Talking to an Institution about Sex Abuse — Why We Must Pass SB134
I urge Maryland voters to support SB134, which is currently before the Maryland Senate. Please contact your State Senator. SB134 will abolish statutes of limitation on child sex crimes and allow survivors to expose their abusers in Civil court.
Please forgive if the following has typos. I find writing about this difficult.
The current system of bringing forward stories of child sex abuse is chaotic and doesn’t work. Scared people tell their stories to friends, sometimes on social media. They often face blowback online and in their communities. Sometimes journalists jump in. Institutions investigate themselves. Trolls arrive — and feed. Police make no arrests. Alleged predators never enter a courtroom. Children are left exposed. The community can’t heal.
***
In 2018 the story of child sex abuse at The Key School in Annapolis broke. Students alleged abuse going back into the 1970s, possibly earlier. It was reported in the Washington Post, the Capital, the Baltimore Sun, and picked up by news outlets around the country.
I’m a Key alum who spoke with the police and with Key School about the abuse, starting in 2014. Under the current laws and practices, doing this made me and my family less safe and did little to protect children.
Key parents and community members have been unkind to me and my family because I spoke out. I imagine I am not alone.
Currently it’s very difficult to bring Civil lawsuits for past child sex abuse in Maryland. This generally leaves institutions, not the courts, to decide where the truth lies. SB134 will open Civil court to survivors.
In Civil courts, survivors can enjoy the court’s protections and procedures to name the people who abused them. They can tell their stories, if they choose, and be protected. Please call your State Senators and ask them to support SB134.
***
Here’s some of what happened to me.
When I was a student at Key in the 80s, I saw the philosophy teacher abuse a student in the grade under me. He began calling me late at night, wanting to talk about how I felt, but also about sex. I was glad for the attention. I was also seventeen, a virgin, and the victim of a sexual assault by a boy from another school, which occurred at a church retreat. He made me promise not to tell anyone about the calls, and we had a procedure in case my parents accidentally came on the phone.
My friends and I grew up in an atmosphere where it was ok for teachers to date students. Many people thought it was a good thing. A boy from my time was openly dating the science teacher — the boy grew up, then committed suicide a few years ago. The history teacher was pursuing a girl in the class behind me. The philosophy teacher was dating a different girl in the class behind me — I saw him abuse her. As an adult, I heard that a boy I cared about immensely, who died in a drunk driving accident when we were teens, was being abused by the math teacher.
Key also had a strong tradition of bullying and favoritism. Teachers bullied and sexualized students. They pulled cruel jokes on us. Physical mistreatment and endangerment was rampant — I believe it endangered our lives. My coaches made me run through asthma attacks until my lips turned blue. The administration expected me to come to school when I was recovering from pneumonia; I had pneumonia several times. A teacher pulled a bookcase down on my head in middle school and threw a classmate down the stairs, breaking the boy’s arm. I was standing at the top of the stairs at the time, and though the teacher would push me, too. So I ran. Our senior party involved the school arranging to lock the senior class in a parent’s basement with a full wet bar. The school sent home permission slips notifying our parents alcohol would be served.
As an adult, I’ve watched people fellow alumni die of addiction or suicide — about one every 18 months. People dear to me have struggled. In particular, I’d seen a lot of men struggle. I’ve noticed that, if a boy is close to peers who are abused, it has about as detrimental an effect as being raped has on a girl. Boys are way more sensitive than we give them credit for. I believe that boys whose friends are abused often have to choose between shutting down their emotions and not doing well in life.
The tradition of bullying I’ve seen at Key persists down the decades. People in my class still say the same nasty things about me that they said in high school — decades ago. While we were particularly vicious, I don’t think this problem is isolated to my year.
Meanwhile the stories I hear from the decades after I graduated, from the 1990s, 2000s, and even 2010s, aren’t terribly different from what I experienced as a child.
I believe the seed behind all these problems is the child sex abuse, the silence, and the social and mental contortions enablers when through protecting the abusers.
Truth is the antidote.
***
In 2014 I told Key’s alumni coordinator on FB there was sex abuse at Key in my day. He was posting yearbook photos of children online without asking consent and asking alumni to post who was in them. I told him about the abuse and asked him to stop. He grumbled, but complied. I saw no other action on his part.
That year I also made a report to the police about the abuse I knew of from my childhood.
***
December 2016, the headmaster contacted me because an alum told him I’d been asking questions about sex abuse at Key. This was unrelated to me contacting the alumni coordinator.
The headmaster called out of the blue, left a long, rambling message on my voicemail (click link and download from external website) saying he needed to speak with me. I’d sent a letter to another alumni asking about sex abuse at Key — I guess they forwarded it to the school. The headmaster and I spoke on the phone and emailed a bit — I didn’t like his tone. He was patriarchal, and I found him unkind, even bullying. He wanted me to tell him what I knew so that he could investigate himself to determine if the issue warranted going to the police.
