A former professional soccer player and coach who'd been accused, and then cleared, of fondling a 12-year-old girl has filed a $7.5 million lawsuit against Clackamas County and four sheriff's office investigators, claiming they ignored several red flags that would have halted the case before it went to trial.

Joseph Leonetti is alleging false arrest, malicious prosecution and denial of his constitutional rights in the lawsuit, which names two sheriff's office detectives, Patrick Bray and Lisa Shipley, and two sergeants, Anthony Kollias and Clint Pierce.

The lawsuit was initially filed in Clackamas County Circuit Court in December, then transferred to Oregon's U.S. District Court on Wednesday.

The girl who made the claims is the daughter of a sheriff's deputy and a friend of Leonetti's youngest daughter. Both girls played on a soccer team Leonetti coached. The accuser claimed Leonetti touched her during sleepovers at Leonetti's Oregon City home.

Leonetti was arrested in June 2013 on four counts of first-degree sexual abuse. He was out on bail until his trial in March 2015 and the case was dismissed on the second day of court proceedings. The prosecutor claimed the dismissal was due to "newly discovered evidence" but did not disclose what new information had surfaced.

Because of the child abuse allegations, Leonetti wasn't allowed to sleep at his Oregon City home or have unsupervised contact with his teenage daughter, the lawsuit said. At the time, his wife Holly was battling breast cancer, which claimed her life in June 2015.

Leonetti is seeking a jury trial, $1.5 million on behalf of his wife and $6 million for economic damages as well as emotional distress mental anguish, humiliation and damage to his reputation, according to the lawsuit.

The Clackamas County Sheriff's Office declined to comment on the lawsuit Friday.

The girl first told a friend of the sexual abuse claims. The friend told her mother, who told the alleged victim's mother who then told her husband, the sheriff's deputy.

The deputy had been upset with Leonetti because his daughter had been moved from the "A" soccer team, where all of her friends played, to the "B" soccer team, the lawsuit said. The girl also had recently started attending a new school, which led to her having to make new friends.

The deputy waited several weeks before telling Sgt. Kollias of the allegations, who was given charge of the investigation, the court papers said. Bray and Shipley also were assigned to the case, and Pierce later took over overseeing the inquiry.

The case should have been forwarded to the Oregon City Police Department because the alleged crime occurred at Leonetti's home and to avoid potential conflicts of interest, the lawsuit claims. Sheriff's staff members are required to notify the Oregon Department of Human Services within 24 hours of learning of abuse allegations, and the Children's Center is supposed to conduct the first interview of the victim, but that didn't happen, the lawsuit said

The detectives instead interviewed the girl first in June 2013, where she gave varying accounts of when the alleged abuse occurred, the amount of times it happened and seemed to have been "helped" in her recollection of events, the lawsuit said.

"Other than (the victim's) various versions of the events, there simply was no evidence that a crime had occurred," the lawsuit said.

Leonetti was arrested the same day and released, and then arrested two days later and booked into the county jail.

According to the lawsuit, the investigators never secured a search warrant for Leonetti's home or looked for any physical evidence. Nor did they gather phone call logs, texts or any computer images in the case. Leonetti maintains he passed two polygraph tests related to the allegations, and interviews with parents of all the girls he coached didn't turn up any evidence of inappropriate behavior.

"Defendants covered up the inconsistencies, failed to investigate them and presented a glossed-over fact scenario to the prosecuting attorney," the lawsuit said.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey