When private schools fail, they shut down. When private nursing homes fail, they shut down. But when negligent government social service agencies fail, they stay open, get more money, and claim more victims. The latest horror story out of Washington state involves Suzy Sclater, a woman with cerebal palsy and the developmental abilities of a toddler, who was raped in a state-operated group home for which her mother had helped raise $300,000.

Suzy’s pelvis was bruised, her hymen broken, a handprint left on her thigh, and semen found in her body. When her mother inquired about the injuries, the Department of Health and Human Services attemped a cover-up and withheld incriminating documents for a year. Here’s a jaw-dropping excerpt from the Seattle Times story:

In the months following the rape, Sclater looked back more closely at incidents that at the time hadn’t seemed to her to indicate abuse Now, she wonders about the cause of the nightmares that awakened Suzy during the night, about bruises on her back that mirrored the pattern of her shower gurney, about her hymen being broken. Sclater’s conclusion: “I think they’d been using her for years.”

DSHS lawyers take a different view of the matter, suggesting that Suzy could have gotten the bruises in a series of falls and inserted the semen into herself.…

Suzy now lives in a private home on Queen Anne Hill, cared for by carefully screened female attendants. Still, she sometimes wakes up screaming in the middle of the night…

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