Longview, Washington School Sexual Assault Lawsuit: When the Adults Who Were Supposed to Protect Your Child Became the Ones Who Covered It Up
You are reading this because your child was sexually assaulted inside a school locker room by older teammates, and the superintendent of the entire school district was just arrested for trying to bury it. We are going to tell you everything we know about what happened, what the law says about it, what the school district’s lawyers are already doing to minimize it, and what your family can do about it — clearly, honestly, and without a single word of filler.
What happened at Mark Morris High School in Longview, Washington is not just a criminal case. It is a catastrophic failure of every adult institution that was supposed to keep your child safe — the basketball program, the athletic staff, the school administration, and the district leadership at the very top. The superintendent, Karen Cloninger, was arrested on felony witness tampering charges and gross misdemeanor charges of failure to report and obstructing a law enforcement officer. The executive director of student services, Andrew Schoonover, faces charges of failure to report and making false statements to a public servant. Police records show that messages related to the case were deleted from Cloninger’s personal cellphone. District leadership learned of the allegations as early as January 29, 2026, and when police contacted the superintendent in early February to ask whether help was needed, she told them the matter was being handled internally.
“Investigators developed information alleging employees were directed by Cloninger to handle the matter internally and discourage further discussion regarding the incident.”
That statement from the Longview Police Department is the single most important sentence in this entire case for your family’s civil claim. It is the difference between a school that failed to protect your child and a school that actively chose to let the danger continue. We handle cases like this — hazing and sexual assault cases where institutions put their reputation ahead of a child’s safety — and we are going to walk you through every layer of what happened, what the law gives you, and what to do in the hours and days ahead.
What Happened at Mark Morris High School: The Full Timeline
The facts that are publicly known paint a picture of a school district that knew about the sexual assault of its own students and chose concealment over protection.
Between November 2025 and February 2026, at least four junior varsity basketball players at Mark Morris High School were forcibly dragged into a windowless room with a lockable door inside the boys’ locker room by varsity basketball players. The younger players were harassed and sexually assaulted. Police incident reports describe a series of hazing incidents that escalated from bullying into sexual violence. Two varsity players have been charged with second-degree rape, unlawful imprisonment with sexual motivation, indecent liberties with forcible compulsion, and indecent exposure. A criminal trial is expected in July 2026.
Here is the timeline of what the adults knew and what they did with that knowledge:
January 29, 2026: District leadership learned of the physical and sexual misconduct allegations. This is the date the Longview Police Department identified as the earliest point at which the district had notice.
Early February 2026: Law enforcement contacted Superintendent Cloninger to ask whether the district needed assistance. Cloninger informed them the issue was being handled internally. Employees within the district raised concerns about their mandatory reporting obligations — whether they were legally required to contact law enforcement or child protective services. Those concerns were overridden.
Early February 2026 (continued): Administrative staff discussed mandatory reporting obligations and determined that “they were not obligated to report at that time.” This determination was wrong as a matter of Washington law, and the fact that it was made by the people responsible for knowing the law is itself evidence of deliberate indifference.
March 5, 2026: Longview Police Detective R. Gibbs wrote in an incident report that Cloninger appeared to be conducting school district business on her personal devices and was “likely deleting public information.” The detective’s report noted that messages related to the Mark Morris case had been deleted from Cloninger’s cellphone.
May 21, 2026: Cloninger was arrested by Longview police. She faces one felony charge of tampering with a witness and two gross misdemeanor charges: failure to report and obstructing a law enforcement officer. The school board held an emergency meeting and placed her on administrative leave.
Additional charges forthcoming: Andrew Schoonover, the executive director of student services for Longview Public Schools, faces two gross misdemeanor charges: failure to report and making a false or misleading statement to a public servant.
Every one of these dates matters for your family’s civil case. January 29 is the date the district had actual knowledge. The weeks that followed — during which the district chose not to report, chose to handle it internally, and chose to discourage further discussion — are the weeks during which the school’s deliberate indifference crystallized into something worse: active concealment. And the deletion of messages from the superintendent’s phone is not just a criminal charge. It is a civil litigation weapon that we will explain in detail below.
Washington’s Mandatory Reporting Law: The Duty That Was Broken
Washington law does not give school administrators the option to handle sexual assault internally. It gives them a legal duty to report — and that duty cannot be satisfied by an internal investigation.
