[15] In 1995, after Pastor Robert Roberson criticized the investigation, he was arrested and charged with eleven counts of the sexual abuse of a child.
[12] After case worker Paul Glassen criticized the way that Perez interviewed the foster daughter of Robert Devereaux, he was arrested for "tampering with a witness", and later fled to Canada with his family.
[38][39] Concerned Citizens for Legal Accountability, formed to ask for an outside investigation,[40] filed a complaint with the state Commission on Judicial Conduct criticizing judges T.W.
[45] Washington Governor Mike Lowry requested a federal review,[2][44][46] but U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno declined to involve the national Justice Department in these cases.
[47][19] The FBI did not question anyone; instead they shipped Reno documents which she found "do not present evidence of prosecutable violations of federal civil rights law.
Van Blaricom, hired by a city insurer who looked into how the Wenatchee police ran the child abuse investigations, stated that the cases were handled properly.
[25][55] But the Seattle Post-Intelligencer argued that while Perez got a lot of the criticism, "he was just the point man for an investigation either directed by or undertaken with the active involvement of CPS officials",[10] and the Wall Street Journal blamed "the entire law enforcement establishment [including] the prosecutors".
[60] This work formed the basis of Lyon's 1998 book, Witch Hunt: A True Story of Social Hysteria and Abused Justice.
Carol and Mark Doggett (whose daughter had been taken to a mental facility in Idaho to recover memories against them,[29][63] and then ran away while denying having been abused[64]) were freed,[65][66] but then still required legal assistance to get their children returned to their custody.
[9][23][67] The Robersons and Sims settled with the state of Washington for $850,000 in a case that was split off from a suit against the police due to a clerical error.
[72][73] The last lawsuit against the authorities in these cases was settled in 2009, with the children of Harold and Idella Everett, who initially made an Alford plea (pled no contest),[74] receiving $120,000.
[8] Manuel Hidalgo Rodriguez, convicted in 1995,[53][75] was awarded $2.9 million from his defense attorney Ed Stevensen,[76] who took a job with the prosecutor 3 weeks after losing his case,[77] but in the end received $689,000.
[80] In 1995, journalist Tom Grant of KREM-TV won a George Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism for his coverage of these cases.
[81] In 1997, KREM and Grant won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award "for Investigative Reporting on the Wenatchee Child Sex Ring.
[12] In 1997, Pastor Roby and Connie Roberson attended the "Day of Contrition" conference in Salem, Massachusetts, along with other victims and experts of the day-care sex-abuse hysteria.