Tacoma dojo accused of failing to protect kids from sex crimes at hands of ex-instructor
A Tacoma-based martial arts school has been accused of failing to prevent the sexual abuse of three boys by former instructor Michael Basse, a one-time University School District employee who had faced criminal charges over abuse allegations prior to his death by suicide.
Seibukan Jujutsu of Washington State LLC, also known as Tenchikan Dojo, was sued in Pierce County Superior Court on Jan. 10 for negligence and gender discrimination, court records show.
The complaint alleged that the three plaintiffs, who were minors at the time, had been sexually abused by Basse, 59, during individual training sessions and on dojo-sponsored camping trips over a three-year period. Seibukan Jujutsu was responsible for screening its employees and knew, or should have known, that Basse was a sexual predator yet didn’t prevent him from having unsupervised access to the children, according to the lawsuit.
In an interview, Seibukan Jujutsu founder and chief instructor Mike Sauders denied the allegations against the dojo, calling them “patently untrue” and “a bunch of foolishness.”
“I did not know,” Sauders said.
The three plaintiffs were among at least eight alleged victims identified only by their initials in an amended filing from Pierce County prosecutors in August that charged Basse with 20 counts of child rape and molestation, following an original filing in April. The boys ranged in age from 9 to 15.
Basse pleaded not guilty to the charges, which were dropped Nov. 21, a day after he died. The Kitsap County Medical Examiner’s Office said Friday that his death had been ruled a suicide by acute ethylene glycol poisoning, a substance used in antifreeze.
Attorney Loren Cochran, who is representing the plaintiffs, told The News Tribune that victims and their families sought accountability for Basse’s alleged crimes from all who were responsible.
“The primary concern should have been the safety of those kids and it wasn’t,” Cochran said. “This is just the first step. All of the families, all of the victims, very much put their faith in the criminal justice process ... and of course that was robbed from them when Mike Basse took his own life.”
He added that more lawsuits were expected to follow.
Basse was a University Place School District employee from 2007 to 2016, The News Tribune previously reported. Two of the alleged victims in the since-dismissed criminal case, including one who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, met Basse when he was a substitute nurse at Sunset Primary School in University Place.
Basse also served as a substitute classroom assistant and a health room paraeducator at multiple schools during his tenure. He was fired in 2016 after the school district was notified by University Place police that a parent had made a complaint against him, The News Tribune previously reported.
District Superintendent Jeff Chamberlin said in April that neither the district nor police investigation into that matter involved any reports of inappropriate touching or physical sexual abuse. Basse cleared standard background checks when he was hired and had been a parent of a district student at the time, Chamberlin said.
The claims made in criminal charges allegedly occurred throughout the entire length of his employment with the school district, but it wasn’t clear where Basse met most of the alleged victims. Basse also taught youth baseball, authorities said.
In May, Basse was charged with child-sex crimes in Grays Harbor County and pleaded not guilty. That case was also dismissed not long after his death, court records show. It was unclear whether any of the alleged victims, who were Pierce County residents, were the same as those identified in the criminal case in Pierce County.
Meanwhile, the lawsuit alleged that Basse, while a dojo instructor, sexually abused two victims from 2013 until 2016, beginning when one victim was 15. The suit didn’t identify the age of the second victim. A third had been abused from the ages of 9 to 12 during unspecified years, according to the complaint.
Seibukan Jujutsu is accused of failing to take any steps to prevent the abuse or adopt policies to identify sexual predators working at the dojo and put a stop to that.
Sauders noted that the dojo requires anyone who enters for private lessons to sign in and it had never been brought to his attention that Basse had been holding such lessons. He questioned when the abuse allegedly occurred, saying it was possible that two of the boys weren’t dojo students at the time.
“I’ve been trying to piece together attendance and stuff like that,” Sauders said.
As Sauders searches for more information related to an alleged predator who he said could have been “hiding in plain sight,” he also sought to clarify that Basse hadn’t been involved with the dojo for “some years” — a dispute of the lawsuit’s assertions that Basse, a fifth-degree black belt and Marine Corps veteran, had been an instructor at the dojo as recently as 2023.
“I don’t understand their purpose in doing this. It seems rather vindictive,” he said, referring to the lawsuit being brought against his business. “I want to be treated fairly. This is tough enough as it is.”
The suit is seeking unspecified damages resulting from the alleged victims’ medical and psychological treatments, as well as legal fees and other relief to be determined by the court.
“The dojo gave Mike Basse carte blanche when it came to having keys to the dojo, completely unsupervised access to all the kids and did no supervision whatsoever,” Cochran said, adding that it’s been known in society for years that there needs to be a system in place around teachers and coaches to ensure children are kept safe. “This is not a new concept.”
