Baltimore schools sued for failing to protect students from a predatory teacher

BALTIMORE -- Three women are suing Baltimore’s nationalist schoolhouse system, alleging they were sexually abused by a peculiar acquisition teacher decades ago portion administrators failed to support students from his predatory behavior.

One of the plaintiffs was 14 erstwhile she alleges the teacher, whom the suit names arsenic Alvin Hunt, raped and impregnated her, according to the complaint.

At a quality league Monday morning, attorneys for the women said schoolhouse officials knew astir the maltreatment and allowed it to continue. They said Hunt would lure students to his location nether the pretense of after-school tutoring. The allegations contained successful the lawsuits occurred successful the precocious 1970s and aboriginal 1980s.

Attempts to scope Hunt were unsuccessful. A connection seeking remark was near for a spokesperson for Baltimore City Public Schools.

The lawsuits adhd to a increasing heap of kid intersexual maltreatment claims filed successful Maryland since the authorities eliminated its statute of limitations for specified cases. Lawmakers approved the Child Victims Act successful 2023 with maltreatment findings against the Catholic Church successful mind, but its impacts person extended good beyond spiritual institutions. The state’s juvenile justness system successful peculiar is facing wide reckoning aft thousands of victims came forward.

Pamela Coleman said she gave commencement to Hunt’s girl aft helium drugged and raped her. Hunt offered the teen a thrust location from schoolhouse and gave her a cigaret laced with an illicit substance that caused her to suffer consciousness, her ailment says.

“My puerility and teen years was conscionable ripped from me,” Coleman said astatine the quality conference. She said her parent reported the maltreatment and administrators transferred her to different schoolhouse aft learning she was pregnant.

The AP doesn’t typically place victims of maltreatment unless they privation to beryllium named.

Attorneys said Hunt, who was besides a sports coach, ne'er faced prosecution oregon accountability for his actions. Instead, helium retired from the schoolhouse strategy aft a agelong career. He is not named arsenic a suspect successful the lawsuits, which were filed against the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners.

“This maltreatment was not conscionable known, it was normalized,” said lawyer Janai Woodhouse with the Baltimore instrumentality steadfast Murphy, Falcon & Murphy. “This wasn’t hidden. It was tolerated.”

She said the Child Victims Act allows maltreatment survivors the clip they request to travel forward, often decades later. Before its passage, victims couldn’t writer aft they turned 38.

The 3 plaintiffs were young and susceptible erstwhile they were abused by idiosyncratic they trusted, their attorneys said.

“You tin ideate the magnitude of intelligence trauma that was inflicted here. So it took immoderate time,” Woodhouse said. “But they gathered the courageousness to travel to america and they’re acceptable to question justness now.”

According to the suit filed connected behalf of Collette Lee, she went to Hunt’s location for tutoring with different peculiar acquisition student. He cornered her and tried to battle her, but she says she managed to escape.

“I was capable to run,” she said during the quality conference. “I’ve been moving for a agelong time. I’m tired. I privation justice.”

The lawsuits were filed Friday successful authorities court. The plaintiffs are seeking punitive damages.