He told me that, under Maryland law, he was obliged to investigate on his own the matter because he was a mandatory reporter. This felt wrong. I understood that under Maryland law, all adults who hear of child sex abuse must report it to the authorities. I was pretty sure regular citizens can’t decide what constitutes a crime.
Yes, I was asking questions too, but there’s a difference between trying to figure out what happened when you were a kid, and a school official conducting their own private investigation into child sex abuse at their school. I told him to back the heck off.
Reading old newspaper articles, I found this wasn’t the headmaster’s first time encountering sex abuse. A teacher at the previous school where he was headmaster had been arrested for possessing child pornography (see the Journal News of White Plains, NY April 10 2015, p5a). My takeaway was he really should have known better than to do anything except go straight to the police after he received the letter I’d sent to an alumni.
***
My old French teacher still taught at the school. I contacted her to ask her what the new headmaster was like. During our conversation, it came out that she knew that the philosophy teacher was abusing students when I was a in high school. She knew about it when it was going on.
I was devastated. She’d tutored me privately in Camus. I thought the world of her.
Why hadn’t she warned me when I was seventeen?
***
Early 2018 before the story of abuse at Key became public, the headmaster emailed me again because he heard I was till still been asking questions; therefore, I had to either report to the his office, or see the school guidance counselor. I found his response… kinda weird. I mean, I hadn’t been a Key student for 30 years.
I went to the police instead with over twenty names of alleged predators, including some still at Key.
(This may seem like a lot of predators, but it was fewer than the number of alleged predators I’d heard about from a survivor group from another school up north. I believe the official number schools admit is usually far fewer than survivors will attest to.)
The police listened, were concerned, and followed up appropriately. But no one was charged, not even when an alleged predator admitted to the Washington Post that he’d sexually abused a Key student.
Some people whose names I gave to the police are still at the school.
***
Around the time I went to the police in early 2018, I exchanged emails and a phone call with the woman who headed Key’s English department when I was in high school. She was also the mother of the girl who was my best friend as a child. I lived with them a few months when I was either a junior or a senior — I don’t remember which.
She told me she knew the philosophy teacher was abusing a student when it was going on. She was on the board at the time — they discussed it at board meetings in the late 1980s, she said.
I told her the philosophy teacher had pursued me. Why she hadn’t warned me about him? I was her daughter’s best friend for twelve years. She wrote back to say the feeling was back then that students could take care of themselves.
I asked her help in bringing out the story of the abuse. She refused.
I told her that, while the philosophy teacher was calling me at night, it was apparent he was more interested in her daughter. That, as much as I liked the attention, I also felt I had to string him along in order to protect my best friend.
The former English teacher still refused to help.
She’s a renowned author. If you went to Key in the 80s, you know her name.
***
Summer of 2018, I ran in the Attorney General, Brian Frosh, at a political party. I told him about the sex abuse at Key and asked for his card. I emailed him everything I had.
***
If you’re an administrator at another school and someone who once worked at Key is involved in an accusation of abuse, tell your local police to contact Anne Arundel Child Protective Services to see if the person’s name pops up.
If you’re someone who ever taught at Key and abused students, know there’s a good chance the State of Maryland has your name in a file somewhere.
But unless an abuser abuses again, and the police are notified quickly and feel they can make a case, it’s unlikely these names will ever see the light of day.
Unless SB134 passes, child sex predators in Maryland are pretty safe.
***
I’m not the only one who believes predators still teach at Key. I don’t know who wrote this on Yelp. Someone emailed it to me. It was taken down not long after.
This is what people who want to speak out about abuse at Key are left with — Yelp reviews instead of the courts.
For the visually-impaired, the text reads: “A law firm’s recent sex abuse report and Key School and its board continue to traffic in a very dangerous lie. That lie is that there are no more abusers on campus, and that there haven’t been for a long time. (break) Take it from someone who was there. People who exploited or who continue to exploit children sexually are still there. People who have covered or continue to cover for abusers are still there. Other abusers continue to have access to Key’s campus and Key students through their immediate family members, who are employees and still very much part of the “Key family.” Many have not been publicly named. (break) The law firm’s recent report admittedly leaves out much of the abuse reported to investigators. Why? And the real “why?” Many people chose not to share their experiences with investigators, due to a (well-placed) lack of trust. You will not read about them in the report. (break) Current Key parents: how do you sleep at night? Do you know who is teaching your children? Because Key doesn’t care. (break) Current and past Boar of Trustees: You know. You knew. Shame on you.”
