Sex Abuse Allegations Made against Children’s Home House Parents. Accuser Says Abuse Occurred in the 1970s.

By Michael Hewlett
Winston-Salem Journal
April 17, 2020

https://www.journalnow.com/news/local/sex-abuse-allegations-made-against-children-s-home-house-parents-accuser-says-abuse-occurred-in/article_1aa51c73-c010-54d1-b82f-fc85719b73ce.html

A lawsuit filed Thursday alleges that a husband and wife serving as house parents at the Children’s Home repeatedly molested an orphaned Winston-Salem boy in the early 1970s, as well as other children. The suit claims officials were negligent and failed to report abuse to local authorities.

The lawsuit says the house parents were eventually fired over the allegations but were never charged with a crime. The accuser is now a 59-year-old still living somewhere in North Carolina. His attorneys filed the lawsuit in Mecklenburg Superior Court against the Children’s Home and the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, which ran the Children’s Home at the time of the alleged abuse. The Western North Carolina Conference is headquartered in Huntersville in Mecklenburg County. The Conference now contributes revenue and volunteers for what is known as Crossnore School & Children’s Home.

Richard Serbin, one of the accuser’s attorneys, said North Carolina’s Safe Child Act of 2019 paved the way for the lawsuit, providing a two-year window for child sexual-abuse claims to be brought. The statute of limitations is eliminated during that two-year window.

He said in an interview that if not for laws like North Carolina’s, 95% of his clients wouldn’t be able to file a lawsuit. Serbin is head of the Sexual Abuse Division of the national law firm Janet, Janet & Suggs.

“My client has endured a lifetime of suffering as a result of this abuse — a lifetime he’ll never get back,” he said in a statement about the lawsuit. “He and other sexual-abuse victims who otherwise would be time-barred from suing now have an opportunity to confront their abusers and those who aided and protected them and seek redress and justice.”

Brett Loftis, chief executive of Crossnore School & Children’s Home, said he had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment. Greg Huffman, attorney for the Western North Carolina Conference, declined to comment, saying he had not received a copy of the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, this is what happened:

In 1968, the plaintiff’s parents died. He was 8 years old. The Forsyth County Department of Social Services sent him and his three siblings to live at the Children’s Home, which was founded in 1909 and located on Reynolda Road in Winston-Salem.

The boy lived in the Anna Hanes Cottage, one of 12 at Children’s Home. His house parents were Bruce Jackson “Jack” Biggs and his wife, Beatrice Hatcher Biggs. About 20 children lived in the cottage. Jack Biggs also served as a substitute preacher for church services at the Children’s Home, the lawsuit says.

In 1970, the lawsuit alleges, Jack Biggs began forcing the boy, who was 10, to come to his bedroom, where he sexually abused the boy, fondling him and doing other sexual acts. Eventually, the sexual abuse escalated into oral sex and sodomy. Jack Biggs also showed the boy pornographic magazines.

Beatrice Biggs also sexually abused the boy, fondling the boy and doing other sexual acts, the suit says.

According to the lawsuit, the Biggses also sexually abused other children at the cottage and encouraged the plaintiff and other boys to touch the genitals of several girls.

The boy was sexually abused for three years, from 1970 to 1973 and felt he could not tell anyone at the Children’s Home about the abuse, the lawsuit says. The children at the Anna Hanes Cottage did not interact with house parents from other cottages, and the superintendent for the Children’s Home had an office in a separate building. The superintendent never visited the cottages, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit says that the Biggses are believed to have been fired around 1973 due to sexual-abuse allegations.

Beatrice Biggs, 82, is still alive. Serbin said it appears that Biggs lives in a nursing home but is not sure where. Jack Biggs died in 2015. They are not named as defendants in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit said that officials at the Western North Carolina Conference and the Children’s Home should have known that the Biggses were not fit to take care of children.

“The defendants and their agents/servants, including the Biggses, had complete control over the plaintiff’s physical and emotional welfare,” the lawsuit says. “As a result of this special relationship, defendants had a heightened duty to implement and enforce measures, protocols, and guidelines, designed to protect the plaintiff and the other children in their care from harm.”

The lawsuit is seeking at least $100,000 in compensatory damages as well as an unknown amount in punitive damages.