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Thursday, February 26, 1998
Family split apart Karen Lopez, 32, saw her entire family -- elderly father, her timid, mentally retarded stepmother, brothers, sisters and cousins -- systematically disappear as each was accused by Perez and CPS. Small wonder, she says, since her youngest half-sister, Donna -- then Perez's foster daughter -- was encouraged by CPS to manipulate and accuse. Lopez's other half-sister, Melinda, made similar accusations but later recanted. "These children were fine until CPS got ahold of them," Lopez says of her two youngest sisters. For years before Perez came knocking, the only problem in the family had been their dad's heavy hand in spanking with a belt, Lopez says. But Wenatchee CPS workers didn't like the way the family lived in a small house littered with hand-me-downs, Lopez said. They didn't seem to believe poor people could provide love and care for their children, she said. Lopez found herself under investigation in August 1995, when Perez turned up at her home with a driving under the influence arrest warrant for her. She was released when it was determined the warrant was a mistake, but Perez was back the next day with an accusation of child rape. Spoiling to take on the system that had destroyed her family, Lopez refused to accept plea bargains and remained behind bars. After she had spent five months in jail, Chelan County Prosecutor Gary Riesen buckled and dismissed the child rape charges. But the damage was done. "I used to be a person who would go and visit people, say 'Hi' on the street. I don't do that anymore. I stay in my house. I don't let my son associate with anybody. I used to be involved in my son's school, but now I don't even volunteer," she says. Moreover, Lopez says CPS placed her now 8-year-old son in a foster home while she was in jail. There, she says, the boy was molested. Weary of trusting the state, she declined to pursue charges and has since moved out of state with him. "After what has happened to us, we just don't trust people anymore," she says. "When I was arrested and taken from him, he was petrified and frightened for five months. Now he screams when I go somewhere."
Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges dismissed complaints of coercion, however, and she was sentenced to 40 years. And on a date burned into her mind, Jan. 17, 1996, the state took away her kids anyway. "I remember the day, I'll never forget it," she says in a soft Oklahoma accent, her voice quivering. "All three were taken away and permanently adopted out. They're now in three different homes in Wenatchee. "I have not seen them since I went to prison in June 1994," she adds. Holt's family had long been troubled. In 1993, she accused her husband, Selid, of molesting their 9-year-old daughter. The allegation followed an argument during which Laura Holt accused Selid of seeing another woman. He responded that he was not only having sex with that woman and but also the Holts' daughter. He is now serving a prison sentence. But Holt says she was outraged when CPS took her children from school and placed them in foster homes. The caseworkers told her she could keep her kids if she improved her parenting skills, divorced her husband and got her family into counseling with therapist Cindy Andrews. Holt says CPS frowned when she instead signed up at the East Wenatchee Mental Health Clinic. CPS steered her to Andrews, whom she says inflicted more harm than good by behaving more like a prosecutor than a therapist. "Cindy Andrews told my baby boy before my November 1994 hearing that his momma and daddy was dead," Holt said. "She asked my kids right in front of me whether momma should be in jail with their daddy . . . She argued with my children that they weren't remembering. She kept telling me I did this abuse, that I let my husband hurt my daughter and I had to be involved in it somehow." Andrews declined to comment through her attorney.
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