Lawsuit accuses a longtime Massachusetts teacher of child sex abuse while working at Maine summer camp

 

The plaintiff, who requested anonymity to protect his privacy, said he has come forward with his lawsuit now, nearly half a century after the alleged abuse in Maine, to seek justice while McCook is still alive. He also wants accountability from the institutions that employed him.

He has been aided by a Maine law passed in 2021 that eliminated the statute of limitations for civil claims over long ago cases of child sex abuse, making lawsuits, such as the plaintiff’s against McCook, viable in court. He said he also approached the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office with his allegation last year.

The warning, relayed to the 11-year-old boy by a fellow camper, was specific and menacing. If the assistant director of Camp Kieve in Maine invited the boy to his nearby home, the camper said, do not go.

Not long after, during the summer of 1976, the warning turned into a waking nightmare, according to a lawsuit filed in Maine on Thursday and interviews with the plaintiff, who is now 58. On the sidelines of a softball game, the assistant director approached the boy and then led him home, the lawsuit alleged.

There, the assistant director rubbed the boy’s back, the plaintiff recalled in interviews, and then subjected him to what the lawsuit described as “sexual contact,” defined by Maine law as “touching of the genitals or anus, directly or through clothing.”