[1]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.
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For background, read:
• “Discord on Nix Road: Newest arrivals unwelcome” from Saturday March 3, 2012, here [2]
• “The backstory: Intelligence gathering, possible fines and code enforcement tools “not normally used” from Sunday March 4, 2012, here [3]
• “The sun sets on House of the Rising Son” from Thursday March 20, 2014, here [4]