MARYLAND
Insurance Journal
March 14, 2006
Witnesses who had been sexually abused as children offered what Maryland House Speaker Michael Busch described as "gut wrenching'' testimony in Annapolis on behalf of legislation that would extend the cutoff time for filing civil lawsuits against abusers.
Two men, including CNN news anchor Thomas Roberts, testified before the House Judiciary Committee last week about the abuse they said they suffered at the hands of a Roman Catholic priest who was chaplain at a Baltimore high school.
"I'm a sexual abuse survivor,'' Roberts, 33, said at a hearing where he was one of almost 40 witnesses who were victims of child sexual abuse who signed up for the committee.
Roberts said he stayed silent for almost 20 years about his abuse. But at the hearing, he sat beside Michael Goles, a former Maryland resident, who filed an unsuccessful civil suit against Jerome F. Toohey Jr., who was at one time chaplain of Calvert Hall College High School in Baltimore County.