Washington’s mandatory child abuse reporting statute designates school personnel as mandatory reporters. This means every teacher, coach, counselor, administrator, and staff member at Mark Morris High School had a personal, affirmative legal obligation to report suspected child abuse to law enforcement or the Department of Children, Youth, and Families the moment they had reasonable cause to believe a child was being harmed. The duty is individual. It cannot be assigned to the superintendent. It cannot be overridden by a directive from above. And it absolutely cannot be satisfied by “handling it internally.”
When Superintendent Cloninger allegedly directed employees to handle the matter internally and discouraged further discussion, she was not exercising discretion. She was ordering people to violate a statute. When Executive Director Schoonover participated in administrative discussions that concluded no reporting obligation existed — despite knowledge of sexual assault allegations — he was party to that violation. And when both of them failed to report, they committed the crime that Washington’s legislature specifically wrote to prevent exactly this scenario.
For your civil case, this is more than a criminal charge. A violation of a mandatory reporting statute can establish what the law calls negligence per se — meaning the violation of the statute is itself evidence of negligence that a jury can be instructed to consider. The school district’s lawyers will argue that the failure to report was a judgment call, a good-faith mistake about a complex legal question. The answer to that argument is the statute itself: the duty is clear, it is personal, and it exists precisely because school administrators have historically chosen to protect their institutions over their students.
Who Can Be Held Responsible: Every Layer of Failure
A school sexual assault case is rarely about one person’s failure. It is about a chain of failures — and every link in that chain is a separate defendant with separate insurance, separate exposure, and a separate story to tell under oath.
Longview Public Schools (the district): The institutional defendant. The district had custodial responsibility for your child during school hours and athletic activities. It failed to supervise the locker room, failed to restrict access to the windowless room where the assaults occurred, failed to report the abuse to authorities, and employed and retained administrators who actively obstructed the investigation. The district’s insurance coverage — typically a commercial general liability policy with excess layers — is the primary source of recovery for your family. Under Washington law, claims against a public school district require filing a tort claim notice with the district before a lawsuit can be filed. This is a procedural gate that must be satisfied, and the deadline is something your attorney must confirm and calendar immediately.
Karen Cloninger, Superintendent (individual capacity): The top administrator of the district. She is charged with felony witness tampering — the most serious charge in this case — for allegedly directing employees to suppress the matter. She is separately charged with failure to report and obstructing a law enforcement officer. Police records indicate she deleted messages from her personal cellphone that discussed the allegations. In her individual capacity, she faces not only the compensatory damages your child suffered but also potential punitive damages, because Washington allows punitive damages against individual defendants for reckless or intentional conduct. Her direction to employees to handle the matter internally and discourage discussion is the kind of deliberate, conscious choice that punitive damages exist to punish.
Andrew Schoonover, Executive Director of Student Services: Charged with failure to report and making false or misleading statements to a public servant. He participated in the administrative discussions that concluded no reporting obligation existed — a conclusion that was wrong as a matter of law. His role in the chain of concealment is separate from Cloninger’s and represents a distinct layer of accountability.
Basketball coaching staff (to be identified through discovery): The coaches had supervisory responsibility for team activities, locker room access, and the dynamics between varsity and JV players. If the coaching staff knew or should have known about the hazing culture — if there were prior incidents, if players had complained, if the pattern was visible to anyone paying attention — then the coaches’ failure to intervene is its own act of negligence. Discovery will reveal what the coaches knew, when they knew it, and what they did or did not do.
The juvenile perpetrators and their parents/guardians: The varsity players who committed the assaults are direct tortfeasors — the people who physically carried out the harm. They face serious criminal charges. In Washington, parents may bear liability under the state’s parental responsibility statutes for the willful acts of their minor children that cause injury to others. This is a separate avenue of recovery from the school district claims.
Longview School District Board of Directors: The board exercises oversight responsibility for district policies and personnel. The board placed Cloninger on administrative leave only after her arrest — not after learning of the allegations in January, not after police contacted the district in February, not after the investigation became public. The timing of the board’s action raises questions about what the board knew and when.
The Evidence Clock: What Is Disappearing Right Now
This is the most urgent section of this page. Everything above is about what happened. Everything below is about what to do. This section is about what is dying — right now, while you read — and what a preservation letter can freeze before it is gone.
