A Harford County judge ruled Tuesday that the state’s Child Victims Act is constitutional in a lawsuit filed against the county’s Board of Education alleging negligence due to the sexual abuse of a student that happened in the 1980s and 1990s.
Judge Alex Allman rejected a motion brought by lawyers representing the school board to dismiss the case on the grounds that Maryland’s Child Victims Act is unconstitutional.
“There is a high burden here,” Allman said. “We’re talking about invalidating a duly passed law of legislature that was signed by the governor, and is in place right now. That is a lot to ask for the court to do. It certainly is a high threshold (that) demands an extra level of attention.”
The Child Victims Act went into effect on Oct. 1 and permits individuals who experienced childhood sexual abuse to file lawsuits against their abusers, regardless of how long ago the abuse took place. Supporters lauded the legislation as a means for victims to seek justice and hold their abusers accountable whenever they felt prepared to take action.
Earlier this month, a Prince George’s County judge also found Maryland’s Child Victims Act to be constitutional in a case involving the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
Even though the law removed the statute of limitations that prevented victims from suing their abusers or the institutions that employed them, lawmakers included a provision that permitted appeals based on constitutional reasons to be made to the Maryland Supreme Court after going through the Appellate Court of Maryland first.
Aaron M. Blank, whose firm represents the anonymous victim in the Harford case, said during a news conference Tuesday evening that he fully backed the judge’s ruling. He criticized the arguments made by the school board’s legal team.
“We think the judge absolutely got the decision on the law correct,” Blank said. “We agree on 100% of his ruling. We felt the defendants took a wishy-washy position on how the law should be viewed and applied.”
Attorneys representing the Harford County school board focused their case on a 2017 Maryland statute that prolonged the time for child sex abuse survivors to file lawsuits against their abusers and the institutions that hired them until the age of 38.
Specifically, the school board’s legal team argued the 2017 law contained a provision that provides immunity from claims filed after a survivor turned 38, called a “statute of repose.” The school board’s attorneys assert that this clause establishes a vested right that cannot be repealed.
“It’s important to our argument,” Edmund O’Meally, a lawyer for the school board, said Tuesday in court. “I am taking the position, with respect to the Board of Education, both the statute of limitations and the statute of repose in and of themselves bar any recovery in this case.”
The case involves allegations of sexual abuse that the anonymous plaintiff endured at the hands of two school employees in the 1980s and 1990s when the plaintiff was a student attending Harford County schools.
According to documents filed in Harford Circuit Court, the plaintiff was allegedly sexually abused between 1985 to 1986 by a fifth grade teacher at Deerfield Elementary School. The plaintiff says he was confined in his teacher’s classroom for lunchtime detentions, during which she “groomed, coerced, and ultimately sexually abused him on multiple occasions.”
The plaintiff alleges the abuse went on for about three months and involved kissing, oral sex and simulated and actual sexual intercourse. According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff’s parents were “forced to sign some type of ‘contract’” in a meeting with the school’s administration agreeing not to speak about the abuse he had endured.
The plaintiff alleges that he was sexually abused again when he was in 11th grade at Edgewood High School by a school custodian. According to the lawsuit, the school custodian allegedly “ordered” the plaintiff to “perform oral sex on him.”
The plaintiff alleges the custodian “continued to sexually abuse” the plaintiff in his office on school grounds multiple times. According to court papers, the plaintiff reported the custodian to law enforcement in November 2020, and the custodian entered into a plea deal that would register him as a sex offender to avoid jail time.
The lawsuit accuses the Board of Education of Harford County of “not properly vetting their staff … not properly training and/or supervising their staff; negligently retaining staff they knew or should have known were sexually abusing students (including the plaintiff); failing to recognize clear and obvious signs of grooming behaviors by staff; failing to investigate reports of concerning and/or criminal behavior; and failing to have in place any legitimate measures to protect against a teachers and/or staff sexually abusing a student.”
During the post-hearing news conference Tuesday, the victim in the Harford case shared his thoughts.
“The only people that are opposed to [the Child Victims Act] are the ones that allowed the abuse to occur in their buildings, by their employees and by their priests,” the plaintiff said during a news conference later on Tuesday. “No child signs up to be sexually abused.”
