BETHEL -- The new district attorney for Western Alaska is inheriting a multidisciplinary team that advocates say was so paralyzed by his predecessor that it struggled to fulfill its mission of comprehensive handling of child abuse cases, which are numerous in the region.
Michael Gray, who has served since 2008 as Fairbanks district attorney, was named Friday to the Bethel position effective April 1 and already is easing into it. It's become a hot seat since the firing of June Stein, the former Bethel district attorney.
Gray visited Bethel last week and said he still is getting the lay of the land. He said he sees value in such teams. They bring in representatives of key agencies including law enforcement, the district attorney's office and the Office of Children's Services along with clinicians, tribes and others, to put the focus on child abuse, domestic violence or sexual assault, depending on the team.
Advocates, including the former longtime executive director of the Tundra Women's Coalition, say Stein resisted the approach of their multidisciplinary child protection team and discouraged participants from discussing open cases, essentially shutting the team down.
"It became like a sandwich meeting. Basically we just sat there and ate sandwiches because June prevented everybody from talking. We couldn't share information anymore," said Carolyn Peter, a forensic interviewer with Tundra Women's Coalition child advocacy center, called Irniamta Ikayurviat, loosely translated as "a place for helping children."
The center, which opened in 2002 through a movement led by an employee of Bethel's tribe, provides a child-friendly place for interviews of reported abuse victims and, like others across the state, tries to ensure that children don't have to undergo duplicative interviews by various agencies. Its staff coordinates the broader team.
Stein said she supports multidisciplinary teams but Bethel's effort wasn't organized as specified by state statute. It was too large, new people would come and go, and confidentiality -- essential to those teams -- wasn't assured, Stein said.
"People would show up at these meetings and I didn't even know who they were," Stein said. They come from Bethel's tribe, Alaska Legal Services, the school system, she said, as well as law enforcement, the Office of Children's Services and the child advocacy center. "People from hither and yon and it was never the same people."
She said she couldn't share confidential information with what she saw as a free-form group and would have been required to disclose what she learned to defense lawyers -- unlike with a properly established multidisciplinary team.
But previous DAs worked with the team, said advocates and clinicians including Michelle DeWitt, who served 16 years at Tundra Women's Coalition, including 13 as executive director.
In the dark
Gov. Bill Walker directed in February that Stein be fired from her role as Bethel district attorney, saying she wasn't a good fit for the community. He acknowledged that he had heard concerns from private attorney Jim Valcarce, a campaign supporter, but said others also had complained about Stein. He wouldn't name them. Stein has since been offered an unspecified position in Anchorage that she hasn't decided whether to accept.
Now DeWitt says she raised concerns about Stein when approached by the Walker administration. She said she also mentioned Stein's good qualities, including that she was hardworking, responsive to emails and willing to meet with groups and individuals -- just on her terms.
The difficulty came because Stein refused to discuss open cases and created a climate in which others were nervous to speak up during regular case reviews held by the community's multidisciplinary team, DeWitt said. Others in the community complained to the Walker administration as well, DeWitt said.
"The leadership at the DA's office was such that it created an environment where partnership was almost impossible," she said.
In part, Stein objected to tribal representatives at the meeting, DeWitt said. Representatives of the Bethel tribe, Orutsararmiut Native Council, which employs social workers, and the Association of Village Council Presidents, which employs Indian Child Welfare Act workers in villages, eventually stopped coming, Peter said.
Stein said the statute specified who could be on the team and that she passed out copies at the team meetings. The statute was changed in 2014 to specify that tribal representatives could be included "by consensus." Before that, the law said persons familiar with the Indian Child Welfare Act were allowed.
When the team functioned well, various players including law enforcement, prosecutors, clinicians, tribal authorities, child protection workers, a school district social worker, a nurse trained in sexual assault and others met monthly to review the legal standing of cases as well as whether families and children were getting needed services, said Shelly Andrews, a licensed clinical social worker who counsels reported abuse victims and their families. A core group met separately to discuss policies and procedures.
"We were all professionals," Andrews said.
Plus the sign-in sheet for the meetings included a confidentiality pledge, according to a copy of it provided by the child advocacy center. Stein described it as an attendance sheet.
After Stein had an outburst about her concerns, Andrews said, people shut down. Andrews stopped going.
"If people cannot talk, we cannot move forward with families," she said.
The case reviews stopped.
"I felt like we were in the dark," said Peter, the forensic interviewer.
Case of 2-year-old
Concerns about confidentiality arise in multidisciplinary teams across the state, and all participants must be comfortable for the teams to work, said Travis Erickson, the Anchorage-based operations manager with the Office of Children's Services.
In small communities it can be difficult to ensure confidentiality because people know one another, said Gray, the incoming district attorney who served in Kodiak before Fairbanks. But on the flip side, those providing services may better know what an individual needs or what's already been tried, he said.
In Bethel, "concerns over confidentiality of the information shared during case reviews grew, and full attendance at meetings became sporadic as each participating agency experienced high turnover," Megyn Greider, an assistant attorney general who works in child protection, said in an email.
Still, OCS never stopped participating, Erickson said.
Pauline Bialy, child advocacy center program manager, said for a long stretch she struggled even to get data on prosecutions from Stein that she needed for reports required for grant funding. She did receive the information for the last quarter.
Stein said she worked to improve the system. She went to a two-day team training session in Anchorage. She encouraged the group to precisely follow the law. She went to the meetings. But the team never worked as it should, as she saw it.
One case that didn't move forward involved a 2-year-old who described sexual abuse by the husband of her babysitter at a home day care, according to the child's parents, Josh and Danielle Craven. They said they wanted their story told and allowed their names to be used. They went to police in early 2014. Their daughter -- who was nearly 3 -- was interviewed at the child advocacy center. They met three times with Stein on a Sunday. They pushed for prosecution.
But Stein told them the case wouldn't go forward. The couple was concerned about the possibility of a conflict because the man worked for the state. They asked for another review. A prosecutor from Anchorage ultimately let them know that charges would not be brought.
"We thought we had done everything we could possibly do to get charges against him," Danielle Craven, a Bethel teacher, said.
The case never went before the multidisciplinary team. By then it was no longer reviewing any.
Stein said she took a close look at the evidence. Child sexual abuse cases are difficult to prove and the case at issue depended on the statement of a young child that sounded coached even if it wasn't, Stein said.
Delta issue
When they were examining individual cases, the multidisciplinary team members held one another -- and their agencies -- accountable, said Eileen Arnold, interim executive director of the Tundra Women's Coalition.
"This is a Delta issue," Andrews, the social worker, said. "We have the highest percentage of child sexual abuse in the nation. Something's not right. I don't know what it is but it's not going to be one discipline resolving it."
OCS doesn't compile rates of abuse by region, but the proportion of children from Western Alaska who are in foster care is high compared to Anchorage, Erickson said.
Stein's issues with the Bethel multidisciplinary team echoed her experience on the Kenai Peninsula, where she previously was district attorney. Peg Coleman, who at the time was executive director of South Peninsula Haven House, a domestic violence and sexual assault program in Homer, said Stein fought her effort to organize a child advocacy center and multidisciplinary team.
"I had never seen anything more obstructionist than this," Coleman said. "She kept holding this position that … it would compromise confidentiality." But the model was already well established, she said.
Stein said Homer's child advocacy center formed while she was district attorney -- with her participation -- but there wasn't yet a multidisciplinary team in place.
Now officials are working on a new memorandum of agreement for Bethel, the first update since 2008. It will spell out the participants and procedures.