Claim of sex abuse on Tacoma school bus prompts request to separate pre-K students
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- A 3-year-old boy was allegedly sexually abused by an older student on a Tacoma school bus.
- Tacoma Public Schools is being sued for negligence.
- Plaintiffs want pre-K students supervised or prevented from riding a bus with older kids.
A 3-year-old boy was sexually abused on a Tacoma Public Schools bus in January, according to a lawsuit that alleges the district failed to heed a prior warning about transporting pre-kindergarten children with older students.
The complaint, filed on May 9 in Pierce County Superior Court, claims that a special-education student at Edna Travis Elementary School was fondled by an older boy and that the abuse was confirmed by security footage. When the toddler arrived at his home bus stop, he was entirely nude and sitting next to the older student, the suit said.
“That is a parents’ worst nightmare,” attorney Kevin Hastings, who represents the parents of the alleged victim, said in an interview Thursday.
Hastings said he couldn’t confirm the age of the alleged perpetrator. He was 7 years old, according to a snippet of a document — attached within the lawsuit — that Hastings said was from the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families.
The suit alleged TPS neglected to protect the 3-year-old boy and failed to prevent older students from having unsupervised access to younger and vulnerable children. The district didn’t respond to an inquiry Thursday seeking comment.
On its website, Tacoma Public Schools identifies its long list of rules for riding the school bus and notes that there are video cameras on buses to aid student safety.
“Safely transporting students to and from school is our top priority,” the district said.
Hasting’s law firm, Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala PLLC, filed a lawsuit against TPS two years ago regarding a similar event. During the 2021-22 school year, a 5-year-old girl at Bryant Montessori was sexually abused on a bus by a 13-year-old boy.
The teen was later convicted of a crime, according to the lawsuit lodged this month, but civil litigation over the incident remains ongoing, court records show. That event should have served as a warning to the district that pre-kindergarten students weren’t safe riding with older kids on school buses, the new suit contends.
“This is the second time in the last few years where a nearly identical situation has happened,” Hastings said. “The concern, of course, is allowing this practice to continue, knowing what we know.”
To that end, the recently filed lawsuit isn’t only seeking unspecified damages and legal fees; it wants to force the district to segregate or monitor its youngest students on buses.
The suit is requesting a judge to issue orders preventing TPS from allowing pre-kindergarten students to ride on the same buses as older students or, if doing so, require that pre-kindergarten students be assigned bus monitors. Hastings said he hadn’t looked into practices at other school districts.
Specifically, the lawsuit is urging that pre-kindergarten students not ride with students who attend elementary, middle or high school. It’s asking for a permanent injunction but it’s also requesting temporary relief and a preliminary injunction — both of which can be granted while a case is still ongoing.
“It was foreseeable and within the general field of danger that vulnerable children ... would be sexually abused without being segregated onto a different bus with only like-age children or without having a bus monitor,” the suit said.
