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Robert Devereux, a businessman whose wife had been devoted to running a group home for troubled schoolgirls, which he kept afloat after their divorce, was also caught in D.E.'s web. He was "the best kind of foster parent, devoted and tireless,'' says social worker Juana Vasquez,who was suspended in part for complaining about Perez's sitting in on CPS meetings. But Devereux had crossed D.E. when he had her removed from his home for being unruly. When he later had a disciplinary problem with another of his charges, Anne W., who has fetal-alcohol syndrome, Perez swooped in and questioned Anne. She later admitted to her social worker, Paul Glassen, that "she had told a bunch of lies about Dad."
Devereux was charged with enough offenses to merit eight life sentences. After he hired a defense lawyer, however, prosecutors were suddenly willing to reduce his monstrous sex crimes to two misdemeanors: witness obstruction (warning someone he would be the next target) and once spanking a child. But by then Devereux, 58, had lost his home and was $50,000 in debt. He has moved to a tiny house on the outskirts of town, where he works the night shift at a truck stop.
Meanwhile, for reporting Anne W.'s recantations, Glassen was arrested for witness tampering and fired by CPS. Then his name began appearing on lists of alleged sex-ring participants. Glassen decided not to risk having his child taken away and moved north to Canada.
Other families have been ripped apart. Mormons Mark and Carol Doggett asked CPS for help with their son, fearing he had molested their youngest daughter. CPS decided it was the parents who were doing the molesting and arrested them. The five children were separated in foster care, the better to "recover" their memories of rape, which they have since recanted. When Sarah, the eldest daughter, objected to what was happening, she was handcuffed, strapped to a gurney and sent to an institution in Idaho to get over her "pathological loyalty" to her family. After the Doggetts were sent to prison for 11 years, Sarah ran away, too afraid to go to school or attempt to contact her siblings, a child completely alone trying to get help for her parents. Now 17, speaking on the phone from her third temporary family, she weeps, "Why would they have gone to social services if they were molesters?"
When asked about Perez's unorthodox methods, local prosecutor Gary Riesen defends his record but says, "It's not part of my job to endorse police officers," and admits there have been inconsistencies among the child witnesses. In fact, D.E., whose screaming has damaged her vocal cords, has been confined to a mental institution and may no longer be competent to testify. Governor Mike Lowry, who last year made a special appropriation for the uncommonly high case load in Wenatchee, has reversed course and, responding to a 2,169-citizen petition, has asked the attorney general to investigate "the actions of officials" in the area.