But for the families relying on the local justice system, the new appointment offers little relief.

Lorraine Rimson has been selected to take the bench as the new Family Court Commissioner, effective June 1, 2026.

She will inherit a docket handling all family law pre-trial matters, civil protection order requests, and juvenile proceedings—a role that has been vacant since Parker’s unceremonious exit in February.

On paper, the court administration is touting Rimson’s extensive resume. Operating out of Port Townsend, Rimson has run her own private law firm focusing on family law.

She brings a stated 30 years of legal experience to the role, having served as the Jefferson County Superior Court Commissioner since March 2023, as well as a Commissioner for Clallam County District Court II, Jefferson County District Court, and a Jefferson County District Court Judge Pro Tem.

But for those who have actually witnessed Rimson in action, the resume only tells half the story.

Since January 2023, Rimson has served as a Commissioner Pro Tem (a substitute commissioner) for the Clallam County Superior Court.

During this time, those observing her courtroom have noted deeply alarming patterns. Among advocates and families who have navigated her courtroom, Rimson has cultivated a reputation for routinely siding with and supporting the perpetrators of abuse over the victims seeking protection.

In a judicial system tasked with safeguarding vulnerable families and children in crisis, installing a commissioner with a documented track record of supporting abusers is not just an administrative misstep—it is a devastating slap in the face to Clallam County.

The appointment raises serious, lingering questions about the judgment and priorities of the Clallam County court leadership.

It was less than two years ago that former-Presiding Judge Brent Basden and Court Administrator Lacey Halberg bypassed standard hiring safeguards to fast-track Brian Parker onto the bench.

Parker, who admitted to having no training in psychology, domestic violence, or sexual abuse, was hired despite an arrest by the Everett Police Department for perjury.

His tenure ended in disgrace following a slew of controversies, including stalking allegations, alleged public aggression against a resident and her child, and a community protest by the Handmaids outside the courthouse.

Following the Parker debacle, the public was owed a transparent, rigorous hiring process aimed at restoring trust and protecting the community. Instead, they have been handed Lorraine Rimson.

Once again, the evidence points to a systemic failure of leadership at the highest levels of our local judiciary.

By elevating a Pro Tem commissioner known for alienating victims and empowering perpetrators, the court has signaled that the lessons of the Brian Parker scandal have gone completely ignored.

We will monitor Rimson’s courtroom closely as she assumes her full-time role on June 1st.

The Longview Police Department confirmed the 9:26 a.m. arrest in a statement, noting Cloninger faces charges of tampering with a witness (a felony), failure to report (a gross misdemeanor), and obstructing a law enforcement officer (a gross misdemeanor).

Police announced that additional charges are forthcoming for Andrew Schoonover, Executive Director of Student Services for Longview Public Schools.

Schoonover’s pending charges include failure to report and making a false or misleading statement to a public servant.

According to the police department’s probable cause statement, detectives developed information that Mark Morris High School staff and district leadership—including Cloninger—were made aware of allegations involving physical and sexual misconduct involving students as early as Jan. 29.

Detectives cited allegations involving multiple students, including a report that one student was forcibly dragged into the Mark Morris High School varsity team room, pinned to the ground, and partially disrobed.

As rumors of the incident circulated on social media, Longview Police Department leadership directly contacted Cloninger on Feb. 5 to ask if law enforcement assistance was needed.

Detectives allege they were informed that the district had investigated the matter and handled it internally.

An official police investigation was launched on Feb. 9 after a parent contacted law enforcement directly to report a sexual assault.

During the inquiry, which involved multiple search warrants, investigators developed probable cause related to mandatory reporting requirements, information provided to law enforcement, and internal communications.

Detectives allege that district employees raised internal concerns regarding their mandatory reporting obligations and whether law enforcement should be contacted.

According to the probable cause statement, investigators developed information alleging employees were directed by Cloninger to handle the matter internally and were discouraged from further discussion regarding the incident.

“This investigation required a significant amount of time, coordination, and evidence review,” Police Chief Robert Huhta said in a statement Thursday. “We understand the significance this case has in our community and the concern it has created for students, families, staff, and the broader public.”

“Keeping children safe is a shared community responsibility,” Huhta continued. “I want to thank our detectives for the professionalism, diligence, and care they have shown throughout this investigation. Our responsibility is to follow the facts, conduct thorough investigations, protect the integrity of the process, and present information through the legal system appropriately.”

The Longview Police Department stated that the investigation remains active and ongoing, noting that additional arrests or charges remain possible as detectives follow investigative leads.

Due to the active nature of the investigation and anticipated court proceedings, city and police officials stated they will not be providing interviews or responding to media inquiries at this time.

On May 11, 2026, Strawn filed an exhaustive 83-page appellate brief seeking to overturn devastating King County Superior Court orders that stripped her of her children, erased her domestic violence protections, and weaponized her medical emergencies against her.

At the center of this legal battle is an all-too-familiar name for readers of The Olympic Herald: Dr. William Singer.

The appeal paints a troubling picture of a court system that allegedly prioritized docket management over due process, relying heavily on a heavily criticized evaluation by Dr. Singer to justify a complete inversion of a domestic violence narrative.

The Illusion of a Fair Trial

According to the appellate brief, the dispositive phase of Strawn’s dissolution trial took place in June 2025. However, Strawn was entirely absent.

Contemporaneous medical documentation filed with the court showed she was suffering from acute illnesses, including pneumonia and mononucleosis, with emergency room notes requesting that she be excused from court proceedings.

According to the brief, rather than grant a stay or a medical continuance, the King County trial judge proceeded with a one-sided trial. The court deemed Strawn’s medical absences “not credible” and labeled her emergency motions as financially motivated “delay tactics.”

With Strawn medically incapacitated and unable to cross-examine witnesses, present evidence, or authenticate her own exhibits, the court issued life-altering final orders. Her ex-husband was granted sole decision-making and custody of their children.

Strawn was also ordered to pay child support, forced to sell her home, and hit with $10,000 in attorney fees for “intransigence”—fees that were effectively deducted from the back-support owed to the state for the children’s care.

“This appeal is about something narrower and more fundamental,” Strawn’s brief argues. “Whether a court may enter life-altering final dissolution, parenting, support, property, domestic-violence-related, and fee orders after the dispositive phase of trial proceeded without one party’s meaningful participation.”

A Pattern of “Fatal Flaws” and Regulatory Violations

The foundation for this drastic shift in custody rests heavily on a behavioral assessment provided by Dr. Singer of the Northwest Evaluation Center. Court documents, appellate briefs, and previous state investigations outline a staggering list of allegations against the evaluator’s methodology.

According to the appellate brief, Dr. Singer’s assessment assigned Strawn’s ex-husband a “Level 0” threat rating, which required no domestic violence treatment.

The brief argues that a “Level 0” threat rating is entirely non-existent under the Washington Administrative Code, effectively allowing the evaluator to “recommend away” court-ordered domestic violence treatment.

This practice of minimizing the necessity for treatment has faced direct regulatory and judicial scrutiny. As we previously reported, Division I of the Court of Appeals recently overturned another King County ruling explicitly due to “significant flaws” in Dr. Singer’s assessments.

In that unpublished opinion, the appellate court found that Dr. Singer violated WAC standards by diminishing the need for domestic violence treatment based solely on a lack of police arrests or criminal charges.

State regulators have also cited Dr. Singer’s program for documentation failures. A late 2025 investigation by the Department of Social and Health Services resulted in a “founded” complaint against the evaluator.

State investigators determined that while the program could verbally articulate a rationale for recommending alternative mental health therapy instead of domestic violence intervention, that justification was completely absent from the written assessment—a failure deemed “insufficient” under state standards.

Furthermore, the appeal and state investigations highlight a pattern of allegedly ignoring or refusing victim input.

The DSHS complaint formally cited the evaluator for failing to sufficiently summarize victims’ statements from court documents.

While Strawn’s trial court noted that she “declined to respond” to Dr. Singer, her appellate brief alleges her diligent attempts over several months to provide a victim statement were repeatedly refused by the evaluator.

These issues are compounded by what the appeal characterizes as an incomplete and biased record review.

A declaration from Dr. Daniel Rybicki, cited in the brief, identifies “fatal flaws” in Dr. Singer’s assessment. According to the declaration, Dr. Singer failed to contact the victim to collect collateral data, a statewide requirement.

Moreover, Dr. Rybicki noted that Dr. Singer’s review was limited exclusively to materials provided by the ex-husband and his counsel, omitting crucial evidence such as Strawn’s DVPO petition, photographs of her injuries, 2016 police reports, and an eyewitness declaration regarding a firearm incident.

Finally, the brief raises alarming concerns over “phantom” corrective reports. Following the DSHS “founded” complaint, Dr. Singer was ordered to amend his assessment under a state-mandated Corrective Action Plan.

When Strawn’s counsel attempted to obtain this mandated report, the evaluator allegedly provided a screenshot claiming it was filed under a King County docket sub-number. According to the appeal and counsel’s sworn declaration, this sub-number is a “phantom”—it does not correspond to any visible entry on the public court docket.

Inverting the Victim Narrative

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of Strawn’s appeal is the court’s complete reversal of the domestic violence posture.

Prior to the dissolution orders, Strawn held a valid, fully adjudicated Domestic Violence Protection Order protecting her and her children from her ex-husband.

However, following the one-sided June trial, the judge used the unchallenged testimony to effectively rewrite history. The court imposed statutory restrictions against Strawn, labeling her the abuser, claiming she engaged in coercive control, and stating her claims of abuse lacked credibility.

Strawn’s brief forcefully argues that a court cannot fairly “invert the domestic-violence narrative through a final trial process in which only one side meaningfully participated.”

The Path Forward

Strawn is asking the Court of Appeals to vacate the June 2025 final orders entirely and remand the case for a new, fair trial in front of a different judicial officer.

Her appeal raises a critical question for the Washington judicial system: Does a court’s authority to manage its docket and avoid delays supersede a mother’s fundamental right to due process?

For now, Melissa Strawn and her children remain in a devastating legal limbo, awaiting a higher court to determine if justice was truly served when only one side was allowed to speak.

For the 2023-2025 biennium, that flow amounts to $30 billion.

But according to a highly critical performance audit released yesterday by Washington State Auditor Pat McCarthy, the digital infrastructure controlling that $30 billion is “unstable,” outdated, and at high risk of “catastrophic failure.”

The audit reveals that the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction relies on a 17-year-old computer network to calculate and distribute funding for the state’s 1 million public school students.

