● The law firm that exposed the scandal filed complaints with the agency, and with National CASA.
● The Snohomish program is so lily-white it has to use a photo from National CASA to show a Black CASA volunteer. Several other CASA programs use the same photo.
Responding to a complaint from the law firm that exposed the
Snohomish County CASA scandal, a key funder for CASA says it’s “looking into”
issues raised by the firm.
The federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention provides grants to National CASA and local CASA programs. The ABC Law Group is asking that “funding from OJJDP that goes to the CASA
program in Snohomish County, Washington be investigated for ethics violations.” They’re also asking for “a federal
investigation/oversight into this program which receives your funding.”
Less than 24 hours after receiving the request, OJJDP
Administrator Caren Harp replied “We’re looking into it.”
The law firm also filed a
formal complaint with the Executive Committee of the National CASA Board of
Directors. The board is chaired by William Bell, who also is President and CEO
of Casey Family Programs.
The complaint asks National CASA to investigate the
Snohomish program for “on-going ethics violations which have now been shown to
have hurt families.” The complaint cites
the
recent scathing decision from a Washington State appellate court which
“held that our CASA program engaged in the destruction of evidence, spying,
perjury, abusive use of litigation, threatening lawyers and violating the
appearance of fairness.”
Up to now, National CASA’s response can be summed up this
way:
And there’s more …
The generic CASA doesn’t look much like the real CASAs
The complaint to National CASA also seeks an investigation
into “false advertising and recruitment practices at Snohomish County.”
Among other things, there’s the matter of this
flyer published by the program. See that nice picture of an African-American
man – the only photo depicting a CASA volunteer? There’s just one problem: Right now, according to the Snohomish County
program itself, of the 57 volunteers in the program, the total number of
African-American volunteers is exactly zero.
The complaint notes that “The flyer to promote CASA contains more
diversity regarding African American families than the entire program itself.”
And Snohomish County is not alone. NCCPR ran a Google
Image search. We found the same photo of the same volunteer on websites for
CASA programs in Kansas City,
Missouri, Jefferson
Parish, Louisiana, Northern
Neck CASA in Virginia, Blue
Ridge CASA, also in Virginia, Clayton County CASA in
Georgia, the Texarkana
Texas CASA program and the Arkansas
State CASA Association. On the Arkansas website, his picture appears above
the caption “Our spotlight shines on those volunteers who have gone above and
beyond the necessary.” But click on the link to find the real volunteer they’re
profiling, and it’s a white woman.
Looks like Generic CASA used to be on the site for Kansas
CASA too. That actually would be an improvement. About ten years ago, a local
CASA organization in Kansas held a fundraiser that included
a Blackface act.
Generic CASA also turns up in a slick promotional video from
National CASA itself.
This doesn’t mean that none of these chapters has an
African-American volunteer. But, as
noted above, the one in Snohomish does not.
We also know that CASA volunteers are 80
to 90 percent white. And we know
that, according to the most comprehensive study
ever done of CASA, commissioned by the National CASA Association itself,
volunteers spend less time on a case if the child is Black.
That study also found that CASA doesn’t work. A study specific to Snohomish County found
that the Snohomish County program doesn’t
work either.
Yet still, National CASA has not responded to the scandal in
Snohomish County. Perhaps now, they’ll
come up with a response better than this:
