Former Catlin Gabel Student Files Lawsuit Alleging Child Sexual Abuse When She Was a Sixth-Grader

Kim Wilson is the first Catlin Gabel student to file a lawsuit following a December 2019 report that said 21 Catlin Gabel faculty and staff are alleged to have engaged in sexual misconduct.

A 1994 photo of plaintiff Kim Wilson, a Portland resident, when she was in sixth grade. Courtesy of Dumas & Vaughn, Attorneys at Law.
By Tess Riski

Former Catlin Gabel student Kim Wilson filed a lawsuit Monday alleging sexual misconduct by her former math teacher, Richardson "Shoe" Shoemaker, who died in 2018.

Wilson is suing the Catlin Gabel School and seeking $4.5 million in damages.

The complaint, filed today in Multnomah County Circuit Court, says Shoemaker abused Wilson "at least 80 times" when she was a sixth grader in Shoemaker's math class from 1994 to 1995.

"I am coming forward today because I was quieted and devalued by the school for many years," Wilson wrote in her plaintiff's statement. "I come forward publicly to allow other victims and witnesses to feel empowered and find strength in knowing you no longer have to feel alone."

Wilson's lawsuit follows recent revelations about decades of sexual abuse at Catlin Gable, an exclusive private school in Portland's West Hills. The allegations have received extensive coverage from the The Oregonian and were the subject of a December report from the school's board of trustees detailing the allegations.

23 students total have reported being sexually abused by Shoemaker from the 1980s to the 2000s, according to the board of trustees' report.

The report said 21 Catlin Gabel faculty and staff are believed to have engaged in sexual misconduct with students between the 1960s and 2016.

Wilson is the first Catlin Gabel student to sue in the wake of that report.

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