Troubled teen’s failed Pierce County adoption prompts $500K payout
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- A Pierce County family adopted a teen in 2019, but was unaware of her troubled history.
- The family, who alleged DCYF withheld revealing records, received $2.5M in a legal claim.
- The adoptee sued DCYF, alleging an adoption set up to fail. The case settled for $500K.
Washington state has agreed to pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit that alleged a teenage girl’s adoption in Pierce County was set up to fail because a child-welfare agency withheld revealing information from the adoptive family.
The civil complaint, filed in 2023 by the adoptee, claimed that the adoption four years earlier was unsuccessful because the Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families didn’t turn over records to the family that showed the 15-year-old struggled with mental health and behavioral issues and had previous confrontations with foster siblings, adults and pets.
Had those issues been known, the family would have foregone the adoption due to safety concerns for their children, according to the lawsuit.
Instead, a DCYF social worker assured the family of seven that the teen would fit in well, despite hundreds of pages in the girl’s file that showed treatment for behavioral problems, a psychiatric diagnosis and emergency removals from foster-care families due to disruptive behavior, the suit said. Two professional assessments said that the girl would best acclimate into a household with no other kids or, at least, no boys, according to the suit. The profile didn’t match the adoptive family.
The girl, identified by her initials in the lawsuit, was physically aggressive. Her adoptive parents, who already had five children including two with physical or developmental disabilities, slept in shifts to protect their other children. The teen’s last years before adulthood were spent in some form of residential treatment, and she was discharged from a long-term inpatient program at Western State Hospital upon turning 18, according to the suit.
“The degree of trauma that all the parties involved suffered is — it’s really hard to imagine,” attorney Michael Schwartz, who represented the plaintiff, said in an interview Dec. 1. “It’s extraordinary how much damage was done.”
DCYF declined to comment on the settlement Dec. 2. In its formal response to the lawsuit, the agency denied allegations of negligence and fraud/misrepresentation, court records show.
A trial scheduled for Nov. 17 was cancelled after a settlement was finalized on Nov. 12, with the state agreeing in a stipulated judgment to pay $500,000 to resolve the matter without admitting liability, according to court records.
It wasn’t the first legal action taken over the failed adoption. The adoptive family previously filed a legal claim against the state that resulted in a $2.5 million payout, according to the lawsuit. The adopted teen similarly filed a legal claim after she turned 18, but DCYF rejected it, leading her to file the lawsuit, according to Schwartz, who also represented the family in their matter.
In the family’s case, DCYF didn’t challenge allegations that the adoption harmed the family or that the agency failed to disclose information as required by state law, resulting in an adoption that should have never occurred, Schwartz previously said.
The adopted child’s lawsuit was hamstrung by the court’s decision to grant DCYF’s request to dismiss a claim related to the agency’s purported withholding of records, Schwartz said Dec. 1. DCYF argued that the fraud claim should be tossed because the plaintiff never alleged that the agency failed to provide her with information about the home, court records show. DCYF’s request to additionally dismiss a claim of negligence was denied.
Without the fraud allegation, the damages that the plaintiff could receive at trial were limited because it made it more difficult to prove liability, according to Schwartz. The plaintiff did not wish to appeal the court’s decision, which would set off a lengthy process with an uncertain outcome, he added.
“In my mind, when you’re dealing with a child who starts going through this episode when she’s 15, 16, 17 years old, I wanted more for her,” Schwartz said about the settlement. “I really did.”
In an August court filing seeking to dismiss all claims, DCYF said there was no evidence to support that the adoptive family’s home was not suitable for the plaintiff.
The plaintiff spent several months prior to the adoption with the family, whom she had chosen from two placement options, and “everything went extremely well,” according to the filing.
Also, the plaintiff could not prove that DCYF’s alleged omissions caused her harm, according to the filing.
“In this case, the issues in the (adoptive family’s) home began with Plaintiff’s own behavioral deterioration,” the filing said. “Given Plaintiff’s history, this could have occurred in any adoptive placement, and Plaintiff has offered no evidence that she would have certainly had a successful adoption in a different home.”
Schwartz said his client, who entered the foster-care system after an abusive and neglectful childhood, was “doing very well, everything considered.” She intends to use the settlement proceeds to get the help she needs, he added. In a follow-up statement Tuesday, he addressed an earlier question about the settlement’s ability to spark any changes that he views are necessary.
“I don’t believe these cases have much of any impact on the behavior of DCYF because the impact would only come about through acknowledgement that management and line staff are doing something fundamentally wrong,” Schwartz said. “And — at the end of the day — I believe the agency is more interested in protecting itself than it is in protecting children.”
This story was originally published December 3, 2025 at 5:15 AM.
