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Thursday, February 26, 1998
Unwillingness to compromise costs her a job
By MIKE BARBER FINLEY -- Juana Vasquez left Wenatchee with her integrity intact. Now fighting an inoperable brain tumor at her home here in the flat, pastoral horse country near the Tri-Cities, the former Child Welfare Services supervisor was one of the first to question the validity of the Wenatchee child sex-abuse investigations. Her unwillingness to compromise in the pursuit of justice cost her a job, but it stands as an inspiration to those who know her. "She's a heroine to me," says Paul Glassen, a social worker who reported to Vasquez in Wenatchee. He lost his job about the same time as Vasquez. "I learned patience and the value of steady pressure from her,'' Glassen says. "She has this abiding sense that justice will (prevail), but you have to wait for it." Vasquez and Glassen worked in the same office as Office of Child Protective Services caseworkers in Wenatchee. Their responsibilities for the welfare of low-income and abused children overlapped. They were in a position to see how Wenatchee police Detective Bob Perez and CPS caseworkers were handling the investigation of child sex-abuse allegations. Vasquez and Glassen are still fighting the injustice they saw in Wenatchee -- this time with a wrongful termination lawsuit against the state. For Vasquez, winning that lawsuit would be vindication not for herself, but for the true victims in Wenatchee. "I want to do it for the children and families," she says. "I don't know how some of my former colleagues can live with themselves. Our job is to protect children -- first, foremost and always. In Wenatchee, this mission was forgotten or ignored. "From what I saw, there was little or any real proof that those children had been molested or raped by their parents. But there is no doubt in my mind that they were horribly abused by those of us who were supposed to protect them." Families are important to Vasquez and her husband, Ramon, a gentle giant of a man who dotes on her. The couple has raised eight children, including three from his prior marriage and an adopted grandnephew. Outside, children's toys dot the yard, lying where they were left after another day of play. Nearby, the family horse calmly stomps a hoof and bends a noble neck to snort a challenge at an approaching car. These days, Vasquez holds court at her kitchen table piled with the records that she religiously kept from her work at CPS. Her dark eyes, creased by laugh lines, alternately exude warmth and defiance, even after a tough chemotherapy session. Nearby, family pictures line the living room. In her family, values were something learned early in life. Integrity born of hard work Born in Quincy, Vasquez grew up working the fields and orchards alongside her migrant farm worker parents. The labor before and after school each day helped her develop a strong sense of duty and integrity, and a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. "It was my mother who instilled in us a strong sense of right and wrong," Vasquez recalls. "One time we were working the fields, her and I and other families, under . . . this supervisor who wouldn't give us any breaks. "My mother finally had it and went up, taking me along, and told him, 'What kind of person are you? Slavery ended a long time ago. No breaks, no water, I'm leaving.' And she left. That left an impression. With my mom, you could stand up no matter who you were, and you didn't have to take it." Vasquez worked her way through college with a Ford Foundation fellowship, earning a political science degree and graduate credits. She became a social worker, then dean of admissions and director of minority affairs at Gonzaga University in Spokane. But her job wasn't fulfilling, she says: "I realized I wasn't doing what I wanted to do, helping kids and families who really needed help." Vasquez returned to social work in the Walla Walla CPS office, then applied for a move when an opening was announced in Wenatchee. "People in Walla Walla warned me that the Wenatchee office was not a good place to go, that there were people there with attitudes," she says. She didn't realize how true that would be until she saw for herself. The office was polarized over how best to handle foster care and over race -- Wenatchee has a sizable Hispanic population, but few Hispanic social workers. Vasquez filed and won a discrimination suit against the Department of Social and Health Services that also named CPS supervisor Tim Abbey and two social workers. A jury that included no minorities awarded her $60,000. "She is an amazing woman of such strength," says Wenatchee attorney Steve Lacy, who represented her in that 1992 lawsuit. "The jury could see the integrity in that woman. She shined with integrity. They