BANGOR, Maine — The Bangor Region YMCA is facing a new lawsuit over its handling of a sexual abuse case involving one of its staff in the 1970s.
In a complaint filed Tuesday, Wayne Quimby claimed the Bangor YMCA neglected to protect him from being sexually assaulted by his youth basketball coach, William Kearns, at Kearns’ home, in 1979.
The former coach was found guilty of the assault in 1980 and was sentenced to one year in prison. Now decades later, Quimby’s civil suit alleges the YMCA played a role in both enabling the crime to happen and ignoring it after the fact.
According to the lawsuit, the Bangor Region YMCA hired Kearns despite him having a criminal record that included a sexual assault.
After the assault, Quimby said he approached a supervisor at the YMCA and detailed what had happened. The complaint said no action was taken afterward.
“What we’re looking for from the Bangor YMCA is some accountability and justice,” Timothy Kenlan, Quimby’s lawyer, said Wednesday. “I think it's important to not only hold the abusers accountable but also any of the organizations that enabled that.”
The Bangor Region YMCA denied the merits of the suit.
“It's difficult to understand how the YMCA would be responsible for something that occurred in someone’s home,” Berney Kubetz, the attorney representing the Bangor YMCA, said Wednesday.
Quimby’s complaint is the latest in a line of civil suits revolving around decades-old sexual assault claims, which have been allowed to go forward since the Maine Legislature dropped the statute of limitation on childhood sex abuse cases in 2021. Now, as the Maine Supreme Court weighs whether that law is constitutional, Kubetz said these suits bring an extra burden on the defense.
“We are challenged to find people and documents and evidence from forty-five years ago,” Kubetz added.
When asked whether Kubetz would request a stay on the Quimby suit until the Maine Supreme Judicial Court hands down a ruling on the matter, he responded “I think that’s probably pretty good advice.”
Bernie Kubetz has provided legal services to News Center Maine and its Parent Company
TEGNA.