Bunting Award 2025 recognizes Seattle Times investigation

Reporter Rebecca Moss uncovers oversights, shortcomings in state commitment center

By George Erb, WashCOG secretary

McNeil Island in South Puget Sound is nearly three miles across the water from the nearest city on the mainland, a remoteness that made it ideal for a prison.

And a prison site it became, in the 1870s, when Washington was still a territory. A century later the federal government declared its McNeil Island prison obsolete and turned it over to the state.

Kenneth F. Bunting

Today the island houses a Special Commitment Center run by the state Department of Social and Health Services. Its occupants are segregated from the rest of society under civil commitment as “sexually violent predators.” They are released when deemed rehabilitated.

But the geography of the place hasn’t changed. The McNeil Island facility remains isolated and sometimes below the radar of oversight authorities in Olympia. Enter The Seattle Times.

The Times in recent years has turned a bright light on this remote facility with an ongoing investigation that has uncovered shortcomings, oversight lapses and, in at least one instance, efforts to sideline a critical internal report and the person who wrote it.

In 2024 The Times published the first of an occasional series of investigative reports about the Special Commitment Center by reporter Rebecca Moss. Her work is ongoing, with her most recent story appearing in January 2026.

Rebecca Moss

Last year alone Moss published stories about gaps in state oversight of the homes that take former McNeil Island residents and the limited sex-offense treatment provided for those who remain behind.

Moss uncovered the case of a Snohomish County landlord who promised to provide housing and spiritual support to released sex offenders. Problems emerged almost immediately. DSHS ended the arrangement after the landlord was successfully prosecuted for drug trafficking and money laundering.

Another story revealed the contents of a troubling internal ombuds report on the commitment center – and how DSHS laid off the author. Not long after The Times and state legislators raised questions, the agency transferred the commitment center’s CEO to another facility.

Throughout, Moss relied heavily on public records. She examined what happened to residents after their release by building a public records database from such sources as the courts and police.

A description of what Moss has compiled leaves the impression that her computer is bulging. She reviewed more than 7,000 pages of Department of Corrections inspection reports, along with 911 records and police reports from more than two dozen home addresses.

Her extensive cache of records includes agency emails, housing contracts and financial reports.  DSHS had not made its internal ombuds report public – until Moss uncovered it. It showed the extent of resident complaints about inadequate dental and medical care.

As one Times editor noted, little of this would have come to light without the newspaper’s sustained investigation.

WashCOG this year recognized Moss for her work in 2025 with its Kenneth F. Bunting Award for outstanding journalism in the interest of open government. The coalition will present the award and others during its Sunshine Breakfast on March 13 in Bellevue.

The award honors the memory of the late Ken Bunting. He was an executive editor and associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Bunting helped found WashCOG in 2002.