An umbrella, a bamboo stick, a metal rod. These household items became implements of torment for four children living in a Federal Way apartment, where the youngest died last month, apparently of abuse.
Anyone who tracks child deaths knows that the ultimate, fatal attack is never the first. Again and again, paper trails show repeated reports to Child Protective Services. It’s not as if these kids are invisible.
Yet the state’s typical response to questions — a knee-jerk denial under claims of protecting privacy — disappears children so effectively, it’s fair to wonder if that is the goal.
Take the case of 5-year-old Soo Jin Hahn. She had developmental disabilities and is now dead at the hands of her father, Woo Jin Hahn, according to prosecutors. Last week, they charged Hahn and his girlfriend, Cierra Fisher, with assaults so systematic it amounted to torture. The couple were also charged with assault for abusing Fisher’s three children, ages 10, 9 and 6 — all of it done in the name of discipline.
The parents’ case will work its way through the courts but probably fade from headlines.
Part of the reason is Washington’s Department of Children, Youth and Families, which reflexively shuts down news media inquiries on these matters. The law, however, says when children die of abuse or neglect the public has a right to know what, if anything, the state did to prevent it.when children die of abuse or neglect the public has a right to know what, if anything, the state did to prevent it.
In the case of the kids in Apartment #47, there were at least three reports of suspected abuse made to CPS in less than three years, plus one to police about domestic violence. Whenever CPS workers got in touch, telling Hahn to stop “severe acts of physical discipline,” he would minimize the problem and “talk his way out of it,” according to charging papers.
An astute investigator might have asked about the children’s injuries — they were clearly noticeable. The eldest, a 10-year-old girl, had an “unhealed gaping wound” on her leg from being hit with a pipe, according to charging papers. Her younger brother had a broken bone.
Good practice says physicians, not CPS workers, should determine whether such injuries are the result of accidents, as opposed to assault. But none of the four kids in the Hahn-Fisher household had seen a doctor. That’s something a CPS investigator could have checked and requested, if only to rule out medical neglect.
Tellingly, when a school counselor asked one of the children about his wounds, he said his parents “told him not to talk about it.”
That response echoes the state’s, which immediately deflected inquiries from this editorial board: “Due to privacy law, we cannot comment on case-specific details.”
It’s absurd to the point of being nonsensical. The child in question has died. Prosecutors have already made public much of what went on in the home, including the state’s involvement. So whose privacy is actually being protected?
The state’s.
