By Conner Board -- KING 5 Seattle | Follow this link to access the online article
LACEY, Wash. — A Lacey family has filed a legal claim against North Thurston Public Schools, alleging school staff failed to protect their nonverbal son with special needs from repeated sexual assaults by a classmate over a six-month period.
According to legal documents, the third-grader was sexually assaulted, harassed and abused by what the claim describes as a "sexually aggressive classmate" in his special needs classroom at Lacey Elementary School from November 2024 to June 2025.
Collin Pfingst, the child’s father, said he counted at least 32 incidents documented in incident reports over six months.
"I've thought about it for hours, on why they would let this happen, and I just can't figure it out," Pfingst said.
The claim alleges that despite being aware of the ongoing assaults, teachers and staff at Lacey Elementary "deliberately disregarded" the child's safety. Pfingst and his wife, Natasha, said the school did not notify them about the incidents until two months after the school year ended.
"No one told us," Pfingst said. "Our son can't talk. He is nonverbal, so he was unable to tell us."
Legal documents describe repeated groping and grabbing, among other things.
"It involved a lot of touching and watching in the bathroom," Pfingst said. "It seems they documented it and just didn't do anything about it. They didn't remove the kid who was doing this to our son. They didn't remove our son from the environment. They didn't tell us. They just didn't do anything about it."
North Thurston Public Schools said it does not comment on pending litigation.
The Pfingsts said they should have been contacted after the first incident so they could have intervened.
"They had a big responsibility to make sure our son was taken care of, but they didn't," said Natasha Pfingst.
They also said the district failed to protect the offending student.
"You need to remove that kid to protect him as well," Pfingst said. "He also has special needs, and they just allowed this to occur for six months and did nothing."
The family said their son, who has always been sweet and gentle, has exhibited aggression and violent outbursts over the past year. They said this has been extremely difficult for their family.
"This last year has been a bit confusing because we didn't know why this was happening," Pfingst said. "And now, since all this has come out and been brought to our attention, it's starting to make some pretty good sense as to why this is happening."
Pfingst said the family wants to ensure that similar incidents do not happen to other children and wants accountability for what happened to their son.
"When your kid can't talk and can't tell you what's going on, you have to trust, you need to have a lot of trust in those people to take care of your kid, and they took advantage of that trust, and they took our ability to protect our child,” said Pfingst.
