Did Pierce County school district fail to monitor sex-offender student?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Bethel School District is accused of failing to protect a student from sexual assault.
- A lawsuit claims the perpetrator was a fellow student with a sex-offense history.
- The victim’s family wants an investigation, reforms and discipline against school staff.
A Pierce County high school student is accused of sexually assaulting a girl on campus while he was on probation for a previous sexual offense, sparking accusations that school officials failed to maintain proper oversight of him, according to a lawsuit.
The 15-year-old victim’s mother sued Bethel School District on Wednesday for its alleged failure to prevent the September 2024 assault in a Graham-Kapowsin High School bathroom, claiming that the incident was part of a troubling pattern of institutional neglect, Pierce County Superior Court records show.
Beyond filing suit, the girl’s family is calling for a full and independent investigation into the district’s “repeated failures to protect students from known sex offenders,” according to a news release Wednesday from the law firm representing the plaintiff.
Bethel School District declined an invitation from The News Tribune to respond to the claims made against it.
“The Bethel School District does not comment on litigation,” district spokesperson Douglas Boyles said in a statement.
The alleged perpetrator, who’s more than two years older than the girl, has not been charged with a crime as of Friday, a spokesperson for the plaintiff’s legal representation told The News Tribune.
The older student entered into the Special Sex Offender Disposition Alternative program for a prior sex offense involving a minor, according to the lawsuit and a pre-litigation claim against the district. Filings didn’t offer additional details of his previous offense.
Under the program, youth offenders in Washington serve a two-year probation term instead of time at a juvenile facility. Offenders may attend public school “under strict, court-imposed conditions designed to protect other students,” including limits on campus time to only class hours, restrictions on participating in extracurricular activity and the unsupervised contact with others more than two years younger, and ongoing monitoring from school officials, the lawsuit said.
School districts may not disclose a student’s sex-offender program status to other students or families but must internally act on that information by implementing and enforcing safeguards, according to the suit.
“The District’s failure to follow these safeguards places other students at serious risk, not only because of their vulnerable status as children but also because other students likely do not know when a student attending school with them has a ‘sex offender’ status,” the suit said.
Despite rules barring unsupervised contact between the two students, the district allowed the older student to interact with the victim during and after school and at a school dance, the suit claimed.
On Sept. 4, 2024, the 10th-grade girl went to use a school bathroom while participating in a school-sanctioned extracurricular activity when the older student followed her inside, prevented her from leaving and then sexually assaulted her, according to the suit. Both students are identified in the complaint only by their initials. The News Tribune isn’t using those identifiers because she is an alleged victim of a sex crime and he hasn’t been charged.
While the lawsuit noted it was unclear whether Bethel School District placed the older student on a school safety plan, it claimed the district failed to ensure he complied with any plan. Including at the time of the alleged assault, the district didn’t adequately supervise him or effectively monitor his movement through a digital hall pass system intended to track students, according to the suit. He was allowed to attend the school’s homecoming dance, in violation of his court-ordered program and without consultation with his probation officer, the suit said.
The filing underscored that the alleged incident was not a one-off. The district previously was sued over similar incidents, according to the complaint, citing two cases from over a decade ago. District officials also knew about repeated assaults inside Graham-Kapowsin High School bathrooms but didn’t provide adequate protections in response, the suit said.
“The district had every chance to prevent this assault — but instead, it chose to repeat the same types of failures that have robbed children of their physical and psychological safety, and their trust in our systems,” attorney Gemma Zanowski, who is representing the girl and her mother, said in a statement. “Until the district takes real, lasting action, every child who walks through its doors remains vulnerable to the same harm.”
The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages and legal fees, according to the filing. The girl’s family also is calling for immediate policy reforms to prevent future assaults, mandatory enforcement of the juvenile sex-offender program in public schools, and disciplinary action against all Bethel School District staff who failed to enforce safeguards.
“By moving forward with this case, we hope to find justice — not only for our child, but to prevent this from ever happening to another student,” the family said in a statement. “Our greatest hope is that by speaking up, changes will be made. We want our voices to matter, for the truth to be recognized, and for our child’s suffering not to be in vain.”
