The Highline School District south of Seattle is being sued by a now-grown woman, who claims she was raped and impregnated by a high school volunteer who is also a registered sex offender.
According to the civil complaint filed this week in King County Superior Court, the then-16-year-old girl identified in court documents as “R.T.” was told by her dance instructors at Evergreen High School “that she needed to attend academic tutoring if she wanted to continue participating in the dance class.”
The instructors allegedly gave the girl the address of an apartment, where a man identified as Lashawn Ferguson “brutally and forcefully” raped “R.T.”
The girl withdrew from Evergreen and moved out of state, where she “discovered she was pregnant” with a now 23-year-old. According to documents “there was no other person who could have been the father other than … Ferguson.”
This new civil lawsuit is not the first time Ferguson – who also uses the name Shawn Isaac Ferguson --- has been connected to sexual wrong-doing at Evergreen.
In 2010, the school’s football coach lost his job because he hired Ferguson to work with the team, not knowing Ferguson was a registered sex offender. KIRO 7 interviewed John Welch, the Highline School District superintendent at the time, who said “as the head coach, it falls on his shoulders to make sure the appropriate paperwork gets turned in before you let somebody on campus.”
The suit names the Highline School District as sole defendant claiming “R.T.’s rape occurred as a direct result of the negligence and failures” of the district.
District spokesperson Catherine Carbone Rogers said she could not comment on a pending lawsuit.
Meanwhile, KIRO 7 found the court documents detailing why Ferguson was required to register as a sex offender.
He was convicted of raping a 13-year old girl in 1997, three years after the alleged attack on “R.T
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