EVERETT — Adults making decisions for Shayne Abegg told a court commissioner they wanted to protect the boy’s privacy when they asked to alter public records.
The 6-year-old boy who in 2007 nearly starved to death at the hands of his father and the man’s girlfriend deserves to be spared any more pain and embarrassment, the lawyers said.
The adults also were protecting themselves.
Court documents obtained by The Herald show that attorneys for the state Department of Social and Health Services and a contract social worker, along with Shayne’s own lawyer and the boy’s court-appointed guardian ad litem were allowed to redact large portions of a lengthy report once included in a public court file.
Their efforts hid from public view harsh criticisms of the state’s handling of Shayne’s case.
The lawyers argued that the boy’s privacy outweighed public interest and asked that medical and financial information be blacked out of a report filed by the guardian in May.
“Our overriding concern with the original report was it revealed confidential health and mental health information,” said Assistant Attorney General Pamela Anderson, who represented DSHS in the civil lawsuit.
The state was worried the information could be used to stigmatize the boy in the future, she added. They were concerned it could affect his future placement with caregivers.
Shayne is expected to be adopted by a foster family this fall.
The Herald obtained a copy of the guardian’s report during the month it was part of the public file. Lawyers in June asked for portions of the report to be redacted.
A Snohomish County judge said that some of the information never should have been made public, including medical information about Shayne. Court rules allow for some sensitive material, particularly in guardianship cases, to be included in separate reports and steps can be taken to seal those reports.
In this case the lawyers also were allowed to redact portions of the report that were critical of state caseworkers and the contract counselor hired to help Shayne and his family.
Gone from the public record are parts of the report that discuss how caseworkers failed to recognize clear signs of ongoing neglect. The document also has been sanitized of details about how Shayne has been harmed by being moved to four different foster homes since he was rescued on March 7, 2007.
The state and lawyers for the caseworkers viewed some of those statements as prejudicial and immaterial to the settlement, court papers said.
At the same time, the lawyers didn’t raise any concerns about semi-nude photographs of Shayne that remain in the public court file.
Detectives took the photographs at the hospital to document the boy’s condition for the criminal case against his abusers. Seattle attorney David Moody, hired to pursue a claim against DSHS, provided some of those photographs to the media. The boy’s guardian submitted additional photographs in a petition asking a judge to proceed with the civil lawsuit.
The child was embarrassed when the photographs were taken, Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Mark Roe said.
Roe prosecuted the criminal case against the boy’s father, Danny Abegg, and the man’s girlfriend, Marilea Mitchell. The deputy prosecutor requested detectives take pictures to document the extent of Shayne’s condition.
Shayne weighed 25 pounds, half the weight of a healthy 4-year-old child, when he was removed from his father’s Lynnwood apartment. A judge likened his physical appearance to that of a Nazi concentration camp survivor.
Danny Abegg and Marilea Mitchell were sentenced to more than eight years in prison for deliberately withholding food from the boy as punishment.
“The fact that those pictures are just out there in a public file, on the Internet and airwaves bothers me,” Roe said. “People don’t choose to be crime victims. Their misfortune should not be for profit, entertainment or a side show attraction. They don’t give up their right to privacy just because someone chose to victimize them.”
Anderson said Thursday that some of the photographs already had been made public by Moody. When The Herald told her that naked pictures of Shayne remain in the court file she agreed to look into the matter.
“Those things may be considered something private,” she said.
Originally, she said, the parties had asked to have the entire file sealed. Court commissioner Tracey Waggoner was unwilling to seal the whole record and required the parties to propose what they wanted removed from the public file.
Anderson said DSHS and the other defendants were concerned with portions of the report that they believed raised unproven allegations. Those same claims already were on record in the civil lawsuit filed against DSHS and others, they said.
Shayne’s guardian needed to provide the judge with all the information she had to support her decision to agree with settling the civil lawsuit, Anderson said. The state, however, didn’t accept those statements as facts, she said.
The lawsuit alleged that caseworkers ignored warning signs that the Shayne was being starved.
An executive review ordered by the Children’s Administration, part of the state Department of Social and Health Services, found that state social workers missed a pattern of abuse and neglect, didn’t follow policy to make sure Shayne was safe and failed to hold his parents more accountable for their son’s well-being.
The state denied the allegations in the lawsuit but agreed to settle and pay $5 million. A contract caseworker, Brad Simkins, and his employer Grayson Associates, agreed to pay Shayne $1 million.
As part of the settlement, the state and contract worker did not admit wrongdoing.
Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wynne approved the settlement in May. Concerns about the content of the 120-page report by Shayne’s guardian were raised at the hearing, Wynne said.
The lawyers filed a motion to redact the file on June 22.
Waggoner signed the order on July 6.
The lawyers would have been required to explain each redaction they were requesting, Wynne said. Records related to physical and mental health are private and routinely are sealed from public view, he said. The law allows for a guardian ad litem to file separate reports — one for the public record and another that can be sealed to protect a person’s privacy. That would have been a better option in this case, he said.
The privacy concerns would not apply to statements about the state’s alleged failures in Shayne’s case, the judge said.
“It is a balancing act with providing for personal privacy and allowing the courts to operate publicly,” Wynne said.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463, hefley@heraldnet.com.
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