THAT’S INTIMIDATION
Law professor and victims’ advocate says Chad Curtis’ attempt to reveal names of sex victims is ‘repugnant’
FORMER Yankees outfielder Chad Curtis, deemed a “predator” by the Michigan judge who sent him to prison on criminal sexual conduct charges in 2013, wants to publicly identify three women who say he assaulted them when they were high school students.
Curtis, acting as his own attorney, filed a brief in Grand Rapids federal court earlier this month that says the women should be named in court papers because courts frown upon plaintiffs filing civil lawsuits anonymously and because the plaintiffs are no longer minors.
Curtis, who is serving a sevento-15-year sentence in Michigan, also claimed it would be unfair to allow the women to sue him anonymously.
“To allow plaintiffs to proceed with pseudonyms, to some degree, creates a verdict before the trial,” Curtis wrote.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Douglas Fierberg, said in papers filed Thursday that Curtis does not understand the applicable law.
“Defendant Curtis’s notoriety as an outspoken former professional baseball player has caused this matter to receive national media attention. Plaintiffs, young women recently graduated from high school, should not be forced to have their identities revealed to the entire country so that they can receive recompense for the harm they suffered. Their identities should not be revealed so that Defendant Curtis can attempt to retry his criminal conviction and accuse them of being liars,” Fierberg wrote.
Advocates for sexual abuse victims said defendants accused of sexual abuse and institutions that allegedly cover it up often try to persuade courts to allow them to identify victims because they hope it might prompt plaintiffs to back off from lawsuits.
“It is a way of intimidating victims,” said Marci Hamilton, a Cardozo Law School professor who has represented sexual abuse victims.
New York lawyer Kevin Mulhearn, who has represented sexual abuse victims in lawsuits filed against Poly Prep, Yeshiva University, and other institutions, called Curtis’ tactic “absolutely repugnant.
“It is a way to silence them through public humiliation,” Mulhearn said.
One of the four plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit filed against Curtis in April 2014 is identified by name, but the others are listed in court papers under pseudonyms. The women were minors when Curtis, working as a substitute teacher and weight-training coach, assaulted them while performing what he said were therapeutic massages.
The Lakewood school district, board of education and district officials are also named as defendants.
Curtis’ filing said he had been denied due process at his criminal trial and that his victims had lied. “This is not a case where plaintiffs are attempting to cast aspersions on an individual from behind a cloak of anonymity, the ‘aspersions’ defendant Curtis claims are being case upon him are facts — proven beyond a reasonable doubt in the criminal justice system,” Fierberg fired back.