School surveillance footage: Mark Morris High School, like most schools, has security cameras covering hallways, gymnasium entrances, and exterior areas. This footage would show who entered the locker room, when, and whether any adult staff were present or absent during the periods when the assaults occurred. School surveillance systems typically overwrite on a 30-to-90-day cycle. The earliest incidents date to November 2025. That footage is almost certainly already gone — overwritten months ago — unless the Longview Police Department placed a preservation hold on the school’s video system during its investigation. This is the first question to answer: does any footage survive?
Cloninger’s personal cellphone and district-issued devices: The detective’s March 5, 2026 report documented that messages related to the case had been deleted from Cloninger’s personal cellphone. The phone has been seized by police under a search warrant. But seizure and forensic imaging are not the same thing. A forensic image — a bit-by-bit copy of the device’s storage — can recover deleted messages that have not yet been overwritten by new data. Every day that passes without a forensic image, the recoverable window shrinks. If your family’s attorney does not formally request that the device be forensically imaged before it is further degraded or factory-reset, the deleted messages that prove the cover-up may become permanently unrecoverable.
School district email servers and internal communication systems: Every email, text, internal memo, and communication among district leadership, coaching staff, and school board members from November 2025 through the present is potential evidence. It establishes who knew what, when, and what directives were issued regarding internal handling versus reporting. Public school districts are subject to records retention schedules, but individual deletion is possible — and Cloninger has already demonstrated a willingness to delete. A litigation hold letter sent to the district’s legal counsel is the only thing that legally freezes these records. That letter must go out immediately.
Basketball team records: Rsters, schedules, practice logs, coaching communications, team chat groups, and any disciplinary records involving the basketball program. These records establish which staff had supervisory responsibility during the assault periods and whether hazing was a known team culture that had been tolerated before. End-of-school-year records purging and coaching staff turnover are real risks. These records must be preserved before they are discarded as part of routine end-of-year cleanup.
Personnel files of Cloninger, Schoonover, and coaching staff: These files may reveal prior complaints, disciplinary history, training records, or performance reviews relevant to negligent retention and supervision claims. Public employee records have specific retention requirements under Washington law, but personnel actions can be expunged or sealed. These must be demanded before any administrative process cleans them.
Internal district investigation records and mandatory reporting deliberation documents: The administrative discussions that concluded no reporting obligation existed are direct evidence of deliberate indifference and statutory violation. The district may attempt to characterize these as privileged or attorney work product. They must be preserved before they are classified, redacted, or sealed.
Police incident reports and the detective’s investigative file: The Longview Police Department’s file contains witness statements, forensic evidence, and the detective’s probable cause findings — including the cellphone search report. This file is in law enforcement custody, but ongoing investigation may seal additional records. Public records requests should be filed promptly to secure what is available.
The single most important thing to understand about this evidence is that the school district’s interests and your family’s interests are not aligned. The district’s lawyers are already working to minimize the district’s exposure. That means they are thinking about what records help the district and what records hurt it — and the records that hurt the district are the same records that help your child. A preservation letter from your attorney is the only thing that converts the district’s routine records management into legally protected evidence that cannot be destroyed without consequence.
The Injuries: What Sexual Assault Does to a Child
Your child’s injuries are not imaginary. They are not exaggerated. They are not “just emotional.” They are real, they are diagnosable, and they are measurable — and the defense’s entire strategy will be to make them sound like nothing. Here is what the medicine actually says.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a formal medical diagnosis, not a label. The diagnostic manual used by every psychiatrist in this country — the DSM-5 — sets out eight separate criteria for PTSD. A doctor does not simply decide your child has it. Your child has to meet every one of the eight: the traumatic event itself, the intrusive symptoms (nightmares, flashbacks, unwanted memories), the avoidance (refusing to go near the locker room, refusing to talk about it), the negative changes in mood and thinking (self-blame, detachment, inability to feel positive emotions), the changes in arousal and reactivity (hypervigilance, sleep problems, irritability), the duration of more than one month, the functional impairment, and the exclusion of other causes. If your child meets all eight, the diagnosis is as real as a broken bone on an X-ray.
