The Pittman sisters as children and as adults. (Photo courtesy of Vincent Nappo, attorney)
Washington will pay $5 million each to three women who were sexually abused about thirty years ago while living in a foster care home in Centralia.
The lawsuit, filed February 2022 in Thurston County Superior Court, says the three sisters — Rachel, Sylvia and Jennifer Pittman — were abused between 1990 and 2000, starting at ages 4, 5, and 6, by two teenage sons of the foster parents. The abuse continued into the women’s teen years and after they were formally adopted by their foster mother, Bonnie Pittman.
The three women told the Standard that they hold the state of Washington primarily responsible for the abuse.
“None of this would have ever happened if they did their job and never placed us there in the first place,” said Rachel Pittman, now 36 years old.
The Department of Social and Health Services, then in charge of foster care in Washington, did not admit legal liability in the settlement and said they would not comment on the case, as foster care is now overseen by the Department of Children, Youth and Families, which also said it had no comment.
The women and their attorneys say the state “abandoned” the three sisters once they were placed in the rural Pittman home. There were as many as 12 children documented in the home — a mix of biological and foster children, according to court records. The three sisters do not recall seeing their social worker monthly, which is required by state law.
“This is beyond negligence,” said Vincent Nappo, an attorney representing one of the sisters who often works on foster care cases. “To not do those monthly visits, for years — it’s just stunning.”
The sisters, he said, “were just completely warehoused and forgotten.”
A state social worker compared the foster home to a reality-TV family: the Duggars, from TLC’s show “19 Kids and Counting,” which ended after it was revealed one of the brothers molested some of his sisters.
In court records, two biological children in the Pittman home described it as a “compound” with an isolated and insular “cult like” environment, extreme religious views and severe corporal punishment – including being hit with a belt and being forced to stand in the rain, unclothed, for hours.
Nappo said the social worker responsible for supervising the Pittman sisters said she was given an “overwhelming and impossible case load.”
The foster home was also only licensed to house one child, according to court records. While a policy exists allowing emergency placements over capacity, state law only allows up to double capacity and for only 72 hours, Nappo said.
“It’s the state’s job…to protect foster kids from bad people,” Nappo said. “According to the records, they did nothing.”
Nappo said that while caseloads have gotten better, many of the issues resulting in the sisters’ abuse remain rooted in the state’s foster care system.
The sisters decided to come forward after 37-year-old Sylvia Pittman, who survived domestic violence as an adult, gained some stability and became concerned about her child, who was placed in Bonnie Pittman’s home due to Sylvia’s boyfriend’s violence.
“I have very little faith in the system because I lost my kids in the system, and then they didn’t give me the chances or the proper resources to help get my kids back because of my past [and] my childhood,” Sylvia Pittman said.
Sylvia Pittman’s daughter is now in Jennifer Pittman’s custody.
The sisters say they want the state to ensure foster children are still able to have a consistent relationship with biological family members the children may still want to see, as they weren’t able to reconnect with their five other biological siblings until they all became adults.
Since the sisters were adopted, the state has moved to prioritizing kinship care and offers resources that didn’t exist more than two decades ago when the sisters were in the foster care system. Under state law, siblings placed in separate homes should have two face-to-face visits with a social worker per month, unless there is an approved exception.
But Jennifer Pittman, now 40, said that while social workers are doing monthly check-ups on Sylvia’s daughter and offering resources, including a program for kinship caregivers, she still believes the system fundamentally hasn’t changed. She said she fought Child Protective Services for months in order to move her sister’s child from Bonnie Pittman’s custody to hers.
According to the sisters, who are still legally Bonnie Pittman’s children, there are currently young children living in Bonnie Pittman’s home. They want to see the state remove those children. They also want the state to provide stronger oversight for foster children — even after they’re adopted.
In the future, the sisters say they hope to start a foundation for foster care youth to connect them with attorneys like theirs.
“I want a giant banner on the side of I-5: ‘Did CPS fail you? Call this 800 number,’” Rachel Pittman said.