Foster Care Abuse Claims

00:00:00.440 --> 00:00:04.720 The first thing that a family should do if they suspect that a child has been 00:00:05.080 --> 00:00:09.200 abused or neglected in foster care is to call the police. 00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:14.560 Foster care involves the most vulnerable kids that you can 00:00:14.680 --> 00:00:18.680 imagine, and it means that they're out of their own home, 00:00:18.880 --> 00:00:23.240 they're living with somebody who is their caretaker, but the state of Washington 00:00:24.040 --> 00:00:26.000 ultimately is their custodian. 00:00:26.360 --> 00:00:32.000 At Cochran Douglas, we see a lot of cases that come in that are foster care kids who 00:00:32.240 --> 00:00:35.560 have been abused or neglected in the system. 00:00:36.400 --> 00:00:40.880 The folks that can be held legally responsible for kids who have been harmed 00:00:41.080 --> 00:00:46.120 in the foster care system are the foster care parents, 00:00:46.280 --> 00:00:51.520 so foster parents can be, but sometimes so can the state of Washington. 00:00:51.640 --> 00:00:56.360 Foster care abuse cases come to us, and oftentimes they come in clusters, 00:00:56.720 --> 00:01:02.240 but usually it's one courageous survivor who calls, and they tell us what happened, 00:01:02.360 --> 00:01:05.240 and then they ask us if there's anything that can be done. 00:01:05.440 --> 00:01:10.600 They have the right to accountability, and it means, with the civil justice side, 00:01:10.720 --> 00:01:15.640 figure out what happened and who failed them that put them in this place of harm. 00:01:16.160 --> 00:01:22.280 Pursuing a foster care case has to start with a firm that knows what they're doing. 00:01:22.520 --> 00:01:27.880 This is a maze of different individuals, different agencies, different 00:01:28.600 --> 00:01:33.680 sub-agencies within larger agencies, so it really takes an attorney who has 00:01:33.920 --> 00:01:38.920 experience in this area of the law in order to get full justice. 00:01:39.160 --> 00:01:42.520 It's really important for these agencies to exist. 00:01:43.640 --> 00:01:48.800 There are kids that need some sort of a foster care system in order to be whole, 00:01:49.120 --> 00:01:52.720 but it's even more important that these agencies, that these 00:01:53.240 --> 00:01:55.960 institutions, operate correctly. 00:01:56.080 --> 00:02:00.400 In the end, we want the institution to work correctly so that they're not doing 00:02:00.640 --> 00:02:04.720 greater harm than the harms that they're supposed to be preventing. 00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:10.240 We have experience pursuing cases in the civil justice system 00:02:10.600 --> 00:02:14.960 against the state of Washington on behalf of foster care kids or 00:02:15.400 --> 00:02:20.000 former foster care kids who have been abused or neglected in the system. 00:02:20.120 --> 00:02:23.600 The cases that we have oftentimes are against individuals 00:02:23.680 --> 00:02:26.000 that we work with time and time again. 00:02:26.200 --> 00:02:29.000 The cases that we prosecute against the state of Washington 00:02:30.040 --> 00:02:34.760 often involve attorneys that we've faced over and over again over the years. 00:02:35.240 --> 00:02:36.640 They know we're serious. 00:02:37.040 --> 00:02:41.840 They know we will go all the way through a jury trial if necessary, 00:02:41.920 --> 00:02:45.680 and they know that we will stop at nothing to get justice for our clients.