Elizabeth Ann Murphy, who endured rape and violent abuse as an 11-year-old Baltimore Catholic school student and openly accused her assailant, died of cancer Feb. 26 at Gilchrist Center Towson. She was 63.

Ms. Murphy came forward and publicly identified herself as the victim of John Joseph Merzbacher, a teacher at Our Lady of Good Counsel School in South Baltimore’s Locust Point. He was convicted in 1995 of six counts of child rape and sexual abuse in connection with her allegations. He died in prison in 2023.

“Liz was a warrior for protecting children,” said Nancy Fenton, a friend. “She was a gift to everyone who knew her. She was a woman of faith and determination and a force for good in the fight against sexual abuse. She left an unparalleled legacy.”

When Merzbacher was convicted, Ms. Murphy stood on the Baltimore courthouse steps with some of her eight sisters and brothers. She also assembled members of the media and said it was OK to aim at her face and use her name.

“It has taken me 20 years to say I am not ashamed. I am not ashamed,” she said that day.

Judge Robert I. H. Hammerman sentenced Merzbacher to four life terms in prison for “dastardly crimes — crimes beyond the comprehension of rational people.”

At the time, some 13 other men and women, most of them former students at what was also called the Catholic Community Middle School, were identified in criminal indictments as victims of Merzbacher. The charges of her fellow students were dropped by prosecutors, and Ms. Murphy was the only criminal victim of record.

“He is guilty. He is the one who has to be judged for this crime, not me. I had no history when I was 11 years old,” she said of her ordeal at the time.

Ms. Murphy said she never told her family she was being raped in the 1970s out of fear that Merzbacher would kill her with the gun he kept in his desk drawer. But in 1993, she contacted police about Merzbacher’s abuse when a former classmate who had become a priest coaxed the story out of her.

Mary Lewandowski, a fellow student, referred to Ms. Murphy as “Liz the braveheart” for her actions in this case.

“Liz started making phone calls to former classmates and she became overwhelmed with the resounding ‘me too’ responses. It led to the question that repeats itself over and over in all our heads for decades now: ‘How could they, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, have let this happen to so many of us?'” said Ms. Lewandowski. “Liz never gave up.”

“She was a powerful force who was able to get people around her and support the case against Merzbacher. After her, the floodgates against the Baltimore Archdiocese opened,” said Joe Wehberg, a fellow South Baltimore resident and childhood acquaintance.

The obituary posted on the funeral home’s web page also said, “The cost of doing this for Liz cannot be told: decades, first of the trial, then of hearings, depositions, appeals, opinions and dissenting opinions, media interviews, helping her former fellow classmates in various ways, and therapy — each of these reopening deep, old wounds and kicking off cycles of post-traumatic stress disorder, over and over and over. She never refused any of these tasks.”

She also worked “to have the State of Maryland laws and statutes changed to ensure that adult survivors of child abuse, and particularly child sexual abuse, would have time to understand their victimization and trauma, and have an adequate chance as adults to seek justice and help and retribution.”

In April 2023, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office released its “Report on Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.” The report told of 156 clergy and other Church officials in the Baltimore archdiocese who tormented more than 600 children and young adults, dating back to the 1940s. Later that year, the Child Victims Act became law, allowing adults who were sexually abused in childhood to sue their abusers.

“This sad fate was shared by several of her classmates,” the funeral home obituary said. “As Liz grew up and began to come to terms with what had happened to her, she adopted a life’s work of ensuring the protection of children so that others would not have to suffer the horrific pain of childhood sexual abuse.”

Born in Baltimore, she was the eighth of nine children born to Mary Grace and Joseph James Murphy, a Baltimore City Police officer. She grew up in a rowhouse on Battery Avenue in South Baltimore near St. Mary, Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church.

She graduated from Seton High School, where she was an athlete. She later became a food service manager at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and at the Broadmead Retirement Community in Cockeysville. She also painted house interiors for a while.

In 2007 she completed her bachelor’s degree with cum laude honors in religious studies and theology at Notre Dame of Maryland University. She was inducted into the National Honor Society for Religious Studies and Theology, Theta Alpha Kappa.

Her funeral home obituary said she sought care at Father Martin’s in Harford County and had 32 years of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. She also sponsored people in AA and was a pioneering Certified Peer Recovery Specialist in the state. She helped women at the Baltimore County Detention Center and assisted them in recovery houses upon their release.

Survivors include her wife of 26 years, Courtney Henderson; her sisters, Mary Meyers, Patricia Cysyk, Denise Milkowski and Ann George; her brothers, Gerald Murphy, Joseph Murphy, Michael Murphy, and Thomas Murphy; and numerous nieces and nephews.

A memorial Mass was held March 8 at the Catholic Community of St. Francis Xavier in Hunt Valley.

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