Woman in seized child-porn video sues Tacoma for not destroying it

P-I STAFF

Former Tacoma Police Department detective and convicted sex offender Lee Giles is facing a lawsuit from a woman accusing him of taking home child pornography seized as evidence. The lawsuit also blames his former employer – the department – for allowing him to do it.

Giles, 61, was sentenced to 19 years in prison earlier this year after pleading to child rape, child molestation and other sex crimes.

In a lawsuit filed earlier this month in King County Superior Court, attorneys representing the woman say officers were able to take child pornography out of evidence and home for their own enjoyment. The case in point – the sole instance offered by her attorneys – is that of Detective Giles.

In a 2006 search of Giles home, detectives found two pornographic videos taken of the woman, then a young girl, in the early 1990s. The man who took the videos was sentenced to prison following a sting operation.

A Pierce County Superior Court judge had ordered the videos destroyed 12 years before they were found at Giles' house. That decision carried "extreme importance" for the woman, who had believed the order was carried out.

Instead, her attorneys contend, Giles "fostered his fetish for victimizing children by viewing pornographic videotapes – including pornographic videotapes from the Pierce County evidence room."

The suit names Pierce County and the City of Tacoma as defendants, as well as Giles. A rebuttal has yet to be filed.