Three women are suing Baltimore’s public school system, alleging they were sexually abused by a special education teacher many years ago while administrators did not protect students from his predatory behavior.
One of the plaintiffs was 14 when she alleges the teacher, whom the lawsuit names as Alvin Hunt, raped and impregnated her, in keeping with the criticism.
At a news conference Monday morning, attorneys for the ladies said school officials knew in regards to the abuse and allowed it to proceed. They said Hunt would lure students to his house under the pretense of after-school tutoring. The allegations contained within the lawsuits occurred within the late Nineteen Seventies and early Eighties.
Attempts to achieve Hunt were unsuccessful. A message in search of comment was left for a spokesperson for Baltimore City Public Schools.
The lawsuits add to a growing pile of kid sexual abuse claims filed in Maryland for the reason that state eliminated its statute of limitations for such cases. Lawmakers approved the Child Victims Act in 2023 with abuse findings against the Catholic Church in mind, but its impacts have prolonged well beyond religious institutions. The state’s juvenile justice system particularly is facing widespread reckoning after hundreds of victims got here forward.
Pamela Coleman said she gave birth to Hunt’s daughter after he drugged and raped her. Hunt offered the teenager a ride home from school and gave her a cigarette laced with a bootleg substance that caused her to lose consciousness, her criticism says.
“My childhood and teenage years was just ripped from me,” Coleman said on the news conference. She said her mother reported the abuse and administrators transferred her to a different school after learning she was pregnant.
The AP doesn’t typically discover victims of abuse unless they need to be named.
Attorneys said Hunt, who was also a sports coach, never faced prosecution or accountability for his actions. Instead, he retired from the varsity system after an extended profession. He isn’t named as a defendant within the lawsuits, which were filed against the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners.
“This abuse was not only known, it was normalized,” said attorney Janai Woodhouse with the Baltimore law firm Murphy, Falcon & Murphy. “This wasn’t hidden. It was tolerated.”
She said the Child Victims Act allows abuse survivors the time they need to come back forward, often many years later. Before its passage, victims couldn’t sue after they turned 38.
The three plaintiffs were young and vulnerable once they were abused by someone they trusted, their attorneys said.
“You can imagine the quantity of psychological trauma that was inflicted here. So it took a while,” Woodhouse said. “But they gathered the courage to come back to us they usually’re able to seek justice now.”
According to the lawsuit filed on behalf of Collette Lee, she went to Hunt’s house for tutoring with one other special education student. He cornered her and tried to assault her, but she says she managed to flee.
“I used to be capable of run,” she said throughout the news conference. “I’ve been running for a very long time. I’m drained. I need justice.”
The lawsuits were filed Friday in state court. The plaintiffs are in search of punitive damages.
