A public information request with the City of Sparks has revealed that Herb LaGue, 84, a martial arts instructor at the Bushidokan Martial Arts Temple, currently in Washoe County custody facing a lewdness with child under 14 charge and a $250,000 bail amount, was previously accused of repeated sexual abuse and rape of another child under 14.
The Sparks Police Department incident report we were able to obtain a copy of is titled Sex with Child Under 14. Its file date was November 24th 2008.
The “brief synopsis of offense” says it concerned alleged sexual assault that occurred for two years beginning in 1992 when the alleged victim, a student at the temple, was 12.
One of the pages indicates the case could not be prosecuted based on the information, but that an individual whose name is redacted in the report “wants the case kept on file in case others come forward wit [sic] information about Lague.”
At the bottom of that page it’s written “Disposition: Case is Suspended.”
Several of the pages we received have accounts of LaGue denying having ever done “anything sexual with any of the students.”
The alleged victim who contacted Our Town Reno about her police report says she was furious her case was never further pursued, and that local media also ignored her repeated requests to look into what was going on at the martial arts temple on 9th street in Sparks.
“It made me so angry,” she says of learning about the recent arrest which came so many years after she stopped going to the temple.
She now calls it a cult where she says she and others were brainwashed and taught how to lie, alleging the sexual abuse against her took place in Sparks in a motor home that was parked next to the dojo, or after LaGue would pick her up from school and drive into the desert, and also allegedly when she went on trips with him to Hawaii for competitions. This account is also reflected in the 2008 police report.
She says she realized only later in her 20s how horrible everything she had gone through really was.
“It was like a combination of being in a sociology class learning about cults and having my husband, the very first normal relationship I ever had was with my husband, and those two things just kind of happened at once. And then I just realized what happened to me and it was just crazy. I filed the police report because I didn’t want it to happen to anyone else,” she told Our Town Reno during a recent phone interview.
She says she checked up on her own police report until 2015, hoping it would be further investigated, fearing other minors were being abused.
The temple is now listed as temporarily closed and calls we made to their number listed on their Facebook page went unanswered.
That page’s latest post is from September 19th where it indicates “For more than 55 years, Professor Herb LaGue and the Bushidokan Federation & Temple have stood for peace, service, and honor. Thousands of students have grown under his guidance, and countless lives worldwide have been benefited by his teachings and peace missions.”
The post denies the most recent accusation which led to the arrest, alleging “the accuser is a disgruntled former student who appears to be using the legal system —through false accusations, set-up scenarios, and litigation tactics for monetary gain that resemble affinity fraud and abuse of process.” One commenter called that post libelous.
Our Town Reno was the first to report about LaGue’s arrest in September after being alerted by parents of another alleged child victim, before 2News Nevada also reported about the arrest.