Kentucky mayor asks court to unseal sexual assault case versus police
By Timothy Mclaughlin
(Reuters) - The mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, asked a court on Monday to unseal a lawsuit that accuses two members of the city's police department of sexually abusing a teenager while he was part of a Boy Scout-affiliated youth program.
The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday on behalf of a man, identified in court papers only as N.C., who joined the Louisville Metro Police Youth Explorers program in 2011 when he was 16 years old, according to the man's attorney, David Yates.
The man claims he was abused by two members of the Louisville Metro Police Department over the next two years, Yates said. The police run the youth program in affiliation with the Boy Scouts of America.
"The allegations represent an appalling betrayal of trust and abuse of power, and threaten a program that has helped so many young men and women interested in becoming police officers and law enforcement leaders," Mayor Greg Fischer said in a statement on Monday.
"To restore the public's trust in this program, the proceedings must be as open as the courts will allow."
The explorer program was also being suspended, Fischer said.
The Louisville police department did not respond to a request for comment.
“The behavior included in these allegations runs counter to everything for which the BSA stands," the Boy Scouts said in a written statement. "Upon learning of the allegations we took immediate action to remove (the officers) and precluded both from any further participation in Exploring or any scouting programming."
Yates asked for the lawsuit to be sealed and declined give specifics of the case, including the names of the officers.
"We are up against a mountain," Yates said on Monday morning. "We have sued the police department and people of powerful authority."
The two police officers are among the seven defendants in the case, according to Yates. One officer has since resigned and the other was reassigned to desk duty.
A copy of the 25-page complaint obtained by the Courier-Journal newspaper claims the teen was raped and sexually abused by two officers in their homes and police vehicles and that the episodes were recorded and used to make pornography.
The youth program is open to anyone aged 14 to 19 who is interested in a career in law enforcement.
(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Cynthia Osterman)