Examining The Accuracy Of School Funding Systems At OSPI

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First implemented in 2008, the state’s core “apportionment system” relies on technology that struggles to meet modern data processing demands.

For local school districts relying heavily on state apportionments and local enrichment levies, the auditor’s report highlights a significant vulnerability. A failure at the state level could cause severe cash flow disruptions for local school districts.

“The software system at the heart of this audit must make extremely complex calculations, which fund the education of more than 1 million Washington school children,” Auditor McCarthy noted in her conclusion. “Yet this system... is outdated, a legacy IT system we found to be unstable and at risk of failure.”

A System at the Breaking Point

The audit paints a picture of a critical financial infrastructure relying heavily on outdated manual processes.

OSPI’s core apportionment system is fed by eight different data applications that track everything from student enrollment and special education needs to bus routes and school lunches.

As state laws surrounding education funding change year by year, the system has struggled to keep pace. Because the aging technology can no longer reliably handle automated data transfers between these systems, OSPI staff have resorted to manual “workarounds.”

In some cases, staff must manually type enrollment and staffing summaries into three separate systems, which the audit notes increases the risk of human error.

The fragility of the system is not hypothetical.

The audit notes a past incident where a routine data backup consumed all available storage space on OSPI’s aging infrastructure. The resulting crash brought multiple systems to a halt, making the agency’s systems unavailable for at least three days.

A 2024 review conducted by a third-party IT firm warned that the entire suite is at high risk for “catastrophic failure.”

Reliance on Key Personnel Threatens Operations

Another vulnerability identified in the audit is human reliance.

Because the system is old and lacks comprehensive documentation for its calculation processes, the state relies heavily on the institutional memory of a few longtime employees and a single vendor.

Furthermore, the audit found OSPI has not cross-trained staff on the system’s specialized work.

The report warns that if just one of these key employees were unable to work at a critical time, “the monthly apportionment calculation would be at great risk for delay, affecting the cash-flow of all Washington school districts.”

For a local school district, a delayed monthly apportionment from the state would be highly disruptive, as districts are legally required to make payroll and fund ongoing operations.

A Multi-Year Replacement Timeline

OSPI leadership acknowledges the crisis. In a formal response attached to the audit, State Superintendent Chris Reykdal agreed with the auditor’s concerns, stating the findings “reinforce our concerns and the urgency around our request for a new system.”

The state legislature has stepped in, allocating $16 million over the next four years to rebuild or replace the failing systems. However, a permanent fix is still years away.

According to OSPI’s timeline, work on the new system will begin in July 2026, and the agency does not expect it to be fully implemented until the 2028-2029 school year.

Until then, local school districts will have to rely on the existing 17-year-old system to manage the state’s multi-billion-dollar education budget.

According to the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office, deputies responded to the 3700 block of Jackson Avenue SE in unincorporated Port Orchard at approximately 2:30 a.m. on May 19.

Upon arrival, they discovered an unoccupied SUV stuck in a ditch with visible damage and deployed airbags.

Investigators at the scene reported that evidence indicated the vehicle had crossed the center line, dislodged a manhole cover, and struck both a street sign and a backyard fence belonging to two nearby homes before coming to a stop.

Roughly 50 minutes after the initial response, deputies located the suspected driver at a nearby urgent care clinic, where he was receiving treatment for crash-related injuries.

The Sheriff’s Office stated that the man exhibited signs of impairment and admitted to deputies that he had been drinking at a bowling alley prior to the collision.

After the suspect refused a portable breathalyzer test, deputies obtained a warrant to conduct a blood draw.

A subsequent records check by law enforcement revealed that the man was driving with a suspended license and has a prior arrest from 2024 for DUI and hit-and-run.

While the Sheriff’s Office did not initially name the suspect in their public statement, Kitsap County Jail records show that 38-year-old Lemanue Perez Morales was booked on Tuesday, May 19, by the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office in connection with the incident.

According to the booking roster, Morales is being held on suspicion of the following charges:

• Driving Under the Influence (Gross Misdemeanor)

• Hit-and-Run of an Unattended Vehicle (Misdemeanor)

• Driving with a Suspended or Revoked License in the Second Degree (Gross Misdemeanor)

Jail records indicate a $10,000 bond was requested for the suspended license charge. Morales is scheduled for a court appearance later today.

The First Amended Complaint, filed by domestic violence survivor Gina Bloom, accuses Parker and prominent Everett attorneys Damon Canfield and Jennifer Bitner of orchestrating a sprawling civil conspiracy.

According to the lawsuit, the defendants utilized a covert financial referral pipeline, fabricated evidence, suppressed records, and weaponized law enforcement to strip Bloom of her children and terrorize her into silence.

The lawsuit—which names Parker, his former firm Port Gardner Law Group, Canfield, Bitner, and the Canfield Madow Law Group as defendants—claims that the family court system was actively corrupted from the inside.

This civil action, originally filed in Clallam County in January 2025, provides startling new context to Parker’s abrupt termination from the Clallam County bench earlier this year, his prior arrest for first-degree perjury by the Everett Police Department, and the mounting community protests over judicial integrity.

On May 19, 2026, attorneys for Brian Parker and the Port Gardner Law Group filed a sweeping 40-page Answer, categorically denying the accusations of conspiracy, harassment, and evidence fabrication.

Parker’s legal team is seeking a full dismissal of the case, arguing that he is shielded by judicial immunity.

The “Referral Monopoly”

At the heart of the complaint is the allegation that Parker’s role as a supposedly neutral Guardian ad Litem in Snohomish County was fatally compromised by a financial dependency on Canfield Madow Law Group.

According to court data cited in the lawsuit, 12 of Parker’s 24 total Snohomish County GAL appointments—exactly 50 percent—originated from CMLG cases.

The complaint describes this not as a professional network, but as a “monopoly” that rendered Parker “structurally incapable of the impartiality his statutory role required.”

The lawsuit claims this pipeline was initiated when Canfield specifically requested Parker by name for Bloom’s custody case in January 2021.

From there, the complaint alleges, Parker and Canfield engaged in frequent, unbilled, and undisclosed private communications to align their litigation strategies.

The complaint notes that in November 2021, Canfield filed a sworn declaration from Bloom’s ex-husband claiming Canfield had “never had Brian Parker as a GAL before this matter.” The lawsuit alleges this was a deliberate falsehood designed to conceal their extensive professional history.

In their May 19 Answer, Parker and Port Gardner admitted that Parker had been a court-appointed GAL in other cases involving CMLG attorneys prior to Bloom’s case, and conceded the November 2021 declaration exists and “speaks for itself.”

However, they vehemently denied the existence of any “monopoly” or financial dependency, and wholly rejected claims of fraudulent coordination.

Allegations of Sexual Harassment and Retaliation

The most disturbing personal allegations against Parker stem from his initial interactions with Bloom.

According to the complaint, during a February 2021 meeting at Parker’s Everett office, Parker mocked Bloom’s English, demeaned her as a Romanian immigrant, and engaged in sexual harassment.

The lawsuit alleges Parker asked Bloom to move closer to him and placed his hand on her lap without consent while she was recounting the trauma of her domestic abuse and a February 2020 rape by her ex-husband.

When Bloom rebuffed these advances, Parker allegedly warned her that disclosing his behavior would make her appear “mentally unstable.”

The complaint further details an April 2021 phone call in which Parker allegedly raised his voice and threatened Bloom that if she did not bring her children to his office for an interview—refusing her request for a home visit where her domestic violence advocate could be present—he would obtain a court order for her ex-husband to physically take them from her.

The lawsuit claims Parker then weaponized his threats. In subsequent GAL reports, Parker diagnosed Bloom with a “personality disorder,” allegedly lifting symptoms directly from an online psychology book to preemptively destroy her credibility.

Parker’s lay diagnosis was heavily relied upon by the court, despite the fact that Parker allegedly suppressed five separate licensed medical evaluations that cleared Bloom of any mental health issues and documented her severe PTSD as a domestic violence survivor.

In their formal response, Parker’s legal team categorically denied all allegations of sexual harassment, mocking, and retaliatory threats.

Parker admitted that a phone call regarding bringing the children to his office occurred, but denied threatening her.

Furthermore, the defendants formally conceded that Parker “does not have clinical training or a license in any mental health discipline”—though they deny any wrongdoing in his subsequent mental health reporting to the court.

Suppressing Evidence and Illegal Surveillance

The lawsuit accuses Parker of routinely turning a blind eye to the ex-husband’s misconduct while suppressing evidence that corroborated Bloom’s fears.

In August 2021, the complaint alleges, the ex-husband took the children to Florida in direct violation of an active domestic violence protection order, causing one child to miss a scheduled forensic interview. The lawsuit claims Parker condoned and approved the trip without notifying Bloom or the court.

Further, the complaint states that throughout the summer of 2021, the ex-husband illegally surveilled and recorded interactions involving the children and transmitted those videos to Parker.

In one July 2021 recording taken by the ex-husband using a GoPro, the children allegedly told a responding police officer that they were afraid of their father and believed he was going to hurt them.

Parker allegedly received the recordings but never disclosed them to the court, continuing instead to characterize Bloom as the source of the children’s distress.

Parker’s Answer document offers a striking admission on the surveillance: Defendants admit that the ex-husband transferred video files to Parker and that Parker did not reference the videos in his reports.

However, the defense claims that Parker “does not recall viewing the videos.” The defense also denies that Parker permitted or approved the Florida trip.

Courthouse Intimidation and Perjury

The harassment allegedly did not stop at Parker’s office door. The lawsuit claims that Parker used his physical presence in court settings to intimidate Bloom.

During an October 2021 domestic violence protection order hearing—a proceeding in which Parker had no court-assigned role—Parker allegedly sat beside the ex-husband and Canfield, testified against Bloom, and later winked and licked his lips at her in the courthouse hallway, causing her to suffer a panic attack.

In a separate incident in December 2022, months after his formal GAL role had ended, Parker allegedly walked past Bloom outside the courthouse making kissy faces, winking, and making huffing noises, prompting her to scream at him in the street.

While Parker’s defense team denies the sexually suggestive gestures, the Answer formally admits that Bloom screamed at Parker during the December 2022 encounter.

These allegations are set against the backdrop of Parker’s ultimate referral for criminal charges.

During the May 2022 trial, Parker testified under oath that he had no recollection of Bloom ever requesting a home visit.

However, the Everett Police Department later recommended first-degree perjury charges against him after discovering that Parker had specifically billed for reading the email request he denied receiving. In their Answer, Parker’s attorneys simply state that the trial testimony, billing entries, and police records “speak for themselves.”

