Child Protective Services Failed To Protect My Son From His Killers and I'm Angry: Father Speaks Out
After seeing the state fail Whitney Decker, Ian Atkerson is speaking out about how the state agency tasked with protecting children failed to protect his son
*Trigger warning: This article contains details of violence against and neglect of a child.
Rustin Atkerson would have turned 10 last month but because of Washington State Child Protective Services’ failure to protect him from his abusive drug addicted mother and her violent boyfriend the child never saw his third birthday, Rustin’s father Ian Atkerson said.
Atkerson is speaking out about what he sees as an unacceptable level of ineptitude, lethargy and gross negligence in the state agency tasked with protecting children like Rustin – CPS.
He said if it wasn’t for CPS his son might be alive today.
“I really think that CPS didn’t help at all,” he said. “They made it worse. And my opinion is they should be dissolved and you should deal directly with the police. I mean if this was taken as an assault case because someone hurt this innocent kid maybe something would have been done.”
Not long after Rustin was born Ian and Rustin’s mother Elaine Hurd, split. She was an addict with no plans of curbing her substance abuse and Ian and Rustin needed to get out of there.
Due to precedent, Elaine was named custodial parent of Rustin at first. The court set a 70-30 custody split with her taking Rustin a majority of the time. She was also ordered to take an anger management course. Ian said he told the court he would like to have his son as much as possible and by May 2017 Elaine’s behavior had caused the judge to amend the arrangement to a 51-49 split – making Ian the custodial parent.
It’s around this time that Ian said his mother noticed evidence of abuse, like large bruises, showing up on his son’s body.
Then Rustin came home with a broken arm.
“He had been sustaining injuries for weeks at that point,” he said. “The final injury before his head injury and his death was a broken arm – a radius ulna fracture above the wrist, which isn’t something a two year old does to himself very often.”
What’s more, Elaine was blaming him for the injury and accused Ian of abusing their two-year-old son.
For months prior to this incident, Ian said he had been contacting the CPS case worker in charge of their case about his concerns that Elaine and her boyfriend, Steven Whiley Rowe, were abusing Rustin. He said had never received a prompt response to his calls and voicemails until he called their caseworker from the emergency room and said he wouldn’t take his son back to Elaine.
“I was scared, terrified for my son’s wellbeing in the months before him being killed, dying due to abuse,” he said. “And it’s like they didn’t take it seriously and I don’t understand it.”
Five minutes later he said he got a call from the caseworker.
“And her response was, ‘Well, if you don’t give him back then you will go to jail and you can’t protect your son from jail,’” he said.
So he did the hardest thing he’d ever done and made the decision he said he regrets most in his life to this day. He gave his son back to Elaine when the schedule said it was time to do so.
It wasn’t long after that that Rustin sustained head trauma that resulted in a massive brain injury. Medical professionals who examined him after he was taken to the hospital estimated Elaine and Steven waited about 19 hours before seeking medical attention for the boy. This lead to swelling and further trauma to his brain.
Rustin was flown to Harborview Medical Center for surgery and treatment and died about a month later, in August 2017.
East Wenatchee Police arrested Steven but the Douglas County Prosecutor’s Office never charged him with anything and he was let go. Then they arrested Elaine and with former Douglas County Deputy Prosecutor Julia Hartnell on the case the state charged her with manslaughter.
Hartnell told Ian and his family that they were going with the manslaughter charge because they couldn’t be sure if it was Steven or Elaine who actually committed the assault that left Rustin with the head trauma. She told them that the prosecutor’s office promised to keep him and his family in the loop, he said, but after years of pre-trial readiness hearings (about 85) and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it had been a long time since they had heard anything. So Ian reached out to the detective who had handled his son’s case and set up a meeting.
That’s where he learned that Hartnell and the state had accepted a plea deal from Elaine. She would plead guilty to criminal mistreatment and the prosecutor would recommend six months in jail for her, he said.
But Douglas County Superior Court Judge Brian Huber didn’t take that recommendation and sentenced Elaine to 222 days, or 18.5 months. However due to the pandemic’s effect on booking procedures in regional jails she only spent 177 days behind bars. The rest of her time she was under supervised home confinement with ankle monitoring.
Why He’s Speaking Out Now
Ian said he’s speaking out now in part because we all just witness the state fail Whitney Decker and her daughters Paiytn, Evelyn and Olivia by not issuing an Amber Alert when they went missing. He said it also seems like the courts failed her like they failed him by giving an unfit parent access to their children.
He said he’s angry about what happened to his son. He said he’d like to see an end to CPS as a state agency and reform and change in the judicial system.
You can listen to my interview with Ian here:
Atkerson Files A Lawsuit Against The State
Because of what he views as “gross negligence” on the part of CPS, Ian filed a lawsuit against the State of Washington’s Department of Children Youth and Families and it went all the way to the Washington State Supreme Court.
In the end the highest court in the state decided that CPS employees did not commit gross negligence and that’s the threshold that must be met before individuals who work for the agency can be held liable for actions and decisions taken while carrying out their official duties.
It’s a decision that Ian’s Attorney Bryan Smith admitted now makes it harder than ever to hold CPS accountable. Smith said the state is unwilling to put itself in a position where they open themselves up for legal exposure – even if state employees are grossly negligent.
“The state wants to save money and they are willing to sacrifice children to do so,” he said.
You can read the court decision here, and listen to my interview with Smith here:
Now the only way to change things so that CPS can be held accountable is to do that through the state legislature, Smith said.
Totally agree the entire
system failed Ian and Rustin. His case stands on its own but not at all the same as the Decker case. Everybody keeps harping about the lack of an amber alert. Fact is, the girls were very likely killed before the police were even aware the girls had not been returned to their mother. And there was no report that Decker had previously harmed the girls. So again, not the same issues.
The CPS rep LIED when she said he'd be arrested if he didn't take Rustin back. Its a CIVIL issue, not a criminal one, per a friend of mine who was a cop for 20 years.