Hawaii Lawyers

Brandee Faria, Mark Leemon and Sidney Royer are Hawaii lawyers who represent survivors of child abuse and exploitation.  When the Hawaii legislature decided to change the statute of limitations for abuse survivors, Brandee, Mark, and Sid decided to team-up with lawyers from Washington state who also have a significant amount of experience representing survivors of childhood sexual abuse. This page provides more information on this team of lawyers.

As noted below, if you ask this team to represent you, the legal fee is the same — there is no additional legal fee for the additional help.

Brandee J.K Faria

Ms. Faria obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from the University of Washington with Honors in 1993.  In 1997, she obtained her Juris Doctorate, cum laude, from Seattle University. During her second year in law school, Ms. Faria was a research assistant for Associate Dean/Corporations Professor Eric Chiapinelli. In  her third year, Ms. Faria attended the University of Hawai’i as a visiting student where she acted as a research assistant for Professor John Van Dyke (dec.) and Sherry Broder working on Hawaiian issues.

Ms. Faria is a member of the Hawaii and American Bar Associations and was admitted to practice before the Hawaii State and Federal Courts in 1997. Ms. Faria was a law clerk to the now deceased Honorable John S. W. Lim, Judge of the Hawai”i Intermediate Court of Appeals from 1997 to 1998. Ms. Faria acts as an arbitrator for the First Circuit Court Annexed Arbitration Program on a regular basis.

In 2010, Ms. Faria was awarded the prestigious Top 40 Under 40 Leader Award for up and coming leaders by Pacific Business News.  She is AV rated, the highest such rating available from Martindale Hubbell Peer Review based on the assessment of judges and her colleagues.

Ms. Faria is the managing partner of the law firm of Perkin & Faria.  Perkin & Faria is a boutique litigation law firm, handling a wide range of cases, including class actions and multi-million dollar civil disputes on behalf of individuals, corporations and partnerships. Her practice is diverse, but she maintains a significant interest in civil consumer and employment litigation, and continues to fight for those who are exploited by deceptive and unfair business and employment practices.

Ms. Faria has obtained multi-million dollar recoveries for individuals, companies and class action groups, successfully litigating over thirty Class Action matters.  She has provided legal counsel and volunteered for a number of organizations, including the Hui Malama I Ke Kai Foundation, Polynesian Voyaging Society, Hawaii Sailing Canoe Association, Kai Makana, Hui Nalu, Project Purelight, and New Hope Christian Fellowship’s Children of Incarcerated Parents Ministry.

While Ms. Faria enjoys all aspects of her practice, she gets the most satisfaction out of helping out the little guy, whether that be the employee, consumer, or victim who has been wronged by those in power.  She takes great pleasure in taking back from the rich the ill-gotten gains stolen from those whose voices would otherwise not be heard.  Her efforts have contributed to hundreds of thousands of dollars being contributed to local non-profits who give back to the community, including Counsel of Native Hawaiian Advancement, Legal Aid Society of Hawaii, Family Promise of Hawaii, Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Hawaii, Goodwill Industries of Hawaii, Hawaii Home Ownership Center, Aloha United Way, Junior Achievement of Hawaii, The Mediation Promise of the Pacific, YWCA of Hawaii, and Parents and Children Together.

Mark Leemon

Mark leemon

Mark Leemon has over 30 years of trial experience, starting with an extensive ten year criminal defense practice as a staff attorney and supervisor at the Seattle-King County Defender Association. In addition to his own practice there, he helped train numerous other lawyers in trial practice, including several who have become some of Seattle’s best criminal lawyers.

Since leaving the Defender Association, Mark has had a widely varied practice on behalf of victims of personal injuries. He has had extensive involvement in the representation of victims of violent crime and was lead trial and appellate counsel in Taggart v. State, the Washington Supreme Court case that established the right of crime victims to sue the state for harm caused by negligent parole and probation supervision. He has before and since successfully prosecuted numerous negligent supervision cases, including Van Wijk v. State, a case brought on behalf of a woman who was stalked and shot by a former boyfriend on community supervision that settled after a week of trial for $1.9 million.

Mark is a recognized resource for issues relating to government liability and has regularly been invited to present continuing legal education programs on this and other subjects. He has appeared on numerous television and radio broadcasts, including the CBS national news program 60 Minutes II.

Mr. Leemon has significant experience in litigation on behalf of clients abused and/or neglected in foster homes, boarding homes and other residential care facilities. Among his achievements in this field is a $1 million settlement in a case against Washington’s DSHS and a nursing home on behalf of a developmentally disabled woman who was sexually assaulted in the home by another resident.

Since going into practice with his wife and current law partner Sidney Royer, Mr. Leemon has increased his involvement in medical malpractice and nursing home litigation, achieving successful results in cases involving negligent diagnosis and treatment and significant birth injuries.

Mark Leemon’s career as a civil trial lawyer is notable both for the broad variety of cases he has handled and the degree of success he has achieved on behalf of his clients.

