The state will pay a former Mason County woman $2.35 million to settle her lawsuit alleging that the departments of Corrections and Social and Health Services failed to supervise a sex offender who abused her, beginning when she was 10 years old.
Danny Dorosky Sr. had served a sentence for child rape when he was paroled in August 1990. He was allowed to be released into the plaintiff’s home, according to the lawsuit, filed last year in Pierce County Superior Court by Tacoma attorney Darrell Cochran.
An attorney with the state Attorney General’s Office who represented DOC and DSHS could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
The suit alleged that DOC knew Dorosky, who died in 2004, posed a danger to the girl, but failed to protect her.
The DOC was supposed to impose conditions on Dorosky, including “supervision by a Community Corrections Officer who would monitor Dorosky’s location and living arrangements and would make sure that Dorosky had no contact with children,” the suit states. That didn’t happen, according to the lawsuit.
In 1992, DSHS received a report that the Dorosky was abusing the girl, the suit states.
According to Cochran, school officials in Shelton told Child Protective Services that they suspected the girl might be a victim of sexual abuse.
“Although it acknowledged the report and began an investigation, and although it learned that Dorosky ‘has a prior conviction for statutory rape and indecent liberties,’ it failed to do anything to protect” the child, according to the suit.
Mason County law enforcement arrested Dorosky in 1993 on suspicion of sexually abusing the girl after her father voiced his suspicions. Dorosky was convicted of child molestation and rape, Cochran said.
In a phone interview Wednesday, the plaintiff, now 31, said she had buried her awareness of what had happened until recently, when her own daughter turned 10. She said she began having nightmares about what had happened to her when she was that age.
She said she saw a therapist about the nightmares and eventually began to remember. She said she then looked up Dorosky’s court records and determined that DOC and DSHS had been negligent. She hired an attorney.
She said “it makes me sick” that state employees could have prevented what had happened to her and didn’t.
The plaintiff, a state employee, added that she would appreciate an apology from the state. “I want them to acknowledge that what happened, shouldn’t have happened,” she said. “It would make me feel a lot better.”
She said she hopes her lawsuit will lead to policy changes that will prevent supervision failures. She added that when she reads about cuts to DOC because of budget constraints, “it just kills me.”
“It’s not something that the state can afford to do,” she said.
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