The October 2021 Custody Flip

The lawsuit paints a damning picture of the events of October 29, 2021—the day Bloom lost primary custody of her two young sons.

That morning, Bloom’s 5-year-old son was sick. While her ex-husband was in a different city attending a small claims court hearing against Bloom’s best friend, Bloom took her son to the Seattle Children’s Hospital Emergency Room, where he later tested positive for COVID-19. Bloom sent three timestamped emails to Canfield and Parker notifying them of her location.

Yet, at an emergency ex parte hearing that afternoon, Canfield allegedly told the court that Bloom’s whereabouts were unknown and that her decision to take the child to the hospital was a dangerous “self-help change of custody.”

According to the complaint, the evidence used to strip Bloom of custody was a declaration from her ex-husband’s pregnant girlfriend.

The lawsuit alleges this document was drafted verbatim in English by the ex-husband on a CMLG template and signed by the girlfriend, a native Spanish speaker who later required two court interpreters at trial.

The complaint claims Parker even advised the ex-husband on using Google Translate to forge the statement for a 14-day hearing that had not yet been scheduled.

The lawsuit highlights this level of private coordination as a stark contrast to a June 2021 email in which Parker refused to relay a simple scheduling question for Bloom, telling her that his “role requires objectivity” and he could not “act as one party’s representative or advocate.”

Parker’s attorneys admitted both the June email and the Google Translate emails exist, but denied participating in any scheme.

Emails obtained by Bloom show that at 11:40 a.m.—more than two hours before the hearing began—Parker had already promised Canfield and the ex-husband in a private email that he would “definitely recommend an immediate change of custody,” abandoning any pretense of a neutral investigation.

Furthermore, the complaint reveals that on October 14, 2021, Parker had called CPS to disparage Bloom’s credibility—describing her as “very difficult to handle” and having “low credibility”—immediately following a phone call with Canfield.

The complaint further alleges that Parker’s October 26, 2021, report falsely asserted that Bloom was noncooperative with a court-ordered psychological evaluation, despite Parker receiving an email from the evaluator, Dr. Monique Brown, clarifying that the delay was caused by the doctor’s own COVID-19 exposure.

According to the lawsuit, Parker’s law clerk, Matthew Jankovic, pointed out this error before filing, yet Parker directed him to file the uncorrected report anyway.

In their Answer, Parker’s attorneys stated the emails and reports simply “speak for themselves.” Internal firm emails cited in the complaint also show a Port Gardner paralegal celebrating the October 29 custody transfer, writing to Parker: “I bet she either harms herself or calls cps and the police on him.” The defense acknowledged the email’s existence.

Parker’s defense team formally admits the October 14 CPS email took place, and they concede a crucial point regarding the October 29 hearing: Parker never actually interviewed the girlfriend, whose declaration played a pivotal role in the custody flip.

Weaponizing Law Enforcement

After losing custody, Bloom alleges she was subjected to a coordinated campaign of “coercive control” executed through the police.

The lawsuit documents five separate incidents between January 2022 and October 2024 where the ex-husband, allegedly acting on the direct advice of CMLG attorneys, called 911 or filed police reports against Bloom for exercising basic parenting rights. These included:

• Calling the police on Bloom for being at a local Chase Bank branch to handle joint accounts.

• Reporting her for using “Our Family Wizard,” the court-mandated co-parenting app, to arrange visits.

• Calling 911 on her for attending her son’s public football games.

In every instance, law enforcement closed the cases without criminal findings. In one notable January 2024 declination, the Marysville Municipal Prosecutor refused to file charges, officially concluding that the police reports were being filed for an “improper purpose” simply to “gain an advantage in the on-going hostile custody battle.”

To highlight the alleged disconnect between the defense’s private views and public arguments, the lawsuit cites an email Canfield sent to Parker on November 23, 2021.

Canfield allegedly sent a news story about Josh Powell—a Washington father who notoriously murdered his two sons during a supervised visit in 2012—to mock Bloom’s fears, writing about her “unnatural obsession with her children being injured.”

The complaint points to this email as evidence that the defendants privately knew Bloom was not dangerous, even as they argued the opposite in court. Parker’s attorneys admitted the email “speaks for itself” but denied any conspiracy.

Stalking, Death Threats, and a Flight into Hiding

As Bloom attempted to sound the alarm on Parker’s alleged misconduct, the intimidation tactics allegedly escalated into terror.

The complaint outlines a horrifying sequence of threats. In March 2023, Bloom found a note on her windshield at her Sephora workplace in Bellevue reading “dead” with a smiley face.

Two months later, during a supervised visit, she received a jewelry box containing a label that read “KILL YOURSELF.”

In December 2023, Bloom alleges she was actively followed through the Bellevue Square mall while at work by Damon Canfield. On that same day, she returned to her confidential address to find a letter assembled from label-maker stickers that read: “YOU DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE. YOU ARE BETTER DEAD!”

Terrified that her police reports were continually being turned against her, Bloom fled. The lawsuit states she spent six months in hiding under the protection of domestic violence services and legally changed her name to escape the harassment.

The lawsuit also outlines an incident of intimidation that allegedly occurred well after Parker was removed from the family law case.

On February 28, 2025, while this lawsuit was pending and Parker was a sitting commissioner in Clallam County, he allegedly stared at Bloom during a venue hearing, placed a pencil in his mouth, bit his lips, and winked at her outside the clerk’s office.

The defense admitted Bloom was in the courthouse but explicitly denied Parker engaged in any sexually suggestive behavior.

A Tragic Vindication

The most heartbreaking revelations in the 148-page complaint come from law enforcement records involving the very home Parker deemed safer for the children.

According to the lawsuit, in January 2024, the ex-husband’s new wife—the same woman whose declaration was used to take Bloom’s children away—called 911. Bodycam footage reportedly captured her telling police she was trapped, feared her husband would hurt her, and suspected he was tracking her phone.

A year later, in March 2025, Bloom’s 11-year-old son called 911 from the backyard of his father’s house. According to the 911 transcript cited in the complaint, the child told the dispatcher his father was threatening his stepmom and that his dad “always lies.”

The child’s final plea to the dispatcher before hanging up was simple: “I want to go back to my mom. She lives in Bellevue. Can you take me back to my mom?”

Immunity and “Judicial Error”

In response to the sprawling allegations, Parker and the Port Gardner Law Group argue the lawsuit should be thrown out entirely.

In their affirmative defenses, Parker’s attorneys assert protection under “quasi-judicial immunity” and “litigation privilege”—legal doctrines that often shield court-appointed officers from civil liability for actions taken during their official duties.

The defense also seeks to shift the blame away from Parker, arguing that any damages suffered by Bloom were the result of her “own fault,” the actions of “other parties,” or “judicial error” by the presiding judges.

Furthermore, Parker’s team is seeking to penalize Bloom for bringing the lawsuit, requesting that the court award them legal fees and costs under Civil Rule 11, a rule designed to punish frivolous or baseless litigation.

The Fallout

The institutional reckoning for Brian Parker has been slow but severe.

In November 2023, following the Everett Police Department’s criminal referral for first-degree perjury, Snohomish County Superior Court temporarily suspended Parker from his role as a pro tem commissioner.

However, the lawsuit notes that on December 6, 2023, the municipal prosecutor declined to file charges under the strict “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard—prompting the court to reinstate Parker to the bench that very same day without a separate administrative investigation.

He was subsequently hired as a Family Court Commissioner in Clallam County in early 2025, before being terminated a year later.

The suspect was taken into custody without incident at his place of employment Tuesday afternoon. Following the arrest, detectives served a search warrant at the man’s residence, where they reported recovering additional evidence.

While the Sheriff’s Office has not officially publicly identified the 42-year-old suspect, Mason County jail roster records show that Wesley L. Robinson was booked into the facility at 2:38 p.m. on Tuesday. He is currently being held without a release date.

According to the booking roster, Robinson faces three Class B felony sex offense charges under Washington State law:

• One count corresponding to RCW 9.68A.050(2)(B) (Dealing in Depictions of a Minor Engaged in Sexually Explicit Conduct in the Second Degree).

• Two counts corresponding to RCW 9.68A.070(2)(B) (Possession of Depictions of a Minor Engaged in Sexually Explicit Conduct in the Second Degree).

The Mason County Sheriff’s Office stated that probable cause for the ICAC arrest was developed during the course of their investigation, which remains active and ongoing.

The Olympic Herald will provide updates as formal charges are filed by the prosecutor’s office and more information becomes publicly available.

In a published opinion filed yesterday, Division I of the Court of Appeals answered two certified questions stemming from a King County Superior Court case, dealing a significant legal defeat to the aerospace giant.

Teela Bauer v. The Boeing Company Opinion

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The unanimous decision upholds an earlier ruling by King County Superior Court Judge Cindi Port, who denied Boeing’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit and allowed the novel legal questions to be sent to the appellate court for review.

The Origins of the Legal Battle

The lawsuit was brought by Teela and Thomas Bauer on behalf of their son, Milo. According to the complaint, Thomas has worked as an electrical installer at Boeing’s Everett manufacturing plant since 2011.

The Bauers allege that during his employment, Thomas was regularly exposed to a “mixture of chemicals,” including volatile organic solvents and heavy metals.

This exposure, the lawsuit claims, damaged his reproductive system and impaired the processes of conception.

Milo was conceived while Thomas worked at the Everett facility and was born in 2017 with severe, permanent birth defects, including congenital heart anomalies, spinal tethering, and a ventricular septal defect.

The complaint asserts that Boeing toxicologists and epidemiologists have known since the 1980s that paternal exposure to certain workplace chemicals could cause birth defects, yet the company allegedly failed to provide adequate warnings or safety measures.

The Foreseeability of Harm

Boeing urged the court to dismiss the claims, arguing that Washington law does not recognize a “preconception duty” in the employment context.

The company warned that allowing such claims would create an unpredictable “volume of potentially meritless litigation” and force employers to interrogate workers about their family planning.

Writing for the appellate panel, Judge Ian Birk rejected those arguments.

The court ruled that an employer’s duty of care is not strictly bound by the timeline of conception, but rather by the legal concept of foreseeability.

Drawing parallels to “take-home” asbestos cases—where employers have been held liable for exposing a worker’s family members to toxic dust—the court found that it is entirely foreseeable that an employee might conceive a child who could be harmed by workplace hazards.

“If Boeing’s conduct involves an unreasonable risk of injury to workers’ children, the timeline bears little import to the existence of a duty,” Judge Birk wrote.