Rape is the single most psychologically devastating event researchers have measured. In the largest epidemiological study of its kind — the National Comorbidity Survey — researchers found that rape carried the highest conditional probability of producing PTSD of any traumatic event studied, for both men and women. Not combat. Not car crashes. Not natural disasters. Rape. When a school district allows the conditions that lead to the sexual assault of its students, the lifelong psychological harm that follows is not a surprise. It is the most predictable outcome in trauma medicine.
If your child froze during the assault, that was not consent — it was a survival reflex. One of the cruelest myths about sexual assault is that a “real” victim fights back. The science says the opposite. In clinical studies of rape survivors, approximately 70 percent experienced significant tonic immobility — an involuntary, brainstem-mediated paralysis where the body locks up and the voice will not come. About 48 percent experienced extreme tonic immobility. This is not a choice. It is a reflex, like a flinch. And the survivors who froze are the ones who go on to develop PTSD at nearly three times the rate of those who did not. If your child could not move, could not scream, could not fight — that is exactly what the human body does under extreme threat, and it is not evidence against your child’s case. It is evidence of how severe the trauma was.
The lifetime cost of rape is real and measurable. Federal public-health researchers estimated the lifetime economic cost of a single rape at more than $122,000 per survivor — and that figure, based on 2014 dollars, only counts what you can put on an invoice: therapy, doctor visits, lost work. It does not begin to measure the nightmares, the relationships that strain, the trust that is gone, the childhood that was stolen. For a child assaulted in a school locker room by teammates — a place that was supposed to be safe, by people who were supposed to be friends — the psychological damage is compounded by the betrayal of every institution that was supposed to protect them.
The injury is invisible — and that is exactly what the defense will exploit. There is no X-ray for PTSD. There is no blood test for complex trauma. The defense will point to a clean physical exam and say “no objective evidence of injury.” The answer is that the injury is in the brain, in the nervous system, in the altered development of a child who learned that the adults entrusted with their safety chose to look away. It is proven through clinical evaluation by a child psychiatrist specializing in sexual assault trauma, through validated diagnostic instruments, through the testimony of the people who knew your child before and can describe who they were before this happened and who they are now.
Title IX and Federal Civil Rights: When a School Chooses to Look Away
Your child’s case is not just a state negligence claim. It is a federal civil rights case — and the federal claims may be the most powerful weapons in your arsenal.
Title IX: Deliberate Indifference to Sex-Based Violence. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school receiving federal funding. Every public school in Washington — including Longview Public Schools — is bound by it. The Supreme Court has held that a school district can be held liable for money damages under Title IX when it has actual knowledge of sexual harassment or assault and is deliberately indifferent to it — meaning its response is clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances.
Here, the district had actual knowledge of the sexual assault allegations by January 29, 2026 at the latest. The response was not to report, not to investigate, not to protect — but to handle it internally and discourage further discussion. That is the textbook definition of deliberate indifference. The superintendent personally told police the matter was being handled internally. The executive director of student services participated in a determination that no reporting obligation existed. This is not a case where the school failed to notice a problem. This is a case where the school noticed the problem and chose to bury it.
Section 1983: State-Created Danger. When school officials acting under color of state law knowingly allow a dangerous environment to persist and actively obstruct reporting, they can be held individually liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating a student’s constitutional rights. The theory is called state-created danger: the officials’ own conduct — directing employees to suppress discussion, deleting evidence, refusing to report — made the students more vulnerable than they would have been without the officials’ involvement. The superintendent’s directive to handle the matter internally and discourage further discussion is an affirmative act that enhanced the risk to every JV player who was subsequently assaulted or re-traumatized by the school’s inaction.
Premises Liability: The Windowless Room. Mark Morris High School maintained a windowless room with a lockable door inside the boys’ locker room — a space that was accessible to students, hidden from adult supervision, and designed in a way that made it a foreseeable location for exactly the kind of assault that occurred. Under Washington premises liability law, a property owner has a duty to maintain its premises in a reasonably safe condition and to protect invitees (students) from foreseeable dangers. A windowless, lockable room inside a locker room, accessible to students without adult oversight, is a dangerous condition. The school’s failure to restrict access to that room, to monitor it, or to remove the lock is premises negligence.
