Pittman’s biological teenage sons, the girls were also “savagely beaten” and “emotionally abused” by the foster parents under the guise of “corporal punishment,” according to PCVA Attorneys at Law. Numerous complaints reached the government of Washington State regarding the parents’ abusive practices, but the state found the behavior did not reach the level of “child abuse.”

PCVA Attorneys at Law claimed corporal punishment is a violation of foster care licensing rules, which the State of Washington agreed with.

The biological father’s parental rights were eventually terminated by the state.

According to the evidence obtained by PCVA Attorneys at Law, the State of Washington only had minimal contact with the family after they formally adopted the children. Then, from 1992 to 1995, the state failed to conduct a single home safety visit with the children.

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Under Washington’s policies and procedures, social workers are required to meet face-to-face with foster children every month to ensure they are safe and protected during the placement.

“The state removed our clients from drug-addicted parents only to place them in a horror house of sexual abuse, physical violence and literal torture,” PCVA Attorney Vincent Nappo, one of the lead attorneys of this case, said. “There is no good excuse for a social worker to fail to do a single health and safety visit with a foster child for years and years. The state must provide the necessary resources and support to its social workers to ensure foster children are safe and protected in placement, or these types of horrific placements will continue.”

“The state abandoned these children and did virtually nothing to monitor their safety and wellbeing,” PCVA Attorney Mallory Allen, one of the lead attorneys of this case, added.

The lawsuit was initially filed in February 2022.

Frank Sumrall is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read his stories here and you can email him here.