What happened to you at Cobb Center was not okay.

Three one-story cottages at 65th and 33rd in North Seattle, eight boys to a cottage, six or seven years old up to thirteen or fourteen. That was Cobb Center, the Children's Home Society of Washington's group home for boys, open from 1974 and in the court record to 1999. The State of Washington licensed it, sent boys there, and, a complaint filed in King County Superior Court in November 2023 alleges, kept sending them after it knew better. If you were one of those boys, whatever year, this is about you.

WatchingSeptember 2026: the King County complaint over Cobb Center, A.G. v. Children's Home Society of Washington and the State of Washington (filed November 1, 2023), is pending. No case number is printed on the public copy and no ruling has been reported. The questions below still work.

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6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

Cobb Center was one of the places the State of Washington sent children. The State's own page covers every licensed group home, ranch and foster home it filled, and the quiz there works for all of them. Washington State foster care and group home lawsuit: the State (DSHS / DCYF) page

This applies to you no matter what

It was the 1970s or 1980s and you assume that's gone. The man who ran Cottage A in 1974 was deposed about it in 2021, in a suit against the State. The paperwork outlives the building.
You were small. Maybe six, maybe eight; the cottages started boys at about six, and the man who filed the 2023 complaint says he was about ten. Not having the words for it then doesn't count against you now.
You told somebody, a counselor, your caseworker, and nothing came of it. The complaint alleges that is exactly how the place ran: reports made to the State, licence renewed anyway.
You don't have a name. A face, a cottage letter, the shift the man worked. The plaintiff already in court was nine or ten at the time.
Your file calls you a behavior problem, a runaway, a kid nobody could place. None of that changes what the State and the Society owed you.
You're asking for a brother, a partner, a grown son who can't ask yet. Reach out anyway.

The Cobb Center lawsuit: what the public record says, and when

None of this is ours. It comes from a filed complaint, a sworn deposition, a King County guilty plea the Seattle Times covered, and one plaintiff's firm's own summary, which we label as that. Every line links to where we found it. Where a complaint is the source, it is an allegation; neither the Children's Home Society nor the State has admitted anything and no court has ruled. One thing said plainly: the 2005 conviction below names the Society's North Seattle home, not the words 'Cobb Center', and we keep that distinction. The State's wider record, the Kiwanis, J Bar D and Toutle River settlements, the $42 million Spokane County verdict, is on the State's own page, linked above, and is not re-told here.

August 20, 2005

The Seattle Times ran this the morning after the plea. Kenneth Mark Bell, then 38, once a counselor at the Children's Home Society's residential home in North Seattle (the one for troubled or at-risk children), had stood up in King County Superior Court the day before and pleaded guilty to two counts: first-degree rape of a child, and second-degree rape of a child. At least three children, the paper said of the court papers, 12 to 15 years old, mid-1990s. Two licensing investigations by Child Protective Services, in 1997 and 1998, had already found he abused two children connected to the home; one was a boy of 12 or 13, abused between 1995 and 1997. The Society fired him, and, the paper wrote, 'a state investigation cleared the home of wrongdoing.' Prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentencing alternative of six months in jail and two years of treatment, with 13 years if he failed it; the story does not report the sentence. The Times does not use the name Cobb Center. Seattle Times.

September 27, 2021

Thomas A. Gill, who supervised Cottage A at Cobb Center from 1974 to 1980, was deposed in a suit against the State, K.H. and G.F. v. State of Washington, Thurston County Superior Court No. 19-2-06191-34. He put the cottages at '65th and 33rd in Seattle': an office on Northeast 65th, Cottages A and B on 33rd Avenue, Cottage C across the field, eight boys to a cottage, two to a room, ages 'probably six or seven up to thirteen or fourteen.' Were the boys wards of the State? 'I don't know for certain, but I believe they were.' DSHS, in his telling, 'came maybe once a year to inspect': food-handler permits, whether the place looked clean, that kind of visit. From ten at night to seven in the morning there was one staff member per cottage. Nobody, he said, had explained to him in 1974 what he was required to report. Gill deposition (posted by plaintiff's counsel).

