CANYON COUNTY, Idaho — This story originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
The Canyon County Sheriff’s Office has settled a lawsuit with a former employee, with a payout of nearly half-a-million dollars.
The county will pay $425,000 in damages and attorney’s fees to Aleshea Boals, a former victim witness coordinator with the county, according to a press release from Strindberg Scholnick Birch Hallam Harstad Thorne, the law firm representing Boals. The county has also agreed to fund additional victim services training sessions at the sheriff’s office.
Boals worked as a victim witness coordinator with the county for 15 years. In 2020, she herself witnessed what she believed to be unfair treatment of female victims of crime, according to a statement from Boals included in the law firm’s release.
The female victims “were being interrogated, called liars, and policies on how to treat victims were not followed,” Boals’s statement said, adding that such treatment was against the Idaho Constitution and Idaho State Statute. Despite reporting the behavior to her superiors, the behavior continued and the detective responsible for most of it was promoted, the statement said.
On one occasion, the detective, Mark Taylor, allegedly made insinuating remarks about a female rape survivor’s body, implying she could not have been raped; in another, Taylor is alleged to have interviewed a victim himself despite not being trained to do so, and told Boals he was closing the case because the victim was lying, as previously reported by the Idaho Press. In the latter case, the suspect did confess to rape.
Boals said the mistreatment of female victims continued, and Boals herself then experienced retaliation, with her superiors taking away job responsibilities and scrutinizing and finding fault in her work, according to the statement released Monday. At that point, she decided to resign.
She viewed the lawsuit as the only way to eke out change in the sheriff’s office.
“I am glad that my efforts prevailed and I hope that this lawsuit and this settlement have changed the way [the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office] does business,” the statement said.
Taylor was employed as a sergeant with the department as recently as June of 2023, according to public records information published by the Idaho Statesman.
A press release written by the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office Wednesday afternoon said, “The Sheriff’s Office stands by its denial that Mark Taylor mistreated any victim or violated any Canyon County policy when dealing with victims. In the particular case mentioned in the media reports, an alleged victim herself told Taylor that her prior allegations were false. The victim’s own mother then requested that Taylor cease his investigation into the matter based on the victim’s disclosure that her prior allegations were false. Taylor persevered in an investigation of the suspect and played a central role in the perpetrator being arrested, tried, and convicted of a separate criminal offense. That perpetrator is now behind bars.”
The statement says that the department has received national recognition for its work on victims’ rights. The statement also wished Boals well in her new role as a victim witness coordinator with the Idaho Attorney General’s Office.
This story originally appeared in the Idaho Press, read more on IdahoPress.com.
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