Tahoma School District (TSD) was sued on January 12, 2022 on behalf of a student who was allegedly sexually abused at about the age of 9 years by a paraeducator working at Glacier Park Elementary School, alleged to be Bryan Neyers. The Complaint filed in King County Superior Court alleges that this sexual abuse occurred “multiple times” and “included, but was not limited to, Neyers fondling and digitally penetrating” the student in places that were under TSD ownership or control. The Complaint alleges (1) the TSD employee “was telling minor students ‘I’ll give you a nickel if you suck my pickle’ among other inappropriate and sexually suggestive behavior”, (2) that complaints about this behavior were communicated to TSD as early as 2016, and (3) TSD “consciously and recklessly disregarded its knowledge that Neyers would use his position with TSD to sexually abuse children”, (4) “TSD through its agents, servants, and employees, acted in concert with each other and/or with Neyers to conceal the danger that Neyers posed to children … so that Neyers could continue serving TSD despite TSD’s knowledge of that danger”, and (5) TSD “knew that its negligent, reckless, and outrageous conduct would inflict severe emotional and psychological distress, as well as physical injury, on others…”
In the Complaint, it is alleged that the student/victim “sustained physical and psychological injuries, including but not limited to, severe emotional and psychological distress, humiliation, fright, dissociation, anger, depression, anxiety, family turmoil and loss of faith, a severe shock to his nervous system, physical pain and mental anguish, and emotional and psychological damage, and … some or all of these injuries are of a permanent and lasting nature.”
TSD uttered its public words in response to the Complaint in an Amended Answer to Complaint filed in court on June 29, 2022. In its Amended Answer, TSD (1) admitted that Neyers worked at Glacier Park Elementary School and Tahoma Elementary School from June 22, 2015 to April 2020, when his employment was terminated, (2) admitted that TSD “failed to exercise reasonable care to prevent its employee, Neyers, from harming Plaintiff [the allegedly abused student], including sexually abusing him”, (3) admitted that TSD “failed in its duty regarding the retention and supervision of Mr. Neyers, and that it created a foreseeable risk that Plaintiff [the allegedly abused student] would be abused by Mr. Neyers”, (4) admitted that its [TSD’s] “actions and omissions proximately caused injury to Plaintiff [the allegedly abused student], and (5) admitted that “while employed by the District [TSD] Bryan Neyers subjected Plaintiff [the allegedly abused student] to grooming, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse, resulting in … damages” to the allegedly abused student.
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?
Now this gets really worse. It has been over 15 months since TSD admitted to its liability and nearly 20 months since the Complaint was filed. Some may think that TDS’s Amended Answer was forced on TSD by its insurance company. This is not true, it is absolute bunk. There are court rules, called Rules of Professional Conduct, that regulate what a lawyer can and cannot do when representing a client. Violations of these rules can result in punishment against the lawyer, including ending the lawyer’s license to practice law. RPC 1.8(f) requires that a lawyer who is paid by the client’s insurance company must ensure “there is NO interference with the lawyer’s independence of professional judgment or with the client-lawyer relationship” and also must maintain lawyer-client confidentiality. In short, the lawyer can only take directions from the client – TSD – not the insurance company. One can reasonably assume that the Board of Directors authorized TSD’s lawyer to file the Amended Complaint as it is written.
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 has TSD, and specifically its Board of Directors, done in the past 15-20 months to make it far more difficult for a pedophile (that’s an adult who sexually abuses a child) to operate within the TSD? Quit. The TSD Superintendent resigned recently, as did 2 Directors. Director Matt Carreon might be compared to Nero fiddling while Rome burned – he has missed 52% of TSD Board Meetings between January and August 2023. While these Directors, and two others, did not directly abuse the affected student, they have all 5 been impotent in their public presentation to our community and have revealed nothing about even the most simple, inexpensive steps that can be taken to protect our vulnerable students from abuse while also protecting our staff and teachers from wrongful accusations.
The answer to my question was revealed in a conversation I had with Board President Pete Miller following a TSD Board meeting on October 3, 2023: absolutely nothing that has been made public. No policy changes. No status report. No plan to increase protection of students. No TSD rule prohibits one-on-one contact between an adult and child (this rule is commonly used effectively by many organizations tasked with keeping children safe and COSTS NOTHING); an adult and student should only be interacting when other students or other adults are around. No TSD rule requires that allegations of abuse of a student be promptly communicated to the Board of Directors, to be reviewed in a closed, executive session, in addition to normal administrative channels. No TSD rule requires the compilation of data about allegations of abuse to TSD students and their outcomes. No TSD rule makes the knowledge of abuse allegations bypass the administrators who have historically suppressed such allegations. (Even the US military now requires that the chain of command be uninvolved in investigating and prosecuting claims of sexual abuse in its services.) TSD has no known, publicly revealed consultation with the numerous experts working to prevent child sexual abuse in our community, whether local, state, national or international. After 15 months since admitting that TSD actions and inactions that violated TSD’s duty of care to its students, the Board of Directors has no known plan to address this problem. No known plan has been publicly revealed by any TSD Director or Administrator. NO PLAN.
“A failure to plan is a plan to fail,” said Benjamin Franklin. Many believe that government’s first and most basic job is to keep its citizens safe. What consequences do you think should be imposed in this instance?
Some folks put together the website https://tahomaparents.org/ that reveals and discusses these issues and more. There are links within this website to Washington State government data and copies of TSD documents obtained from TSD with Freedom of Information Act requests that provide more information about these concerns.
This same TSD administrative team received IRS letters in 2021 demanding $763,840 in penalties and interest because hundreds of critical tax forms submitted to the IRS by TSD were incorrect. Over 40% of TSD students failed to meet math and science standards this spring; over 30% failed to meet English standards, according to statistics reported by the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. These are long-term problems. We’ve all heard excuses, but do excuses solve problems? What plan has been revealed to the public by the Tahoma School District Board of Directors or Administration to identify the causes of these problems and fix them? What goals have been set? More on this in our next issue.
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.
