David Soukup, advocate for abused and neglected children, dies at age 90

David W. Soukup was a judge in Seattle when he faced a nerve-wracking decision. A 3-year-old girl had been taken to a city hospital with injuries that a doctor said appeared to be assault. In court, the mother insisted her daughter had merely fallen off a swing — and anyway, she said, her boyfriend had moved away and wouldn't be coming back.

Judge Soukup was divided on whether to take the child away from the only family she knew. If he sent her to a foster home with strangers, would she feel abandoned and traumatized? If he gave her back to her mother, would she be in physical danger?

He had decided similar cases before, and they had kept him awake at night. “I found it terrifying to make decisions about children when there was no one there to just advocate for the child,” he said in a 2018 interview.

At that moment, a flash of inspiration came: Why not recruit volunteers from the community to represent the child's interests at custody hearings?

In 1976, Judge Soukup founded what became Court Appointed Special Advocates (CAS), now a prominent national organization, active in 49 states and Washington, DC, representing the interests in court of nearly 250,000 abused or neglected children, most of them in foster families. concern.

Judge Soukup died Dec. 16 at a hospital in Silverdale, Washington, near his home in the Seattle area, his son Dan said. He was 90.

There are more than 97,000 CASA volunteers nationwide and they are virtually ubiquitous in many juvenile courts. The program has won praise from Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund, and has received more than $300 million in grants from the Department of Justice since 1994.

In October, during a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing about the failures of Georgia's foster care system, a teenager named Mon'a Houston testified about neglect and overmedication as she cycled through group homes until she was assigned a CASA volunteer.

“Ms. Page was the first adult who listened to me,” Ms. Houston said, adding that her lawyer would “regularly argue” with the state child welfare agency “to get me what I needed.”

Such expressions of support suggest why Judge Soukup's idea caught on. Recalling the birth of the program, he said in the 2018 interview that he asked his bailiff to call six or seven people in the community who might be interested in meeting over a brown bag lunch to discuss his idea .

“When I walked into the lunchroom, there were 50 people there,” he said. “And I said, 'This is going to work.'”

In the United States, approximately 600,000 children were victims of abuse or neglect in 2021. according to to the Department of Health and Human Services, and an estimated 1,820 died from abuse. The figures for child abuse and neglect are five times as high in poor families.

After Judge Soukup's program began in Seattle in 1977, growth occurred quickly. In 1982, there were 54 state and local CASA programs. Today there are 939, coordinated by the National CASA/GAL Association for Childrenwith offices in Seattle, Atlanta and Washington, DC

After training, volunteers – many of whom are retired – are appointed by judges; Unlike social workers or attorneys, who typically handle a large volume of cases, a CASA attorney typically works with just a few children and monitors them closely until they find a permanent home.

“Judges need CASA volunteers in their courts, and they really need them as a party to the action because there is no one else in the courtroom whose sole function is to meet the child's needs. Everyone else has a different role,” Judge Soukup said in 2018.

Independent research has shown that children who are assigned a CASA attorney have better outcomes than children who are not. The Office of the Inspector General from the Department of Justice reported in 2007 that children assigned to CASA attorneys received more court-ordered services and were more likely to end up in permanent homes.

Other researchhowever, has contradicted some of these findings. An article from 2016 in The City University of New York Law Review argued that CASA embodied structural racism because most of its volunteers were white, middle-class women who had undue influence over clients, most of whom were poor black and Native American children. CASA says it “follows the guiding principle that children grow and develop best in their families of origin, when that can be achieved safely.”

Last year, the Justice Department placed a temporary freeze on subsidies to CASA due to problems it found in the organization's practices. This is reported by The Imprint, a news site covering child welfare and juvenile justice issues. Sally Wilson Erny, deputy chief executive of CASA, said in an email that the group has resolved “all recommendations” from the Justice Department and that “we are now moving forward.”

David Wilson Soukup was born on December 15, 1933 in Elmhurst, Illinois. His father, Phillip Soukup Jr., owned a chain of hardware stores and his mother, Ruth (Wilson) Soukup, was an elementary school teacher.

After graduating from Iowa State University, Mr. Soukup enlisted in the Army and served at Fort Lewis, Washington State. He married Anne Mathews, a former office worker, in 1959 and settled with her in the Seattle area. They had seven children.

After earning a law degree from the University of Chicago in 1961, he was hired as district attorney in King County, Washington, which includes Seattle. In the 1960s, he was appointed a judge in Seattle Municipal Court and later in King County Superior Court. He remained on the bench until 1983, when he resigned to practice arbitration and mediation law.

His first marriage ended in divorce in 1995. Shortly thereafter, he married Beth Waid, who had served as executive director of the national CASA network until 1994.

After founding the organization, Judge Soukup remained an active board member, meeting with political figures to promote the mission and working to expand the network. In 2017, after he addressed CASA's national conference in Seattle, hundreds of volunteer advocates from across the country lined up to have their pictures taken with him.

Judge Soukup's wife survives him, as does a stepdaughter, Caitlin Waid; six children from his first marriage, Daniel, David, Ed, Peter, Jack and Mary-Pat Soukup; and a brother, Robert Soukup.

Later in life, after retiring from law, Judge Soukup became a CASA volunteer himself, representing children. “It was an extraordinary experience,” he said. “Both the hardest and best thing I've ever done.”