The panel noted that public policy strongly favors protecting workers from hazardous exposures, emphasizing that employers need only “fully inform” their employees of the risks and exercise reasonable care to avoid liability.

Separate and Distinct Injuries

The second major hurdle in the case involved the Washington Industrial Insurance Act (IIA), which generally provides employers with immunity from civil lawsuits over workplace injuries in exchange for the no-fault workers’ compensation system.

Boeing argued that because Milo’s injuries were a direct result of Thomas’s occupational disease, the child’s claims were derivative of the workplace injury and should be entirely barred by the IIA.

The Court of Appeals disagreed, relying on prior state Supreme Court precedent regarding in utero injuries.

While acknowledging that Milo’s birth defects were causally connected to Thomas’s reproductive damage, the court determined that the two suffered “separate and distinct injuries.”

“Milo’s injuries are personal to him, they are not derivative of Thomas’s,” the court concluded. Therefore, the IIA’s exclusivity provision does not shield Boeing from the child’s lawsuit.

The decision affirms King County Judge Cindi Port’s refusal to dismiss the case, meaning the Bauers’ negligence lawsuit against Boeing can now proceed toward trial.

Dr. Michael R. Wilmington, who authorities say took his own life in Lewis County on May 2 just a day after a felony warrant was issued for his arrest, used his position at the Kaiser Permanente Salmon Creek Medical Office to sexually abuse patients, the civil complaints allege.

First Suit Alleges Decades of Missed Warnings

The first lawsuit, filed May 11 in King County Superior Court against Kaiser entities—including the Salmon Creek Medical Office and the health plans of Washington and the Northwest—was brought by a former patient identified as “Jane Doe 1.”

371064959 Complaint

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The plaintiff claims that Wilmington sexually abused her between 2000 and 2006.

According to the complaint, Wilmington subjected the minor to inappropriate touching, required her to be naked when it was not medically necessary, and made sexually charged comments under the guise of legitimate medical care.

The suit claims Kaiser received multiple, severe complaints about Wilmington over a twenty-year span but repeatedly minimized or ignored them “to conceal their bad acts” and protect the organization’s reputation.

Among the filings’ most disturbing allegations is an incident roughly two decades ago.

A mother reportedly complained that Wilmington unexpectedly pulled down her adolescent daughter’s undergarments during a routine sports physical to inspect her genitals—an action a Kaiser nurse allegedly defended as legitimate care.

Another alleged incident detailed in the lawsuit claims that seven years ago, the doctor insisted on conducting well-child exams on four siblings, during which he fondled the genitals of two minor boys.

He then allegedly became enraged when their mother refused to leave the room so he could examine her minor daughter alone. The mother reportedly called Kaiser three times to file a formal complaint.

The lawsuit also alleges Kaiser staff were aware of highly unorthodox behavior, claiming Wilmington advocated for nudity, invited parents and children to his home for “sleepovers,” and suggested that a minor survivor of sexual abuse “shadow” him to see other naked children. The complaint even alleges he had minor “interns” examine other patients in the nude.

The plaintiff is suing for negligence, discrimination under the Washington Law Against Discrimination, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Second Suit Claims Failure to Warn Recent Patients

A second complaint, filed on May 13 in King County Superior Court by an Oregon mother identified as C.W., focuses on the health provider’s alleged failure to warn recent patients of the danger in their clinics.

372583152 Complaint

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The lawsuit states that C.W.’s daughter, identified as K.N., was a pediatric patient of Wilmington from February 2022 through March 2024.

The suit names several entities, including Washington Permanente Medical Group and Northwest Permanente, alleging they knew of the severe risks the doctor posed but intentionally or recklessly withheld that information from the family.

According to the filing, Kaiser did not alert the family until May 3, 2026—a day after Wilmington was found deceased in Lewis County.

The plaintiff is seeking damages for reckless infliction of emotional distress.

Criminal Investigation Continues to Widen

These civil actions follow a rapidly expanding criminal investigation led by the Vancouver Police Department and the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, which originally began with a cyber tip regarding child sex abuse material in February 2026.

The probe initially led to the April 29 arrest of Vancouver resident Chad Hartley, who remains incarcerated on severe child pornography and molestation charges.

Detectives quickly discovered Hartley’s association with Wilmington, who police say hosted “naked sleepovers” at his La Center residence.

The investigation expanded further on May 7, when authorities arrested a third man, 61-year-old William J. Sneiderwine.

He faces charges including Conspiracy to Commit Child Molestation I and Tampering with Physical Evidence, an arrest authorities attribute to intensive forensic analysis of digital evidence.

With the primary investigation remaining active and ongoing, law enforcement continues to urgently appeal to the community for assistance.

Police are asking anyone who is aware of a child who may have had unsupervised contact with Chad Hartley, Michael Wilmington, or William Sneiderwine to immediately contact their local law enforcement agency.

The unanimous decision by Division I of the state’s appellate court unwinds a high-stakes case, centering on a critical procedural error by Grant County Superior Court Judge Tyson R. Hill.

889567 Opinion

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The Trial and the Rumor

The defendant, Christopher Collin Lester, was found guilty in a November 2023 bench trial in Ephrata.

The charges stemmed from abuse allegations involving his stepchildren in Soap Lake, followed by a confession he made to a designated crisis responder at Grant County Integrated Services in Moses Lake.

Lester was subsequently sentenced to 318 months in prison.

However, the appellate court’s opinion reveals that the integrity of the trial was fundamentally compromised by an undisclosed irregularity.

In December 2023, weeks after the trial had concluded, a second Grant County judge happened to bump into Lester’s defense attorney outside the courthouse.

The judge casually mentioned a rumor circulating among court staff: members of “New Hope,” a local victim and witness advocacy group, had been in the courtroom signaling to the children as they testified.

When the defense attorney investigated, a jury administrator confirmed the story. The administrator reported witnessing a New Hope member walking up the stairs with the child victims, pulling on her ear and telling them to “remember this signal.”

Crucially, the administrator confirmed she had reported this directly to Judge Hill during the trial.

The Trial Court’s Inaction

Despite receiving this highly irregular ex parte communication bearing directly on the credibility of the witnesses, Judge Hill never informed the defense or the prosecution before issuing his verdict.

At a subsequent sentencing hearing where the issue was finally raised, Judge Hill admitted he had been told about the signaling allegation.

According to the appellate court’s summary, the judge explained he decided to “keep a watchful eye” but “completely forgot about it” after not noticing any overt signaling during the testimony.

Judge Hill also reasoned that he couldn’t imagine New Hope would ever give a sign on how to answer a question, assuming the signal might merely be a way for the children to let advocates know they needed a break.

The Appellate Ruling

In an opinion authored by Judge David Mann, the Court of Appeals declared that this inaction fatally compromised the trial.

Under the state’s Code of Judicial Conduct, a judge who receives unauthorized ex parte information must promptly notify the parties.

The appellate court found that keeping the defense in the dark robbed Lester of the opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses about potential coaching, ask for curative measures, or investigate New Hope’s involvement while the trial was still active.

“An objective observer could conclude that the trial court received ex parte information bearing on witness testimony, assumed New Hope’s neutrality, and then kept the allegation to itself while serving as the fact finder,” Judge Mann wrote.

Furthermore, the appellate court noted that the judge’s assumption that New Hope would only use signals appropriately could be viewed as a bias toward the State and the advocacy group.

“We cannot condone informal and off the record handling of serious trial irregularities or allegations,” the opinion concluded.

What’s Next

The appellate court’s ruling does not exonerate Lester or evaluate the underlying evidence of abuse against him.

Instead, the court mandated that the convictions be reversed and the case remanded back to Grant County Superior Court for a brand-new trial before a different judge.

On May 14, 2026, Judge Houser granted The Olympic Herald’s request to bring a camera crew into the courtroom to record the upcoming proceedings. Furthermore, the judge granted our motion for a continuance, officially scheduling the highly consequential hearing for May 28 at 1:30 PM.

Sunlight as the Ultimate Disinfectant

For months, Benjamin Mavy—a man deeply connected to the embattled Clallam County Judge Brent Basden and formerly represented by the Wolfley Law Firm—has been aggressively attempting to weaponize the civil court system to silence this publication.

He has demanded an unconstitutional prior restraint that would explicitly ban us from publishing news.

Mavy’s legal strategy has been built entirely on concealment. He wants a Washington state court to establish a gag order to shield Clallam County’s “good ol’ boys” network from public scrutiny, while burying his own documented history—including twelve CPS investigations, a ban from volunteering at Sequim’s Helen Haller Elementary School, and encounters requiring police intervention at the local YMCA.

But if Mavy and his well-connected backers intend to destroy the First Amendment to protect their institutional secrets, they will no longer be able to do it behind closed doors.

They are going to have to do it on camera, for the entire community to see.

The Strategy of “Paper Terrorism” Thwarted

As The Olympic Herald exposed earlier this week, Mavy dumped a staggering 171-page “Supplemental Declaration” on this journalist in a blatant act of paper terrorism.

His goal was transparent: to overwhelm me with manufactured paperwork and bankrupt The Olympic Herald into submission just days before a massive deadline in the Washington State Court of Appeals related to terminated court commissioner Brian Parker.

The strategy was designed to exhaust our resources so that we could not afford to retain our First Amendment attorney, Rasham Nassar, for the hearing initially scheduled for May 14.

By granting our motion for a continuance, Judge Houser has successfully stopped the clock on Mavy’s tactic of financial exhaustion. We now have the breathing room required to fight back properly.

The May 28 Deadline

While the continuance is a major tactical victory, the battle is far from over. The new hearing is set for May 28 at 1:30 PM.

We beat back their financially ruinous $2,000-per-day gag attempt in April. Now, we must permanently dismantle their bid for a sweeping, unconstitutional publication ban.

I cannot face the entrenched power players of Clallam County alone. They have deep pockets, overlapping institutional loyalties, and a desperate need to keep their systemic failures buried.

But we have the truth. And on May 28, we will have the cameras rolling.

A scheduling order filed on May 15, set oral arguments for July 1 at 10:00 AM before U.S. District Court Judge Michael J. McShane in Eugene, Oregon.

The highly anticipated hearing will determine the immediate future of the lawsuit, addressing the LDS Church’s Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings alongside the plaintiff’s Corrected Motion for Leave to File Amended Complaint.

In stark contrast to the institution’s public emphasis on family safety and its own internal anti-abuse policies, the LDS Church’s legal team is advancing a sweeping defense against allegations that its clergy enabled a teenage girl to be isolated with her abusive adoptive father.

