A former staff member at a state-run juvenile detention center is accused of sexually abusing six boys between 1976 and 1989, Baltimore County Police reported Friday.
Ronald Neverdon, 78, of Woodstock, is charged with 38 counts related to child sexual abuse. He held various positions at the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School on Old Harford Road, including youth supervisor and group life supervisor.
District Judge Krystin J. Richardson on Thursday ordered Neverdon to continue to be held in the Baltimore County Detention Center without bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 2.
“Our client categorically denies that this happened,” said Tony Garcia, Neverdon’s attorney, who represented him at the bail review hearing.
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Neverdon, he said, is “looking forward to his day in court.”
Detectives reported that an attorney representing a group of men who allege that Neverdon sexually abused them as children contacted law enforcement in April 2024.
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Police interviewed six men between April 30, 2024, and Aug. 12, 2024, who range in age from 53 to 63 about the accusations.
One of them, police assert, stopped answering questions and emotionally struggled to continue with the interview.
“We didn’t matter,” the man told investigators. “I know you’re doing your job and I appreciate it, but we didn’t matter then and I don’t think we matter now.”
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Neverdon agreed to speak with detectives at the Baltimore County Child Advocacy Center on July 17, 2024, police reported, and they did not ask him any “accusatory questions.”
He confirmed that he started working at what was then called the Maryland Training School for Boys in 1973 and retired from the state in 2013, police claim.
The Charles H. Hickey Jr. School can hold up to 72 boys who are awaiting their court date or placement, according to a fact sheet from the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services. It mostly serves those from Baltimore, Carroll, Cecil, Harford and Howard counties.
Police filed the charges less than one month after 69 men filed a lawsuit in Baltimore Circuit Court against the State of Maryland and Maryland Department of Juvenile Services that alleges Neverdon sexually abused them as children while the state looked the other way.
Neverdon is not named as a defendant in the case.
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“This is a positive development in terms of public safety, but it’s too little, too late for the brave men I represent,” Adam Slater, founding and managing partner of Slater Slater Schulman LLP, whose law firm represents them and filed the lawsuit, said in a statement.
“The way the state can make this right is by promptly addressing the thousands of outstanding Child Victims Act cases, including those brought by the 69 survivors who named Ronald Neverdon as their abuser,” he added.
Thousands of people are seeking accountability under the Child Victims Act of 2023, which eliminated the time limit for survivors to file lawsuits and made it easier for them to sue institutions.
The Maryland Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law this year.
But lawmakers are considering changes to the act, as the state could be responsible for damages in the billions.
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