Spoliation of Evidence: The Deleted Messages. When Superintendent Cloninger deleted messages from her personal cellphone that discussed the investigation, she did not just commit a crime. She created a civil litigation weapon. Under Washington law and the federal rules that govern evidence destruction, when a party destroys evidence after a duty to preserve has arisen, the court can impose sanctions ranging from an adverse inference instruction — telling the jury they may assume the deleted evidence was harmful to the district — to dismissal of defenses. The detective’s March 5 report documented the deletion. The criminal charges for witness tampering independently establish the underlying conduct. In your civil case, the deleted messages are not just missing evidence. They are evidence of consciousness of guilt, of deliberate concealment, and of a defendant who chose to destroy the truth rather than let it surface.
What a Case Like This Is Worth
We are going to give you an honest assessment of what cases like this are worth — not to promise you a number, but to make sure you understand the scale of what happened and what the law allows your family to recover.
Multiple victims — at least four identified JV players — were sexually assaulted in a school setting. The district had documented notice as early as January 29, 2026. The superintendent was arrested for active obstruction, including felony witness tampering. Evidence was destroyed. Mandatory reporting laws were violated. These facts create an extraordinarily strong liability posture.
Individual claims for each victim could range from $1 million to $5 million or more in compensatory damages alone — covering past and future mental health treatment, educational remediation or transfer costs, loss of earning capacity if psychological injuries impair educational attainment, and the non-economic harm of pain, suffering, emotional distress, and the betrayal of trust by the very institution charged with your child’s safety.
Punitive damages are available against individual defendants in Washington for reckless or intentional conduct. The superintendent’s direction to suppress reporting and her deletion of evidence are the kind of deliberate, conscious choices that punitive damages exist to punish. These damages are pursued against Cloninger and Schoonover personally, not against the district itself.
Washington does not impose a general cap on non-economic damages in personal injury cases. The state supreme court has rejected damage caps. This means a jury is free to award what the harm is actually worth — not what a statute artificially limits it to.
With multiple victims, strong liability, evidence destruction, and the criminal proceedings independently establishing the underlying conduct, the total exposure across all defendants scales with the number of plaintiffs who come forward and the severity of proven psychological injury. Cases with this combination of facts — institutional notice, active concealment, mandatory reporting violations, and multiple child victims of sexual assault — can carry total exposure ranging from $5 million to $35 million or more.
These figures are not predictions. They are the range that the combination of facts in this case supports, based on the severity of the harm, the strength of the liability, and the absence of damage caps in Washington. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can tell you is that the school district’s insurance carrier already knows this, and the district’s lawyers are already working to minimize it.
The Insurance Playbook: What the District’s Lawyers Will Try
The school district’s insurance carrier and its defense lawyers have a playbook. We know it because Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. Here are the plays they are already running and the counter to each one.
Play 1: “We’re handling it internally.” This is the play the superintendent already ran — and it is the play the district’s lawyers will continue to run in different clothing. They will say the district is conducting its own investigation, cooperating with authorities, and taking appropriate action. The translation is: we are controlling the narrative and the evidence. The counter is that the district’s internal investigation is not a substitute for legal accountability, and the preservation letter your attorney sends the day you call is what forces the district to stop managing the story and start preserving the proof.
Play 2: “Personnel matter — we cannot discuss it.” The district will cite privacy laws and personnel confidentiality to avoid producing documents, answering questions, or sharing information. The counter is that personnel records are discoverable in litigation, that the public records act in Washington provides independent access to many district records, and that a court order cuts through the “personnel matter” shield when the personnel in question are accused of covering up the sexual assault of children.
Play 3: The quick counseling offer with a release attached. The district may offer to pay for your child’s counseling or therapy — a gesture that sounds compassionate and is designed to close the case before the full extent of the harm is known. The offer may come with a release or waiver that, if signed, extinguishes your child’s right to pursue full compensation. The counter is simple: never sign anything from the school district or its insurer without your attorney reviewing it first. A counseling benefit is not compensation for a lifetime of harm, and a release is a permanent surrender of your child’s rights.
Play 4: “The students’ conduct was the cause, not the school’s.” The district will try to isolate the blame on the juvenile perpetrators and argue that the school cannot be held responsible for the criminal acts of its students. The counter is that the school had a duty to supervise, a duty to report, and a duty to protect — and when it had notice of the danger and chose not to act, the subsequent assaults became foreseeable. The law holds institutions accountable when they know about a danger and do nothing.
