PEND OREILLE COUNTY, Wash. -- The state of Washington agreed to pay nearly $17 million to a dozen men who were abused as children in foster care in a Pend Oreille County group home. That home was the J Bar D Ranch near Ione. The abuse of boys there by staff members dates back to the 1970s and 80s.
"Molestation, sick and heinous things that shouldn't happen to children," said John Seckar who was sent to live at the ranch when he was 12 years old. "To put me in that home as a child that had already been abused enough, that was...that was gross. Gross. If you look in the dictionary under 'gross negligence,' that should be whoever signed those papers and sent me there."
He spent about three years at the ranch, which closed down in 1984 because Seckar, who had been repeatedly beaten and raped over a nearly 3-year period couldn't take it anymore. He escaped the ranch and ran for miles to Ione and called 911 from a payphone.
"For the kids, it was this terrifying Catch-22. Do I run away from this and face getting beaten savagely because I left and tried to tell? Or do I stay and endure this horror?" said Seckar's attorney Darrell Cochran. He calls J Bar D Ranch uniquely horrible.
"Children were being horrifically sexually abused. They were being neglected. They were being warehoused by DSHS (Department of Social and Health Services), and the DSHS administrators in Spokane were running interference in cahoots, if you will, with the operators of the J Bar D Ranch."Â
Cochran says the investigation found that DSHS officials were likely receiving money or benefits for their work to keep the ranch open. Â
While Seckar will receive settlement money, he says his main goal in the lawsuit was to ensure the state would never put another child through what it put him and so many others through.
"They had rights, just general rights as children to be protected by those that are supposed to protect them and guide them and put them in homes. These kids already had abuse happen to them and they already had negative things or felt unwanted and unloved. And to put 'em in an environment like that, there's just no amount of money that makes up for it. There's none. There's none."
4 News Now's Robyn Nance sits down with Rob King to discuss her upcoming special report on J Bar D Ranch and one of their victims
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