Pierce County school district, Seattle Archdiocese settle child sex abuse lawsuit

TACOMA (WA)
The News Tribune

March 13, 2018

By Alexis Krell

A former Parkland Elementary student who says he was sexually assaulted by a teacher there in the 1980s has settled a lawsuit against the Franklin Pierce School District and the Seattle Archdiocese.

Franklin Pierce agreed to pay $950,000 to the alleged victim, identified in court records as D.W. The Archdioceses agreed to pay $1.5 million.

The complaint accused the Archdiocese of helping teacher Edward Courtney get hired in the public school system, despite the fact that he’d been accused of sexually abusing students at multiple Catholic schools where he worked before Parkland.

“Courtney then used his position at Parkland Elementary to gain access to Plaintiff D.W. and to sexually abuse him multiple times in multiple locations, including at Parkland Elementary and other activities that Courtney arranged through his position at the school,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in 2016 and was set to go to trial March 12.

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