Key School Creating Therapy Fund for Survivors of Sexual Abuse
By Lauren Lumpkin
Carolyn Surrick asked three things of Key School, her alma mater: publicly acknowledge years of sexual abuse of students by teachers, ensure the safety of current students and help survivors pay for therapy. In January, the Annapolis private school released a report that described decades of unchecked sexual abuse. Independent investigators retained by the school did not find evidence of current abuse at the school. Now, the school is creating a therapy fund to provide support for alumni as they continue to heal “from the abuse inflicted by former faculty members,” officials said in a letter Monday. Backing for the fund will come from the school. This comes in the wake of a proposed bill designed to give survivors of child sexual abuse more time to file lawsuits failing to pass in the Maryland General Assembly. Survivors of abuse at Key School have requested this kind of support for years. The measure also comes under the guidance of anti-sexual abuse organization RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. “The thing they have yet to do is take care of the survivors. There are emotional costs, but there are also real costs to this,” said Surrick, a Crownsville resident and abuse survivor. “I’m very grateful that Key is moving forward to help the healing process for survivors and the entire Key community.” Board of Trustees President Joe Janney and Head of School Matthew Nespole announced RAINN will help guide the school as it reckons with its past. School leaders are still determining the details for the fund, like how much will be poured into the fund and who can benefit from the money. An eight-month investigation revealed harrowing details about the school’s history; investigators identified 10 adults in positions of authority who engaged in sexual misconduct or inappropriate relationships with at least 16 students from the 1970s until the 1990s. Some of the most serious allegations were brought against five male teachers. One woman told investigators a teacher raped her when she was 14 years old. Another said teachers kept photos of students in “nude and sexual positions.” Nearly every witness interviewed described “extremely predatory” behavior that went on for years. Since making the report public, Key School officials have shared information about safeguards put in place to protect the community, including a third-party hotline for reporting misconduct and FBI national background checks for employees. Officials in June will hold “trauma-informed” listening sessions for alumni, Janney and Nespole said. The school also plans to incorporate RAINN’s sexual misconduct training into faculty and staff professional development, officials said. School leaders have asked RAINN to review the institution’s policies and identify areas for improvement. “We believe it is through listening, and truly hearing, that we have the best opportunity to reckon with the ills of the past and move Key forward,” Janney and Nespole said. Justice subverted Key School’s announcement came after Maryland senators opposed a bill that would have eliminated the statute of limitations for child sex abuse cases. Surrick and other Key survivors rallied behind the legislation. Surrick testified in front of delegates in March. “The Hidden Predator Act of 2019” passed the House in March. Del. C.T. Wilson, the bill’s sponsor, also wanted the legislation to open a two-year lookback window for survivors to sue their abusers. The legislation died in the Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee on April 3 in a 5-to-5 vote. In a last-ditch effort to get it through Senate, delegates on Saturday tacked elements of Wilson’s bill onto Sen. Justin Ready’s “Laura and Reid’s Law.” That legislation, prompted by the 2017 murder of Laura Wallen and her unborn child she planned to name Reid, would allow for longer sentences for those convicted of crimes of violence against pregnant women. Ready won passage Monday by a unanimous vote, but the amendment to alter it to include language from the Hidden Predator Act failed. “I appreciate the House for doubling down on the message that we care,” Wilson said. “If the Senate doesn’t (care), the House does.” Wilson’s proposed legislation represented a pathway to justice for survivors, Surrick said. She helped pen a letter to Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller to bring the bill to the Senate floor days before it died in committee. But when she found out the effort failed she wasn’t surprised. I It still stung. “It took my breath away,” she said. Surrick was raped and impregnated by a Key School teacher at the age of 14. Decades pass before the average survivor comes forward about their abuse; the guilty should be held accountable no matter how much time has passed, Surrick said. Wilson called the vote a “let down.” He has spoken publicly about the sexual abuse he endured as a child at the hand of his adoptive father. “The pedophiles won again,” he said. Wilson in 2017 pushed a bill through that extended the state’s statute of limitations for child sex abuse crimes by 13 years, and let victims file lawsuits against their abusers until the age of 38. It also said survivors over the age of 25 must prove gross negligence in civil cases, a burden of proof considered more difficult to prove than ordinary negligence. The final version of that bill included a provision called a “statute of repose” that was “snuck in” as a Senate amendment, Wilson said. The language prevented past abuse victims from filing lawsuits. David Lorenz, director of Maryland’s chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he is focused on helping his fellow survivors heal. “There’s a whole lot of people licking their wounds and hurting,” he said. Jena Cochrane, a Gambrills resident, is one of them. She called the Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee’s decision a “slap in the face.” Cochrane testified in front of Maryland senators in March. She carried a photo of her 12-year-old self — the age at which she was sexually abused by her step-father — and wore white “in honor of lost innocence,” she said. “I am very dejected and this has basically murdered the chance for so many victims and survivors to have justice,” Cochrane said. “Maryland took that away from us.” Surrick said she doesn’t know when she’ll talk to leaders at the Key School again. “I think that they had no idea when the report came out, it was going to be so damning of what happened there,” she said. “I feel like they’re really working to do the right thing.” Kathryn Robb, executive director of Child USAdvocacy, said school employees need to be screened and trained to detect and prevent sexual abuse in schools. “In schools, we have coaches who have to sit down at a computer and take an hour or two-hour class on concussions and it’s mandated,” Robb said. “Certainly it should be mandated how to spot possible behaviors that are suggesting that something is going on.” Key School in January announced it retained Praesidium, a firm that provides employee sexual misconduct training. The school has also shared updates about its screening procedures for new employees, state-level background checks. Employees who engage in romantic or sexual relationships with students — even if consensual — will be terminated immediately.
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