Child Victims Act settlements could cost Maryland over $3 billion: 'A potentially enormous liability for the state'

Hannah Gaskill, Baltimore Sun on Jan 21, 2025

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BALTIMORE — State Senate President Bill Ferguson doubled down on his support Monday of the law that could leave Maryland liable for $3.1 billion in settlement payments to survivors of child sexual abuse — despite the state’s massive budget deficit.

“I think that we understood that there could be a cost,” Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, said Tuesday.

“I think the victims in these cases have borne this cost for years and decades, and so we have to find some way to compensate for those pains and do it in a way that is practical for the state — that is real — and it’s going to cost money.”

In 2023, the Maryland General Assembly passed the Child Victims Act, which removed the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse survivors to file civil lawsuits against those responsible. The state could be on the hook for paying out up to $890,000 per occurrence of abuse.

The constitutionality of the law is currently being challenged in the Maryland Supreme Court.

At a joint fiscal briefing of the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee on Monday, Department of Legislative Services fiscal analyst David Romans said that, to date, approximately 3,500 claims have been brought under the law. The majority of plaintiffs were housed in Department of Juvenile Services facilities, some dating back as far back as the 1960s.

Ferguson said Tuesday that the more than 3,000 victims the state could be liable for paying restitution to is not the “full scope” of cases that were filed, but rather those who had a “reasonable claim of at least an instance” of sexual abuse against them when they were children in the custody of the state of Maryland.

State lawmakers are beginning to dig into Gov. Wes Moore’s budget proposal, which seeks to close a $2.7 billion gap. Romans told legislators Monday that nothing is earmarked for pending settlement payments under the Child Victims Act.

Attorney General Anthony Brown’s office has hired outside counsel to negotiate with the plaintiff’s attorneys to devise a sustainable way to pay them as settlement negotiations continue.

“This is a potentially enormous liability for the state,” Romans said. “However, it is very possible that there will be a settlement reached before the end of session, and you all may be asked to find the money to make the first settlement payment, which could very easily be hundreds of millions of dollars.”

According to Ferguson, lawmakers were warned at the time the bill was passed that increasing the payment caps and removing the statute of limitations to report instances of abuse could cause financial problems for the state.

When asked if they acted too quickly to enact the law, he said, “What’s the cost of a young person who’s been repeatedly violated sexually when in the custody of the state?”

Kathleen Hoke, a University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law professor, said that because the constitutionality of the case is still pending in the courts, no cases have been tried under this law. She also questions the feasibility of survivors being able to prove to a jury that abuse happened decades ago.

“I think any projection for any claim that’s made is going to be validated is a bit high,” she told The Baltimore Sun in an interview.

Regarding the burden that may be placed on Maryland taxpayers, Ferguson said that “the sad reality” is that taxpayer dollars, in some cases, unintentionally funded the abuse, pointing to the number of the survivors who say they were under the care of the Department of Juvenile Services.

“We spent many years warehousing children in facilities in which, now, today, the chickens have come home to roost,” he said. “These are very real costs associated with very real, horrific scenarios of what’s happened to young people who have been violated when in state custody, and we have to figure out a way to make it right.”

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