A state judge sentenced former Hawaii School for the Deaf and the Blind teaching assistant Alfie S. Lumabas to 10 years in prison Tuesday for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old student at the school.
State Circuit Judge Rom A. Trader declined the city prosecutor’s request to impose restitution to pay for the girl’s counseling because that expense is covered by a settlement to a separate federal lawsuit.
Lumabas, 38, agreed to the 10-year prison term when he pleaded guilty in January to two reduced counts of second-degree sexual assault in a deal with the prosecutor. Ten years is the maximum penalty for second-degree sexual assault.
A September 2013 indictment charged him with two counts of first-degree sexual assault; each carries a mandatory 20-year prison term.
Lumabas is legally deaf. Through a sign-language interpreter, he declined to make a statement Tuesday before Trader handed down his sentence.
His victim, now 24, who is also legally deaf, said through her own sign-language interpreter that the experience has left her emotionally and mentally traumatized. And even though the sexual assaults happened 10 years ago, she said she has only recently accepted what happened to her. She said she gets frustrated as she tries to move forward because the experience of what happened keeps pulling her back.
The victim was living in the school’s dormitory in 2005 when Lumabas was her tutor. The sexual assaults happened in a school classroom.
The girl reported the sexual assaults to Honolulu police in 2008.
She and her parents also filed a lawsuit against Lumabas, the state Department of Education and the state in 2010.
They later dropped their state lawsuit and joined a federal class action brought by other students who said they were bullied, terrorized, assaulted, robbed and raped at the Waikiki campus and on the school’s buses by other students.
In 2013 the state and a former school counselor agreed to pay $5.75 million to former and current students who claim they were sexually assaulted by other students or had a sexual encounter with a staff member.
Lumabas is the only adult to be criminally prosecuted for sexual assaults at the school.
Some students have also been prosecuted as juveniles in state Family Court.
