Another lawsuit alleging sex assault of a minor girl by a guard at Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility has been filed in court, three months after the state agreed to pay $350,000 to settle similar claims filed by the foster parents of another girl held at HYCF.

The new suit was filed in federal court by a young woman who claims she was assaulted by an HYCF guard in mid-2002 when she was 16.

The plaintiff's lawyer, Susan Vo Hansen, said yesterday that her client did not report the assault at the time it occurred.

"When children are sexually abused, they frequently don't talk about it," Hansen said.

"Later events can trigger memories of what happened and that's the case with my client here," she said.

The HYCF guard who allegedly committed the assault was never charged with an offense and is no longer working at the facility.

Toni Schwartz, spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services, which oversees HYCF, said the department had not been served with the suit and would have no comment.

Attorney General Mark Bennett also declined comment on the suit.

Hansen was the lead attorney in another lawsuit filed against the state and former HYCF guard Lia Olione which was settled August 1 with the state agreeing to pay $350,000 to the victim and Olione agreeing to pay $7,000.

Olione was a correctional officer at HYCF from 1995 to 2003, when he sexually assaulted a teenage ward at the facility.

The girl reported the assault and Olione was placed on leave while a criminal investigation was conducted. He fled to American Samoa after he was indicted on charges of first- and second-degree sexual assault of a minor, kidnapping and terroristic threatening.

He later pleaded guilty to three felony charges and was sentenced in July 2004 to 15 years in prison by state Circuit Judge Karl Sakamoto.

Bennett said yesterday that the settlement agreement with the victim and her family, reached in August, must still be approved by the Legislature.

"We at the state do apologize for what happened to this girl. It was a terrible thing and she was very brave to come forward and report what had been done to her," Bennett said.

For years, HYCF has been the target of civil rights complaints, federal investigations and repeated reports of inadequate staffing.

Since last year, a special monitor appointed by the U.S. Justice Department has been assessing state efforts to remedy major safety and health care violations found by federal inspectors in 2004.

Bennett said yesterday conditions at HYCF "have greatly improved."

The facility is "still far from perfect, but it's a better place than it was four, five or 10 years ago," Bennett said.

Olione, the former guard now serving time for sex assault, last month filed a lawsuit of his own against the state, claiming that overcrowding and understaffing at HYCF caused him to be "excessively overworked."

He claimed that physical and mental exhaustion, stress and sexual frustration "resulted in (Olione) sexually assaulting a minor female ward at the HYCF."

Olione said in the suit that his problems first surfaced in 1996, when he "made verbal statements of a sexual and/or abusive nature to minor female wards" at HYCF, but the state took no action against him.

Because of understaffing, Olione claimed he "often times" worked from 24 to 48 hours in a row at HYCF.

Bennett had no comment yesterday on Olione's lawsuit.

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.