***
I also spoke with the Key’s investigators. At the police’s suggestion, I only told them stories from before 1990 and didn’t tell them I’d spoken with the police. (I also didn’t tell them I’d given information to the Attorney General.) Three of the four alleged abusers I told the investigators about weren’t listed in the school’s final report. One had access to Key students for at least a decade after he left. Another had taught public school.
The school’s report described me as a police informant without asking my consent — I believe based on the old statement I made in 2014.
I didn’t see that betrayal coming. It scared me. Predators sometimes come after people who go to the police; I believe the school’s report contained enough information about me for people I went to school with to figure out who I was.
The school’s investigators are lawyers; one specializes in family law. They should have known better than to expose a police informant against her will.
The report also had an important point wrong in my story: the student who sexually assaulted me was a boy from another school, not a Key student. To this day, I fear people who know about the event will blame it on someone from Key. I still don’t understand why the investigators decided to include the assault at all. It happened on a church retreat, not at Key, and I was the only Key student involved. The report incorrectly said I was assaulted by a student at Key.
The school’s report only listed ten alleged abusers. Had they listed everyone I mentioned, they would have listed thirteen.
***
If the investigators wanted to a story to show abusive the Key can be, they didn’t have to describe how I was sexually assaulted. They could have described our senior party. The permission slip the school sent to our parents said only wine and beer would be served. (My mom didn’t even sign the slip, but I was allowed to attend anyway.) Actually the school arranged to lock us in a parent’s basement with a bar full of hard liquor. A board member’s son tried to get me drunk and so he could put into me into a closet with another boy to have sex — the board member’s son was 18 at the time, so technically an adult. Scared, I banged on the basement door to be let out. The parents who owned the house finally unlocked it. My father came for me, and drove me home.
My Dad and I were very close, and he was protective of me. But after years with children at Key, he didn’t think there was anything that wrong with our senior party. And honestly, neither did I. (Mom did.) It wasn’t till years later that I thought, “Oh my God…”
***
Fall 2018, I contacted the headmaster to tell him everything I’d told the police. Yes, he’d been a scary jerk, particularly on the phone, but the safety of children was at stake. The school’s report hadn’t yet come out; I still had faith Key might do the right thing. So I left a note on the headmaster’s porch with a time and date, then waited in Chick & Ruth’s Deli with my laptop early one morning. He never showed. Later, he told someone else in an email that I had “threatened [his] family during the investigation…”
For the record, I didn’t threaten anyone. I was trying to give him the same list I’d given the police. But I imagine him saying I did this is a good way of discrediting me.
***
After the school’s report came out, I tried contacting the investigators about the incorrect information and the omitted names. They didn’t respond.
Then I contacted the headmaster anonymously via Proton mail with my concerns. He guessed who I was. Again, he was rude and unkind — to the point where I cut off the conversation before telling him all names I’d given the school’s investigators because his emails implied he would out me as a source for the report. (The school promised confidentiality if we spoke with their investigators.)
Key and their investigators don’t seem to understand that giving names to the police puts a target on your back, that outing a police informer endangers them. Outing me as a police informant, then breaking the report’s confidentiality could endanger me.
How much danger? Lawyers I spoke with told me that child predators occasionally murder people who go to the police. For the last several years, I’ve been operating under the assumption that enough people at the school know that I went to the police that some of the alleged abusers I named now know.
I’ve considered moving out the area.
***
I’m generally quiet about abuse at Key. But when I’ve spoken about it, current and recent Key parents have been horrible. Two were unkind to me and my mother at a St. Johns event. Recently someone trolled me online and spoke of how a vocal survivor “went crazy.”
I believe this behavior is common toward anyone who speaks about the abuse at Key.
***
I believe Key offers what feels like a wonderful childhood for many students, but was randomly cruel when I was there, and stayed randomly cruel long after I left. I suspect it has maintained much of this random cruelty. I believe this cruelty’s root is the child sex abuse and it’s legacy.
Children who are around child sex abuse learn it’s ok to casually destroy the lives of others. Adults who keep abuse secret put this ethos into practice. Below is an excerpt from a legal case against Key from 2002 that someone sent me. It demonstrates this casual cruelty.
For the visually-impaired, the text reads: “2. The Key School is a private school located in Annapolis, Maryland, which provides educational services to the residents of the State of Maryland and Anne Arundel County. (break) 3. All events relevant to this matter occurred upon the premises of Defendant’s school, in Annapolis, Maryland. (break) 3. On or about December 28, 2001, at approximately 12:45 p.m., minor Plaintiff [redacted] was in attendance of her classes at The Key School, when she was involved in a school faculty run science experiment taking place in the school’s gym. As part of the science experiment, and as being run by Defendant’s employees, the minor [redacted] was attached to a pulley system connected to the ceiling of the school’s gym and lifted from the floor. After the minor Plaintiff was lifted approximately 4 feet from the floor, she was forcefully dropped upon her head and body.”
