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Director's Message
May 6, 2004
To: DHS Employees
From: Gary Weeks, Director
Special message re: Statesman Journal article
I wanted to share with you an extraordinary article that appears in today's Statesman Journal. It gives an honest and vivid portrayal of the work we and our partners do to fight child abuse. But more importantly, it accurately portrays how individuals from a number of agencies can work together as a team with one overall goal.
Not only does the article recognize the dedication, commitment and hard work of the individuals involved (and I must give a special thumbs up to CAF's Dawn Hunter in that regard), it illustrates just how effective true collaboration can be in the work we do.
I hope you will not only read the article and feel a sense of pride in your profession, but you will also share it with family and friends, so they will have a better idea of what you do and how important your work is to all Oregonians.
I've included the text of the story at the end of this note. If you'd like to see the actual story with the accompanying photos, you can link directly to it at the Statesman Journal site.
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Trio share a passion for protecting young
A detective, a child protective services worker and a prosecutor work to halt child abuse.
CAPI LYNN
Statesman Journal
May 6, 2004
All three remember the case like it was yesterday.
The child protective services worker, the police detective, the prosecutor.
It happened in 1994, when a Salem couple starved their 4-month-old baby boy to death.
Six other children were taken into protective custody, including a 9-year-old girl who later testified during the trial.
Although murder charges were dismissed, the couple were found guilty of second-degree manslaughter and six counts of criminal mistreatment and were sentenced to 7-1/2 years in prison.
"Parts of the case were very hard for everybody involved," said Dawn Hunter, then a caseworker for the Department of Human Services.
Salem police Detective Craig Stoelk remembers. So does Walt Beglau, Marion County deputy district attorney.
A decade later, the three continue the crusade against child abuse.
Their jobs are emotionally and physically demanding. They deal daily with children who have been battered, bruised and molested, and their heavy caseloads often require that they work long hours.
"It's an incredibly challenging field to be in," said Sue Miller, executive director of a local child abuse prevention program. "You really have to have a commitment."
Hunter, Stoelk and Beglau are members of Marion County's Child Abuse Review Team, which includes representatives from 30 agencies, including hospitals and schools.
The team reviews all child fatalities that occur in the county, provides training to people who work on the front lines of child abuse, sets policy on child abuse and provides a resource for participating agencies.
"There are a lot of wonderful people in this county who work really hard to protect kids," said Debbie Joa, who works at a child abuse assessment center and helps lead CART along with Beglau. "What I've noticed about those three individuals is that they're really involved and really proactive and really work well with others."
None of the three welcome the spotlight. They prefer the focus to be on the county's team-oriented, multidisciplinary approach.
"No one alone can get this accomplished," Beglau said.
Their jobs are so different, yet the same.
In separate interviews, it was remarkable how similar their answers often rolled off their tongues about the work they do.
All are careful to not get too personally involved. Their goal is to show empathy for the child and at the same time keep a professional distance.
That isn't always easy when they are dealing with young boys and girls who unfairly have had the joys of childhood stolen from them and replaced by pain and fear.
Stoelk, 49, remembers the first child-abuse homicide he investigated years ago. The girl was the same age as his daughter.
"I found myself feeling almost too connected with the victim to the point of having a hard time staying objective," he said.
Beglau, 40, and Hunter, 44, also know there is a fine line that must not be crossed.
"You can't become too invested or your effectiveness is diminished," Beglau said.
Hunter, now a supervisor for child protective services, said her office continually monitors employees and their emotions to prevent burnout.
"It's very hard to see and hear bad things all day long, every day," she said. "When that's all you see and hear, that becomes your reality."
It is important, all three agree, to find ways to release the stress when they go home.
Beglau, who oversees a team of six lawyers that prosecutes child abuse and adult sexual assault cases, plays basketball and exercises.
Stoelk, the senior detective who investigates child abuse cases for Salem Police, goes fishing and works in his yard and garden.
Hunter focuses on her two sons, ages 7 and 11, who are involved in sports, Scouts and other activities.
"Even when it's been a bad day or a particularly trying day," she said, "you leave here and see they're doing kid stuff and they have regular kid problems. They have a math test or they miss a ball in the outfield. It keeps it in perspective. Everybody doesn't abuse their kids."
Beglau and Stoelk also have children. Beglau has a 13-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl. Stoelk has an adult son and daughter.
They all shy away from sharing details of their jobs with their families.
When Beglau's daughter asked recently about the cases he was working on, he told her about some of the filthy houses that investigators have discovered children living in. "She wanted to know how dirty, and I described it to her by saying, 'You know the Porta Potties at your baseball game? Well, it's all over.' "
The county is looking into whether criminal mistreatment charges can be filed in those cases, which are Stoelk's pet peeve.
He has seen engine car parts on a toddler's bed and marijuana growing in an infant's room.
In one particular house, he described the squish, squish of the carpet that was soaked with cat urine and the cat feces on the kitchen counters.
"You'd start to talk, but there would be so many flies around your mouth," Stoelk said. "Every three minutes you'd have to go outside to catch your breath."
Just when Stoelk, Beglau and Hunter think they have seen it all, along comes a case that is worse.
"It shatters your sense of normalcy," said Stoelk, who has investigated more than 3,000 child-abuse cases and six child homicides. "There's always something with a more warped twist."
There are times when all three wonder why they continue the crusade.
But they keep coming back to what drew them to their respective jobs: They have a passion for protecting children.
"I haven't lost the passion yet," Beglau said, "but I have lost some of the energy. My family can attest to that. I get discouraged. I get sad to see what these kids go through. But you measure success in small victories because we can't fix this."
More than 8,400 children in Oregon were confirmed victims of abuse or neglect in 2002, the most recent statistics available.
What keeps Beglau going is the resiliency he sees every day in children who have been physically, mentally or sexually abused. Like the boy who lived in squalor and kept his homework neat and tidy in his backpack.
"He was keeping the only order in his life that he had," Beglau said. "That kind of resiliency is common in these kids, and it is very encouraging."
Like the 6-year-old girl who stared her molester in the face and testified the reason she did not report the sex abuse before was because he told her he would kill her mommy.
Prosecutors don't always win child-abuse cases, and child welfare workers and police detectives don't always save the children. Beglau, Hunter and Stoelk have to live with that.
"You have to do your job with the notion that you've covered all the bases, gone the extra mile and done all you can do," Stoelk said.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of his and Hunter's jobs is removing a child from a home because of abuse or neglect.
"You feel like you're punishing them, taking them out of their comfort zone," Stoelk said. "The kids, depending on their ages, have no idea why this is happening and they're literally screaming, reaching out to their parents and the parents are screaming."
DHS gets a bad rap no matter what it does. Sometimes it is blamed for removing children when it shouldn't. Other times it is blamed for not removing children when they should.
"A lot of times it is a no-win situation," Hunter said. "We try to do what's best for the kids, safest for the kids."
In the 1994 starvation case that all three worked on, the system was berated by the judge. The children were removed from that home months before when investigators responded to calls about a dirty house. But the children were returned the next day after the parents cleaned up the mess.
About one year later, the 4-month-old was starved to death.
It was a heart-rending case for Hunter, Stoelk and Beglau.
The 9-year-old girl who testified had been taking care of her younger siblings and felt responsible for the death of her baby brother.
For the girl and her five other siblings, there was a happy ending. They went to live in another state with a grandmother who ended up adopting them.
Hunter's office recently received a commencement announcement from that girl.
She will graduate from high school in June.
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This message is intended for all Department employees. Please read it electronically, if possible. Managers and supervisors are asked to share the message each week with employees who do not have email access.
If you have a disability and need a document on this Web site to be provided to you in another format, please send an email to dhs.forms@state.or.us or call (503) 945-7021, fax (503) 373-7690 or TTY (503) 947-5080. If you know of others who need this accommodation, please let them know it is available.
Oregon Department of Human Services
Director's Office
500 Summer St. NE E15, Salem, OR 97301-1097
Phone: (503) 945-5944
Fax: (503) 378-2897
TTY: (503) 947-6214
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