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Oregon's Columbia River Correctional Institution, a 595-bed minimum security prison, sits just west of Portland International Airport.

(Oregon Department of Corrections )

A deaf prison inmate accuses the Oregon Department of Corrections of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by not providing him an interpreter during 13 years of incarceration.

David Duane VanValkenburg

A federal lawsuit filed on behalf of 48-year-old David D. VanValkenburg seeks $460,000 in damages for what he describes as a systematic failure to effectively communicate with him from the beginning of his prison term in November 2000.

VanValkenburg's complaint alleges that the Department of Corrections failed to competently communicate with him during intake interviews and orientations, educational classes and training, and in such confidential settings as medical appointments, religious services and counseling meetings.

"Instead," VanValkenburg's lawsuit alleges, the Department of Corrections "required Mr. VanValkenburg to train inmates to act as interpreters for him, who were unqualified and failed to keep Mr. VanValkenburg's information confidential."

The lawsuit, originally filed in Multnomah County in May, was moved last week to U.S. District Court in Portland. Judge Anna J. Brown will hear the case.

A spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Justice, which will defend the prison system, declined to comment on the litigation, citing its policy of not commenting on pending litigation.

VanValkenburg was convicted of sodomy and sex abuse in Washington County and sent to prison on Nov. 15, 2000. He served time at Oregon State Penitentiary and four other prisons. He's now at Columbia River Correctional Institution, a minimum-security prison near Portland International Airport.

The lawsuit acknowledges that VanValkenburg can write notes in English, with limited skills, but American Sign Language (known as ASL) is his primary language.

He served the bulk of his prison term at Snake River Correctional Institution, an Ontario prison known as SRCI, where he alleges that staffers never provided him with a qualified ASL interpreter.

In cases where he had to communicate with prison staffers, VanValkenburg was forced to use "non-confidential, untrained and primarily unqualified inmates as interpreters, including known gang members," the lawsuit alleges.

"After nearly ten years of working to train his own interpreters at SRCI for free, (the prison system) paid Mr. VanValkenburg to train his own unqualified, inmate interpreters," according to the complaint.

-- Bryan Denson