Public Notice: .@SenatorSusanLee .@DelArianaKelly .@mkorman .@SaraLove4MD .@Andrew_Friedson can't say they never heard about the plan for a cell tower on the home team bleachers at new North Bethesda high school.

@SenatorSusanLee @DelArianaKelly @mkorman @SaraLove4MD @Andrew_Friedson You all going to tell yr constituents about cell tower going on home team bleachers at new high school? Or are you just going to let parents be surprised? This is your public notice. https://t.co/No9xr5XGfK pic.twitter.com/NvnPfGknrc

— Parents' Coalition (@PCMC1) July 18, 2022

Time to Act. Vote Now on Hidden Predator Act SB134! Send a message to Maryland Legislators Today

It’s been over a month since the Maryland Senate Judiciary Committee heard SB134, The Hidden Predator Act of 2021, and has yet to call it to a vote. We must urge Senate leadership to give this legislation a fair chance and call it to a vote.

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• Removing the so called “statute of repose” to make it clear to the courts, the public and survivors that the Maryland General Assembly was unaware of the constitutional implications of a “statute of repose” (language offered behind the scenes by the Maryland Catholic Conference) and did not intend to vest constitutionally protected property rights in child sexual predators nor the individuals and organizations that hid predators from discovery and prosecution, allowing them to continue to victimize children.
• Creating a lookback window for those victims who have been previously barred by the statute of limitations, allowing them to file suit for a period of two years (any such claims must be filed by October 1, 2023).
• Eliminating the civil statute of limitations for child sexual abuse claims going forward (for claims arising October 1, 2021 or later)

Tell Montgomery County Senators To STAND UP for Children who were Victims of Sexual Abuse. E-mail/Call/Tweet Today: @Willcsmithjr @jwaldstreicher @SenatorSusanLee

 RSVP for JUSTICE FOR SURVIVORS VIGIL

Please join us this Wednesday (March 17, 2021) for a Justice for Survivors Vigil on Lawyers Mall in Annapolis.  The Vigil begins at 10 am, but we ask that people arrive earlier if they are able. We will have signs but feel free to bring your own. Our message is Justice4MDSurvivors Vigil: We Stand United in Support of SB134.

Parking is available at the Visitors Center as well as nearby parking garages. Contact Susan Kerin at susank@capconcorp.com if you need more details or a map on parking options.

Please note that participants must adhere to public safety practices including social distancing and wearing masks.

You can RSVP at http://evite.me/4HgPg1qfRu

We understand that some of you may not be able to attend with us in person, but want to show your support for survivors. If you are not able to attend in person, we are asking that you call the Senators listed below on Wednesday, flooding their phone lines with calls of support from survivors and their allies.
 
Your message is clear, we stand united behind SB134, The Hidden Predator Act, and want the bill passed out of committee without amendments.  

Please call and email:
Bill Ferguson (Senate President)   410-841-3600               bill.ferguson@senate.state.md.us
Melony Griffith (President Pro Tem) 410-841-3127              melony.griffith@senate.state.md.us
Will Smith (Chair, JPR)     410-841-3634              will.smith@senate.state.md.us
Jeff Waldstreicher (Vice Chair, JPR)   410-841-3137              jeff.waldstreicher@senate.state.md.us
Jill Carter (JPR)                  410-841-3697              jill.carter@senate.state.md.us
Jack Bailey (JPR)                410-841-3673              jack.bailey@senate.state.md.us
Susan Lee (JPR)                 410-841-3124              susan.lee@senate.state.md.us
Michael Jackson (JPR)      410-841-3103              michael.jackson@senate.state.md.us
Charles Sydnor (JPR)        410-841-3612              charles.sydnor@senate.state.md.us

Urgent: Ask the MD Senate to Pass the Hidden Predator Act of 2020 on Sunday, March 15th

The Maryland Legislature is rushing through certain pieces of legislation before they end the session early because of the coronavirus pandemic.

It's time for the Senate to Pass the Hidden Predator Act of 2020.  Read the Information Sheet below.

Key Committee members that must pass the bill out of Committee on Sunday are:

William C. Smith, Jr., Chair	Democrat, District 20, Montgomery County	(410) 841-3634, (301) 858-3634, 1-800-492-7122, ext. 3634 (toll free)	will.smith@senate.state.md.us
Jeffrey D. Waldstreicher, Vice-Chair	Democrat, District 18, Montgomery County	(410) 841-3137, (301) 858-3137, 1-800-492-7122, ext. 3137 (toll free)	jeff.waldstreicher@senate.state.md.us
Jill P. Carter	Democrat, District 41, Baltimore City	(410) 841-3697, (301) 858-3697	jill.carter@senate.state.md.us
Shelly L. Hettleman	Democrat, District 11, Baltimore County	(410) 841-3131, (301) 858-3131 1-800-492-7122, ext. 3313 (toll free)	shelly.hettleman@senate.state.md.us
Susan C. Lee	Democrat, District 16, Montgomery County	(410) 841-3124, (301) 858-3124 1-800-492-7122, ext. 3124 (toll free)	susan.lee@senate.state.md.us
Charles E. Sydnor III	Democrat, District 44, Baltimore County	(410) 841-3612, (301) 858-3612 1-800-492-7122, ext. 3612 (toll free)	charles.sydnor@senate.state.md.us
Christopher R. West	Republican, District 42, Baltimore County	(410) 841-3648, (301) 858-3648 1-800-492-7122, ext. 3648 (toll free)	chris.west@senate.state.md.us
Ronald N. Young	Democrat, District 3, Frederick County	(410) 841-3575, (301) 858-3575 1-800-492-7122, ext. 3575 (toll free)	ronald.young@senate.state.md.us

And on Twitter:
@Willcsmithjr

@jwaldstreicher

@SenatorSusanLee

@shellyhettleman

@CharlesSydnor3d

Hidden Predator Act of 2020 by Parents' Coalition of Montg... on Scribd

MoCo Senator Susan Lee Wants to Compromise on Student Safety. MCPS Administrators can Escape Criminal Penalty Even if They Suspect Sexual Abuse of MCPS Students Under Her Bill.

Montgomery County Senator Susan Lee wants the Maryland legislature to pass her bill, Senate Bill  568, that would provide for criminal penalties for administrators who fail to report sexual abuse of children only when they have ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE of the abuse.

Senator Lee says this bill is "not as broad" as she would have preferred but that the bill has been written this way because of "anticipated resistance."  [WHO IN MARYLAND IS RESISTANT TO PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM SEXUAL ABUSE?]

Senator Lee says this bill would encourage mandatory reporters to report for the "most obvious incidences" of sexual abuse.  [IF IT ISN'T OBVIOUS, THEY DO NOT HAVE TO REPORT?]

Senator Lee says her bill is a "compromise."  Senator Lee says she "brought the stakeholders together and this was sort of a compromise."  [Senator Lee did not bring the following stakeholders together:  Professor Lynn McLain, Ernest Crofoot, Theresa Lancaster, Jennifer Alvaro, or Ellen Mugmon. None of these stakeholders agree to Senator Lee's compromise.]

Nor did Senator Lee bring to the table any of the victims of sexual abuse in MCPS schools by MCPS teachers John Vigna, Lawrence Joynes or Jose Pineda.  In each of those MCPS cases multiple administrators knew about inappropriate behavior and suspected sexual abuse but did not report that information to the police.  In each of those cases the failure of the mandated reporters to call the police contributed to the victimization of addition children.  Which of those victims have agreed to Senator Lee's compromise?

Senator Lee's bill would do nothing to get MCPS administrators to report suspected sexual abuse of students.  MCPS would continue to be able to cover up these crimes under Senate Bill 568.  Why? Because Senator Susan Lee does not want to impose criminal penalties on administrators who fail to report the sexual abuse of students unless those administrators actually witness the sexual abuse with their own eyes and identify the act that they see as sexual abuse.  

Which of the Vigna, Joynes and Pineda victims who were victims of these sexual predators after those predators were already known to MCPS administrators (as evidenced by letters telling each predator to STOP TOUCHING STUDENTS) agreed to Senator Susan Lee's "compromise?" [NONE!]

The video below shows Senator Susan Lee presenting her Senate Bill 568 to the House Judiciary Committee on March 27, 2019.  After Senator Susan Lee speaks the Chair of the Committee, Luke Clippinger brought up Ellen Mugmon to speak in opposition to the bill. 

.@SenatorSusanLee Comment on Your Bill: "psychiatrists who treat pedophiles have looked for a backdoor way to reinstate it. They have found it in SB 568/HB 787 (your bill).

