April 16: This part isn’t funny.
We next heard from Detective Wayne Phillips of the Child Justice Center. I am not going to spend much time on this session, because it concerned child abuse. But I want to share some facts:
These cases require a very thorough investigation, because what looks like abuse (bruises, for example) can sometimes turn out to be due to a medical condition.
There is a team of trained specialists, including specialist medical doctors and psychiatrists, who are tasked with determining whether a child has been abused.
There are two women working at the Justice Center who are trained to discuss situations with children using open-ended questions, so the child reports what actually happened, as opposed to following someone’s lead.
When members of the Justice Center go to interview a family, they attempt to look as little like police as possible. They dress in street clothes and drive unmarked cars. The interview room is near family court and looks like a nursery.
Detective Phillips is never in the room when the child is interviewed; he sits on the other side of a one-way mirror and listens and takes notes. He made it clear that he would never sit in on an interview of this type; it was not expressly stated, but it was clear that he is aware that his gender might frighten these children to the point that they would not tell their stories.
Prosecutors review Detective Phillips’ reports to determine if a crime has been committed, so he has to be as thorough as possible.
Detective Phillips has somewhere between ten and twenty new cases to work on each month, and has been working on such cases for the last seven years.
Detective Phillips recently spoke to the WA Senate, in hopes that Senate Bill 5010 would pass. The bill makes it a felony to give fentanyl to a child. The bill did not pass. The detective plans to try again the next time the bill goes before the Senate.
The Children’s Justice Center is not the police; it is a separate entity that works with the police.
There is no RCW that addresses mental and emotional abuse.
If you ever meet Detective Wayne Phillips, shake his hand. It isn’t enough. But it’s deserved.