Play 5: The statute-of-limitations clock. The district’s lawyers are already counting the days. Washington’s general personal injury statute of limitations is three years under RCW 4.16.080. But RCW 4.16.340 provides an extended limitations period for claims arising from childhood sexual abuse — and this extension may apply to your child depending on their age and the nature of the claims. Additionally, claims against a public school district require a tort claim notice under RCW 4.96.020 before a lawsuit can be filed. The district’s lawyers are counting on families not knowing these deadlines and not acting in time. The counter is to have an attorney confirm every applicable deadline for your child’s specific situation immediately — not next month, not after the criminal trial, now.
Play 6: Evidence destruction as a strategy. The superintendent already deleted messages. The district’s routine records management will continue to overwrite surveillance footage, purge email on retention schedules, and cycle out coaching records. Every day without a preservation letter is a day the district’s interests are served by the normal operation of its records systems. The counter is a litigation hold letter — sent the day you call — that legally freezes every relevant record and converts any subsequent destruction into sanctionable spoliation.
The First 72 Hours: What Families Should Do Now
If your child was one of the JV players assaulted at Mark Morris High School, here is what the next 72 hours should look like.
First: Get your child the right medical care. Your child needs to be seen by a mental health professional who specializes in sexual assault trauma in children and adolescents — not a general therapist, not a school counselor, but a clinician with specific training in treating sexual assault survivors. The diagnosis and treatment records from this evaluation are the foundation of your child’s injury case. The defense will try to argue that your child’s psychological harm is pre-existing or unrelated. The earliest possible evaluation by a qualified specialist is the proof that the harm is real, that it started here, and that it is connected to what happened in that locker room.
Second: Do not discuss the case with school district personnel, coaches, or other parents. The district’s lawyers are building their defense from the moment the story broke. Every conversation you have with a school employee, a coach, or another parent can be used by the defense. Be polite, be brief, and say nothing about the facts of what happened, your child’s condition, or your legal intentions. If anyone from the district contacts you, direct them to your attorney.
Third: Do not post about the incidents on social media. This cannot be overstated. The defense will mine every public statement, every social media post, every comment thread for anything that can be used to undermine your child’s claim. A post about your child “seeming okay” at a family event can be used to argue the harm is not serious. A post expressing anger at the school can be taken out of context. Say nothing publicly until your case is resolved.
Fourth: Do not sign anything. No release, no waiver, no acknowledgment, no settlement offer, no counseling agreement, no school district form of any kind. If the district offers you anything — therapy, a transfer, a meeting, a benefit — say “I need to have my attorney review this first” and call us.
Fifth: Preserve everything you have. Every text message your child sent or received about the incidents. Every email from the school. Every photograph. Every doctor’s appointment record. Every note from a teacher who noticed a change in your child. Every piece of physical evidence from the school. Save it, back it up, and do not delete anything.
Sixth: Call an attorney. The preservation letter that freezes the school district’s evidence has to go out now — not after the criminal trial, not after the school board finishes its investigation, not after you have had time to process what happened. Every day that passes without that letter is a day the district’s routine records management continues to destroy evidence. The attorney you call should have specific experience with institutional sexual assault and hazing cases — not just general personal injury, but the specific dynamics of school liability, mandatory reporting law, Title IX, and the psychology of child sexual assault trauma.
How We Build a School Sexual Assault Case
Here is how a case like this is actually built — from the first phone call to the courthouse.
Week one: The preservation letter goes out. The day you call, a letter goes to the Longview School District’s legal counsel ordering the preservation of every relevant record — surveillance footage, email servers, personnel files, team records, internal investigation documents, the superintendent’s devices, the coaching staff’s communications. This letter legally freezes the evidence. After that letter is on file, any destruction of those records is sanctionable spoliation — meaning the court can punish the district and tell the jury to assume the worst about what was destroyed.
Week one: The tort claim notice is filed. Under Washington law, claims against a public school district require a formal tort claim notice to be filed with the district before a lawsuit can be filed. This is a procedural gate with its own deadline. Your attorney confirms the current deadline and files the notice immediately.
Weeks one through four: Records demands and public records requests. We file public records requests with the Longview Police Department, the Longview School District, and any other agency with relevant records. We demand the police investigative file, the detective’s cellphone search report, the district’s internal communications, and every document that shows who knew what and when.