The LDS Church’s April brief leans heavily on legal technicalities and constitutional shields. Attorneys for the institution argue that because the abuse occurred in the victim’s home, rather than at a LDS Church activity, the LDS Church is legally absolved of responsibility.

Furthermore, they characterize a Washington bishop’s alleged instruction to the victim’s mother to keep quiet about the abuse as constitutionally protected “bad advice.”

The defense also argues that Oregon’s mandatory clergy reporting laws are strictly criminal—meaning they fail to create any civil liability for the Church’s alleged failure to report the perpetrator to the police.

The plaintiff’s legal team forcefully dismantled those claims in late April, arguing that the Church has mischaracterized previous state rulings and that the bishop’s active discouragement of reporting created a new risk of harm, stripping the actions of any First Amendment protection.

Perhaps most legally perilous for the LDS Church’s defense is the plaintiff’s revelation regarding the direct involvement of the institution’s highest echelons.

While the LDS Church claims it had no duty to act, Salt Lake City headquarters allegedly placed a restrictive “annotation” on the abuser’s membership record and specifically warned an Oregon bishop about the dangerous living situation.

Plaintiff attorneys argue this proves the LDS Church voluntarily assumed a duty to protect the girl—a duty they allegedly abandoned by delaying discipline, failing to notify authorities, and leaving the teenager completely unsupported.

The impending July 1 showdown in Eugene Courtroom 2 will force the LDS Church to defend these controversial legal maneuvers in open court.

Judge McShane’s decision on the pending motions will dictate whether the plaintiff can proceed with her amended complaint, or if the LDS Church’s “no duty” defense will successfully shield it from accountability.

Clinton Laverne King was taken into custody without incident on Thursday, May 14, and booked into the Clallam County Jail for second-degree murder. According to jail records, King was booked at 1:03 p.m.

The arrest is the culmination of a lengthy investigation that involved the execution of more than 45 search warrants, according to the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office.

King is accused of killing Danny Steven Kendrick, whose body was discovered on the morning of February 21 at a property in the 6300 block of Deer Park Road.

Kendrick was later determined to have died from gunshot wounds, and the case was officially classified as a homicide on March 5.

The investigation gathered significant momentum on Thursday when detectives located a vehicle connected to the homicide near Black Diamond Road.

Investigators and undercover detectives with the Olympic Peninsula Narcotics Enforcement Team conducted surveillance, following the vehicle to a residence in the 1300 block of West 16th Street. There, detectives observed a man matching King’s description heading toward the property.

Having already established probable cause to arrest King for second-degree murder, detectives obtained a warrant for the residence and called in the Peninsula Crisis Response Team.

Due to the high-risk nature of the operation, nearby Stevens Middle School was briefly placed on a modified lockdown as a precaution.

Before the Crisis Response Team could fully arrive, deputies observed King preparing to leave the residence on a motorcycle.

To prevent a potential high-speed pursuit and ensure public safety, deputies moved in immediately, taking King into custody outside the home without incident. A vehicle believed to be associated with the homicide was also seized as evidence.

The arrest on Thursday follows a separate high-risk search warrant executed earlier this week on Monday, May 11, at a residence in the 1300 block of West 9th Street, which successfully uncovered additional evidence related to Kendrick’s death.

The Clallam County Sheriff’s Office expressed gratitude for the extensive assistance provided during the investigation by the Port Angeles Police Department, OPNET, the Peninsula Crisis Response Team, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air & Marine Unit, and the Washington State Patrol Crime Scene Response Team and Crime Laboratory.

Authorities are still encouraging anyone with additional information related to the incident to come forward by contacting the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office non-emergency dispatch line at 360-417-2459, or by submitting tips online.

Following a devastating jury verdict that found the district cultivated a hostile work environment, the administration’s bureaucratic shield is officially shattering.

Late last month, the community launched its first devastating salvo against the district’s culture of cover-ups. During a late-April board meeting, residents laid bare the administration’s horrifying defense of veteran track coach Brian Weekes.

Community member Rod Larson revealed that Superintendent Diana Reaume had taken the witness stand during the federal trial to defend video evidence of Weekes massaging a female athlete—a severe boundary violation that Reaume justified as acceptable for “educational purposes.”

That same night, veteran track coach Pam Gale exposed a missing security tape from a documented April 2019 incident where Weekes was found alone in a dark weight room with a student.

When Gale’s husband, former board member Rick Gale, attempted to question the administration’s handling of the situation, Board Chair Bill Rohde aggressively silenced him.

That blatant censorship was soon heavily shadowed by the revelation of a staggering ecclesiastical conflict of interest: Weekes had previously served as the Bishop of Rohde’s own LDS ward, holding immense spiritual authority over the very Board Chair tasked with holding him accountable.

With those explosive, unresolved allegations still hanging in the air, the community returned to the Board of Education meeting this past Tuesday night. And rather than finding answers, the reckoning reached a horrifying new fever pitch.

At the start of Tuesday’s meeting, Board Chair Rohde attempted to reinstate the district’s standard playbook: silence the critics. Delivering a cold, preemptive warning to the community, Rohde explicitly banned any back-and-forth dialogue, declaring that the board would not answer questions and that its stony silence should be considered “neutral.”

But as the public comment period unfolded, that silence felt less like neutrality and more like a damning indictment.

The reckoning resumed with Rodney Larson, who delivered a blistering rebuke of the district’s “complete collapse of institutional control.”

Larson tore into the administration’s aggressive legal tactics, noting that the district’s attorneys routinely use an “8-inch pile of policies and procedures” not to protect students, but as a shield to deny and cover up federal law violations.

Larson then dropped a series of bombshell allegations, pointing to a sordid district history that includes statutory rape, racial and physical bullying, and tragedies resulting in suicide and murder.

Even more chillingly, Larson exposed a pattern of systemic witness intimidation. He revealed that during the recent federal trial, multiple witnesses withdrew their testimony after being made aware of their “vulnerability” as current or potential district employees.

“This is a sobering indictment of the power structure embedded in Quillayute Valley School District,” Larson told the silent board.

“A power structure that seeks above all to save face and preserve its image, and considers the welfare of the children of the community entrusted to them as cultural collateral damage.”

The meeting also exposed deep, painful fractures regarding the district’s internal investigations and risk management strategies.

Community member Erin Queen took the podium to defend the district’s use of third-party investigator Rick Kaiser.

Speaking as a parent whose daughter had an abuser working at the school, Queen expressed gratitude that Superintendent Reaume outsourced their investigation to avoid small-town conflicts of interest. Queen argued that by forwarding cases to the state level, the district was proving it does not sweep abuse under the rug.

But that narrative was immediately dismantled by Pam Gale.

Gale—who previously exposed the administration’s refusal to produce the 2019 dark weight room security tape—rebuked the district’s investigative practices.

She detailed her own highly combative encounters with Rick Kaiser, accusing the investigator of being “bold” and entirely dismissive of her reports.

Gale stated she eventually had to write her statements down before meeting with him, telling the board, “I really felt that Mr. Kaiser was trying to make me say things that I wasn’t meant to say, or that what I was trying to say he wasn’t listening to.”

Gale’s testimony paints a dark picture of a risk management apparatus designed to manipulate witnesses and protect the district’s bottom line, rather than uncover the truth. It aligns perfectly with the district’s previous admissions under oath, where administrators advised staff to avoid boundary violations not to protect students, but to protect themselves from “false accusations.”

For decades, the Quillayute Valley School District has managed the liability and shuffled the problems out the back door. But the community is no longer playing by the district’s rules.

“The weak and compromising equivocate,” Larson warned the board as his time expired Tuesday night. “Those with integrity stop the buck.”

For QVSD, the buck has finally stopped. The only question remaining is whether anyone in the administration has the integrity to answer for it.

The ink was barely dry on our latest victory for the First Amendment when the next attack arrived.

Just weeks after The Olympic Herald successfully defeated an egregious attempt to levy a coercive, publication-killing $2,000-per-day fine to silence our reporting, Benjamin Mavy—a former member of Brent Basden’s LDS ward—has launched a second, heavily escalated legal strike against this newspaper.

Mavy’s newest motion takes issue with our recent reporting on the Sequim School District, QVSD, and Carl King. He bizarrely claims that our articles accused him of child rape and accused him of “being the same as Ted Bundy.”

The First Attack: The $2,000-Per-Day Gag Attempt

To understand the sheer audacity of this second attack, one must look at how spectacularly Mavy’s first attempt failed.

Earlier this year, Mavy filed a motion under the guise of a civil anti-harassment proceeding. His goal? To force the Olympic Herald to delete over thirty deeply researched articles.

These pieces investigated a sprawling web of local power, scrutinizing Clallam County Judge Brent Basden, Port Angeles attorney Lane Wolfley, former Commissioner Parker, former ER doctor Josiah Hill, and others.

Mavy’s filings specifically demanded the removal of his own public courtroom testimony from a December 2025 trial. During that trial, Mavy was caught on the court record stating: “Judge Basden and I share one of my closest friends.”

Because we dared to publish this exact quote, Mavy claimed we were engaging in “stalking” and “unlawful harassment.”

The proposed penalty for our journalism was a financially ruinous $2,000-per-day fine, designed specifically to bankrupt this publication into submission. Mavy also demanded jail time.

On April 16, a visiting judge from Kitsap County, Judge Houser, held a hearing regarding this motion.

We were represented by attorney Rasham Nassar, a fierce defender of the First Amendment who is no stranger to battling entrenched local power.

In open court, Nassar expertly dismantled Mavy’s attempt to use the civil court system as a backdoor for unconstitutional prior restraint. She emphasized that the targeted articles are heavily protected First Amendment speech.

The vast majority of the articles Mavy sought to delete did not even mention him and those that did relied strictly on ethically sourced information from public records, trial testimony, and open court databases.

The court agreed. Judge Houser formally denied Mavy’s motion, delivering a resounding victory for the press and refusing to penalize the Herald for fulfilling its fundamental duty to the public.

A Playbook of Institutional Betrayal

Mavy’s legal harassment does not exist in a vacuum. As the Olympic Herald recently exposed in our reporting on the Quillayute Valley School District, Clallam County suffers from a pervasive culture of institutional betrayal.

Across our local institutions, bureaucratic rules are routinely twisted to shield those in power. When a local mother attempted to hold QVSD abusers accountable, the administration confiscated her paperwork under the guise of protecting “student privacy.”

Similarly, Mavy is attempting to weaponize civil anti-harassment laws to confiscate the press’s documentation of public corruption.

The tactic is identical: use the language of protection and victimhood to enforce the concealment of systemic failures.

