Sex offender volunteered with Evergreen High football team

A Level III sex offender was allowed to work as a volunteer with the Evergreen High School football team, according to Highline Public Schools.

The revelation, disclosed Thursday, prompted the school district to rescind a job offer to the school's acting head football coach, said Highline Public Schools spokeswoman Catherine Carbone Rogers.

The coach was to have been officially offered the football job before officials learned the volunteer was a convicted sex offender, said Carbone Rogers.

District Superintendent John Welch said it was the head coach's responsibility to see that the volunteer passed a background check before having contact with students.

The district said two female students who serve as managers with the football team alerted authorities after the volunteer made comments Monday that made them feel uncomfortable.

He was subsequently arrested for failing to register as a sex offender.

In a letter to the parents of the football players at the White Center school, Welch said the volunteer made an inappropriate comment at practice and the principal immediately escorted him off school grounds. District officials also discovered that he had not completed a criminal-background check as required.

"The individual had been on campus only twice before Monday," wrote Welch. "The quick action by the girls who reported the incident and school staff ensure that all contact with this person was stopped immediately."

Carbone Rogers identified him as Lashawn Jamar Ferguson, 48, who was convicted of rape in 1998 and failed to register as a sex offender in 2008. He is being held without bail in King County Jail.

When he was convicted of rape he had a different name: Shawn Isaac Ferguson. He changed his name to Lashawn Ferguson in 2001, according to court records.

It's not the first time this year the district has faced alleged sexual misconduct on campus.

In May, the state Department of Health issued an emergency suspension of a health-care provider who was accused of sexual misconduct while working in the Highline Public Schools athletic program.

Jayson Boehm, 36, had been contracted to provide first aid at athletic events and helped manage Highline Memorial Field. He also did volunteer work with Evergreen High sports teams and was a bus driver for the district for a decade.

He was fired in April after the Department of Health said Boehm conducted physical exams of 26 male adolescent students, asking them to strip and touching their genitals.

Boehm also gave students injections and prescribed treatment for various ailments, but lacked credentials to do so. On documentation of his physical exams, he wrote that a doctor had performed them.

Boehm held credentials as an emergency-medical technician, massage practitioner, nursing assistant and registered counselor. None of those credentials would allow him to perform the examinations, said the state Department of Health.

Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com

Information from Seattle Times news researcher Miyoko Wolf and Times archives is included

in this report