Oppose SB 568/HB 787 Crimes - Child Abuse and Neglect - Failure to Report

Submitted by Ellen Mugmon

March 27, 2019

Former Legislative Chair of the State Council on Child Abuse and Neglect

No State or the Federal Government Has a Law Like This

The purpose of SB 568/HB 787, as amended, is to take the child abuse reporting penalty issue off everyone’s plate and at the same time protect from accountability powerful professional groups and institutions by establishing an impossible evidentiary standard under Maryland law, ”actual knowledge,” and secondly, by overruling a significant 1993 Attorney General’s opinion that requires the reporting of child abuse after the victim turns eighteen. See Md. Op. Atty. Gen. 189 (Dec. 3, 1993). The bills also have a one year statute of limitations, which means that if the failure to report is not found out by authorities within a year, there could not be a prosecution.

Then Attorney General Curran stated the following: “If we accept the proposition that no reporting were required if the victim is now an adult, we would be saying that there would be no duty to report if an eighteen year old had been subject to recent abuse and had younger siblings at home in the care of the abuser. That would be an untenable construction of the statute, one that we cannot imagine the General Assembly intended.”

As the Baltimore City State’s Attorney noted in her written testimony in 2018 on SB 132/ HB 500, the same bill as SB 568/HB 787, except for the penalty: “It is nearly impossible from a legal perspective to prove that an individual had “actual knowledge” of abuse, especially if the mandatory reporter contends that they did not see the abuse occur and did not believe the child’s disclosure.”

Requiring “actual knowledge” of the abuse before a mandatory reporter could be prosecuted for failure to report it is a higher standard of knowledge than beyond a reasonable doubt. Jurors do not need to witness a crime as it is occuring in order convict an individual for committing it.

Thus, this bill is NOT a compromise as proponents claim. It is NOT a small step forward either. Rather, it is a complete and harmful capitulation to the Maryland Catholic Conference and powerful professional groups which once and for all want to end the pressure to bring Maryland law into the mainstream with legislation that that could actually result in convictions.

To argue about the differences in a penalty that will never be applied egregiously misses the point. The Committee has a moral obligation to acknowledge all the defects in this bill and then reject it.

Those Who Don’t Know History Are Doomed To Repeat It.

The Maryland Catholic Conference has for 26 years attempted, whenever the opportunity arose, to get out from under 78Md. Op. Atty. Gen. 189 (Dec. 3, 1993). In the face of this third explosion of the horrific clergy abuse scandal, it would be unconscionable for the Committee to agree to the restrictions in this bill, which would be unique to Maryland.

While the Committee should be commended for voting favorably on HB 687, which remediates a statute which was supposed to remediate the previous statute of limitations law, it is understood that it is not likely to make it out of the Senate. The passage of SB 568/HB 787 will be another slap in the face to the survivors who supported that bill and equally oppose this one.

After the SOL bill was enacted during the 2017 session, the press, advocates and survivors mistakenly hailed its passage. They did not realize that the extension of the time period to allow a suit to be filed was meaningless because the bill had been drafted behind the scenes to make it impossible for survivors to prevail.

It would be wrong for any legislator to claim a so called victory for child protection, should this bill pass, knowing full well that it is unworkable and that the “[i]nclusion of subsection (c) in proposed Crim. L. 3-602.2 could well be read by the courts to mean that the General Assembly has now taken a policy view counter to that of the of the A.G.’s Opinion-- that reporting when an identified victim has reached the age of majority is unimportant. Such a reading would leave at risk innumerable children in an abusers sphere.” (Professor Lynn Mclain, February 26, 2018)

Since the notorious Berlin pedophile exemption (unique to Maryland) was repealed in 1989, psychiatrists who treat pedophiles have looked for a backdoor way to reinstate it. They have found it in SB 568/HB 787. Disclosures by pedophiles do not meet the “actual knowledge” standard, the highest form of knowledge in law. Pedophiles do not rape children in front of those providing treatment to them. In the pre-1993 handling of his cases, Dr. Berlin refused to report when a relative molested his niece because she was nineteen even though she had a younger sister at risk. This bill would not penalize him if he did so again

Attorney General Frosh is currently investigating the Catholic Church in Maryland. Why is this Committee jumping the gun to provide new protections from accountability for the hierarchy when it fails to report? The Committee should not rely on Bishop Lori’s reforms, which call for parishioners to report child sexual abuse to the Church, first and foremost, rather than to the authorities. Setting up internal investigations prior to reporting to determine credibility by the Church’s own standards, thereby compromising police and social services investigations, is a self serving procedure which will not lead to the truth. Bishop Lori, while usurping governmental functions in plain sight, is supporting these bills.

