BALTIMORE — A priest lured 9-year-old David Schappelle into a private area of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Gaithersburg decades ago under the guise of teaching him about confession.

Father Wayland Brown proceeded to masturbate under his “ceremonial robe,” withdraw his hand when he was finished and tell the boy that “God will be very angry” if Schappelle “didn’t accept his holy offering.” So began a course of sexual abuse that lasted months and went on to involve another pedophile priest, according to a lawsuit filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court.

The complaint says the abuse spanned the summer and fall of 1986, yet Schappelle said recently he didn’t begin to remember what happened to him until approximately 2019. By that point, the legal time limit for him to sue the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, which is headquartered in Maryland and has parishes in five counties, had expired.

“It was so traumatic that basically my brain just shut it out,” Schappelle told reporters Thursday at a news conference hosted by his lawyers.

Schappelle’s break came Oct. 1, when Maryland’s Child Victims Act took effect. The law erased time limits for those sexually abused as children to sue their abusers and the institutions that enabled their torment, but now that law — and Schappelle’s lawsuit — hang in the balance because of legal challenges from the Washington diocese and others sued under the act.

The Supreme Court of Maryland is slated to hear arguments Tuesday about the constitutionality of the nascent child victims law and, within roughly a year, determine whether it’s legal.

Much of the highly technical debate in court will focus on a 2017 law that preceded that Child Victims Act and whether the Maryland General Assembly included a provision in that law granting defendants, such as the Washington diocese, permanent immunity from child sex abuse lawsuits after a survivor turns 38 years old.

But beyond the courtroom, there are broader implications for survivors, who recent research estimates mostly come forward when they are between 40 and 50. In the Child Victims Act, survivors and their advocates say, there was finally a law that acknowledged that timeline.

“If we say the Child Victims Act is unconstitutional, it tells those predators and pedophiles that it’s OK, time will expire and everything will be fine. If you can just get through that time where the child turns 38, then you’re fine. You’re free,” Schappelle said. “Well … we need to hold our society to a better standard. We don’t just forget things that happen.”

“I mean,” he continued, “the truth has to happen. Whether it takes five years, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, the truth needs to come out. It will come out. That’s what the Child Victims Act is about.”

‘Time for accountability’

David Lorenz, Maryland director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, remembers working to pass legislation resembling the Child Victims Act as early as 2004.

Over those almost two decades since, he said, survivors’ advocates rallied against some stubborn lawmakers and a strong — and well-funded — push against the legislation by the Maryland Catholic Conference, the church’s lobbying arm in the state.

At a news conferences Wednesday and Thursday, Lorenz credited the release last April of a state attorney general report documenting the abuse of more than 600 children by 156 clergy and other officials employed by the Archdiocese of Baltimore with propelling lawmakers to enact the child victims bill.

“That report came out and it was a total inversion of how the legislators looked at us,” Lorenz recalled. “We’d walk in there and say, ‘We’re here to support the Child Victims Act,’ and they’d say, ‘Oh yeah, we’re right behind you.’ It was unbelievable.”

Democratic Gov. Wes Moore signed the bill into law April 12, 2023, and a deluge of lawsuits flooded Maryland courts when it took effect in October. The complaints targeted the likes of churches, schools, youth correctional facilities and other institutions, with people alleging abuse by priests, teachers, guards and others in positions of authority over children.

The Baltimore diocese, America’s oldest, declared bankruptcy two days before the child victims law took effect. For survivors of abuse in that branch of the Catholic church, that meant repurposing lawsuits in state court into proof-of-claim forms filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore. In that case, the church is in mediation with a committee of abuse survivors.

Because of questions raised during the Child Victims Act’s passage, state lawmakers included a provision allowing for a mid-lawsuit appeal on constitutional grounds to the state supreme court. Almost as quickly as complaints hit court dockets, defendants like the Washington diocese, Harford County Board of Education and Key School in Annapolis challenged the law as unconstitutional.

Circuit Court judges in Prince George’s and Harford counties ruled the law was constitutional, leading to swift appeals. The Montgomery County Circuit Court judge presiding over Schappelle’s lawsuit deemed the law unconstitutional, siding with the Washington diocese.

Schappelle appealed that ruling, but his case is not before the Supreme Court. The high court is considering appeals arising from lawsuits against the Washington diocese in Prince George’s and the education board in Harford County, as well as a question from a U.S. District Court judge presiding over a sex abuse lawsuit against the Key School.

Robert K. Jenner, an attorney for Schappelle and another plaintiff whose case is before the Supreme Court, foreshadowed Tuesday’s oral arguments at the SNAP news conference with his client.

