Judy Chafin hears a judge proclaim her not guilty in Lewis County Superior Court.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – The Chehalis woman accused of wrongly collecting more than $90,000 in benefits – supposedly working while receiving payments for a 2006 on-the-job injury was found not guilty today.
Judy Chafin, 62, wiped tears from her face as the judge announced his decision.
Prosecutors said the operator of controversial halfway houses performed landlord-like services for the newly released prisoners who lived in the various residences, part of her House of the Rising Son organization. Her attorney said the activities didn’t meet the definition of work from the state Department of Labor and Industries which paid out the funds.
Lewis County Superior Court Judge James Lawler said the case came down to whether it was work and if she intended to commit theft.
“The witnesses were all over the board as to what work meant in this case,” Lawler said. “I simply cannot find that has been proven here.”
The trial that began on Monday was decided by the judge; there was no jury.
Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Eric Eisenberg had suggested that a 2010 investigation into her activities that went nowhere and her subsequent expansion of the number of homes indicated she must have known what she was doing was work.
Judge Lawler said defense attorney Sam Groberg’s argument was more reasonable, that Chafin continued what she was doing after L&I had knowledge of the House of the Rising Son.
Chafin’s benefits were stopped and then reinstated, he said.
“To put criminal liability on that once that question has already come up, does not make sense to me,” Lawler said.
Chafin was acquitted of 30 counts of forgery and two counts of first-degree theft; one count of theft was related to Social Security disability payments.
She was visibly relived and thanked the judge.
“I’m not guilty, and I never was,” she said outside the courtroom. “So I’m very happy about the decision that shows God is standing there.”
The Chehalis woman suffered an on-the-job injury in September 2006, while working as a certified nursing assistant at Tiffin House in Centralia. She founded the organization between 2006 and 2007.
At its height, there were as many as 10 similar homes.
Chafin began to get a lot of attention from law enforcement and then city and county officials beginning about two years ago when residents on a rural Chehalis road complained they didn’t want multiple felons, especially registered sex offenders, living together under one roof in their neighborhood. Lewis County Sheriff Steve Mansfield vowed to do everything he could to shut her down.
Earlier this year, she said she chose not to fight the various zoning actions and found places for her various tenants to live.
Attorney Groberg said it was a different kind of case, that no one alleged his client didn’t have a real injury, his client didn’t hide what she was doing, and she didn’t earn any money doing it. She lost money, he said.
“Judy’s a good person, trying to do good things,” he said.
He said the case was political in some aspects.
“Not on Eric’s (the deputy prosecuting attorney) part,” he said. “But with Brad Reynolds, the neighbor and another neighbor was Chehalis’ code enforcement officer.”
And he noted the politics in Olympia with a push for L&I to privatize, that the agency is looking harder to find fraud to justify such a change.
“And one example of trying to find fraud, Judy’s an example of that,” he said.
The L&I investigator who handled the case said he couldn’t say who made the initial complaint. It was anonymous, he said.
•••
For background, read:
• “Discord on Nix Road: Newest arrivals unwelcome” from Saturday March 3, 2012, here
• “The backstory: Intelligence gathering, possible fines and code enforcement tools “not normally used” from Sunday March 4, 2012, here
• “The sun sets on House of the Rising Son” from Thursday March 20, 2014, here
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
asap,
Crawl back into your hole, comparing the LC Sheriff to Hitler and Nazi Germany is one of the most ignorant things I’ve heard in a long time. Most people never have negative interaction with law inforcement past traffic violations, maybe you have tried to get away with a crime and were caught??
And to BobbyinLC,
Pot, Kettle, Black. …… 😉
I hope they are using talk-to-text as those posts make my head hurt trying to read them.
ASAP,
You mus be misspelling your postings on purpose. No one can be that illiterate.
U most be acounty employee or with the sheriff’s department or have just not had to deal with the sheriff’s in Lewis County.because if you had dealt with lewis county sheriff’s department. you would feel the same way that most people in lewis county feel that have dealt with the sheriff’s departmentand as for taking away and never seen again
.Mansfield would do this to some people in this county if you could get away with it .when your sheriffs department will not file charges on county employees who admit to breaking the law but did as part of his job ..yes a county employees violate
your constitutional rights .and the department refuses to file charges on the county employees who did a criminal trepass and would not even look at the evidence the tax paying citizen had.telling them we do not file charges on our county enforcementeven though his evidence clearly shows he was trespassingwith no warrant and doing what he is doing as a favorfor another county employee to get my property as I would not sell to themand I know this county works on the good ole boys system.because living in this county all my life I have seen this happen time and time again so yes we are on the verge of Nazi Germany when your government and your police departments do not work for the people but for themselves and for political gains .and if mr Mansfield was.paid on his job performance the man would starve to death..that is my opinion like it or not
Asap,
The fact that you can say what you just said without you and your family being hauled away in the middle of the night, never to be seen again shows we are no where near the times of NAZI Germany.
You don’t like the Sheriff; I get that. But comparing him to Hitler is pretty sick.
We have not seen law enforcement like the Mansfield bunch. Cents the forties in NAZI Germany they were called the brown shirts and that is exactly the formof police department we have with the lewis County sheriff’s.. When the sheriff’s department plays all three parts Judge Jury and will not stand complaints against county employees to the prosecutor.. He will allow county employees can conspire against your freedoms . Trespass on your land. Take E legal evidence from your land. being a county employee does put you above the law if Mansfield had his way we the people would not have the rights given us by the constitution. He has shown me that we have people have no rights at all
OK, right, He was on a witch hunt, playing the Good O Boy again. Stevie should have resigned a long time ago.
Steve Mansfield is an excellent sheriff and Lewis County has been lucky to have him instead of some lackey chosen by the attorney who really runs things. In this particular case, Steve said something because of multiple problems with a particular house, including breakins, drugs and someone getting shot.
Steve Mansfield needs to go.
Looks like we need to reconsider whether some people at the county attorney’s office are doing actual work. Public sector attorneys are among the highest paid people in the county yet they’ve just spent our precious dollars persecuting a lady who had already been investigated and had done nothing criminal in the broad sense of the word while many real criminals go unprosecuted. Good for Judge Lawler.
The dispute over this womans L&I claim are much less intriguing to me than the words and attitude of the County sheriff-> “complained they didn’t want multiple felons, especially registered sex offenders, living together under one roof in their neighborhood. Lewis County Sheriff Steve Mansfield vowed to do everything he could to shut her down”. I would likely not care to have this facility located near my home either, however, does having them all under one roof in one location not make it easier to keep track of them, as opposed to scattered all over the city, or county, or state, or country? Mansfield really needs to check himself in this regard His oath, to protect and serve the community he represents should be his priority, not his personal attitude towards felons. Who wants a sex offender living next door? No one. That being said, these people, to my knowledge, HAVE served their time, for the crimes they have committed, and without the opportunity to re-assimilate and or prove they have been “rehabilitated” if that is in fact possible, society is setting them up for failure, and increasing the potential for them to re-offend. Personally, I feel that sex offenders should never be set free, but other people can become felons for writing bad checks. Should they be forever ostracized for that crime? Are they really a threat to your children? Not so much. Mansfield needs to focus on the rampant drug infestation of Lewis County, which IS a threat to your children, as opposed to going out of his way to obstruct the efforts of those trying to make right a wrong, or at the very least, survive in a society that is hostile towards them, and those who help them. They have paid their price to society, per the law. You want something to complain about, how bout the meth monkeys, roaming freely, unchecked, unsupervised, and hell bent on hooking your kids on drugs!