Sidney Stillerman Royer

Sidney Stillerman Royer

Sidney Royer started out as a social worker, and worked for several years in that capacity in a number of different hospitals. Her familiarity with hospital administration and medical procedures made her particularly well qualified to deal with the intricacies of medical and psychiatric malpractice cases when she turned to the law in 1983. Since then, she has helped scores of clients, not only those injured through medical neglect or abuse, but also victims of violent crime, and people who have been seriously injured in a variety of circumstances. In each of these cases, her background has allowed to better understand the trauma faced by those who have been seriously injured, and to forcefully advocate on their behalf.

Non-Hawaii Lawyers

If you or someone you love was sexually abused as a child, Brandee, Mark, and Sid may ask for permission to work together with one or more of the attorneys listed below. While not licensed to practice in Hawaii, the attorneys listed below have significant experience representing survivors of sexual abuse and assault.  If these lawyers are part of your legal team, the legal fee remains the same, which means you receive the benefit of more than one law firm working for you for the same legal fee.

Michael T. Pfau

Attorney Michael T. Pfau

Seattle attorney Michael T. Pfau has practiced law for more than 25 years.  He has tried over 50 cases to juries, the bench, and arbitration panels.  Michael has obtained multiple verdicts in excess of $1 million, and he has recovered tens of millions of dollars in settlements for his clients.  In 2012, he obtained an $8 million jury verdict against a Catholic religious order, believed to be one of the largest of its kind.

Michael attended Boston College, graduated magna cum laude, and earned a number of other academic honors.  After Boston College, Michael attended Michigan law school and graduated in 1991.  He has been named a perpetual “Super Lawyer” by Law and Politics magazine, receiving that honorable distinction every year since 2003.  He is peer rated AV Preeminent.

Michael has dedicated a large part of his practice to representing victims of childhood sexual abuse against sexual predators and the institutions that employ and protect them.  Michael has had tremendous success prosecuting claims of child sexual abuse in a number of different states and jurisdictions.  In this endeavor, Michael has been lead counsel for hundreds of victims of sexual abuse and has recovered in excess of $200 million for his clients over the past 15 years in lawsuits against the Catholic church, the Mormon church, the Boy Scouts of America, and other institutions responsible for child sex abuse.

Michael has been involved in a number of the nation’s large Catholic bankruptcy settlements, including the Dioceses of Spokane and Milwaukee and those involving the Jesuit order and the Irish Christian Brothers.

Michael was also recently involved in a lawsuit on behalf of three minor girls who were sold for sex on the website Backpage.com, which was the largest online source of sex trafficking in the United States.  His clients obtained a landmark victory in the Washington State Supreme Court over whether federal immunity barred the case.  He now represents clients with claims against Backpage.com in Washington, California, Texas, Hawaii, Illinois, and Hawaii.

Jason P. Amala

Attorney Jason P. Amala

Jason P. Amala has represented hundreds of survivors of childhood sexual abuse.  He has recovered tens of millions of dollars for those clients, and was part of the trial team that obtained an $8 million verdict for a client who was abused at a parish run by a Catholic religious order.

Jason started representing abuse survivors more than ten years ago when he was asked to help a number of men who had been abused at a Catholic boarding school outside of Seattle.  The litigation eventually led to the bankruptcy of the Christian Brothers religious order.

Jason has successfully pursued claims against the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America, the Mormon Church, and numerous schools and state institutions.  He has also been closely involved with a number of Catholic bankruptcies, including the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and the Christian Brothers religious order, and has been the lead appellate lawyer on a number of watershed cases that have expanded the rights of abuse survivors and crime victims.  The prior results Jason has obtained for his clients do not guarantee or predict the future results of his work, but they do reflect his dedication to helping survivors of child abuse.

Jason graduated with distinction from the University of Washington Honors College, and then obtained his law degree from Seattle University School of Law, where he graduated second in his class and received a number of top honors.

Jason is licensed to practice law in Washington and currently lives in Seattle, Washington.

Vincent T. Nappo

Attorney Vincent T. Nappo

Vincent primarily represents survivors of childhood sexual abuse against the individuals and powerful organizations responsible for the abuse, such as the Boy Scouts of America and the Catholic Church.

Vincent has a long history of advocating on behalf of underprivileged and underrepresented communities.   Today, he continues to fight for those who have been wronged by the greed, negligence, and careless acts of others.  He serves as a guardian ad litem for abused and neglected children, and he volunteers his spare time to help victims of domestic violence.

Vincent graduated summa cum laude from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and then earned his law degree from the University of Washington School of Law.

Vincent is currently licensed to practice law in Washington and lives in the Seattle area.

Anelga Doumanian

Attorney Anelga Doumanian
Anelga has focused her work on helping survivors of childhood sexual abuse since before she became a lawyer.  During her second year of law school, she clerked for one of the few Missouri law firms that is dedicated to representing survivors of childhood sexual abuse.  After graduating from law school, Anelga continued to focus almost exclusively on representing survivors of childhood sexual abuse against the Catholic Church, including the Archdiocese of St. Louis, the Archdiocese of Seattle, and the Diocese of Yakima.  Although Anelga lives and works in Seattle, she is licensed in both Washington and Hawaii.