EVERETT — First his parents failed him. Then state social workers let him down.
Shayne Abegg, 5, nearly starved to death before someone noticed.
The boy suffered years of abuse and the state did not do enough to protect him, according to an executive review ordered by the Children’s Administration, part of the state Department of Social and Health Services.
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 review team found.
There were warning signs and evidence his father, Danny Abegg, was ignoring recommendations to adequately care for Shayne, according to the report.
“On a case like this, this shouldn’t have happened. We should have known and not closed the case,” said Randy Hart, the children’s regional administrator in Everett for the state Department of Social and Health Services. “We are responsible for keeping children safe and certainly this outcome showed that our intervention wasn’t successful.”
The probe into how state social workers oversaw Shayne’s care was ordered in March. A few days earlier, Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies had removed Shayne from his father’s apartment after the state received a complaint about his condition.
Shayne weighed only about 25 pounds, about half the weight of a healthy child the same age. His hair was falling out and he was too weak to sit up on his own. He shook when he stood and suffered from hypothermia, a dangerously low temperature, because he lacked body fat.
A state social worker last visited the family in January and reported that Shayne appeared in good health. She recommended Shayne get counseling because his family situation had been changing, and his brother no longer lived with him.
She also noted that Danny Abegg told her he was afraid to enroll Shayne in counseling because the boy lied and he was afraid the boy’s infant half-sister would be taken from them.
The state closed Shayne’s case file in February.
The boy was hospitalized a month later in critical condition.
Danny Abegg, 27, and his girlfriend, Marilea Mitchell, 22, were arrested. Their child abuse trial started Monday. Prosecutors say Shayne was deprived of food as a form of punishment. The couple are charged with first-degree criminal mistreatment.
A pediatrician with a specialty in child abuse told Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wynne that she has seen a lot of malnourished children in nearly two decades of practice.
“I don’t think I’ve seen anyone quite at his level,” testified Dr. Rebecca Wiesteer, who examined Shayne soon after he was hospitalized.
Deputy prosecutor Mark Roe on Monday added aggravating circumstances to the charges, meaning that the couple could receive a higher penalty if they are convicted.
Abegg’s lawyer, public defender Marybeth Dingledy, asked the judge to focus on whether her client might have just been negligent, and not reckless, in raising Shayne.
According to court documents, Shayne and his older brother often went hungry when they lived with their mother. They learned to hoard food.
After the boys moved in with their father, they continued to hoard and Abegg was told to leave food for his children as a way to reassure them that they wouldn’t go hungry again.
Instead, Abegg told a caseworker that he worried about the cost of feeding his boys, locked up all the food, and sent them to their room if they got into it, court documents said.
Shayne’s court-appointed guardian hired Seattle attorney David Moody to pursue a civil lawsuit on behalf of the boy.
State social workers should have acted faster to remove Shayne from his father’s home after they saw signs of abuse, Moody said. He expects to file a claim against the state on behalf of Shayne by the end of the week. That’s the first step in a lawsuit against the state Department of Social and Health Services.
“DSHS admits that it missed warning signs, failed to provide adequate oversight, and turned its back on little Shayne,” Moody said Monday. “The executive report is detailed and unvarnished. DSHS admits that it failed to protect Shayne. The public should be outraged.”
Shayne now lives with a foster family.
He has gained weight but is far from healthy, Moody said.
The boy still has problems eating during the day because he’s afraid he’ll get in trouble, the attorney said.
“I expect Shayne will have permanent delays like learning disabilities, due to basically the starvation of the brain,” Moody said.
Starting in 2003, state social workers investigated at least a dozen complaints of abuse and neglect involving Shayne and his brother, including reports from outside the family that the boys appeared to be malnourished.
Based on the history of medical and physical neglect, the state should have gone to court to begin the process of removing the children from their parents, according to the DSHS review.
In addition, social workers shouldn’t have closed the case until it was thoroughly reviewed by a child protection team, the review concluded.
Shayne’s case was handled by caseworkers assigned to Indian Child Welfare Unit in the regional offices. His mother is a member of the Kotzebue Tribe in Alaska.
The review team included staff from the Children’s Administration, a pediatrician, sheriff’s detectives and the director of the Office of the Family and Children’s Ombudsman.
They noted that there wasn’t enough oversight of the social workers handling Shayne’s case and when the boy moved from place to place, his case wasn’t well tracked. The social workers’ caseloads also were over the recommended limits, the report found.
“It’s not an excuse,” Hart said. “We use our best skills and we have good people who really care about kids. In this case, something didn’t work.”
The state has made some changes to address the issues, Hart said.
It has taken steps to make sure more experienced supervisors review these types of cases and social workers get training to help recognize the signs of malnutrition. He has reconfigured some of his staff to decrease caseloads.
And some people who were involved with Shayne are no longer in their positions. He declined to say whether anyone was fired.
Hart still has questions.
“When the social worker walked out of that door did she know she shouldn’t have closed the case or did she have the wool pulled over her eyes?”
Reporter Jim Haley contributed to this report.
Reporter Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463 or hefley@heraldnet.com.
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