None of the Penn State officials convicted of failing to report Sandusky to authorities could have been convicted in Maryland under the “actual knowledge” standard in this bill. None of them had “actual knowledge” of Sandusky’s abuse. That is why this bill is a pretense.

The Congressional bipartisan federal law enacted after the USA Gymnastics scandal states: "When a mandatory reporter learns of facts that give reason to suspect that a child has suffered an incident of child abuse ... and fails to make a timely report as required by subsection(a) of that section, [the mandatory reporter] shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than year or both."

Why should it be that Maryland children in USA Gymnastics programs are better protected than all other Maryland children under SB 568/HB 787?

Without the 1993 opinion, the shocking disclosures of the notorious Maskell Case would never have come to light, as chronicled in the Netflix series, The Keepers. The Baltimore Archdiocese concedes this point in its response to the Keepers on its website. (See also in this regard: “Catholic Officials Knew of Teacher’s Abuse, Court Files Indicate,” by Tricia Bishop, The Baltimore Sun, November, 25, 2012 and“U-Md. Lawyers Didn’t Tell Police That Swim Coach Rick Curl Had Abused a Teen Girl,” by Amy Brittain, The Baltimore Sun, May 29, 2013.

Scandals in Maryland now include the cover-ups and failure to report by the Catholic Church, the ongoing scandals in the Montgomery County Schools, the Ron Price scandal in Anne Arundel County, the Deonte Carraway scandal in Prince George’s County, and more recently the scandal in the Baltimore Orthodox Jewish Community. These scandals will continue until there are successful prosecutions for failure to report, which cannot happen under this legislation.

Do Not invoke the #MeToo Movement in Support of This Bill

Proponents claim that SB 568/HB 787 is in line with the goals of #MeToo which are to increase the power of victims to be believed, to increase the protection of women and children, and to expand the possibility of justice. But this legislation is actually antithetical to the movement because it would automatically discount disclosures of abuse by child and adult victims alike, since these disclosures most assuredly would not meet the “actual knowledge” standard.

Absolutely no one, especially Rachael Denhollander, an activist and survivor of Larry Nassar’s whom proponents invoke, nor any other of the more than 250 victims of the USA Gymnastics scandal, would ever consider coming to Maryland to testify for such a backward bill. Ms. Denhollander was the first victim to come forward publicly. She was 31-years-old when she disclosed her victimization when she was 15-years-old. A mandated reporter under this bill could say that she was too old to require a report and that her disclosure did not provide the requisite “actual knowledge,” either.

It is appalling that SB 568/HB 787 mirrors provisions in the USA Gymnastics’ policy which caused the decades long cover-up of a terrible scandal. Steve Penny, the former director of USA Gymnastics, did not report the abuse because he deemed disclosures by victims and even allegations by other coaches as second or third hand information which did not prove to him that the abuse actually occurred. Moreover, his investigator stated that she did not report complaints by gymnasts who had turned eighteen because they were no longer children. It did not matter that they were children when they were abused or that other children were in the hands of a prolific 54-year-old pedophile. What mattered was the policy which protected the reputation of the organization.

Sending The Wrong Message - Undermining Maryland’s Reporting Law

Proponents insist that the bill would not undermine the underlying civil reporting law since the language of the civil reporting law would not be changed. This is false. Two reporting standards muddy the obligation to report suspected abuse and complicate and confuse training. Because there would be no criminal penalty based on the "reason to believe" standard, why would mandatory reporters follow the civil law, especially those not subject to professional penalties? Consequently, this bill would delay or have an overall chilling effect on reporting. It would encourage reporters to wait until they knew for sure that abuse has occurred or eventually fail to report at all. It would also encourage administrators such as those in Montgomery County continue to keep secret lists of possible perpetrators and perform internal investigations prior to reporting instead of reporting immediately. This endangers children.

Child Protection Lip Service

Supporters of this bill are up front. They admit that the bill is intended to protect mandatory reporters. They state that the bill “would be the most lenient toward adults, i.e. mandatory reporters, than any other law in the entire United States or its territories.” During a meeting prior to the session, it was stated that the Committee in 2018 had concerns about the “actual knowledge” language and it was out for this session. Why must we now accept the nonsensical mantra from proponents that something is better than nothing, when this legislation is worse than nothing?

Mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect is the very foundation of the child protection system. But this bill is so flawed that if it were enacted, the safety and protection of children would be compromised far more than it is under current law. For these reasons, I request 568/HB 787 be given an unfavorable report. 

Oppose SB 568 HB 787 Ellen ... by on Scribd