A Terrifying Escalation

A reasonable individual would have accepted the court’s April ruling. But for a network reliant on concealment, an independent press is an existential threat.

Instead, Mavy has decided to double down, submitting a new 171 page “Supplemental Declaration” and a proposed order demanding sweeping restraints against me.

Scheduled to be heard by Judge Houser on May 14, 2026, this new motion asks the court to permanently gag this publication and rewrite the rules of journalism.

In his proposed order, Mavy demands that the court restrain me from publishing statements that “identify the protected persons by unique contextual details even if not by full legal name.” Furthermore, he requests a blanket judicial ban on “publishing identifying information.”

The chilling implications of this demand cannot be overstated. Mavy is not just asking to censor his name; he is demanding a ban on the very concept of investigative reporting.

By requesting that the court outlaw the reporting of “unique contextual details,” he is asking the judiciary to prohibit the Olympic Herald from describing factual events, referencing public documents, outlining legal histories, or reporting at all on his documented ties to the highly controversial actions of Judge Basden.

If a journalist cannot publish “contextual details” about individuals operating within the orbit of a sitting Superior Court judge, then the press is rendered entirely toothless.

It is a textbook example of unconstitutional prior restraint, explicitly designed to protect the powerful from public scrutiny.

Historical Echoes

Historically speaking, the echoes of this tactic are deeply disturbing.

In 1844, the Nauvoo Expositor—a newspaper established to criticize the leadership of the LDS Church and Joseph Smith—was physically destroyed by a town council operating under Smith’s command.

They declared the newspaper a “public nuisance” to justify silencing its dissent.

Today, in 2026, Mavy is not bringing a sledgehammer to a printing press. Instead, he is asking a Washington state court to wield the gavel to achieve the exact same result: the eradication of a publication that dares to question the conduct of the powerful.

A Bizarre Legal Strategy: Outing Himself to the Court

Perhaps the most revealing—and frankly, absurd—element of Mavy’s latest legal filing is how he attempts to prove this so-called harassment.

In his supplemental motion, Mavy includes screenshots of recent Olympic Herald articles, including a piece exploring the “Bundy Precedent.”

That article examined the psychological link between animal cruelty and escalated violence, noting how Bundy’s LDS ward ignored his warning signs.

The article then stated that Judge Basden’s courtroom appeared to be “shielding a man who is allegedly exhibiting similar terrifying precursors to lethal violence.”

Crucially, the article never identified anyone. It spoke broadly of someone “with a documented history of dangerous behavior” being shielded by shared religious loyalties.

Yet, in his sworn declaration to the court, Mavy attached this exact article and complained that it was part of a targeted campaign against him.

Improperly citing case law, Mavy argued that the court must gag this publication because “the context overwhelmingly identifies me as the target.”

He formally complained that a reasonable person would understand the unnamed man in the Bundy comparison to be him. By making this argument, Mavy achieved something remarkable: he legally outed himself.

He formally complained to a Superior Court judge that when a newspaper describes an unnamed man with a history of animal cruelty being shielded by an LDS judge, the shoe fits him perfectly.

Instead of proving harassment, Mavy inadvertently proved the absolute necessity of a free press.

The Cross Country Coach

And the truth of who he is trying to protect is staggering. This isn’t the only time Mavy’s own filing exposes the horrifying reality of the network he is trying to protect.

In his supplemental motion, Mavy complains to the judge that the Olympic Herald has targeted a cross country coach as one of these supposed victims of press harassment.

He presents this as evidence of unwarranted cruelty. But who exactly is the cross country coach that Mavy is so desperate to shield from public scrutiny?

As Sequim parents know all too well from our recent investigation, the district has spent decades operating as a pipeline for predators, routinely looking the other way to protect its own.

We exposed an entrenched administrative culture that shielded individuals like Dennis Peterson and Jerry Jeff Pedersen, while deploying a bureaucratic “shell game” to protect toxic leaders and punish whistleblowers.

It is within this exact compromised system that Mavy found his “victimized” cross country coach: Paul Brinkmann.

In 2012, Brinkmann was arrested and faced two counts of first-degree child molestation, four counts of second-degree rape of a child, three counts of third-degree rape of a child, and one count of second-degree rape by forcible compulsion.

The alleged victim refused to testify at trial—a tragically common occurrence in abuse cases. The charges were ultimately dismissed without a trial.

Some Sequim parents were outraged to learn that the administration had handed Brinkmann the keys to the high school cross country team.

The Sequim School Board formally approved Brinkmann’s retirement last week, on May 4, 2026.

Now, Mavy is using a civil court filing to formally complain that an investigative newspaper is “harassing” this coach simply because the press dared to report on him.

Mavy is actively defending the very administrative rot that Sequim parents have been fighting to root out.

Banned From the Classroom

Yet, the ultimate irony lies in his relationship with the administration he is now championing.

While Mavy uses his legal filings to defend a Sequim School District coach, public records reveal a stunning irony: Mavy himself was banned from volunteering in the very same school district.

Given the Sequim School District’s documented history of ignoring red flags and shielding dangerous individuals from accountability, one has to wonder: just how alarming must Benjamin Mavy’s behavior have been for this specific administration to quietly ban him from district property?

According to public records and court records obtained by the Herald, Mavy was quietly removed from his volunteer role in classrooms at Helen Haller Elementary School.

The timeline of this removal is telling. On January 16, 2024, Mavy sent an email to one of his children’s teachers, Saxon Holt, abruptly stating: “I just wanted to let you know I won’t be volunteering in your class for the indefinite future.”

According to a sworn declaration from Holt dated August 14, 2024, she was surprised by Mavy’s sudden departure and followed up with the school’s principal.

The principal explicitly confirmed the truth: Mavy “was no longer able to volunteer on district property.”

When Holt gently broke the news to Mavy’s young child, expecting the child to be sad, the reaction was chilling.

Instead of being upset, the child gave the teacher “a hug and a smile... as if she thought I had somehow arranged it.” The teacher noted she was “perplexed” by the child’s obvious relief.

Months later, the facade completely dropped. In a September 2024 email to the school’s principal, Mavy finally admitted to the ban, complaining: “I have not been told who made the complaint or what the complaint was that caused me to be banned from volunteering in my kids’ classes last school year.”

He further acknowledged in writing that “accusations and conflict are likely to follow [him]...for at least another 9 years.”

The alarms didn’t stop with school administrators.

In a November 2024 sworn declaration filed by Mavy himself in family court, he described a chilling encounter with an eight-year-old child from his daughter’s former class in Sequim.

According to Mavy, when the young child saw him, she immediately became concerned and explicitly warned him: “You’d better not hurt [his daughter].”

The fear surrounding Mavy escalated to the point of requiring police intervention.

According to Sequim Police Department body camera footage obtained by the Herald, law enforcement was forced to intervene at the Sequim YMCA on May 1, 2025.

The footage shows Mavy arguing with a Sequim police officer because his teenage son, whom Mavy admitted he hadn’t seen in 19 months, had sought refuge inside a YMCA office from Mavy.

Crucially, the officer explicitly informed Mavy why the child had fled there: Mavy had previously been at Sequim High School—in the exact same district where he was already banned from volunteering.

School staff had asked him to leave the premises, prompting his terrified child to escape to the YMCA to get away from him.

The officer explicitly informed Mavy that his actions were causing the child “angst and stress”—a fact Mavy casually brushed off, replying on camera, “Yeah, I’m sure that’s true.”

Mavy even attempted to argue that the YMCA staff were illegally keeping his son, prompting the officer to clarify that they were simply providing the child a safe place to be.

An affidavit signed by a YMCA staff on May 13, 2025 regarding the incident stated that Mavy’s “presence [was] very unsettling and [the staff] felt that he was trying to be intimidating.”

The Irony of the Spotlight

There is a profound, self-inflicted irony to Mavy’s relentless legal campaign. By filing a 171-page declaration and initiating these proceedings to supposedly stop the press from writing about him, he is achieving the exact opposite: drawing massive public attention to himself.

To prove he is a “victim” of journalism, Mavy has voluntarily entered his own police encounters, elementary school bans, and a dozen CPS investigations into the permanent, public court record.

By trying to sue us into silence, he is dragging his own history into the spotlight, ensuring that the very behavior he wants hidden is now a matter of immense public scrutiny.

Who Is Funding This Proxy War?

Mavy’s relentless, escalating legal assault raises a glaring, unignorable question: How is he paying for this?

Civil litigation is an extraordinarily expensive endeavor. Filing sprawling motions, drafting supplemental declarations, and pursuing permanent injunctions against a publication requires significant capital and resources.

Yet, the reality of Mavy’s financial situation paints a starkly different picture.

During a recent court proceeding, I testified regarding Mavy’s living conditions, noting that he was residing illegally in a condemned camper trailer parked next to a former drug house in downtown Port Angeles. Mavy complains about this testimony in his most recent filing.

In response, Mavy took to the stand and confirmed the setup, haggling over the details by testifying that his travel trailer was connected to a garden hose in the backyard rather than visible from the road.

The reality of these living conditions goes far beyond a trivial dispute over a garden hose. Bizarrely, during that same December 10, 2025 trial, Mavy voluntarily played a 911 recording to the court.

The tape featured a nurse from the Olympic Medical Center Children’s Clinic requesting a welfare check on Mavy’s children.

The nurse reported that the children—who were at the clinic suffering from a virus, vomiting, and fevers—told staff they had no running water, heat, or food at their father’s home.

Even more disturbing, despite clinic staff suggesting the severely ill children go home with their mother, Mavy insisted on taking them back to that freezing, waterless environment simply because it was his scheduled custody time.

It is against this backdrop of extreme deprivation that court records from a Trust and Estate Dispute Resolution Act petition expose a staggering financial paradox.

While Mavy plays the impoverished victim living in a camper trailer in some courtrooms, in others, he is accused of hoarding millions in a controversial, self-controlled trust.

According to the TEDRA filings, Mavy created the “Applegate Irrevocable Trust” in November 2021—just 11 months before he filed for divorce, according to court records.

As the “Trust Advisor,” Mavy holds absolute, unchecked power over the trust’s assets. The petition alleges that prior to filing for divorce, Mavy fraudulently transferred $282,190.70 of marital funds into the trust’s bank accounts. According to court records.

The hypocrisy is devastating.

Furthermore, exhibits within the court records show Mavy weaponizing his unchecked authority to arbitrarily declare three of his own children “estranged,” cutting off their access to trust benefits.

According to the TEDRA petition, he did this in direct retaliation just weeks after two of the children filed a police report with the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office alleging he committed assault with sexual motivations against them.

