A second suit against the territorial government for sexual abuse said to have occurred at Takhini Whitehorse Elementary has been filed in the Supreme Court.

The plaintiff was a young student at the school when a teacher repeatedly sexually assaulted him or her, the suit says.

The abuse is said to have occurred between 1973 and 1974 while the plaintiff was a young child.

The teacher, who is now dead, is identified only as J.C. in court documents.

The territorial government is being held responsible for the abuse vicariously, as the teacher was an employee of the government at the time.

The abuse also happened within a territorial school, the claim states.

YTG breached its duty of care to the former student on a number of fronts, according to the suit.

This includes failing to ensure that J.C. was a suitable teacher for young children.

The claim also states that government did not take adequate steps to ensure that students, including the plaintiff, were safe from J.C.'s sexual predation.

Nor did it supervise the teacher who would spent long periods alone with children.

Subsequently, the government failed to investigate complaints and allegations against J.C, the suit says.

The former student has suffered physical, mental, emotional and spiritual injuries and continues to suffer as a result of the acts committed 30 years ago, the suit says.

As a result, the plaintiff has suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, loss of self-esteem, alcohol abuse problems and difficulty forming healthy relationships with others, the case outlines.

The government is being asked to pay damages for pain and suffering, loss of income, and damages in trust of the plaintiff's family who provided 'extraordinary assistance' in the wake of the abuse, documents say.

This is the second civil suit involving child sexual abuse to name a teacher in the territorial school system.

In a case filed this summer, another plaintiff, who was also a child who attended Takhini Elementary, said he or she was sexually assaulted between 1974 to 1975.

The teacher is given as the same initials, J.C., in both civil suits.

While YTG has dealt with a number of high profile criminal cases involving sexual abuse committed against students by teachers of Yukon public schools, these cases are among the first to take issue into the civil court.

The two cases bear similarities to hundreds of civil suits brought against the federal government in the wake of the sexual and physical abuse cases suffered by first nations students at residential schools.

These schools, however, were jointly run by religious groups and the federal government.

Whitehorse lawyer Dan Shier is representing the plaintiffs in both cases involving the former Takhini Elementary students.

In an interview with the Star this summer, he said YTG could be on the cusp of a wave of claims involving sexual abuse in public institutions at the territorial level.

At that time Shier said he was aware of six cases of child sexual abuse from territorial public institutions that were currently being developed.