Jennifer Wynhausen walked into Pioneer Courthouse Square with a message emblazoned on her black t-shirt: “9/11 is a (expletive) lie.”

Despite her controversial and outspoken stances on what she perceives as federal government conspiracies and lies, leaders at Oregon’s Department of Human Services have entrusted her for years to carry out a vital role of government transparency. She coordinates reviews of child abuse deaths.

State law compels officials to review abuse and neglect deaths of children who died within one year after case workers were called to check in on them. Officials must deftly and transparently carry out the reviews, with the ultimate goal of preventing more child deaths.

A story published Sunday by The Oregonian/OregonLive exposed the department’s delays, omissions and failures to comply with state law since March 2017. The department continues to withhold at least two child fatality reports from the public.

Wynhausen has coordinated the fatality reviews since at least November 2014. She was no longer listed as coordinator in a September 2018 organizational chart. A department spokeswoman said Wynhausen’s new job title was erroneous, but did not specify why or say when, if ever, Wynhausen stopped coordinating fatality reviews.

Wynhausen is outspoken in public and on social media about her political views, which are at times extreme. Some of the topics she addresses, such as medical care, immigration and guns, may also come up during the child death review process. She has derided immigrants for failing to pay taxes and endorsed the idea of a parent shooting to death a daughter’s would-be suitor.

The Department of Human Services insists that the process is set up so that one person can’t sway an outcome. “Federal and state laws, along with department policies and procedures, protect the integrity of the important work we do on behalf of vulnerable Oregonians, especially children,” said Laura McGinnis, an agency spokeswoman.

Director Fariborz Pakseresht ultimately decides when to launch a review, then a team of many people reviews facts and draws conclusions.

Pakseresht said Thursday, one day after The Oregonian/OregonLive brought Wynhausen’s views to the agency’s attention, that the agency takes “concerns about our employees seriously.”

“We started looking into these reports as soon as they were brought to our attention,” he said in an email. “The department cannot regulate personal statements made by employees outside of working hours, but we direct our staff to always maintain the decorum expected of public servants.”

McGinnis said that employees must follow social media and political policies. The guidelines forbid workers from posting most political content during work hours and set standards for what they can say on the department’s behalf.

But she also noted that employees have a Constitutional right to free speech. “Employees are held accountable for their job performance.”

The agency did not make Wynhausen available to comment for this story. A message left Thursday on her agency phone was not returned.

She earns $91,200 a year, not including benefits.

Wynhausen started working at the Department of Human Services in January 2001, nine months before the Sept. 11 attacks would claim more than 2,900 lives.

After that event, she vocalized her doubts about the government’s version of what happened.

In an undated photo taken at Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland, she smiles while wearing a t-shirt that says, “9/11 is a (expletive) lie.” The photograph is still available today on a t-shirt company website.

WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT

Jennifer Wynhausen, a Department of Human Services employee, poses in an undated photo taken in downtown Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square.

Wynhausen met with outspoken 9/11 doubter Jon Gold, who traveled to Portland from Pennsylvania. Gold runs several social media pages dedicated to Sept. 11 “truth” and “justice” and believes the U.S. government has withheld evidence about its role in the attacks. The pair posed for a photo in downtown Portland that he shared to his public Facebook page in June 2012.

Gold also shared a second photo of him, Wynhausen and Cindy Sheehan, a prominent war critic whose son was killed in the Iraq War.

“I’m totally going to steal these pictures,” Wynhausen wrote in a public comment under the photos. “I got to meet two amazing people!!”

Her Facebook account, which uses a pseudonym, includes identifying biographical details and interacts regularly with other Department of Human Services employees. The Oregonian/OregonLive reviewed hundreds of public interactions, such as comments and likes.

In them, Wynhausen expressed support for activists who questioned the attacks and opposed the military response to them. In one video shared in July 2009, Jesse Ventura criticized the federal government for spending so little investigating the attacks. “Go Jesse!!” Wynhausen wrote.

She liked another video, in January 2010, that explained how a governmental research program had supposedly caused the devastating earthquake in Haiti five days earlier.

She often questioned the political motives of both Republicans and Democrats, including then-President Barack Obama, whom she labeled a “corporatist, lying, fascist” in February 2010. She described the 2012 election between Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney as a race pitting a “Giant Douche v. Turd Sandwich.”

McGinnis did not answer a question about how the department conducts background checks on employees who are promoted within the agency.

The September organizational chart said Wynhausen coordinates the state’s “Families First” programs, an apparent reference to federal child welfare reforms adopted this year.

McGinnis said that listing was incorrect, but did not respond to a questions regarding what job she holds instead and why she was listed as coordinating the department’s rollout of federal legislation. Two other employees, Aimee Dickson and Molly Miller, are listed as fatality review coordinators.

Wynhausen posts comments using her personal account, presumably on her own time. But sometimes the topics she discussed relate to issues that child death reviews might confront.

In response to a story about the economic impact of immigration in September 2010, she wrote, “If they are earning so much money, buying homes, etc, they should be paying taxes!!”

She called modern medicine into question in May 2010. “There are far too many uneducated people who listen to what the pharmaceuticals companies are saying … they believe the bs and ignorantly allow their children to be poisoned.”

The intersection between personal beliefs and medical care is key issue in Oregon, a hub for congregations that refuse to seek medical care when believers, even children, fall ill. At least three children have died from faith-healing since 2011.

At least 48 Oregon children have died from gunshot wounds during the same time span. None of their deaths, including that of a 10-year-old shot and killed in foster care last year, have ever been subject to a public fatality review.

Wynhausen often supported posts advocating gun rights and follows public pages such as “Prepper Inventory List” and “Girls with Guns Clothing” on Facebook.

One shirt in particular caught her eye. Its message: “I have a beautiful daughter. I also have a gun, a shovel and an alibi.”

“I need one of these,” she wrote in September 2014.

Within weeks, she was managing the state’s child fatality reviews.

-- Molly Young