The cruelty of this financial cutoff is matched only by its extreme secrecy.

In a March 5, 2025 declaration filed in the TEDRA proceeding, one of the targeted beneficiaries described being kept completely in the dark, testifying:

“When it comes to the trust, I have received no explanation as to why I can’t benefit. I’ve never received any accounting of any kind about what is going on with the trust, what decisions are being made and by whom, what it contains, or how it’s supposed to work. I’ve never even received a copy of the trust itself.”

This creates a deeply disturbing financial reality. How does a man who was living in a condemned camper afford a high-stakes legal campaign against an investigative newspaper? There are only two logical conclusions, and both are damning.

Either Mavy is illicitly draining the disputed trust—the very funds he shielded from his alleged victims—to finance his legal vendetta against the Olympic Herald. Or, he is acting as a proxy.

The court filings themselves provide a glaring clue as to who might be backing him.

In the TEDRA action over his trust funds, Mavy was represented by attorney Kenneth Wolfley.

Kenneth is the son of Port Angeles attorney Lane Wolfley—a man deeply entrenched in the local LDS stake who was previously awarded a lucrative court contract by his longtime friend, former business partner, and former LDS Stake President, Judge Brent Basden.

Given Mavy’s on-the-record boasts of sharing a “closest friend” with Judge Basden, and his reliance on the Wolfley law firm to protect his assets, the circle is entirely closed.

Are the entrenched power players of Clallam County quietly bankrolling this hit job?

If the institutional rot in Clallam County runs as deep as our investigations suggest, Mavy’s lawsuit is a well-funded, coordinated hit job orchestrated by those who have the most to lose from the truth.

The Real Target: Protecting Judge Basden and the “Good Old Boys” Network

Why go to such extreme, unconstitutional lengths to silence a local newspaper? Because this relentless legal campaign is not, and has never been, about “harassment.” It is about concealment.

The Olympic Herald has spent months untangling the complex, deeply concerning relationships operating within the Clallam County justice system. The focal point of much of this reporting has been Judge Brent Basden.

As we previously reported, Judge Basden is currently facing a formal investigation by the Washington State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

The allegations center around the accusation that Judge Basden has utilized his courtroom to grant leniency to Mavy, all while actively discouraging cooperation with law enforcement and Child Protective Services.

This leniency reached a terrifying peak when, according to court records, Judge Basden officially intervened to shield Mavy from professional scrutiny.

On March 8, 2024, Judge Basden outright denied a court-appointed evaluator’s recommendation that Mavy undergo a psychosexual exam.

How did Mavy avoid this critical evaluation? By hiring an “expert” with a deeply troubling history—one uniquely favored by Judge Basden.

Court transcripts reveal that Mavy hired controversial psychologist Dr. Marsha Hedrick to recommend against the exam.

In trial testimony from August 20, 2024, Hedrick was hired by Mavy to testify, explicitly stating on the record that “it is a mistake to refer somebody for a sexual abuse evaluation.”

As the Olympic Herald previously exposed, Dr. Hedrick is a highly controversial figure whose foundational theories have been widely discredited by her own co-author, and whose professional orbit includes architects of the Catholic Church abuse cover-ups.

The reach of her training is so extensive that it has been cited on the credentials of evaluators whose work appears in high-stakes Department of Justice records, including the Jeffrey Epstein matter.

While there is absolutely no indication that Dr. Hedrick had any direct association with Epstein, the presence of her training network in such deeply controversial, high-profile abuse cases underscores the exact type of “expert” Mavy brought into Clallam County.

Yet, Judge Basden is a vocal fan.

We previously obtained courtroom video showing Judge Basden praising Hedrick from the bench, calling her testimony “fascinating” and actively recommending her to his judicial colleagues.

When a litigant hires the exact debunked expert that the presiding judge openly admires to shield himself from a sexual abuse evaluation—and the judge complies and denies the exam—it goes beyond leniency. It is a closed-loop system of protection.

Our reporting has revealed that this judicial leniency overlaps heavily with church authority. Basden previously served as Tammy Leask’s Stake President and notably did not recuse himself from her criminal proceedings.

Judge Basden was also caught on video stating that law enforcement deepens the problem when interviewing victims.

And the real-world consequences of this protection are devastating. Because Judge Basden intervened to block professional scrutiny in March 2024, the situation was allowed to escalate unchecked.

It is precisely this judicial shielding that paved the way for the chaos that followed—culminating in a terrified child fleeing to a YMCA for police protection in May 2025, and Mavy ultimately amassing a staggering 12 Child Protective Services investigations, according to his most recent supplemental declaration.

When an individual amasses a dozen CPS investigations and causes children to flee to the police for safety, public scrutiny is inevitable. And that is exactly what this lawsuit is designed to stop.

When a sitting judge publicly undermines dedicated police officers and prosecutors, while simultaneously participating in a religious network that lobbies for legal loopholes to conceal abuse, it becomes a matter of urgent public interest.

Mavy’s supplemental motion is a desperate, transparent attempt to stop the Herald from uncovering these deeply intertwined relationships.

If Mavy can convince a visiting judge that investigative journalism is legally synonymous with “stalking,” then every critical article, every public records request, and every exposure of Clallam County’s “good ol’ boys” network becomes an actionable offense.

As one of our readers recently commented, Clallam County has historically operated on a system where politicians, judges, and connected individuals evade accountability. For decades, if you weren’t in the club, you were out of luck.

The Olympic Herald was founded to break that cycle. Mavy’s lawsuit is the establishment’s attempt to reinforce it.

The Paper War: Why I Need Your Help Today

The systemic failures in Clallam County depend entirely on the quiet, sustained compliance of the broader community.

When institutional power is concentrated in overlapping school, church, and judicial leadership, pushing back carries immense social and personal risk.

Benjamin Mavy and his associates are banking on that silence. But they picked the wrong newspaper to intimidate.

On May 5, 2026, Mavy dumped a staggering 171-page “Supplemental Declaration” on me, filled with self-created, uncertified transcripts and pieced-together exhibits. He is attempting to bury this publication in a mountain of paperwork.

This document dump was perfectly timed to overwhelm me.

Just three days later, on May 8, I faced a hard deadline in the Washington State Court of Appeals, where I filed a 76-page appellate brief fighting to overturn terminated court commissioner Brian Parker’s original, unconstitutional order.

615568 Brief Court Of Appeals

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This is paper terrorism, explicitly designed to exhaust my resources. And right now, it is taking a toll.

Defending the First Amendment against entrenched local power is extraordinarily expensive.

Because of the sheer volume of Mavy’s escalating filings, and the ongoing appeal of his previous orders in the Washington State Court of Appeals, I have temporarily exhausted the funds necessary to continue retaining my attorney, Rasham Nassar.

Earlier today, I filed a Motion for Continuance, asking the court to delay the May 14 hearing so I have the time to raise the funds necessary to bring my attorney back into this fight.

I cannot face Clallam County’s “good ol’ boys” network alone. To defeat this unconstitutional gag order, I need an expert First Amendment litigator by my side.

To help me re-retain my legal counsel and fight back against this 171-page attempt to bankrupt and silence the press, please consider making an urgent donation to my GoFundMe or upgrading to a paid subscription today.

We defeated their attempts to silence us once. With your help, we will do it again.

Donate

D2 60325 Published Opinion

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As an investigative journalist for The Olympic Herald, I spearheaded this motion, with additional support from public interest advocates.

603250 Tomashefsky Motion to Publish

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The newly published opinion, stemming from the consolidated cases of Asbach v. Couto, establishes crucial statewide precedent. It clarifies how trial courts must balance the state’s interest in preventing domestic violence with the free speech rights of citizens in the digital age.

The Core of the Case

The underlying dispute involved Domestic Violence Protection Orders granted to Karina and Aiden Asbach against Adam Couto.

The trial court found that Couto engaged in “coercive control” by, among other things, posting a public YouTube video regarding his estranged family.

Under Washington’s recently expanded domestic violence statute, RCW 7.105, “coercive control” is defined as a pattern of behavior that causes emotional or psychological harm and unreasonably interferes with a person’s free will.

In granting the DVPOs, the trial court ordered Couto to remove the existing video. However, the court went further, imposing a prospective restriction that restrained him from posting, sharing, or transmitting “any videos or other such media which refers to the petitioner or the parties’ children, whether by name or otherwise, in any manner whatsoever.”

On March 31, 2026, the Court of Appeals issued an unpublished decision affirming the DVPOs generally but striking down the blanket restriction on Couto’s future online postings.

The Court held that prohibiting a citizen from discussing their family “in any manner whatsoever” was not narrowly tailored and constituted an unconstitutional content-based restriction under the First Amendment.

The Olympic Herald’s Fight for Publication

Because the March 31 decision was initially unpublished, it could not serve as binding precedent for future cases.

Recognizing the critical First Amendment implications, as an investigative journalist, recognized member of the Society of Professional Journalists, and publisher of The Olympic Herald, I filed a Non-Party Motion to Publish the opinion.

I argued that the 2022 legislative overhaul of RCW 7.105 has inadvertently caused confusion among trial courts, occasionally leading to the unconstitutional censorship of protected speech under the guise of preventing “coercive control.”

I emphasized that the press and the public share a vital interest in clearly defining the constitutional boundaries of speech, ensuring that journalists and citizens can scrutinize court proceedings and publish on matters of public concern without fear of unlawful prior restraints.

“Binding precedent that strictly curtails this is of paramount public importance,” I stated in my motion, asserting that the protections articulated in previous case law must apply with equal force to modern digital media.

Support from Victim Advocates

The push to publish the decision also garnered significant support from the advocacy community. Gina Bloom, a legislative lobbyist, certified crime victim advocate, and parenting coordinator, filed a separate motion urging the Court to publish the opinion.

Bloom Motion To Publish

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Bloom highlighted a counterintuitive but severe consequence of overly broad gag orders: they frequently punish the very victims they are designed to protect.

Bloom pointed out that in modern family court litigation, when victims speak publicly about their abuse, criticize institutional failures, or advocate for reform, their speech is increasingly weaponized against them and labeled as “harassment” or “coercive control.”

By publishing the decision, Bloom argued, the Court provides essential guidance that “victims do not forfeit their constitutional right to speak publicly about abuse, family court experiences, or perceived failures of the legal system merely because the opposing party finds such speech unwelcome.”

The Court’s acknowledgment that public discussion of perceived family court bias constitutes protected political expression is a massive victory for public advocacy.

