SNOHOMISH — The Snohomish School District has agreed to pay out $25,000 to a woman who accused the district of negligence over a reported sexual assault in Snohomish High School decades earlier.
According to the lawsuit filed in July 2022, the woman was sexually assaulted after a teacher locked her in a room with another boy as a form of punishment in the 1980s.
In late September, the parties reached a settlement. The terms came after the school district’s law firm, Byrnes Keller Cromwell, filed for sanctions against the woman’s attorney, alleging misconduct.
“To avoid the time, expense and uncertainty of litigation, and without admission of liability, the Parties wish to resolve the disputes between them in consideration for the mutual promises and agreements set forth below,” according to court papers obtained by The Daily Herald through public records request.
Around 1980 or 1981, a Snohomish High School teacher, Mark Albertine, would punish students by locking them in a room unsupervised, according to the lawsuit filed in Snohomish County Superior Court. The woman was a 15-year-old student at the time.
She made a sarcastic comment in class, so Albertine locked her in a conference room, the complaint alleged. A teenage boy was already inside. Albertine locked the door and left, according to the lawsuit.
The teen sexually assaulted her, according to the allegations. She couldn’t get out of the room or call for help.
The assault wasn’t reported to police and she didn’t tell anyone for years, her attorney Kirk Davis wrote.
One day, in the past few years, the woman was at a high school friend’s house. Her friend was talking to a man on speaker phone, she alleged. The woman “immediately recognized” the man’s voice, and the events from decades earlier became vivid again.
The lawsuit argued the Snohomish School District and Snohomish High School acted negligently in allowing Albertine to use this kind of punishment.
This month, a spokesperson for the school district declined to comment on the resolution of the case.
In July, Davis tried to withdraw from the case. Davis wrote in court documents that he had “essentially become a witness” in the case, and therefore could not continue as counsel.
A week later, Keith Petrak, an attorney from Byrnes Keller Cromwell, submitted a 150-page document seeking sanctions against the attorney, citing two instances of alleged misconduct.
The first instance was a “false” discovery request regarding “highly probative evidence,” according to court documents.
In October 2022, when responding to a request for legible diaries or journals regarding the sexual assault, the woman denied any existed, according to court documents. However, counseling records revealed she kept a journal, describing nightmares about the incident.
In her deposition, the woman testified she still had part of her journal, and that she gave the rest of it to her attorney. When asked further questions about the journal, she became “highly emotional,” lawyers wrote in court filings.
Davis requested a break. After the break, the plaintiff testified she threw away the journal after stopping counseling, court papers said. The next day, Davis tried to withdraw as her attorney.
On Aug. 4, about a week after her deposition, the plaintiff said she found a few pages from the journal in her trash, court documents said.
“Suffice to say that there is every reason to believe that Plaintiff has not produced the entirety of the journal, if indeed what has now been produced was not created in the last week in anticipation of a spoliation motion,” Petrak wrote.
The other matter alleged the “interference with and manipulation” of the testimony of the plaintiff’s high school friend, who was a key witness, the lawyer wrote.
An hour into the witness’ deposition in March, the friend responded to questions about the phone call recounted in the original complaint. Her answers were “entirely inconsistent” with the claims, according to court documents.
Davis requested a break, during which he began texting the witness, asking her to call him, according to court records. The witness logged out of the Zoom call, and returned about 20 minutes later. She said Davis asked her if she was tired. The witness then became confused about phone calls between the plaintiff and the alleged assailant, Petrak wrote. She abruptly left the deposition.
Later that day, Davis texted the witness, saying he was sending a declaration, which the witness signed a week later. According to the motion, the declaration contradicted her deposition testimony.
Davis wrote in court records he had to withdraw from the case because he became a witness himself, after contacting the woman’s friend over text and by phone during her deposition.
Davis countered that the sanctions motion contained many errors. One example was the claim that the woman “destroyed evidence.” Davis claimed his client did find the missing notes in her dumpster and turned them over to the defendant’s counsel.
Davis couldn’t be reached for comment this week.
In court papers, the woman wrote she had been honest throughout the case. She wrote she was in special education in high school, and is sometimes confused when she reads.
The woman claimed the defense counsel was trying to “trick her” by accusing her of destroying evidence.
“All I’m trying to do is tell the truth about how I was sexually assaulted in that locked room all those years ago,” the woman wrote in court documents. “The Defense attorney is trying to make my confusion look like I’m not telling the truth.”
Jonathan Tall: 425-339-3486; jonathan.tall@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @snocojon.
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