Weeks four through twelve: Discovery. Once the lawsuit is filed, the formal discovery process begins. We serve written interrogatories — questions the district must answer under oath. We demand production of every email, text, memo, and record related to the case. We take depositions — sworn testimony — from the superintendent, the executive director of student services, the coaching staff, the athletic director, and every administrator who touched this case. The depositions are where the district’s story falls apart, because under oath, the people who chose to cover this up have to answer for every decision they made.
The criminal case as a civil weapon. The criminal proceedings against Cloninger, Schoonover, and the juvenile perpetrators create a parallel-track advantage. If any defendant pleads guilty or is convicted, those findings can be used in the civil case. Admissions made in plea allocutions, testimony given at trial, and conviction findings all carry weight in the civil case. The civil case does not depend on criminal convictions — but convictions significantly strengthen your position.
Expert witnesses. We retain a child psychiatrist specializing in sexual assault trauma to evaluate your child, diagnose their injuries, and testify about the long-term psychological prognosis. We retain a school safety and mandatory reporting compliance expert to testify about what the district should have done and how far below the standard of care its conduct fell. We retain a forensic psychologist to address your child’s long-term care needs and a life-care planner to project the lifetime cost of treatment. We may retain a forensic digital expert to attempt recovery of the deleted messages from the superintendent’s phone.
How the number is built. A life-care planner builds the cost stream — every therapy session, every psychiatric medication, every educational intervention, every year of treatment projected across your child’s expected lifetime. A forensic economist reduces that stream to present value — what it is worth in today’s dollars. The non-economic damages — the pain, the fear, the lost trust, the stolen childhood — are presented through your child’s testimony, your family’s testimony, the expert’s clinical evaluation, and the sheer weight of what happened. The punitive damages are built from the superintendent’s own conduct — the directive to suppress, the deletion of evidence, the choice to protect the institution over the children.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the school district for what happened to my child?
Yes. A public school district in Washington can be held legally responsible when it fails to protect students from foreseeable harm — especially when it had actual knowledge of the danger and chose not to act. The district had notice of the sexual assault allegations by January 29, 2026, and its leadership chose to handle the matter internally rather than report to law enforcement. That choice is the foundation of a civil claim for negligent supervision, negligence per se for the mandatory reporting violation, and Title IX deliberate indifference. A tort claim notice must be filed with the district before a lawsuit can be filed, and your attorney should handle this immediately.
What if the school says it was the students’ fault, not the school’s?
The school district will try to isolate blame on the juvenile perpetrators. But the law does not let an institution that had notice of a danger and did nothing off the hook by pointing at the people who carried out the harm. The district had a duty to supervise the locker room, a duty to restrict access to the windowless room where the assaults occurred, a duty to report the abuse to authorities, and a duty to protect its students from foreseeable harm. When it failed all of those duties, the subsequent assaults became the foreseeable consequence of its inaction. The students who committed the assaults are responsible — and so is every adult who knew about the danger and chose to look away.
How long do I have to file a claim?
Washington’s general personal injury statute of limitations is three years under RCW 4.16.080. However, RCW 4.16.340 provides an extended limitations period for claims arising from childhood sexual abuse, which may apply to your child depending on their age and the specific nature of the claims. Additionally, claims against a public school district require a tort claim notice under RCW 4.96.020 before a lawsuit can be filed. These deadlines are not flexible. An attorney must confirm every applicable deadline for your child’s specific situation immediately — because the district’s lawyers are already counting the days.
Does the criminal case against the superintendent affect my civil case?
Yes — it helps. The criminal proceedings against Cloninger, Schoonover, and the juvenile perpetrators create a parallel-track advantage. If any defendant pleads guilty or is convicted, those findings can be used as evidence in the civil case. The criminal charges independently establish the underlying conduct — the failure to report, the obstruction, the witness tampering — which reduces the civil burden of proof on those elements. Your civil case does not depend on criminal convictions, but convictions significantly strengthen your position and increase the pressure on the district to settle.
What if my child didn’t fight back during the assault?
This is one of the most common and most painful fears survivors and their families carry. The science is clear: freezing is the most common physical response to sexual assault, not the exception. In clinical studies, approximately 70 percent of rape survivors experienced significant tonic immobility — an involuntary paralysis where the body locks up and the voice will not come. This is a survival reflex, not consent, not weakness, not evidence against your child. It is evidence of how severe the trauma was. Survivors who froze go on to develop PTSD at nearly three times the rate of those who did not. Your child’s freezing is part of the injury, not a defense against it.
