Carroll office may help with case

"We have a defendant who's also an alleged victim. ... But before we get to that point, we have an investigation that's almost concluded, so it made sense to consult with an outside prosecutor," said Margaret T. Burns, spokeswoman for the city state's attorney.

Burns told The Sun last week that it is possible that Baltimore prosecutors might ask Gilmore to prosecute the case against Blackwell if the priest is indicted. Carroll County State's Attorney Jerry F. Barnes said his office would not prosecute the case.

"We would be more than happy to lend our expertise in regard to providing an examination of this particular case and conveying our assessment of the facts - and no more," he said.

To city prosecutors, the Carroll state's attorney's office appears qualified to review the Blackwell file - especially since it had demonstrated its ability in a similar investigation, the one that led to the guilty plea last month of the Rev. Brian M. Cox, former associate pastor of a Westminster parish.

"They have a cadre of investigators and prosecutors who are familiar with these types of cases," Burns said.

Cox, 63, founder of Resurrection Farm, a ministry to homeless people and their families,

admitted that he molested two boys in the early 1980s while he was associate pastor at St. John Catholic Church. Gilmore said she would seek a six-year prison term for Cox.

Obtaining guilty pleas from Cox to two counts of child abuse was a pursuit that took years.

Children "have a hard time telling when someone who in their eyes is next to God would hurt them," said Gilmore, who looked into an allegation against Cox in 1995 but was unsuccessful in bringing charges against him. "And always the fear in any kind of case like this is, 'Who's going to believe me?'"

The Cox allegations were first reviewed by then-prosecutor Kathi Hill in 1985.

In that year, Hill started a child abuse unit in the Carroll state's attorney's office that became CASA.

"We knew we needed specialized investigators, and the state police were being revolved out as soon as we'd send them to training," recalled Hill, now a defense attorney. State police and prosecutors committed investigators to a unit and won funding from the county commissioners.

Hill and an assistant received grants and became a charter member of what was then known as the National Network of Children's Advocacy Centers, now the National Children's Alliance.

In her first year, Hill said, she obtained a guilty plea to sex-abuse charges against a Methodist minister - even though "the whole church was against the victim, a teen-aged boy ... and that was horrible."

Gilmore, 39, has spent much of the past 10 years handling child- and sex-abuse cases, beginning in Howard County and continuing when she moved to Carroll in 1995. The CASA unit she oversees has a staff of 10, including three prosecutors, four state troopers and civilian support staff.

Recent cases Gilmore's unit has handled involved: Kimberly L. Merson, 25, the former substitute teacher who received an 18-month jail sentence on a conviction for having sexual contact or other offenses with 10 boys at Francis Scott Key High School. Harold W. Fair Jr., 50, a longtime Taneytown elementary school teacher received a 10-year prison sentence in March for having sex with a 13-year-old boy and for touching a 10-year-old.

William H. Hyde, a former Carroll County schools superintendent was arrested in August and later indicted on charges that he sexually abused a girl.

Gilmore would not comment on the Blackwell case. She said she expects to take "a couple of weeks" to review the file before meeting with city investigators.