A Seattle massage therapist who was held at knifepoint inside her own Madison Valley business in 2022 has been awarded a $5 million settlement after the Washington Department of Corrections admitted it bore responsibility for the attack. The 45-year-old woman filed suit in 2025, arguing the state should have known the man who assaulted her posed a danger to the public. He had escaped from work release the day before he showed up at her spa.
According to The Seattle Times, Jordan Benjamin Alexander was serving a 43-month prison sentence for multiple counts of second-degree robbery when he was released from prison to a reentry center in July 2022. The lawsuit alleged the Department of Corrections transitioned him to the Bishop Lewis Reentry Center that year despite the fact that, as the woman's attorneys argued, he was not an appropriate candidate for reentry-center freedoms. DOC documentation confirms Alexander had escaped from work release on August 30, 2022 — one day before the assault took place.
On August 31, 2022, Alexander entered the woman's Seattle massage parlor under the guise of a courier delivering a package, then threatened her with a knife and demanded money before sexually assaulting her in an enclosed area, per the lawsuit's allegations. A colleague interrupted the assault, cutting it short. Additional reporting from KIRO 7 indicates Alexander left behind a bag full of knives when he fled, and that Seattle police did not arrest him until three months later, in December 2022, near the University of Washington bookstore.
A Pattern DOC Says It Missed
Attorney Ashton Dennis, who represented the woman, said the $5 million settlement is the department's largest payout in a case that did not involve death or terminal illness. Dennis said the assault completely changed the woman's life, adding that she often experiences fears of revictimization and now gets rides to and from work rather than walking home, according to the same Seattle Times report.
The lawsuit alleged the state neglected its relationship with Alexander by failing to control or monitor him. Court documents cited in the report show that a classification counselor received emails about Alexander's unstable mental health conditions in the weeks before his release, yet he was still promoted to minimum 1 custody level — the classification required for placement in a reentry program. Dennis said classification counselors may not know about mental health concerns unless they are specifically notified, pointing to a communication gap inside DOC's own screening process.
KIRO 7's earlier coverage adds further context to that gap: prior to his 2021 bank robbery conviction and subsequent work-release placement, Alexander had already compiled an extensive King County criminal record between 2008 and 2020 that included 18 theft and robbery convictions, five harassment charges, and domestic violence incidents. The Department of Corrections has admitted liability as part of the settlement, according to a spokesperson cited by the Seattle Times.
From Attempted Rape Charge to a 20-Year Sentence
Alexander was initially charged with attempted rape and first-degree robbery. A 2022 competency evaluation found he lacked the capacity to assist in his own defense, and the case was dismissed without prejudice pending a civil-commitment evaluation. According to court documents referenced in the Seattle Times report, Alexander later responded well to medication and restoration treatment, and charges were refiled against him in 2024.
He ultimately pleaded guilty in 2024 to third-degree rape and first-degree robbery and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Now 37, Alexander is incarcerated at the Monroe Correctional Complex, housed in a treatment unit for people with serious mental illness.
The Reentry Center's Own Troubled History
The Bishop Lewis Reentry Center, where Alexander was placed before his escape, sat at 703 8th Avenue in Seattle's First Hill neighborhood. It operated as a 69-bed, male-only facility run by nonprofit contractor Pioneer Human Services under a state contract, according to Pioneer Human Services' own documentation. The center has since closed; Washington's 2025–2027 budget documentation scheduled $4 million in cuts to convert and close the Seattle facility.
Legal filings from May 2026 revealed the Bishop Lewis center had another custody failure on its record: a person incarcerated there died of a fentanyl overdose in July 2023 after going undiscovered by staff for more than 12 hours, per Justia Ask A Lawyer, with family members pursuing tort claims against DOC over the unmonitored conditions.
A Costly Pattern for Washington's Corrections System
This settlement is not an isolated cost for the department. It follows a $6 million DOC payout in September 2025 and a $4.5 million settlement in May 2026 tied to fatal delays in diagnosing and treating cancer among incarcerated patients, as detailed by Prison Legal News. Under Washington tort law, the Department of Corrections owes a legal duty of care to protect the public from foreseeable harm caused by people under its custody or community supervision, according to the Davis Law Group.
These payouts are part of a much larger trend. Washington paid out a record $500 million in legal settlements and tort judgments in 2025 — a fivefold increase from 2021 — according to FOX 13 Seattle, prompting lawmakers to set aside nearly $1.3 billion for lawsuit liabilities in the current state operating budget.
Work-release rules generally allow incarcerated individuals within 12 months of their earned release date to live in partial-confinement facilities to find work and complete treatment while following curfews and monitoring protocols, according to the Office of the Corrections Ombuds. Whether that framework will change is uncertain. In January 2026, the Washington State Legislature allowed Senate Bill 5005 to die in committee, per Prison Legal News, leaving Washington among roughly a dozen states still without an independent oversight board or mandatory operational standards for its detention and correctional facilities.
