SALEM — The state has paid a total of $9 million to two women who were attacked last year by a prisoner who walked away from a work crew and took off in a car belonging to one of the women.

The women still suffer from their injuries, said their attorney, John Coletti. One woman’s fractured arm has not healed, and one has trouble walking long distances.

Both have cognitive problems and severe post-traumatic stress disorder, “which has had a huge impact on their lives,” he said.

Jedaiah Lunn, 37, is accused of surprising the women as they foraged for moss and other plants along a gravel road on April 14, 2021, at Gales Creek Campground in western Washington County.

At the time, he was on a crew based at the state’s South Fork Forest Camp in Tillamook County and slipped away from a job site in the campground.

The women were from Japan but living in Washington County, and the attack drew a sharp response from the Japanese government.

The consul general of the Consular Office of Japan in Portland asked Gov. Kate Brown how the state Department of Corrections had allowed a man with a long criminal record to escape.

In September 2021, five months after the assault, the governor temporarily shut down the work camp pending a review of its practices. The camp has since resumed work.

Despite reaching a settlement with the victims, officials with the state Department of Corrections and Department of Forestry still refuse to release basic details of what happened, such as how many state workers were on site when Lunn walked off and when anyone noticed he was missing.

The Oregonian emailed questions Wednesday, Aug. 31, to both agencies, but they issued statements declining to answer.

Internal emails The Oregonian obtained under a public records request show Washington County prosecutors urged Department of Corrections Inspector General Craig Prins to release the information citing “the public interest in this case,” according to the documents. Prins ignored the advice. So, too, did the Department of Forestry.

Lunn beat the women with a large stick, according to court records, authorities and witnesses. The Japanese official said one of the women suffered a skull fracture and cerebral hemorrhaging and the other underwent four surgeries to address the complicated fracture of her arm.

Lunn stole a car belonging to one of the women. He was captured later that day on Sauvie Island.

The women last year sued the state, naming both the Corrections and Forestry departments as defendants. The Forestry Department manages the camp under an agreement with the Department of Corrections. The camp is a minimum-security prison that houses about 200 inmates who are within four years of release. Men assigned there work on crews that perform forest management and disaster relief in Northwest Oregon.

According to court filings, the state agreed in June to pay one woman and her husband $5.125 million and the other woman and her husband $3.875 million. They are identified in court records by their initials to protect their privacy.

Coletti said Lunn’s criminal history should have disqualified him from working in what he described as an unsupervised program.

“They need to be far more careful about who they let into this program,” he said. “This should have never happened in the first place.”

At the time he escaped, Lunn was serving a three-year sentence for a home invasion robbery in Multnomah County. He was convicted of second-degree robbery, a Measure 11 offense that comes with a mandatory minimum sentence. He had been slated for release next year.

Heidi Steward, acting corrections director, said in an emailed statement she hopes the settlement “will help the women heal their physical and emotional scars. This was a horrific crime, and we will continue to work closely with criminal investigators and prosecutors to ensure Mr. Lunn is held accountable.”

Steward sent a separate email to the agency’s employees highlighting policy changes and praising the contributions of prisoners in managing and responding to wildfire threats.

Lunn was charged in the attack with attempted murder, first-degree assault, first-degree escape and first-degree robbery.

According to Washington County Circuit Court records, Lunn is scheduled to enter a plea in the attack on Sept. 23. The details of his plea are not listed in court records.

In their lawsuit, the women alleged that Lunn had been allowed to work in a 5-acre area without supervision for hours and that visitors to the area were not warned that a prison work crew was present.

Emergency dispatch logs show Lunn had been gone at least 81 minutes before a state forestry employee called Washington County 911 to report him missing from the prison work crew.

At the time, a witness told The Oregonian that “oversight seemed very light” of the work crew and that he saw one responsible person for what he thought was “a significant number of men.”

Asked for the names of employees who were placed on leave as a result of the escape, the Department of Forestry identified Kael Poklikuha as a forest crew coordinator. The agency said Poklikuha, who was paid an annual salary of $57,528, resigned Nov. 30. They did not indicate if his resignation was related to the escape.

Forestry officials previously declined to release a report on what happened, saying it was part of an ongoing personnel investigation and was exempt from disclosure. The Oregonian on Wednesday made a second request for the record; agency spokesman Jason Cox said the request is under review.

After the assault, the Corrections Department said it would post signs alerting the public to the presence of inmate work crews and would transport inmates to those job sites in vans that are clearly marked “prison work crew.”

The state also said it would do more to train the forestry workers who supervise the crews, tighten oversight of inmates working at sites outside prison walls and have prison officials conduct more frequent “spot checks” of the crews.

Recommendations by corrections officials noted that the vast majority of people serving time in Oregon’s prisons are doing time for crimes against other people. That means prison work crews are more likely to include people serving time for those types of crimes versus property or drug crimes, officials said.

Officials recommended that the agency use demographic information, criminal history, prison conduct and other factors to analyze which prisoners pose the greatest public safety risk if they were to escape and then use that analysis to help determine who is sent to South Fork.