A Baltimore County judge on Monday released on home detention a former Baltimore teacher accused of the second-degree rape of his 12-year-old neighbor.

Lewis M. Laury Jr., 24, taught U.S. history at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School until this summer, when he was arrested in July after authorities found a missing 12-year-old girl at his Pikesville home. A grand jury indicted him on 24 counts, including 12 counts of second-degree rape and other sex offense charges.

Assistant State’s Attorney Jessica Borits said during Monday’s bail review hearing that a different girl — a 16-year-old Mervo student — had previously complained that Laury acted inappropriately toward her.

That teen, who Borits described as one of Laury’s U.S. history students, reported that Laury had discussed sex with her and then given her a ride home while asking her if she liked “older guys” and about her “kinks.” Laury asked her if she wanted to have sex with him and she said no, Borits said.

“The defendant is a predator,” Borits said. No charges have been brought related to that allegation, she said. Laury’s attorney, Jerome Bivens, said the school principal and the school resource officer had investigated the student’s allegation and taken no action.

Baltimore City Public Schools spokesperson Sherry Christian wasn’t immediately able to answer questions about the student’s complaint on Monday afternoon.

Borits said that U.S. Marshals Service discovered the missing girl, who had left a note for her parents saying she was visiting a friend in Pennsylvania in June, had used a friend’s phone to call Laury, allowing authorities to track her to his home. He wasn’t at home when they found her.

The girl reported sexual activity to a Greater Baltimore Medical Center nurse when she was at the hospital for a sexual assault forensic exam, Borits said. She was 12 years old at the time, meaning the activity was charged as second-degree rape. Under Maryland law, it is a felony for an individual to have sex with someone under the age of 14 if they are four years or more years older than the victim.

DNA results and cellphone data records are still pending.

Borits said Laury told detectives the girl had slept in his bed while he slept in the living room and that his memory might be impaired by alcohol and marijuana. Laury also gave investigators a piece of paper with which he tried to verify the girl’s age, in a written contract she signed that listed her “expectations and needs,” Borits said.

Laury’s attorney Jerome Bivens said his client hadn’t raped the girl and claimed the girl hadn’t told detectives he had during their “elopement.”

“There was no sex,” said Bivens. He told Circuit Court Judge Robert E. Cahill Jr. that the girl had knocked on his client’s door, carrying luggage and $200, and told him she was escaping her abusive boyfriend. Bivens said Laury told her she could stay temporarily.

Cahill granted Biven’s request to release Laury from the Baltimore County Detention Center on home monitoring, adding that although the facts of the case are “terribly serious, terribly concerning,” the law requires him to oppose the least onerous conditions of pretrial detention while ensuring the safety of the public and any victims.

He also expressed concerns that the trial could drag on indefinitely as prosecutors wait on DNA and cellphone record extraction from backed-up labs and the FBI. Cahill ordered Laury to stay at home at all times, without leaving for work or school, and not to contact the girl or her family members.

“I must repeat, I’m following the law here,” the judge said. A trial date has not yet been set for the case.

Before asking for his client’s release, Bivens asked six people filling a row of the courtroom to stand to illustrate Laury’s strong community ties. He introduced Laury’s parents and attorney Nicholas McDaniels, who acted as a mentor to Laury.

Bivens said Laury was away in Frederick, performing work for McDaniels’ law firm, when police found the girl.

Laury attended Mervo as a student and then graduated from Towson University, where Bivens said he gave the commencement address and made the dean’s list every semester. He was previously a law student at University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.

Bivens said Laury attended law school for a year, “took time off from his legal education to start a family” and worked for Baltimore City Schools for two years.

“Schoolteachers are heroes,” Bivens told Cahill. “Look at me, your honor, I’m a Black man, I’m born in Baltimore, and so is he.”

In July, a law school spokesperson said Laury had not been enrolled in “a while.” A spokesperson did not respond to a question about the circumstances of his departure on Monday.

Court records show that Laury married a woman in 2021 who later claimed in divorce proceedings that he had coerced her into marriage and committed adultery. A judge granted the two a divorce in July 2023, after they had been separated for more than a year.

Laury’s former brother-in-law and mother-in-law both alleged he had attacked them at their Montgomery County home in December 2021 after forcing his way inside. A judge granted final protective orders in both cases, which are not criminal cases and require a lower bar for evidence.

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