(Court documents allege the child suffered permanent damage to her body and head.)
I believe the reckoning that the truth can bring will help tame this sort of behavior.
***
I’m writing this because I want SB134 to pass. Enough to risk exposure.
To recap:
1. I first contacted Key in 2014 about the abuse and heard nothing further.
2. I went the police in 2014.
3. Key contacted me in 2016 because I was asking questions about abuse — unrelated to me contacting Key in 2014 about the abuse.
4. I went to the police again in 2018, then contacted the State Attorney General’s office.
5. I believe there are still employees at Key who have abused Key students.
6. I believe there are still teachers at the school who knew of the abuse and did nothing. (My old teacher can’t be the only one.)
7. The school’s report only named one of the four predators I told the investigators about and contained incorrect information.
8. The school’s report outed me as a police informant without my consent.
9. The headmaster has acted toward me in ways I find scary and disturbing.
10. The Key School and greater Annapolis community is unkind to people who talk about abuse at Key.
Imagine how much safer and gentler our communities would be if, instead of relying on chaos like this, survivors could sue in Civil court and enjoy the court’s protections?
In New York, a law similar to SB134 enabled survivors to file at least 1,000 lawsuits. Think of all the predator names those lawsuits make public. How much safer communities are — how much people can heal.
***
SB134 would create a magic two-year window during which survivors of child sex abuse in Maryland can sue abusers and institutions in Civil court — as if statutes of limitation from the past had never expired. And it would abolish all statutes of limitation on sex crimes against children going forward.
My understanding is that the Maryland statute of limitations of age 38 only applies to people who turned 25 after Oct 1, 2017, so only people born from late 1992 onward have this opportunity. People in their 30s and older are cut out, and people tend not to speak about being abused until their 40s.
Criminal convictions of child sex abuse after years have passed are almost impossible, and current statutes of limitation mean survivors don’t really have access to Civil courts. So institutions are free to make their own rules concerning past abuse allegations — actually, they almost have to. Their communities pressure them to do something, and often the truth is lost in the mix.
Aside from the missing predator names, the school’s report does little to show the depth and horror of the abuse. It doesn’t address the years people lose. It doesn’t address the legacy of abuse at the school — the insularity, the bullying, the favoritism, the poor teacher/student boundaries — things that continue to harm kids. It doesn’t talk about the funerals.
The truth won’t bring back the dead, but it may help the living heal so that fewer will die.
***
Current parents, students, donors, employees, Board members and friends of Key live in a community alongside survivors. They ought to treat survivors and their friends and family gently; often they don’t. Alumni who were abused have died of addiction, drunk driving, and suicide. It’s cruel when people invested in Key stand next to us in church or community events, downplaying our experiences while praising the school. This behavior does little to turn children into functionally compassionate, ethical adults. How can you say another person’s life matters when you can’t act honorably toward the person standing next to you?
More truth will help heal the community. We need to grant survivors full access to Civil court. We need SB134.
***
Stories of alleged abusers still at Key persist. I’ve found that current parents don’t want to know. The problems is that, even when predators don’t abuse, predators and enablers aren’t healthy for kids to be around. Even people who know about abuse and are silent aren’t good for kids. Kids absorb the necessity to keep these secrets like small sponges.
On the surface, many predators and enablers are really good with kids. They can get in children’s heads, understand them. The initial effect creates precocious kids who can hold their own with adults. Kids seem educated, quirky-but-personable, self-possessed, politically conscious.
But having adults in their heads to this extent is harmful. Closeness to predators and enablers causes kids to grow up too fast. They have boundary problems, micro-aggressions, and the persistent feeling that ignoring ethical quandaries is the adult thing to do. The ill effects last into adulthood.
What I’ve found in many Key alumni are people who, despite what they say and think, in the tradition of Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, tend to Tom and Daisy through the world, careless with the people around them, and often careless with themselves.
I’m speaking from personal experience. Key alumni tend to be progressive, interested in social justice, and climate-conscious. But they are haughty, insular, exclude others, and are often deeply unkind to anyone they perceive as uncool. Being uncool, to a Key Schooler, means a person doesn’t deserve justice, consideration, even personhood. And I shouldn’t say they — I should say we. We tend to be haughty, unkind. We often treat others as less-than-human. We’re prone to burnout, addiction, poor psychological boundaries and micro-aggressions toward anyone we see as weak, unworthy, or uncool… I’ve seen it in chatter over class reunions; thirty years on, my classmates still disparage the same person we all picked on when we were kids. I see it in new and old alumni. I see it in myself.
We need the truth for our own health. We need survivors to have access to Civil courts. We need SB 134 to pass.
