OREGON
The Oregonian
By Heather Steeves, The Oregonian
on February 15, 2013
A woman who grew up in Lake Oswego filed a $16 million lawsuit in federal court Thursday, accusing her church youth group leader of near-daily sexual abuse that went on for years.
Cristie Marie Prasnikar, 34, who now lives in Arizona, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland against Ralph Woodrow “Woody” Veerkamp, 65, Our Savior’s Lutheran Church of Lake Oswego and Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. She is asking for $300,000 in economic damages, $6 million in non-economic damages and $10 million in punitive damages to set an example.
According to the lawsuit, Prasnikar joined an Our Savior’s youth group for high school students when she was 14 and was assigned to a group led by Veerkamp, an adult church-goer. The church’s Great Commission Subcommittee youth program drew hundreds of junior high school and high school students from the area in the 1990s.
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