Ruling leaves child sex lawsuit on path to possible dismissal

Guy Lucas, The High Point Enterprise, N.C.
·2 min read
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Jun. 20—KERNERSVILLE — The N.C. Supreme Court has ruled that a lawsuit against the Kernersville Family YMCA over child sexual abuse by a former employee will return to a judge in Forsyth County, where an appellate court indicated in a ruling in late 2021 that the lawsuit could be thrown out.

The ruling issued Friday comes in a lawsuit by eight men who say they were sexually abused as children by Michael Todd Pegram, now 51, a former YMCA teen director, who pleaded guilty in June 2019 to multiple charges alleging that he repeatedly lured boys into sexual contact from 1991 to 2001.

The civil lawsuit against the YMCA and its parent organizations, filed in February 2020, alleged that Pegram had boys spend the night at the Kernersville YMCA, took them on trips to the beach, Florida, camping and other places, and assaulted them in his office, the activity room, the hot tub and the shower room.

In June 2020, the YMCA sought to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the statute of limitations for a civil suit had expired.

The attorney for the eight men suing the YMCA sought to have a panel in Wake County courts determine whether a 2019 law allowing victims of child sexual abuse to file suit within two years of a criminal conviction was constitutional, and the Forsyth County judge hearing the case agreed.

The N.C. Court of Appeals ruled in late 2021 that because the YMCA did not file a specific challenge to the constitutionality of the 2019 law, the Forsyth judge's decision was not proper.

But the ruling also indicated that the 2019 law should not be applied to any of the victims in Pegram's convictions because the statute of limitation in those cases had already run out in 2015, and the legislature has no authority to change that.

The attorney for the eight men appealed to the N.C. Supreme Court, arguing that the appellate court should have limited its review to a single technical issue rather than examining the details of the case.

The Supreme Court disagreed, saying that the court's actions were "well within the court's sound discretion."