Will my child have to testify?
In most cases, yes — but the process is designed to protect child witnesses. Your child’s testimony may be taken through a deposition (sworn testimony outside of court, with attorneys present) and, if the case goes to trial, in court. The court can take measures to protect child witnesses, including closing the courtroom, using support persons, and limiting the scope of cross-examination. Your attorney will prepare your child for every step and will fight to make the process as protective as possible. Many cases settle before trial, which means your child may never have to testify in a courtroom — but the case must be built as if trial is a real possibility, because that is what creates the pressure to settle.
What if the school district offers to pay for my child’s counseling?
Be very careful. The district may offer counseling, therapy, or other benefits as a gesture of goodwill. This offer may come with a release or waiver that, if signed, permanently extinguishes your child’s right to pursue full compensation. A counseling benefit is not compensation for a lifetime of harm. Never sign anything from the school district or its insurer without having your attorney review it first. If the district offers to help, say “I need to have my attorney review this first” and call us.
How much is my child’s case worth?
No attorney can give you a specific number without evaluating your child’s specific injuries, the full scope of the district’s conduct, and the evidence that survives. What we can tell you is that cases with this combination of facts — multiple child victims of sexual assault in a school setting, documented institutional notice, active obstruction by the superintendent including felony witness tampering, deleted evidence, and mandatory reporting violations — carry significant exposure. Individual claims for each victim could range from $1 million to $5 million or more in compensatory damages, with additional punitive exposure against individual defendants. Washington has no general cap on non-economic damages. Total exposure across all defendants and all victims scales with the number of plaintiffs and the severity of proven psychological injury. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What if the surveillance footage from November is already gone?
It may be — school surveillance systems typically overwrite on a 30-to-90-day cycle, and the earliest incidents date to November 2025. But the absence of footage does not end the case. The police investigation file, witness statements, the detective’s cellphone search report, the district’s own internal communications, and the testimony of the people involved all provide evidence independent of the video. And if the district allowed footage to be overwritten after it had a duty to preserve it — after January 29, 2026, when it learned of the allegations — the court can give an adverse inference instruction telling the jury to assume the missing footage would have shown what the plaintiffs say it showed. The destruction of evidence is itself a weapon.
Can we sue the superintendent personally?
Yes. Karen Cloninger can be sued in her individual capacity for her personal conduct — directing employees to suppress the matter, failing to report, obstructing the investigation, and deleting evidence. Washington allows punitive damages against individual defendants for reckless or intentional conduct, and the superintendent’s deliberate choices are the kind of conduct that punitive damages exist to punish. Andrew Schoonover can also be sued individually for his role in the failure to report and the false statements to a public servant. These individual claims are separate from the claims against the school district itself.
About Attorney911
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes Washington cases, working with local counsel where required. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. And the person who answers the phone at 1-888-ATTY-911 is a live member of our staff, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — not an answering service.
Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is the managing partner of the firm and the lead counsel in an active $10 million-plus hazing lawsuit against a university and fraternity — a case that involves the same dynamics of institutional failure, team culture, and the escalation of hazing into catastrophic harm that you see in what happened at Mark Morris High School. Ralph was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the story the institution does not want told — and how to tell it to a jury in a way they cannot forget.
Lupe Peña is a former insurance-defense attorney who spent years inside a national defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the other side values your child’s suffering, how they choose their medical experts, how they use surveillance and social media monitoring, and how they engineer the “quick offer with a release” trap. He now uses that knowledge for injured clients. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
We handle cases involving child injury, premises liability, negligent security and sexual assault, and wrongful death. The firm has recovered more than $50 million for clients. We have a 4.9-star rating with more than 250 Google reviews. We have been in business since July 18, 2001 — more than 24 years. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
If your child was one of the JV basketball players assaulted at Mark Morris High School — or if you are a family in any community facing a similar failure by the school that was supposed to protect your child — call us. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. And the preservation letter that freezes the evidence before it disappears goes out the day you call.
Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. If your family is more comfortable in Spanish, we will serve you fully in your language.
The school district had its chance to protect your child. It chose differently. Now it is your turn to choose — and the first call is the one that starts the clock working for your family instead of against you.