November 1, 2023

A complaint signed by Darrell Cochran and Patrick Brown of Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala was filed in King County Superior Court: A.G. v. Children's Home Society of Washington, Cobb Center; the State of Washington, DSHS, Child Protective Services and DCYF; and Does 1 to 5. The plaintiff, born in June 1987, was placed at Cobb Center, 'a state-licensed group home for boys owned by Children's Home,' at about ten, from roughly 1997 to 1999, and alleges he was 'repeatedly sexually abused by Children's Home staff.' The complaint alleges that 'the State knew about the dangers that Children's Home presented to youths, but it still sent children there anyway,' and that 'through numerous sources, the State knew or should have known that a culture of sexually inappropriate behavior pervaded Children's Home.' It pleads negligence, gross negligence, outrage and related counts, and that sixty days had passed since the State received a standard tort claim. The case number is blank on the copy counsel posted. These are allegations; neither defendant has admitted anything. A.G. complaint (posted by plaintiff's counsel).

June 30, 2025

The plaintiff's firm published a Cobb Center report, last updated on this date, summarising 23 DSHS incident reports it says it has reviewed: staff-on-resident and resident-on-resident sexual assaults involving boys from five to fifteen, and the line 'the State continued to license this facility, even as reports of severe sexual abuse and neglect mounted.' This is the firm's own account of documents it holds, not a court finding and not an agency publication, and we have not seen the underlying reports. It is here because it is the only public list of what the State was told, and a lawyer can ask for the originals. Cochran firm report (plaintiff's counsel).

We checked this on September 15, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from June 30, 2025. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Cobb Center lawsuit

The State of Washington. A Cobb Center claim runs against the State, and the 2023 complaint names it right after the Society, under every name it has worn: DSHS, Child Protective Services, and since July 1, 2018 the Department of Children, Youth, and Families. One agency, two names. It licensed the cottages. It placed boys in them. It was the one that was supposed to inspect, and to investigate when a report came in. In plain words the theory is negligent placement and negligent supervision: the complaint says the State sent children to a home it had reason to distrust and left them there after it was told. Washington's own statute, RCW 4.92.090, makes the State answer 'to the same extent as if it were a private person or corporation.' The State has a page of its own on this site, linked above, covering every licensed home it filled; the record there is the State paying, over and over, on exactly this theory.

Beside the State stands the operator: the Children's Home Society of Washington, the nonprofit that owned and ran Cobb Center on its own campus at Northeast 65th and 33rd, and that still exists, now called Akin after a merger with Childhaven. The Society is named in the 2023 complaint. It was a Society counselor who pleaded guilty in 2005, and it was the Society the State's licensing investigators visited in 1997 and 1998. A private nonprofit is sued like any private defendant, no claim form first.

Three things about the State as a defendant a lawyer will walk you through. A standard tort claim goes to the Office of Risk Management before suit, and the suit waits sixty days. There is no cap on what a jury can award, because the Washington Supreme Court struck the State's damages cap in 1989. And Washington does not award punitive damages, against anyone, unless a statute says so; none does here. So the case is about what happened to you, not about punishing an agency. The individual staff are Does in the complaint. Your case does not depend on knowing a name.

Your deadline: the Washington statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse at Cobb Center

Washington's rule is RCW 4.16.340, and for anything before June 6, 2024 it has three clocks. Three years from the act; or three years from when you discovered, or reasonably should have, that an injury was caused by it; or three years from when you discovered that the act caused the particular injury you are suing over. Whichever is latest, and none of them starts before you turn eighteen. Cobb Center's cottages were open from 1974 and the record runs to 1999, so the first clock, three years from eighteen, has run for every boy who was there. That is not the end. What is left is the discovery route, and the courts read it by what you yourself understood, and when; the statute says a parent's or guardian's knowledge is not held against the child. The Supreme Court settled in 1999, in a case against a diocese, that these clocks govern the negligence claim against the institution that was supposed to protect the child, not only the claim against the man. The plaintiff in the Cobb Center complaint was born in 1987 and filed in 2023. Whether the same route is open for you turns on your own dates, and a lawyer decides that, in one call, at no cost.

