A woman who was sexually abused as a child has filed a lawsuit against Pierce County, the City of Tacoma and a retired Tacoma police officer after videotapes of her abuse were found in the officer's home.

In the suit, the woman, identified by the initials K.W., alleges two videotapes of her abuse were not destroyed despite a 1994 court order. The tapes ended up at the home of retired Tacoma police officer Lee William Giles Jr.

They were found by Tacoma police detectives while searching Giles home in August 2006 in connection with an unrelated child sex case.

Giles, who retired from Tacoma police in 2000 after a 30-year career, was sentenced to 19 years in prison in January after he pleaded guilty to first-degree child rape, second-degree child rape, first-degree child molestation and third-degree assault. The victims were relatives of Giles and his longtime girlfriend, Maureen Wear, who was also convicted in the case.

K.W.'s lawsuit, which was filed Aug. 1 in King County Superior Court, states the discovery of the videotapes caused "substantial embarrassment, humiliation, infliction of emotional distress." She is being represented by Jack Connelly.

When she was a child, K.W. was sexually abused by her stepfather, her lawsuit states. He videotaped some of the incidents and was arrested by Astoria police after he mentioned to an undercover officer that he had a pornographic videotape of a child that he made when the girl's mother was not home.

Two videotapes were confiscated as part of the investigation and placed into the Pierce County Sheriff's Department's property room as evidence in January 1991, the lawsuit states. The stepfather was later convicted of sexual exploitation of a minor and second-degree child molestation and sentenced.

At the end of the court case, a judge ordered the videotapes and other visual evidence destroyed.

The lawsuit claims the destruction of the tapes was "extremely important" to the K.W. and allowed her to "move forward secure in the knowledge that the images of these events were behind her and had been destroyed."

Except that the tapes were not destroyed and somehow ended up with Giles.

The lawsuit alleges there was no system in place to make sure the court order was followed or that "police officers employed by the City of Tacoma could not simply take the pornographic images home for their viewing."

Giles is the only officer named in the suit.

"No systems, procedures or protocols were in place or followed to protect victims of child sexual abuse from having these images viewed by others or brought back at later dates," the lawsuit states.

The failure to destroy the tapes and to make sure they were guarded "was unreasonable and negligent," the suit states.

Calls to the Tacoma City Attorney's Office and Pierce County Risk Management office have not yet been returned. No responses to the lawsuit have been filed in King County.

Giles is currently serving his sentence at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen.

UPDATE: Tacoma City Attorney Elizabeth Pauli said the city has not yet been served with the lawsuit and could not comment on its claims.

UPDATE 2: After the tapes were discovered in Giles' home, investigators looked into how Giles got them.

The videotapes were taken from a locked storage room at the Pierce County Sheriff's Department where items set for destruction are kept, sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said.

For a time during his law enforcement career, Giles shared an office with a sheriff's deputy that was next to the storage room. They had keys to the room because they kept their confidential files and other items in the room, Troyer said.

"He managed to get in there and cherry pick what he wanted," Troyer said of Giles. "He's the issue, he's the problem."

The property in the room is routinely destroyed.

"In the past, we've not had a problem," Troyer said. "It's a locked, secure facility."