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…