Because one defendant is the State, there is a step before the courthouse. A standard tort claim is presented to the Office of Risk Management in the Department of Enterprise Services (RCW 4.92.100); the suit cannot be filed until sixty calendar days have passed (RCW 4.92.110); the limitations clock stops while those sixty days run. The Cobb Center complaint pleads exactly that step. It is paperwork a lawyer handles, not a reason to wait.

Two things you may have read that are not true here. Washington removed the time limit for childhood sexual abuse in 2024, but only for abuse on or after June 6, 2024; Cobb Center's years are decades earlier, so the three clocks above are the law for you. And Washington has not opened a look-back window for older claims the way California and New York did. Nobody can promise how a court reads your dates. The people the State has already paid for 1970s and 1980s placements are the proof it can be read your way.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told anyone. The plaintiff's firm says the DSHS reports it holds describe boys of five; most of them, by definition, never filed anything.
You were only there a few months, between placements. The duty was the same for a month as for a year.
It was another boy, older, and the staff knew. The claim is about what the adults did with what they knew.
You went to Cobb Center from your family, not from a caseworker. The Society can still be sued; whether the State can too depends on who placed you and what it was told, which is a question for the call, not a reason to skip it.
Your records are gone, or the State says it can't find them. On April 30, 2026 the Washington Supreme Court ruled that DCYF has to hand its own child-welfare files to a former foster child who sues, so the State's copy is reachable even if yours isn't.
You live in Oregon, Idaho, anywhere. The claim is against Washington and its Society and is filed in King County; you don't have to live here.

Facilities covered

Cobb Center, the Children's Home Society of Washington's group home for boys on the Society's campus at Northeast 65th Street and 33rd Avenue Northeast in the Bryant neighborhood of North Seattle: the office building on 65th, Cottages A and B on 33rd, Cottage C across the field, and the night-staff house at the edge of the property. Open by 1974, in the court record to 1999; when it closed we have not found in any public document. The Society's campus has been on that corner since 1908, and the Society itself continues today as Akin. Somewhere else the State sent you, the Kiwanis Vocational Home in Centralia, J Bar D in Pend Oreille County, Toutle River, a Boys Village home, a foster home? That is the State's page, /washington-state-foster-care-survivors, and the questions there cover every placement. Not sure which? Answer the questions here and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue the State of Washington for what happened at Cobb Center?

One man already has: the complaint filed in King County on November 1, 2023 names the State and the Children's Home Society, and it is pending. Whether you can turns on your own dates, when you were there and when you connected what happened to what it did to you, which is what the questions above and one phone call sort out. A tort claim form goes to the State first, then sixty days, then the suit.

What was Cobb Center in Seattle?

A group home for boys run by the Children's Home Society of Washington on its campus at Northeast 65th and 33rd, three cottages of about eight boys each, ages roughly six to fourteen, open from 1974 and named in a court record to 1999. It was a private home licensed by the State, and the State placed boys there. The Society still exists, under the name Akin.

Was anyone at Cobb Center criminally charged?

One man was, and the story about him never says 'Cobb Center'. His name is Kenneth Mark Bell. He'd been a Children's Home Society counselor, and in August 2005, in King County Superior Court, he pleaded guilty to first- and second-degree rape of a child, for things done in the mid-1990s at what the Seattle Times calls the Society's North Seattle home. The 2023 civil complaint? Nothing criminal connected to it in the public record, and a civil case doesn't need a criminal one anyway.

Has the Cobb Center lawsuit settled?

Not that anyone has reported. As of September 2026 the 2023 complaint is pending, no case number appears on the public copy, and neither the Society nor the State has admitted anything. The State has settled other group-home cases one at a time, which is on the State's page; nothing here promises it will settle this one or yours.

How much does a group home abuse lawyer cost?

Here, nothing. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed WA attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.