Binding Precedent

On May 12, 2026, the Court of Appeals officially granted the motions, ordering the opinion to be published in the Washington Appellate Reports.

This ruling ensures that while courts remain empowered to prohibit unprotected conduct—such as true threats, stalking, and actual domestic violence—they cannot issue sweeping bans that chill lawful advocacy, investigative journalism, or a citizen’s fundamental right to free expression.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of The Olympic Herald and allied advocates, Washington’s legal framework now has a robust and clearly defined constitutional guardrail for the digital age.

Law enforcement officials made a significant move on Monday in the ongoing investigation into the February murder of 73-year-old Clallam County resident Danny Kendrick.

On May 11, Clallam County Sheriff’s Detectives, aided by the Peninsula Crisis Response Team and the Port Angeles Police Department, executed a high-risk search warrant at a residence located in the 1300 block of West 9th Street in Port Angeles.

According to the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office, the operation aimed to secure evidence related to Kendrick’s death.

Once the scene was secured, detectives searched the property and successfully located evidence that authorities say will further the ongoing homicide investigation.

While significant progress was made with the search, law enforcement confirmed that no arrests have been made at this time, and the investigation remains active.

The development follows months of investigation into what was originally reported as a suspicious death.

On February 21, at approximately 7:22 a.m., deputies responded to the 6300 block of Deer Park Road, where Kendrick was found dead.

Investigators later confirmed that the 73-year-old died from gunshot wounds, officially classifying the case as a homicide.

In the initial stages of the investigation, detectives worked closely with the Washington State Patrol Crime Scene Response Team to collect and process trace evidence at the Deer Park Road location.

The Clallam County Sheriff’s Office continues to ask for the public’s help in solving Kendrick’s murder.

Anyone with information related to this incident or the newly recovered evidence is strongly encouraged to come forward. Tips can be directed to the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office non-emergency dispatch line at 360-417-2459, or submitted online at www.clallamcountywa.gov/497/sheriff.

In an era where corporate media conglomerates control the narrative and routinely ignore local corruption to protect their bottom lines, we set out to follow the paper trails, attend the hearings, and ask the uncomfortable questions that others are simply too compromised to ask.

What we uncovered over the past 120 days has shaken the foundation of Clallam County’s political and judicial establishment. Because we operate entirely without corporate backing, we don’t answer to advertisers, hedge funds, or the “old boys club.”

We answer to you, the citizens. And over the past four months, the truth has finally seen the light of day.

Unmasking the Courthouse Crisis

The most staggering revelations of our first four months centered on the deeply entrenched cronyism and systemic failures within the Clallam County Superior Court.

We broke the story on the appointment of Family Court Commissioner Brian Parker, revealing that he had been fast-tracked into his position by then-Presiding Judge Brent Basden—despite a police arrest for felony perjury stemming from a Snohomish County custody case.

After our persistent reporting exposed Parker’s troubling background and stalking allegations from local residents, he was ultimately terminated.

But Parker’s removal only scratched the surface. Our investigations into Judge Basden exposed a terrifying reality for vulnerable families in our region.

We uncovered a documented pattern of Basden utilizing his courtroom to enrich his inner circle, including awarding a lucrative taxpayer-funded contract to his former business partner, Lane Wolfley—a man previously suspended from the practice of law for exploiting a client.

We also published courtroom video of Judge Basden actively discouraging a parent from cooperating with a Child Protective Services investigation, telling her that “law enforcement deepens the problem.”

Today, Judge Basden is the subject of a formal investigation by the Washington State Commission on Judicial Conduct for allegedly allowing his ecclesiastical role as an LDS Stake President to dictate his rulings and endanger children.

Protecting Our Students

Beyond the courthouse, our most widely read and impactful reporting has centered on holding our public school systems accountable.

We exposed a devastating, decades-long cover-up within the Sequim School District, where an entrenched administrative clique known as the “six pack” systematically punished whistleblowers and shielded abusive executives.

This systemic failure to monitor predators ultimately cost taxpayers and insurers more than $2.35 million in civil rights settlements.

Similarly, we detailed severe institutional negligence at the Quillayute Valley School District. For over 20 years, district administration consistently relied on a playbook that prioritized quiet resignations and liability management over student safety and transparent accountability.

This culminated in a recent federal trial where a jury found QVSD liable for creating a hostile work environment, awarding a former coach $250,000 in damages.

These two investigations struck a massive nerve, proving that our community is hungry for genuine accountability in the institutions tasked with protecting our children.

Defeating Censorship and the Fight for Free Speech

When an independent press begins dismantling entrenched power, retaliation is inevitable.

As the Olympic Herald continued to publish these uncomfortable truths, the Clallam County Superior Court attempted to disable public commentary and abruptly deleted its entire official Facebook page rather than face public scrutiny.

But the attacks went much further than social media blackouts.

In a chilling attempt to execute a modern-day burning of the press, an associate of Judge Basden filed a motion to impose a coercive fine of up to $2,000 per day against me until I removed over thirty investigative articles.

We refused to be intimidated. Represented by attorney Rasham Nassar, the Herald fought back in court and won a resounding victory for the First Amendment.

A visiting judge formally denied the motion, affirming what we have maintained from the start: exploiting civil harassment statutes to legally gag a newspaper is an unconstitutional prior restraint.

Looking Ahead

As we reflect on these past four months, we are also looking toward the future. We have a few exciting announcements to share:

• More journalists are joining the team soon. Expanding our staff will give us the ability to provide greater general news coverage across the region. Crucially, it will also allow me to focus my time and resources on massive, deep-dive investigations—like our ongoing scrutiny of the Sequim and Quillayute Valley School Districts.

• New investigations are underway. Building on the momentum of our reporting, we are currently working on another Clallam County school district investigation coming soon.

• Our new website is launching later this week. We are upgrading our platform to better serve our readers and deliver the news more effectively.

• Print edition coming to Clallam County in August. We are thrilled to be bringing our reporting directly to your hands in print form, and other counties in Washington will be considered in the future. More to come on that later this week.

We Need Your Support to Keep Fighting

These last four months have proven that independent journalism has the power to change our community.

But this work—digging through and purchasing thousands of public records and court records, attending endless hearings, and fighting aggressive, well-funded legal battles designed to silence us—requires significant resources.

The Olympic Herald is 100% reader-supported. We do not answer to corporate media conglomerates or local political establishments. But to continue holding the powerful accountable, we need your help.

If you value the transparency, accountability, and fearless reporting we have brought to Washington State over the last four months, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription or making a one-time donation to my GoFundMe.

Every contribution ensures that we have the resources to defend the First Amendment, follow the paper trails, and keep bringing these vital truths to light.

Thank you for reading, thank you for sharing our stories, and thank you for standing with The Olympic Herald.

This latest development follows the recent arrest of a Vancouver man and the suicide of a prominent local pediatrician connected to the case.

According to a recent update from the Vancouver Police Department, detectives from the Digital Evidence Cybercrime Unit served a search warrant at a Vancouver residence on May 7. Authorities arrested 61-year-old William J. Sneiderwine.

Sneiderwine was booked into the Clark County Jail and is facing serious charges, including Conspiracy to Commit Child Molestation I and Tampering with Physical Evidence.

Detectives from DECU and the Children’s Justice Center have been working alongside VPD Digital Forensic Investigators to meticulously examine digital evidence related to the case.

Authorities state that this intensive forensic work made the latest arrest possible.

The investigation, which involves the Vancouver Police Department and the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, originally began in February 2026 after authorities received a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding child sex abuse material.

The case gained significant public attention late last month when investigators arrested Chad Hartley during a pedestrian stop on April 29.

Hartley remains incarcerated in the Clark County Jail on multiple charges, including four counts of dealing in child pornography II, four counts of possession of child pornography, and one count of child molestation I.

The investigation quickly led detectives to Dr. Michael R. Wilmington, a local pediatrician affiliated with multiple medical facilities across the Portland and Vancouver area.

According to police, Wilmington allegedly hosted “naked sleepovers” with young children at his residence in La Center.

Just a day after authorities issued a felony warrant for his arrest for child molestation I, Wilmington was found deceased in Lewis County on May 2 from an apparent suicide.

The Vancouver Police Department states that the investigation is active and ongoing, and no further information is releasable at this time to protect the integrity of the case.

Law enforcement continues to urge anyone who is aware of a child who may have had unsupervised contact with Chad Hartley, Michael Wilmington, or William Sneiderwine to immediately contact their local law enforcement agency.

Now, a more urgent banner spans the college’s website: “Canvas is currently unavailable globally. There is no estimated time for restoration at this time. We’ll share updates as soon as we receive them.”

Behind this outage lies one of the largest educational cyberattacks in history.

Instructure, the parent company of the widely used Canvas learning management system, has been breached by the criminal extortion group ShinyHunters.

The hackers allege they have stolen 275 million records and over 3.65 terabytes of data, affecting an estimated 8,809 school districts, universities, and online education platforms worldwide.

For Clallam County, this means the personal data and private communications of Peninsula College’s student body and faculty are potentially in the hands of cybercriminals. While the college’s portal remains locked down, the reality of the situation is far more urgent.

On a dark web leak site, ShinyHunters posted a ransom note asserting they have breached Instructure “(again)” and mocking the company for ignoring them to do “security patches.”

The group has issued a stark ultimatum, giving Instructure and affected schools until the end of the day on May 12, 2026, to negotiate a settlement.

A failure to pay, the hackers warned, could result in the release of “several billions of private messages among students and teachers.”

The possible exposure of Canvas data is particularly alarming due to the platform’s central role in student life.

According to a disclosure Instructure sent to affected institutions, the company stated there is currently no evidence that passwords, government identifiers, dates of birth, or financial information were taken.

However, Instructure confirmed in the same disclosure that full names, email addresses, student ID numbers, and private messages were accessed before the breach was contained.

At Peninsula College and institutions nationwide, these private messages often contain highly sensitive disclosures to academic advisers, academic accommodation requests, and communications with Title IX advocates.

Canvas is an educational juggernaut, used by 41% of higher education institutions in North America.

The current breach is Instructure’s second confirmed cyberattack in just eight months, following a previous ShinyHunters attack against the company’s Salesforce environment in September 2025.

As the May 12 deadline approaches, Instructure has engaged outside forensic cybersecurity experts and law enforcement.

The full scope of the breach is still under investigation. In the meantime, Peninsula College students and staff in Clallam County are advised to remain vigilant.

Cybersecurity officials recommend monitoring accounts for unusual activity and treating any unsolicited emails or password reset requests purportedly from Canvas with extreme caution.