“This is thick, this is heavy. This is a constitutional analysis going back decades. The arguments will be long, they will be involved, but they will be important,” Jenner said. “But we know this, it is time for change. It is time for justice. It is time for accountability.”

Debate centers on 2017 law

The constitutional debate over the Child Victims Act centers on the law that preceded it.

Defendants in the cases before the Supreme Court argue that the 2017 law that expanded time limits for victims to file suit granted them permanent protection from civil claims after a victim turned 38. The provision in the law that granted them immunity, they argue, is called a statute of repose and gave them a “vested right” against liability in sex abuse lawsuits.

They contend lawmakers can’t change a statute of repose.

Their argument garnered support from a group of organizations representing businesses, insurance companies and civil defense attorneys in Maryland, who filed a brief with the state Supreme Court arguing the law was unconstitutional. They say limiting the time for filing lawsuits is fair because witnesses’ memories fade and evidence is lost with time.

“The heavy cost of defending against or paying these decades-old claims will not fall upon the perpetrators of these crimes, but will be borne mainly by schools, nonprofit organizations, and other entities that provided services to children, impacting those they serve today,” the group wrote.

On the other side of the debate, plaintiff’s lawyers argue the 2017 law did not include a statute of repose but a statute of limitations, which the legislature can change or get rid of at any time.

The only other statute of repose in Maryland law can be found in the construction industry, according to legal scholars. In that context, it protects the likes of architects and builders from liability related to injuries sustained in the structures they designed or built after a certain amount of time passes.

Under that statute of repose, the clock for lawsuits starts ticking when the building is deemed operational. By contrast, a statute of limitations starts counting the period a person has to file a lawsuit from the time they sustain an injury.

Even if the Supreme Court finds the 2017 law is a statute of repose, plaintiffs lawyers argue, the legislature has the power to change it. They pointed out that the General Assembly did just that in the 1990s when it allowed people to file retroactive lawsuits against builders who created structures with asbestos.

Several organizations that represent abuse survivors, children’s rights and crime victims have backed up the plaintiffs’ arguments in legal briefs filed with the high court. So too did Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, who long ago pledged to defend the Child Victims Act, and several of the lawmakers behind the 2023 law and its 2017 precursor.

“The General Assembly did not intend to eliminate their power to allow the filing of certain time-barred claims for child sexual abuse,” read the brief filed for the lawmakers. “It is clear and unequivocal that in 2023, the Maryland General Assembly used that power to give all living survivors of child sexual abuse the opportunity to file a lawsuit against an organization responsible for the abuse, regardless of when the sexual violence occurred.”

Steven J. Kelly, an attorney for some of the plaintiffs, said having the lawmakers behind both laws submit a brief explaining their reasoning was critical because the Supreme Court justices will do an analysis of the “legislative history” of the act, which involves looking at debate in the legislature at the time the bills were being discussed and different drafts of the legislation.

“Having the legislators, the people who were actually there, who worked on the legislation, talk about that record is really powerful, and we’re hopeful it will be convincing to the justices,” Kelly said at the news conference with Jenner, Schappelle and Lorenz.

‘This is my time’

The Washington diocese knew “or should have been aware” that Brown, the priest who allegedly abused Schappelle, had a history of “predatory behavior” dating to more than a decade before he encountered Schappelle, according to the lawsuit.

Before he was ordained in 1977, Brown was a religious teacher at a church in Savannah, Georgia. The complaint says an administrator of that church once wrote that Brown “was developing a coterie of young boys around him.”

Brown became a seminarian at St. Rose of Lima after teaching in Georgia, according to Schappelle’s lawsuit. He allegedly sexually abused two boys who were parishioners there. The Catholic Church ordained him nonetheless.

Georgia law enforcement in 1986 launched an inquiry into Brown’s “behavior with male children,” prompting the bishop of the Savannah diocese to confront him. Schappelle’s complaint says he admitted to sexually abusing young boys.

The bishop subsequently sent him for “evaluation” and “treatment” at Saint Luke Institute in Silver Spring, the suit says. While he was at Saint Luke, he taught religious classes at St. Rose of Lima. That’s where he came across Schappelle, abused him and permanently altered his life.

Brown died in 2019 after being convicted in South Carolina of sexual assaulting two boys and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The Archdiocese of Washington declined to comment.

The complaint says the abuse “shattered” Schappelle’s faith, despite his being raised Catholic, left him with mental anguish and physical sickness.

Schappelle said the Child Victims Act gives voices to people who were abused as children, grew up and realized what happened to them. It gives him recourse.

“I didn’t have that as a child,” he said. “This is my time. This is what it means to me.”

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