January 27, 2012 — Washington State has agreed to a $2.35 million settlement brought by a woman who was sexually abused as a child, and alleges that two Washington State agencies failed to protect her from a known sex offender who was living with her family.
The woman was abused by a man named Danny Dorosky Sr., a paroled child rapist. Dorosky was released from prison in 1989 after raping two children. The man allegedly befriended the girl’s family and was allowed to live with them. Dorosky started abusing the girl in 1990, when she was 10 years old, and continued abusing her for three more years.
When the girl’s school officials reported that she might be a sexual abuse victim, the Department of Social and Health Services’ Child Protective Services failed to follow-up or adequately protect her from Dorosky.
Dorosky was already on parole for raping two children in the 1980s. When he was released, his Parole Board order required intensive management and supervision. One requirement was that Dorosky undergo lie detector tests every 90 days as one way to ensure that he was not in contact with any children. The Department of Corrections never followed up on this requirement.
When the girl’s father contacted law enforcement, police officers arrested Dorosky. He was convicted of child molestation and rape.
The woman who filed the child sexual abuse lawsuit in Washington State says that she buried her awareness of what had happened to her as a child until recently. The memories resurfaced when her own daughter turned 10. She looked up Danny Dorosky’s court records and hired a lawyer who specialized in child sexual abuse. If state employees had acted appropriately to determine whether Dorosky was in contact with children, they could have easily discovered that he was living with a 10 year-old girl, and stopped the abuse.
She hopes that, in the future, Washington State agencies will be more likely to monitor known child rapists who are free in the community. Raping or molesting a child is a crime that has a high likelihood of re-offense. If people who have been convicted of these crimes ever re-enter society, it is imperative that they be monitored. Often, pedophiles will spend many years cultivating their relationships with future victims, grooming them for future abuse. They carefully tend their image as someone who is trustworthy around children, granting them unsupervised access with children.
Danny Dorosky died in 2004.
A lawyer for the woman says that the Department of Corrections and Child Protective Services both had opportunities to protect the woman from sexual abuse, but they both failed over and over again. Though the woman has been awarded $2.35 million in her case, she now seeks an apology from the State.
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