PROVIDENCE — As boys, Michael and Alex Cesaro kept quiet about what their basketball coach at North Kingstown High School did to them for years, when he got them alone. About how he invited them to take off their clothes and touched their nude bodies, near their genitals, for his self-designed “fat tests.”
As adults, the brothers forced a reckoning in North Kingstown, R.I., when they pushed forward with allegations against the celebrated coach, Aaron Thomas. They were among 600 former and current teen athletes on whom authorities determined Thomas had conducted intrusive “naked fat tests” that began with the question, “Are you shy or not shy?” over the course of nearly 30 years. The revelations led to resignations of school officials, multiple investigations, and criminal charges against Thomas.
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The brothers had remained anonymous. But no longer.
On Tuesday evening, Michael Cesaro testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of Senate Bill 2648, legislation that would remove the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse to file civil lawsuits. His younger brother, Alex, who was at a trauma-centered treatment facility in Florida, had given his full support.
“I was coerced into getting naked in front of Aaron Thomas, a school administrator, during school hours and on school property. The calculated level of grooming performed by Aaron Thomas had convinced me and hundreds of other boys that there was nothing wrong or inappropriate with what was being done,” Michael Cesaro told the senators, with his parents, Susan and Tom, watching in the hearing room. “It wasn’t until I had grown, matured, and had a family of my own that I was able to process what had happened to me back then.”
Cesaro, who is now 39, testified about the shame his brother had felt and how it had affected his life. Alex is 36, married with two sons, a vice president at a bank, and, Michael said, now at a facility “fighting as hard as he can to address and overcome the trauma that first started at the hands of Aaron Thomas decades earlier.”
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“The effects of abuse are eternal on the victims, their families, the community, and on society,” Cesaro told the senators. “There are no limits on when or how long the impacts of child sexual abuse can be felt, and accordingly, there should be no limits on justice for those who suffer at the hands of abusers.”
Susan Cesaro became teary as she watched from a back corner of the room.
The Cesaro family decided to go public to back the bill, sponsored by state Senator Alana M. DiMario, who represents North Kingstown, Narragansett, and New Shoreham.
“Alex wasn’t able to deal with the shame until he was older. He wasn’t going to recognize it when he was younger, and that’s what this is all about,” Michael Cesaro told the Globe before the hearing. “That’s what this is all about — making sure that when you are strong enough, when you are capable enough to actually deal with it, that you have the ability to get justice.”
Research has shown that victims of childhood sexual abuse frequently don’t speak out about the abuse for decades. That was the reason for a state law passed in 2019 that gives victims of childhood sexual abuse and exploitation 35 years to bring civil lawsuits against individual perpetrators.
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DiMario’s bill removes the statute of limitations completely, retroactively, whether the claim was lapsed or time-barred under previous versions of state laws.
Her bill would also allow claims to be brought against any party, including claims of sexual abuse of a minor; negligent supervision of a person who sexually abuses a minor; a defendant whose conduct caused or contributed to the childhood sexual abuse of another; wrongful conduct, negligent or default in supervision; hiring, employment, training, monitoring, or failure to report, and/or concealment of sexual abuse of a minor.
“We recognize need to address and extend the statue of limitations for individual perpetrators, and our next task is to take action to hold institutions responsible for their actions,” DiMario testified. “We must use every tool available to ensure that institutions, whether they be churches or schools or other youth-serving organizations, are incentivized to do the right thing, right away.”
The bill is a response to a ruling by the Rhode Island Supreme Court last year that that found the 2019 law doesn’t retroactively apply to people or institutions who enabled child sexual abuse, but were not the actual perpetrators.
The Supreme Court “put it right back in our lap. If not now, when?” said state Representative Carol Hagan McEntee, who sponsored the 2019 legislation extending the statute of limitations.
“We all know, if you look into these cases, the institution turns a blind eye to what’s happening to these children,” Hagan McEntee said. “Not only are they complacent, they are negligent.”
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The legislation was named “Annie’s Law” in honor of her sister, Dr. Ann Hagan Webb, who was raped as a child by a priest. “Unless these institutions are held accountable, they will always choose to protect their reputations and their pocketbooks,” Hagan Webb said. “Schools, camps, religious organizations are loathe to admit anything happened on their watch.”
Cary Silverman of the American Tort Reform Association testified against the bill, citing concerns about setting a precedent by removing the statute of limitations and what it could mean for other civil claims.
But these are not typical cases, responded Kathryn Robb, the executive director of Child USAdvocacy. “We are not talking about slip and fall cases, fender benders. We are talking about the rape, sodomy, and sexual assault of our children,” she testified.
There is nothing in the Rhode Island Constitution that prevents the General Assembly from passing a law that addresses these claims retroactively, Robb said. “We will shift the cost of abuse away from victims and taxpayers to the bad guys, and most importantly, we expose sexual predators out there.”
It takes so long for victims to come forward, Robb said, and now she knows first-hand. She held up a picture of her own son, Jesse Kajko, when he was a boy. He’s now an adult in his 30s and just last year, disclosed that he had been raped by a doctor at a hospital in the Boston area while he was undergoing medical care.
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“I’m an expert on this,” she said, clutching the photo, her voice shaking. “And, I didn’t know.”
Dr. Herbert J. “Hub” Brennan spoke movingly, painfully, about his experiences when he was in third grade and being raped by the Rev. Brendan Smyth, a now-deceased convicted sex offender. He’d tried to put the abuse out of his mind for decades.
“As we mature, we think about it with an adult mind. The first thing is to get by the shame,” Brennan said. “If we can get by self abuse, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, suicide, we find ourselves here before you, pleading for justice.”
Amanda Milkovits can be reached at amanda.milkovits@globe.com. Follow her @AmandaMilkovits.