DSHS sued for $22M over starving of child

When Shayne Abegg came to live with his father in Everett, he was a healthy, perhaps even slightly rotund, 3-year-old weighing 38 pounds.

A year later, his weight had dropped to 22 pounds. He could neither sit nor walk; his muscles were wasting; his temperature was a dangerously low 87 degrees. His father and his father's girlfriend had intentionally starved him, a judge later found.

On Thursday, an attorney filed a $22 million lawsuit against the state Department of Social and Health Services, claiming the agency failed to protect Shayne.

Shayne was removed from his Everett home in March 2007. Over the previous nine months, DSHS had received numerous complaints that Shayne and his older brother were being abused by Danny Abegg and girlfriend Marilea Mitchell, according to state records. The complaints included allegations that the boys appeared to be beaten and starved.

Last month, Mitchell and Abegg were sentenced to eight years in prison. At trial, the couple had claimed that they just thought the boy was skinny — a defense that incensed the judge, who likened photos of Shayne to those of concentration-camp victims.

In the lawsuit, attorney David P. Moody said the signs were everywhere, yet DSHS employees and contract workers simply ignored them. Moody filed the suit after talking with Shayne's court-appointed guardian.

DSHS spokesman Steve Williams said the agency doesn't comment on pending lawsuits.

He pointed out, however, that two employees involved in the case resigned; two more may face discipline. In addition, the agency has hired an outside expert to retrain workers on how to recognize malnutrition.

"We were very concerned when this case developed," Williams said.

According to the lawsuit, DSHS dismissed some of the complaints as "unfounded." But the agency nonetheless enlisted a private contractor to help the family — particularly with "food issues."

The contractor reported troubling patterns, the lawsuit said. The boys had a "fear of starvation," he wrote in one report. They "have to scavenge for every meal that they can get," he wrote in another. Yet Abegg and Mitchell seemed "less than enthusiastic" about working on that problem. Instead, the couple continued to withhold food as a form of discipline, and complained to the contractor that the boys would "steal" food from the kitchen.

As the contractor worked with the family, another complaint came in, and the warning signs continued, according to the lawsuit. Yet Shayne was left in the home.

The work of DSHS employees was slipshod, the lawsuit alleges: Not everyone who filed a complaint was interviewed; other times there was no record that anyone spoke with Shayne or his brother outside the presence of family; still other times, investigators accepted Abegg's and Mitchell's explanations. Even when one caseworker saw "extreme bruising" on both sides of the brother's head, she did not act to protect the boys, according to the lawsuit. Shortly after the caseworker noted the bruising, Abegg sent the brother to live with relatives in California.

In March 2007, Mitchell's sister made an urgent call to authorities: Shayne was in bad shape. This time, Snohomish County sheriff's deputies responded, and he was rushed to the hospital. Several people who examined Shayne called it the worst case of child abuse they had ever seen.

Today, Williams said, 5-year-old Shayne is in "excellent health" and is "thriving" in foster care.

Maureen O'Hagan: 206-464-2562 or mohagan@seattletimes.com