NOBLEBORO, Maine — Two lawsuits filed this month in Lincoln County Superior Court accuse a former employee of a well-known summer camp for boys of child sex abuse dating back to the 1960s and 1970s.
One of the complaints claims Bill McCook abused a young boy at Camp Keive. The Nobleboro camp is also named a defendant in that case. Another civil action alleges McCook molested another boy on an overnight camping trip not connected to the camp.
That alleged victim wants justice under a state law that removed a time limit for civil claims and spoke with NEWS CENTER Maine.
Fighting back tears, one of the men, now in his late 50s, said he had carried a painful secret until now.
"I wanted him to know that I didn't forget, and I remembered. He traumatized me, and he hurt me," the man said, his voice cracking with emotion.
NEWS CENTER Maine is not naming the man, who spoke with us by phone.
According to this lawsuit, the plaintiff claims he was sexually abused multiple times by McCook.
The incident allegedly happened in the mid-1970s during an overnight camping trip to an island in Muscongus Bay, overseen by McCook, a well-known camp counselor. The man was only 9 or 10 years old at the time. He said those painful memories were triggered when the alleged victim saw McCook at his local grocery store decades later.
"Part of me wanted to confront him right there in the store, and shout to everybody would hear it what he had done," the alleged victim recalled.
He came forward after seeing media coverage of a lawsuit filed last year against McCook by another former camper, who claims McCook molested him at Camp Kieve, a wilderness camp on the banks of Damariscotta Lake. Legal complaints were made possible under a 2021 Maine law that did away with the time limits for victims of sexual abuse to seek justice in civil court.
Tim Kenlan represents the alleged victim and Michael Innis, who also filed a lawsuit alleging McCook sexually abused him during an overnight stay at Camp Kieve for Boys in Nobleboro in the summer of 1969. The Harpswell resident was a relative of McCook, who worked at the camp as a counselor. The nonprofit KWE, which runs the camp, is also named in the lawsuit.
"We believe that KWE failed to take reasonable steps to prevent a known abuser have access to children," Kenlan an attorney at Berman & Simons explained.
In an email to its community, KWE's board of trustees released the results of an independent investigation, saying McCook is a serial predator who sexually abused as many as 10 boys in the 1960s and 1970s. But the report said the camp did not take timely steps to sever ties with McCook.
Kenlan, though, does credit KWE for taking steps to better protect the community.
"They have taken a deep dive and looked at themselves in the past and said this is not right, we want to make this right," Kenlan added.
That includes adopting new staff standards to address any inappropriate or harmful behavior before it crosses the line into abuse.