WA sued in death of 5-year-old girl, allegedly killed by father
By Lauren Girgis -- The Seattle Times | Follow this link to access the online article
The family of a 5-year-old girl who prosecutors allege was beaten to death by her father in Federal Way last spring is suing the state, alleging Washington’s
child welfare agency was negligent in its response to allegations the girl was being abused.
Soo Jin Hahn died in May after her father, prosecutors allege, beat her for hours. Her official cause of death was circulatory collapse due to blunt force injuries and dehydration. Her father, Woo Jin Hahn, is charged by King County prosecutors with homicide by abuse and several counts of assaulting a child.
Her great-grandmother, as a representative of Soo Jin’s estate, is now suing the state and the Department of Children, Youth and Families. The lawsuit comes
as deaths and near-deaths among children who were connected with the state’s child welfare system have risen in the past five years.
Soo Jin lived with her father, his girlfriend and her three children. Woo Jin Hahn’s girlfriend, Cierra Fisher, has also been charged with assault of a child
in connection with Soo Jin’s death. Relatives, health care workers and a school counselor made over a dozen calls to Child Protective Services about the family
before Soo Jin Hahn died, expressing concerns about medical neglect and physical abuse.
Soo Jin was not getting treatment for a potential craniofacial disease, was not enrolled in school, and was nonverbal, according to DCYF case reports and
police records. The lawsuit alleges child welfare workers did not investigate Soo Jin’s health or well-being.
“Despite five years of documented concerns about the welfare of Soo Jin as a medically fragile and vulnerable child, as well as concerns about other children in the same residence, DCYF failed to create a safety plan, failed to file a dependency petition, and failed to take any meaningful action to protect Soo Jin or the other children in the home,” the complaint states.
A spokesperson for the Department of Children, Youth and Families said the agency does not comment on active litigation.
Soo Jin first came to the agency’s attention in 2020, when a relative and Adult Protective Services representative expressed concerns regarding her mother’s declining health and conflict between Soo Jin’s mother and Woo Jin. Later that year, a doctor told CPS they were concerned for Soo Jin’s well-being after the family repeatedly failed to seek medical care for her, according to CPS records. The agency determined the allegations of neglect were unfounded. A medical professional called again and an investigation was opened in 2021, but it was closed after caseworkers were “unable to locate the family,” according to the DCYF child fatality review.
“When you’ve got medical care providers calling about a medically fragile child, especially one with cognitive impairments, then DCYF knows that call moves to the very front of their concern list,” said the family’s attorney, Loren Cochran. “From the very beginning, they knew that Woo Jin Hahn was not a capable caregiver.”
More reports came between 2022 and 2025 from educators and the aunt of Fisher’s children about physical abuse of the other children in the home.
When caseworkers contacted the family in 2023, the lawsuit states, they did not remove the children from Fisher and Hahn’s presence to interview them: “As expected with any minor questioned about their safety in front of their abuser, the child denied being physically punished,” the lawsuit states.
That case was later closed, again citing caseworkers “being unable to locate the family,” despite the department knowing where the family lived, according to the lawsuit.
Four months before Soo Jin died, the agency received a report from a school counselor who had concerns about Soo Jin’s father possibly physically abusing the other children in the home.
In April, a caseworker documented that Soo Jin had a bruise on her face. Her father told the caseworker she had hit her face on a wall heater while sleeping.
A month before Soo Jin died, the Department completed its assessment, stating the “parents were transparent about their actions and were cooperative in adjusting their disciplinary methods.”
When Soo Jin died 30 days later, she had 52 separate injuries covering her body, according to the lawsuit. There were levels of Benadryl in her system “at a level likely to produce sedation,” the lawsuit stated.
Cochran said child fatality reviews are conducted “in secrecy” and aren’t discussed further outside of the committee review. The complaint does not request specific monetary damages at this point, he said.
“Clearly, there were failures,” Cochran said.
“We have enacted and enabled an entire government agency to act on behalf of kids just like Soo Jin, so what do we need to do to make sure that they’re doing their job?” Cochran said.
The fatality review following Soo Jin’s death stated the CPS office that handled her case was experiencing “workload challenges” and that “the work with the family … did not seem continuous.” According to the report, caseworkers seemed to have responded to individual incidents without adequately considering the history of reports in order to understand the risk facing the children.
