A Baltimore teacher was arrested Monday and charged with rape after detectives discovered that a 12-year-old girl who’d gone missing last month had been staying with him.
The suspect, 24-year-old Lewis M. Laury, is charged with second-degree rape and a third-degree sex offense. He was ordered to remain held at the Baltimore County Detention Center without bond during a bail review hearing Tuesday afternoon in Baltimore County District Court.
The charges against the Baltimore City Public School System teacher come after police used a flood of notices asking the public to help locate the missing girl, who left a note at her Baltimore County home, discovered by her parents on June 21, stating that she was meeting with a friend in Pennsylvania.
The girl’s mother, who said she knew that her daughter didn’t have any friends in Pennsylvania, became “alarmed” and immediately called Baltimore County Police, a county prosecutor said during Tuesday’s hearing. The girl had been gone since the prior day, Assistant State’s Attorney John Macgee said.
After analyzing a phone belonging to a friend of the girl’s, police found that she had contacted Laury, according to charging papers. Authorities located the girl in Laury’s apartment, which detectives wrote in charging papers is in the same Pikesville-area complex as the girl’s. Laury wasn’t there, and the girl was taken for an evaluation at a hospital, where she told detectives that she and Laury had had sex multiple times, charging papers say.
The girl had met Laury on a playground in their neighborhood and told him that she was 22 years old, McGee said. The prosecutor also said that Laury had spoken with detectives and initially stated he “didn’t remember” if they’d had sex, as he had been “drinking and smoking weed,” though he acknowledged he had spent time with the girl.
Alisa Fornwald, a public defender representing Laury, said that her client denies the allegations. Laury appeared at Tuesday’s hearing before District Judge Marsha Russell from the county’s detention center, though he sparsely spoke, saying that he had not seen the charging documents in his case but had been shown a video about his rights as a defendant.
A city schools spokesperson said Tuesday that Laury is currently employed at Mergenthaler Vocational Technical High School. Fornwald said Laury is currently attending law school at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.
Laury’s LinkedIn page says he also attended “Mervo” before graduating from Towson University in 2021 . It says that he was hired as a long-term substitute for Baltimore City Schools in August of 2022, and that he now teaches U.S. History for Baltimore City Schools. It also notes that he completed legislative internships in the Maryland General Assembly and Baltimore City Council.
Laury, who faces a maximum of 20 years of incarceration for the second-degree rape charge and 10 years for a third-degree sex offense charge, has no prior criminal history or pending charges, the county’s pre-trial detention staff said at the hearing.
In applications for protective orders, which are distinct from criminal cases, Laury’s then-brother- and mother-in-law both alleged he had physically attacked them in late 2021 after forcing his way into their home in Montgomery County, according to court records.
A judge granted final protective orders in each case, finding by a preponderance of the evidence — a lower evidentiary bar than in a criminal case — that Laury entered the home by force, pushed his ex-wife’s mother and assaulted her brother.
In subsequent divorce complaints, his ex-wife claimed that he coerced her to get married and that he committed adultery. He “admitted” to all “statements” in the original divorce complaint, which alleged coercion, and urged a judge to grant a divorce. A Montgomery County judge granted an absolute divorce last July.
Laury is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in the second-degree rape case on July 26.
Baltimore Sun reporters Alex Mann and Dillon Mullan contributed to this article.
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