After decades of working in Maryland’s juvenile justice system, the man who over 60 plaintiffs recently accused of sexually abusing them at a youth detention center went on to work for Baltimore City Public Schools as a substitute teacher.

Ronald P. Neverdon, the former DJS employee at the center of a sweeping lawsuit filed Tuesday against the state of Maryland, worked for the school system intermittently for several years leading up to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a city schools spokesperson and payroll records reviewed by The Baltimore Sun.

Neverdon last worked as a substitute teacher for BCPSS in February 2020, city schools spokesperson Sherry Christian confirmed. Payroll records from that year list the former Department of Juvenile Services employee’s initial hire date with the school system as October 2013.

The recent civil complaint in Baltimore City Circuit Court alleges that Neverdon sexually abused dozens of boys who were being held at the Charles H. Hickey, Jr. School juvenile facility during his tenure at DJS from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Though the men allege that the former housing supervisor’s pattern of abuse was an open secret among Hickey staff and detainees for three decades, Neverdon has not faced charges for sex crimes. But a source familiar with the matter said that Baltimore County Police are now conducting a criminal investigation into abuse allegations involving Neverdon.

The lawsuit was enabled by Maryland’s Child Victims Act, which removed the state’s statute of limitations on most civil claims related to child sex abuse. As far as criminal matters, state law does not impose a statute of limitations on felonies, including most sex crimes.

Neverdon, now 78, did not return multiple phone calls requesting comment or answer at a West Baltimore home listed as his address when a reporter knocked on the door. A nephew of his said Tuesday that he had passed a reporter’s request for comment to his uncle, though it had not been returned a day later.

The 59-page complaint filed against the state on Tuesday afternoon details the abuse that the dozens of plaintiffs, men who are now in their 30s to 60s, say they suffered at the hands of Neverdon as children. Many of them allege that they continue to suffer from psychological problems, anger issues and addiction because of the abuse.

One of the anonymous plaintiffs told The Baltimore Sun he had attempted to kill himself dozens of times due to his abuse and that Neverdon had more victims, many who were not ready to come forward and relive their abuse, and others who had died — several, by suicide.

The Department of Juvenile Services, which the lawsuit accuses of “simply look[ing] the other way” despite knowing of abuse by Neverdon and other facility staff, declined to respond directly to the lawsuit’s allegations, with a spokesperson noting the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

“DJS takes allegations of sexual abuse of children in our care with utmost seriousness,” the department said in a statement, adding that it was “working hard to provide decent, humane and rehabilitative environments” for youth committed to its facilities.

Asked Wednesday if a criminal investigation involving Neverdon had been opened in light of the civil allegations, or if county prosecutors had ever investigated Neverdon for sexual abuse, Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said his office was “unable to comment at this time.”

A Baltimore County Police spokesperson said the department “does not comment on open litigation,” when asked the same questions. The Maryland attorney general’s office also declined to comment, noting it “neither confirms nor denies the existence of investigations.”

Ronald Neverdon, the son of a steelworker, comes from a large family with ties to local offices. His relatives include prominent Baltimoreans such as former Maryland Del. Joan Neverdon Parker and Russell A. Neverdon Sr., a longtime defense attorney who made an unsuccessful write-in bid against Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore’s 2014 race for state’s attorney. He and Ivan Bates, now Baltimore’s top prosecutor, represented Michael Maurice Johnson during his first trial in the high-profile killing of Phylicia Barnes. The former delegate died in 1997, while the former lawyer did not return a request for comment.

The Hickey school in Northeast Baltimore County, as well as other juvenile facilities in the state, have been the subject of multiple lawsuits alleging sex abuse by DJS staff filed after the Child Victims Act came into effect in 2023.

Though it does not list Neverdon as a defendant, Tuesday’s complaint appears to be the first time Neverdon has been accused in civil court of sexually abusing youth at Hickey. The latest suit against Maryland comes as lawmakers weigh legislation to cap the state’s liability under the Child Victims Act as settlements could cost the state over $3 billion.

Maryland’s youth detention facilities have a long, well-documented history of troubles. And staff-on-youth abuse at the Hickey facility, in particular, has been at the center of several probes.

Problems at Hickey came to a head in 1991 when a city grand jury found a pattern of harassment by staff and an advocate’s report portraying the jail-like facility as a “violent training school.” Spurred by a visit to the troubled facility the previous year, then-Governor William Donald Schaefer moved to put the school’s operations under private control.

It soon became clear that privatization didn’t solve those issues. Multiple reports from an independent state monitor in the early 2000s detailed Hickey as a facility still plagued with violence, including physical abuse by staff, employees bringing alcohol and pornography into the facility and multiple assaults between youths every day.

A Department of Justice report from 2004 found conditions at Hickey and the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center in Prince George’s County violated the constitutional civil rights of youth detainees there — those conditions included “a deeply disturbing degree of physical abuse of youth by staff” and “inappropriate staff-youth relationships” involving female employees and minor residents.

The facility downsized in 2005, removing long-term residential programs but keeping its 72-bed detention center. Federal oversight of the facility ended in 2008 after the Justice Department found that DJS had remedied many of the issues that investigators had identified.

The state’s Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit continues to review conditions at the facility, which housed an average population of 70 youth during the third quarter of 2024, a 19% increase from 2023.

The National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached 24/7 at 800-656-HOPE or online. The hotline, operated by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, offers a range of free services, including confidential support from trained staff.

Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson @baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.