Voice of The Valley Article - Tahoma Has No Plan to Fix the Holes in its Policies.

[Justin B]

Great article published to the Voice of the Valley by a former Tahoma School Board President.

https://voiceofthevalley.com/2023/10/08/tahoma-school-district-has-no-plan-to-fix-the-holes-in-its-policies-that-have-failed-to-keep-your-children-safe-from-abuse-at-school/

[MOM]

EPIC!

Here are a few strong points from this article:

“A failure to plan is a plan to fail,” said Benjamin Franklin.  Many believe that the government’s first and most basic job is to keep its citizens safe.  What consequences do you think should be imposed in this instance? 

Washington State Law, specifically RCW 26.44.030(1). requires that “professional school personnel” … “who have reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect” … “shall report such incident, or cause a report to be made, to the proper law enforcement agency or to …” Children’s Protective Service.  Not only are staff, teachers, and administrators “professional school personnel”, so, I suggest, are Board Directors.  They are paid wages by the school district for their services, so are “personnel”, and if Directors are not “professional”, do they have any business functioning as your representatives overseeing the Tahoma School District, hiring its superintendent, and establishing policies?  When were reports of Neyers’ alleged conduct first reported as required by law?  How long was the TSD Board of Directors kept ignorant of these allegations?

 

What does this lawyer language mean?  A TSD employee is accused of sexually abusing a young student as early as 9 years of age multiple times and TSD admitted it failed various duties it has to protect TSD students from the abuse.  This means the only legal issue left for a court to decide is how much money TSD will wind up paying the victim for his injuries.  It took until July 2023, over a year after the Amended Answer was filed, to come up with an agreed amount:  $3,900,000, as reported by the Seattle Times on July 12, 2023, a settlement that will eventually be presented to the court for approval.  Separately, Neyers has been criminally charged regarding his illegal conduct with 4 other minor children.

This gets worse, folks.  TSD added affirmative defenses to its Amended Answer. An affirmative defense is an allegation by the defendant (TSD here) that if the plaintiff (here the child who had allegedly been sexually abused multiple times by a TSD employee starting when he was as young as 9 years old) had acted differently his injury would be less severe, so the defendant should not have to pay for all of the injuries the plaintiff suffered.  TSD stated, “Plaintiff failed to mitigate, or reasonably attempt to mitigate, his damages, if any.”  Mitigate means to make something less severe.  So this means that TSD, after admitting liability, alleged this youngster, whom it admitted had been sexually abused by TSD’s employee as a result of TSD’s admitted violations of its duty to protect TSD students from this harm, was supposed to come up with some action that made his injuries less severe, if he had any damage at all.  Now, who among us who has been sexually abused and penetrated by an educator as a 9 year old has no physical or emotional damage at all? Or the ability to reduce his injuries?

The woman who wrote this article:   Jennifer C. Rydberg is a retired attorney, grandmother, and mother of two sons who attended Tahoma schools. She served a term on the Tahoma School District Board of Directors 1991-1995 including 1 year as its President.  Active in Scouting BSA, her husband was a local scoutmaster for 25 years; both received Silver Beaver Awards.