AIRWAY HEIGHTS, Wash. -- After spending nearly four years in prison for Wenatchee child-sex ring convictions that recently were overturned, Harold Everett was a free man Thursday.

The 68-year-old told reporters outside the Airway Heights Correctional Facility that he had always believed he would be freed.

"I knew it would be sooner or later," he said, two days after Chelan County Prosecutor Gary Riesen decided against retrying Everett and his wife, Idella. "It just took a little time."

Everett, who wore a white T-shirt and gray sweat pants, was greeted by lawyers Robert Van Siclen and Kathryn Russell.

They helped him lug two cardboard boxes containing his belongings to a red sports-utility vehicle that whisked the group away from the medium-security lockup west of Spokane.

Driving the vehicle was Andrew Schneider, one of two Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporters who wrote a five-part series earlier this year that criticized authorities' handling of the Wenatchee cases.

Everett said the group planned to drive 150 miles west to Wenatchee, where he will reunite with his wife. He offered few details of his immediate plans.

He said he looked forward to "just getting home and starting my life again."

Idella Everett, 44, completed her sentence and was released earlier this month.

A state Court of Appeals panel last week overturned the Everetts' sex-abuse convictions, citing improper interview techniques by the Wenatchee Police Department and state Department of Social and Health Services employees.

In November 1994, the Everetts entered Alford pleas, in which they admitted no wrongdoing, but agreed the state had enough evidence to convict them of sexually abusing children.

Harold Everett was sentenced to 23 years and four months in prison for four counts of first-degree child rape, and Idella Everett was sentenced to four years and eight months for two counts of first-degree child molestation.

State officials say the Everetts are unlikely to be reunited with their five children anytime soon. The children are in foster care, and the parents must go through an extensive process in an effort to regain custody, state officials said.

The state Department of Social and Health Services is not bound by court decisions in such cases, and would have to be convinced the Everetts could provide a proper home for the children, spokeswoman Kathy Spears said.

"Can the parents protect the child and keep them from abuse or neglect?" Spears said. "Just because he is released does not mean they will automatically be returned."

The state does not even have to tell the Everetts where the kids are, Spears said.

Mario Fry of Wenatchee, president of a grassroots support group for those convicted in the sex rings cases, also predicted the Everetts are unlikely to see their children soon.

"These people will never get their kids back," said Fry, of Concerned Citizens for Legal Accountability.

Many of those prosecuted in the Wenatchee cases -- including the Everetts -- had ties to a Pentecostal church in East Wenatchee led by Pastor Roby Roberson. Roberson and his wife were acquitted of child sex charges, and have become activists in pursuing court challenges on behalf of those who were convicted.

Roberson said Thursday the release of the Everetts was a major victory for critics of the investigations.

"The day I was acquitted I vowed Harold and Idella, you'll be next,' " Roberson said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.

He also criticized state officials for not immediately reuniting the Everett family.

"That mindset has caused the problem in Wenatchee, Wash.," Roberson said. "That is vicious, mean-spiritedness against parents."

He vowed to fight for the return of the children.

The Everetts have a teen-age boy, two younger daughters and a pair of twin sons who are the youngest. The ages were not available.

The two daughters provided crucial testimony against their parents and other adults charged in the cases. One of them later recanted her testimony.

Wenatchee Police Officer Bob Perez, the main detective in the child sex abuse investigations in 1994 and 1995, was a foster parent to the daughters.

Roberson said the Everett's oldest son has been adopted by a family in the Midwest. One daughter is at a hospital in Spokane and the other at a foster home in the Wenatchee area. The twins are living in two separate homes in the Wenatchee area, Roberson said.