Consolidated Lawsuits Allege Baltimore Cops Violently Raped and Abused Vulnerable [mostly Black] Children While in Custody. City Authorities Claim Immunity [or "the Law of the Jungle" Standard]

From [HERE] When Brianna’s uncle died in 2024, she stumbled onto a collection of papers that took her 20 years back in time, back to when she was a frightened 12-year-old girl sitting in Baltimore’s social services office.

The documents showed her uncle’s prolonged effort to get justice for Brianna after he learned what happened to her in that office in 2004. Reading through handwritten letters and statements from that time, Brianna found herself back in that room, where a Baltimore Police officer groped and sexually abused her, she said in an interview with Baltimore Beat.

Her uncle never got what she would consider justice. But under Maryland’s Child Victims Act, Brianna got her own chance: she filed a lawsuit against the state of Maryland and the city of Baltimore over the abuse. (Baltimore Beat is identifying Brianna using a pseudonym to protect her identity and safety.)

“I feel like I was robbed of a childhood,” she said.

Brianna’s lawsuit became possible in 2023, when Maryland lawmakers passed legislation to allow adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse to sue no matter how long ago their abuse happened. While the Child Victims Act was passed after a massive attorney general’s report revealed decades of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, it also brought forward thousands of other lawsuits, many against the state’s juvenile justice system.

A small subset of these cases has received less attention: lawsuits over abuse at the hands of the police.

Half a dozen of these lawsuits were consolidated into a group in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. While they are far fewer in number than the lawsuits against Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services, they depict violent rapes and abuse by officers who had vulnerable children under their control. The allegations span decades; one survivor is in her 70s now.

“If you look at the date ranges of these cases, … there is a clear history of sexual misconduct committed by Baltimore City Police Officers against, typically, women, young women in their custody,” said Cary Hansel, a civil rights lawyer handling one of the lawsuits. “Given that clear history, there is an obligation on the part of anyone with power to stop it.”

The Maryland attorney general’s office, which defends state agencies in these lawsuits, declined to comment. A spokesperson for Mayor Brandon Scott also declined to comment on behalf of the city.

In court papers, both the city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland denied responsibility for the allegations. The city and the state offered something of a catch-22 in their responses: the city argued the Baltimore Police Department was under state control at the time of the claims, while the state argued that BPD officers were city employees at that time. 

They also claimed to be protected by sovereign immunity, or the idea that federal and state governments have immunity from lawsuits unless they specifically waive it. [MORE]