CONCORD, N.H. (Legal Newsline) - A woman who claims she discovered a Catholic school was responsible for hiring a known sexual offender decades after she was assaulted can proceed with her lawsuit, New Hampshire’s highest court ruled, overruling a lower court that dismissed the case under a three-year statute of limitations.
Plaintiff Larissa Troy alleges she was assaulted twice in the mid-1990s by Shawn McEnany, a teacher who had been hired by Bishop Guertin High School in 1999 despite his 1988 conviction for unlawful sexual conduct with a 15-year-old girl. Bishop Guertin was an all-boys school at the time and official Leo Labbe believed McEnany didn’t pose a threat to the students.
The school later went coed and Troy and her sisters attended in the 1990s. Troy said McEnany assaulted her twice, once witnessed by her sister. She said she reported the second assault to the dean of students, who accused her of lying. In November 1997 McEnany was charged in New Hampshire with failing to register as a convicted sex offender.
Labbe then sent out two letters to school families. One disclosed McEnany’s prior conviction but denied any improper conduct at the school and said he’d been reassigned. The second said the school knew of McEnany’s record when it hired him but Labbe personally believed he had been rehabilitated.
Troy claims she didn’t learn of either letter or McEnany’s record until 2017, when she Googled his name. She blamed psychological troubles in college on the assaults and sued Bishop Guertin in May 2018.
New Hampshire extends the statute of limitations for victims of sex assault under the age of 18 to their 30th birthday or three years after they discover the cause of their injuries, whichever is longer. Troy missed the deadline for her 30th birthday, however, so the only question was whether she had “discovered” the cause of her injuries within three years.
A trial court dismissed her case, agreeing with the school that Troy knew when she was assaulted the crime occurred at the hands of a school employee. But the New Hampshire Supreme Court reversed in its Aug. 10 decision, ruling that the simple fact an employee was involved isn’t enough. A jury must decide whether Troy knew or should have known the school negligently hired McEnany knowing his prior record, the court concluded.