Bastian Confirmed to Washington Judgeship

Stanley A. Bastian, an attorney who once defended DouglasCounty over a discredited child sex abuse scandal in the 1990s, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate Wednesday to serve as a federal judge in western Washington.

Bastian, 56, was confirmed on a vote of 95-0.

He comes from a civil employment law and civil rights practice with Jeffers, Danielson, Sonn & Aylward in Wenatchee.

One of his most publicized cases came in his defense of several police officers and prosecutors in Douglas County during a Wenatchee sex ring controversy, according to his law firm’s website.

In 2001, a SpokaneCounty jury found the city and DouglasCounty negligent for a discredited 1994-95 investigation of a child sex ring investigation, according to press accounts.  Bastian represented DouglasCounty in that trial.

The jury awarded $3 million to a couple wrongly accused of child abuse, according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer.  The scandal erupted in the mid-1990s in which officials  purported to expose a large scale sex ring in the Wenatchee area charging 43 people with 29,000 counts of sexual abuse of 50 children.  Most of the resulting convictions were overturned on appeal, according to published accounts.  The case became known as the Wenatchee Witch Hunt.

Bastian’s practice included health care, civil rights, discrimination, employment law, police liability and labor negotiations, according to his firm.

Bastian has been with the firm since 1988, when he began as an associate, and worked his way to managing partner in 2012.

He will fill the judgeship of Judge Edward Shea who assumed senior status in June 2012.

Prior to his 25 years with Jeffers Danielson, he served as an assistant city attorney and a criminal prosecutor for the Seattle City Attorney’s office from 1985 to 1988.  He also worked as an associate at Bergman & Bauer in Seattle in 1983-84.

Bastian served as president of the Washington State Bar Association from 2007 to 2008 and as chair of the non-profit Equal Justice Coalition of Washington from 2010 to 2013.

He clerked for Judge Ward Williams of the Washington State Court of Appeals from 1984-85.

He received his law degree from the University of Washington School of Law in 1983 and an undergraduate degree from the University of Oregon.