Leaders question timing of ASD report

Proposal that would have removed statute of limitations tabled

WEST HARTFORD — Hours before the release of a report detailing allegations of long-ago sexual abuse at the American School for the Deaf, the Connecticut state legislature formally tabled a proposal that would have removed the statute of limitations for sexual assault survivors to bring civil lawsuits.

While one legislator finds the timing more than coincidental, the ASD denies coordinating the report release with the tabling of the proposal.

The ASD report outlines 75 credible allegations of abuse at the West Hartford school, including sexual abuse and extreme physical abuse of young students. The report covers allegations from the late 1950s through the 1980s, and accuses nine former faculty and staff, including a longtime director of the school.

Under existing state laws, many of the allegations are too old for the survivors to bring either a criminal or civil case.

The proposal that was tabled on Friday would allow sexual abuse survivors to sue in civil court at any point in their lives. It had previously been hailed by Democratic leadership as an extension of previous reforms, including the 2019 “Time’s Up Act.”

The proposal was brought to the contentious tabling vote

in the judiciary committee’s meeting on Friday morning. Several hours after the vote, at 4:20 p.m., the ASD sent out its abuse report.

‘That might have been the impetus’

The lawmaker who spearheaded the recently tabled proposal, state Sen. Mae Flexer, D-Killingly, is suspicious of the report’s timing.

“I can’t imagine that it is a coincidence,” Flexer said. “There’s a reason why it didn’t come out on last Tuesday, or the week before or the week before that.”

The ASD denies that the timing was intentional or planned around the judiciary committee’s vote. Elizabeth DeRosa, ASD’s director of institutional advancement, said the school had planned for several weeks to hold a Board of Directors meeting on Feb. 20, which was Thursday, and to release the report after that meeting.

“The action of the Judiciary Committee was a complete surprise,”

DeRosa said in an email. “There was absolutely no connection between this action and the release of our statement.”

Judiciary committee cochair Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, said the committee tabled the proposal because it required further vetting and potentially lengthy public hearings, which would be difficult to accomplish in the current and unusually short legislative session.

Flexer said that, had the ASD released the report earlier, it might have shifted the outcome of Friday’s committee vote.

“If we had yet one more example of a Connecticutbased institution that had covered this sort of thing up and allowed this kind of abuse to happen, that might have been the impetus to change the minds of some of my colleagues,” Flexer said. “It might’ve made some people think it was more pertinent than ever that we take this up this year.”

Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, DWest Hartford, said she didn’t know if an earlier release would have changed the vote. Gilchrest said the state has already seen similar situations, including sexual abuse by priests and by Boy Scout leaders.

“There have already been so many examples that we shouldn’t need additional instances,” Gilchrest said.

Gilchrest, who has worked for years on sexual assault policy, said the allegations described in ASD’s report took a familiar shape.

“It actually mirrors a pattern we see in many institutions, that the abuse was ongoing for far too long and once again that a vulnerable population was taken advantage of,” Gilchrest said.

‘What is it going to take?’

Following ASD’s report, Flexer and Gilchrest pointed to changes that could be addressed both at the school itself and in the state legislature. Gilchrest said she’s so far been “pleased” with the school’s response to the allegations.

“They are not only being cooperative, but have made it clear that they’re going to look at the current policies,” Gilchrest said.

In Friday’s report, the ASD included a section titled, “Moving Forward,” which outlines some of its plans for addressing the many abuse allegations. The school also reported the allegations to West Hartford police in March 2019 and that investigation remains “active and ongoing,” the department said Monday night.

The school said it has reviewed a number of its policies, has “strengthened” professional development on issues related to student well-being and has purchased software to facilitate anonymous reports of abuse.

In addition to these actions, Gilchrest said she hopes the school will provide further training to staff, so that employees understand exactly how to handle suspected or alleged abuse. She said similar training should be extended to all students and parents, who also “need to understand how to have these conversations.”

Looking to the legislature, both Flexer and Gilchrest said they hope to see a resurfacing of the proposal to eliminate the civil statute of limitations.

For Flexer, ASD’s report compounded her frustration and further solidified the need for reform.