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Mother sues over rape of daughter by guard
The school board and security firm neglected proper background checks, a lawsuit says.
YOUNGSTOWN — The mother of an 8-year-old Austintown girl who was raped by a Leonard Kirtz School security guard has sued the school board, the now-imprisoned former guard and the private firm that employed that guard.
The civil lawsuit was filed against Harry Fraley, 63, who is serving a 10-year prison term at the North Central Correction Institution in Marion for raping the child; the Mahoning County Board of Developmental Disabilities, which operates the school; REMCO Security of Boardman, which employed Fraley; and five John Doe defendants, whose names and addresses are undetermined.
The complaint, which seeks more than $25,000 in damages, was filed Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, where it is assigned to Judge John M. Durkin, who sent Fraley to prison in October 2008 after Fraley pleaded guilty.
The anonymous plaintiff in the suit is listed as Jane Doe, and she is represented by Attys. Michael A. Bruno and Charles E. Boyk of Toledo.
Police said the assaults occurred at the girl’s residence and at the Leonard Kirtz School during the summer of 2007.
“Fraley acted with actual malice, fraud and insult upon the plaintiff’s minor child,” the suit says. “Fraley’s conduct was so extreme and outrageous as to go beyond the bounds of decency and was such that it can be considered utterly intolerable in a civilized community,” the complaint added.
The lawsuit alleges that the school board and REMCO neglected their duties to perform an adequate background check on Fraley, which would have uncovered his 1997 and 1999 convictions for public indecency with minor children.
“It’s not our negligence,” said Richard Clautti, owner of REMCO Security, who said he hadn’t seen the lawsuit. Clautti said his firm relies on the results of fingerprint and FBI and state background checks as required by the state.
Fraley must have cleared these checks, or the state wouldn’t have issued him an identification card allowing him to work, Clautti said.
After reviewing the lawsuit, Atty. Christopher Sammarone of Youngstown, who represents the school board, said the board would “defend this action vigorously.” Fraley wasn’t a board employee, and the victim wasn’t a client of the board, Sammarone added.
However, Larry Duck, board superintendent, said after Fraley’s indictment in September 2007 that the board told REMCO on July 22 of that year that it no longer wanted Fraley working on board property.
After the indictment, Duck said guards would no longer be allowed to have visitors while working on board property and that the board would do its own background checks on guards in the future.
At Fraley’s sentencing, the victim’s mother told Judge Durkin that Fraley had robbed her daughter of her innocence and “scarred her for life.” She said her daughter has nightmares, in which she screams in the middle of the night, and that she doesn’t trust men and fears Fraley will harm her and her family if he is released from prison.
Fraley, who apologized in court and asked for forgiveness, will be on parole for five years after he leaves prison.
After prison, he must register as a sex offender quarterly with the sheriff for life, and he’ll be barred from living within 1,000 feet of any school, preschool or child day-care center.