$100K settlement reached in lawsuit over Baltimore County’s handling of sexual assault case – Baltimore Sun

Baltimore County and the state would each pay $50,000 under a settlement reached with a woman who argued her First Amendment rights were violated when county officials attempted to dissuade her from filing rape charges.

The state Board of Public Works must still approve the states share of the settlement payment. According to an online agenda, the matter will be considered at the boards Oct. 26 meeting. The county is paying $50,000, said Erica Palmisano, spokeswoman for the county executives office.

The settlement was first announced last month, days before the case was set to go to trial in U.S. District Court. But the settlement amount was not made public.

If approved by the board later this month, the settlement would conclude the yearslong legal battle over the handling of rape allegations by the countys top prosecutor Scott Shellenberger and the county police department.

The case stems from an incident in 2017, when the woman was a college student. The Baltimore Sun does not typically identify individuals who say they are survivors of sexual assault.

The woman, then a Towson University student, has said an assault took place when she and another female student were in an apartment with three University of Maryland Baltimore County baseball players.

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Both women told police they had blacked out or passed out and were sexually assaulted by the men. The men have said the acts were consensual.

The Baltimore County States Attorneys Office declined to bring charges against the men, and so the woman opted to attempt to bring charges against them herself, by filing a statement of charges with the court commissioner. Her first try failed, but after her second attempt, a different commissioner charged the men with rape and sex offenses in 2018.

But before officials could deliver the criminal summonses, Shellenberger dispatched police officers to the womans home, according to her legal filing. Once there, they spoke with her grandmother, and stated that she risked facing criminal charges of her own if she pursued the charges against the men. Ultimately, prosecutors dropped the charges against the men.

The womans account was included in a broader class-action lawsuit filed by several women against Baltimore County and UMBC. But in 2020, U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow threw out all of the claims except hers.

Her case, focused on possible First Amendment violations, was allowed to go forward. In a rare move last year, Chasanow denied immunity for Shellenberger, opening the door for a trial or a settlement in the womans case.

The three baseball players received $150,000 each from the university in a defamation case, after they were named in an article about the assault allegations by the campus newspaper, The Retriever. The university is under a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into its Title IX compliance and response to sexual harassment complaints.

Shellenbergers record on sexual misconduct allegations was questioned frequently during his recent reelection bid. Ultimately, Shellenberger won a narrow victory over his first primary challenger since his election in 2006.

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$100K settlement reached in lawsuit over Baltimore County's handling of sexual assault case - Baltimore Sun