Campbell Hall Alum Sues Atari Co-Founder

STUDIO CITY, CA — The pioneer businessman who co-founded Atari Inc. and established the Chuck E. Cheese's chain is being sued, along with his wife and one of their sons, by a woman who alleges she was sexually assaulted at age 15 by the son during a sleepover at the family's Agoura Hills home in 1999.

The woman brought the suit Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court against 77-year-old Nolan Bushnell and his wife, Nancy and the as-yet unnamed son, whom the plaintiff's attorneys state in their court papers that they hope to identify during the course of the lawsuit but for now is dubbed "Doe Bushnell."

The plaintiff is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages on allegations of sexual battery, assault, false imprisonment and negligence.

A representative for the Bushnells could not be immediately reached.

The plaintiff was born in Alabama to immigrant Armenian parents who moved the family to Tarzana when she was 10 years old. In 1998-99, she was a freshman at Campbell Hall, a private Episcopal school in Studio City, where she bonded with Neela Bushnell, a daughter of the Bushnells, while the two teens were members of the junior varsity girls' basketball team, according to the lawsuit.

Neela Bushnell invited her to spend the night at the Bushnell family home in the spring of 1999 and the plaintiff accepted after getting her own mother's consent, the suit states. The plaintiff says that shortly after she arrived at the "palatial Bushnell estate," Nolan and Nancy Bushnell "unexpectedly went out for the evening."

One of Neela's three brothers plied the plaintiff with alcohol, then accosted her in a bathroom, the suit alleges. The plaintiff claims he blocked her from leaving, sat on the toilet and tried to pull her onto his laps. When she resisted, he led her outside to a barn, forced her to the ground, held her down by both wrists and sexually assaulted her as she repeatedly said, "No," the suit alleges.

The Bushnell son called the plaintiff, who was just starting to come to terms with her sexual identity, a pejorative term and asked, "Are you so sure you're a lesbian?," according to the suit, which says she "collapsed in on herself to survive ... she never fully recovered."

The plaintiff alleges that the sleepover was supposed to be supervised by responsible adults, but that instead Nolan and Nancy Bushnell "left alcohol freely available and no responsible person in charge. They never checked on the young (plaintiff) they had taken into their care."

The Bushnells have five sons and only three were old enough to have been the plaintiff's alleged assailant, according to the suit. The plaintiff is ruling out one of the sons because she knew him and hopes to learn through discovery who of the remaining two allegedly attacked her, her court papers state.

The plaintiff has "spent over two decades trying to come to terms with what happened to her and why," according to the suit, which further alleges she developed post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma and fibromyalgia.

Nolan Bushnell is dubbed by some as the "father of electronic gaming" because of his work in starting the arcade game market and creating Atari with businessman Ted Dabney. His behavior has long been controversial, and in 2018 he was denied the Pioneer Award from the Game Developers Conference due to allegations of consistent sexist behavior.

The hashtag #notnolan began appearing all over Twitter. Game designer Elizabeth Sampat wrote, "This is not the year to fete a man who pressured female employees into topless hot tub parties and code-named Pong after the hottest woman in the office."

Sampat's tweet referenced a report in the book "The Ultimate History of Video Games" by Steve Kent that Bushnell held company meetings in a hot tub and tried to get a female employee to join him. In a 2012 Playboy interview, Bushell said that prototype machines were named after attractive female employees, and a version of Pong was codenamed "Darlene" after an employee who "was stacked and had the tiniest waist." An ex-executive reported that Bushnell wore a t-shirt saying "I love to [f--.]"

The Game Developers Choice Awards Advisory Committee eventually relented and chose not to give an award, writing that "picks should reflect the values of today's game industry."

— City News Service and Patch Editor Michael Wittner contributed to this report.