knew she could not be bought, she could not be intimidated, she could not be threatened." Lacy, who has represented several of the accused in the Wenatchee child sex-abuse investigations, is also handling Vasquez and Glassen's pending lawsuit against the state. In mid-1994, tensions were already high in the CPS office when a jury found in Vasquez's favor, forcing her promotion to a supervisory job. The volatile situation exploded, however, when Perez started his two-year stint as the city's top sex crime investigator. CPS workers who showed disdain for the mentally ill, poor and ethnic people of the Apple Valley found an ally, Vasquez and Glassen say. "Perez practically gave them everything. As a policeman he could question who he wanted to and base things on something related to police work," she says. Where CPS caseworkers previously saw no child abuse, and noted only "normal behavior" by parents they contacted, they now supported Perez's accusations of rape and molestation. CPS workers seemed to relish the excitement of police work and lose their sense of social work, Glassen says. "The better we did at reuniting families, the more CPS . . . resented it, as though we were wrong in rehabilitating families," he says. CPS "had an attitude that children were replaceable parts," Glassen says. "Juana never had that. She knew the value of a family." The boiling point The arrest of Robert Devereaux brought the issue to a head. Devereaux and his wife, Maxine, had been highly regarded foster parents who sheltered more than 300 girls over the years, many of them troubled children no one else could handle. When the Devereauxs divorced in 1991, he continued to take in foster daughters -- much to the displeasure of Abbey and a faction of CPS workers. They considered it improper and troublesome for a single man to care for girls. What had been reported as normal behavior in the home, with the girls sometimes running around in their underwear or jumping into Devereaux's lap, became the subject of speculation and sarcasm. A few months before the investigation, Glassen was lunching with Abbey and other social workers at a popular Mexican restaurant when Perez joined in jokes at Devereaux's expense. "I'll bet he teaches them to drive," said Perez, moving his hand near his crotch while imitating Devereaux's voice: "Come on honey, sit here on my lap and grab this stick shift." Glassen says he was shocked, not so much at the joke but that it was made in such a public place and with professionals joining in the mockery. Caseworkers told Glassen it was Perez's normal behavior, but he filed a formal complaint. When one of Devereaux's foster daughters got into trouble and landed in detention, Perez went alone to see the 15-year-old girl who was angry at Devereaux for forbidding her to see a boy. Perez came away with an accusation of sex abuse by Devereaux. But when Glassen visited the girl a day later, he got a different story: the girl tearfully said Perez pressured her to make the accusation. The recantation was met with hostility from police and CPS. It opened a door to an option CPS and police didn't accept in their quest for disclosures from children about sex abuse -- the likelihood that it didn't happen. Worse, it provided ammunition for defense attorneys. As Glassen's supervisor, Vasquez watched as Perez meddled in the state agency's affairs. He grumbled loudly to CPS Area Manager Carol Billesbach, asking her to make Glassen "back off," and threatened to sue for "personal slander.'' Then Glassen was arrested -- handcuffed and led from his office as startled colleagues watched. He was charged with obstructing justice and later fired. Vasquez soon tangled with Perez when she asked a caseworker to schedule routine medical checkups for the children who were being shifted from Devereaux's home. Perez intervened and canceled the appointments with no explanation, she said. Vasquez had demanded to see Perez's account of his interview with the girl. It arrived with a warning. "He came down and gave me the report. I told him my concerns were not going to stop there," Vasquez said. "I wanted to know when he got his report to start investigating . . . and that's when he told me, 'It's going to cost you your job, Juana.' " He was right. She was reprimanded and placed on involuntary leave in September 1994 for failing to assist investigators. She was fired in October 1995. Since then, Vasquez has remained a leader in efforts to question the Wenatchee sex-abuse investigations. Her brain tumor was revealed last fall when she suffered a seizure at her new job as an admissions recruiter at Washington State University's Tri-Cities campus. A week after emergency surgery, she was planning how best to make use of whatever time she is allowed. INSIDE SEATTLEPI.COM
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