Frank James Milligan

WOODBURN — A Marion County lawsuit that concerned alleged sex abuse crimes at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility has been dismissed.

The case centers on Frank James Milligan, 47, a convicted child sex predator whose most infamous crime was the July 2000 abduction of a 10-year-old boy, whom he sexually assaulted, choked unconscious and left for dead in a park in Dallas. He was also charged and convicted of the sexual molestation of a Salem boy in Seaside in 1999.

Prior to these crimes, he had previously been employed by the Oregon State Hospital and Oregon Youth Authority, working as a group life coordinator at MacLaren from May 1997 until being placed on leave in 1999. He was formally dismissed in 2000.

While at MacLaren, he allegedly sexually assaulted at least one youth offender housed there, a man identified in court documents only as “J.M.” J.M. was 15 in December 1998 when he was sent to MacLaren and assigned to the residential area in which Milligan was working at the time.

Milligan, already serving combined prison sentences of 36 years, was convicted in September of criminal charges stemming from the incident at MacLaren, for which Marion County Judge Cheryl Pellegrini tacked an additional 35 years onto his sentence.

However, the civil case may have reached its conclusion after a different judge, Claudia Burton, entered a ruling on summary judgment in May against J.M. and his attorneys, of the Portland firm Kell Alterman & Runstein.

Burton ruled on two of the central issues in the case, both of which, in different ways, deal with statutes limiting the windows of time in which claims may be filed for damages stemming from injury or sex abuse.

The defense had argued that the $5.5 million lawsuit was subject to the Oregon Tort Claims Act, which requires claims against government agencies to be noticed within six months of the alleged injury and filed within two years. In this case, the crimes occurred in 1998, and the claim was not filed until 2014 because — according to the plaintiffs — J.M. had repressed the memories of the abuse.

However, the plaintiff had countered that a different provision of Oregon law should apply, which allows victims of child sex abuse until the age of 40 to file claims. One of J.M.’s attorneys, Dennis Steinman, said his client was only 30 when the claim was filed.

Burton ultimately ruled in favor of the Oregon Youth Authority.

In a phone interview, Steinman said the decision creates a “disconnect” in the law.

“The net effect of the judge’s ruling is that if a child is abused by a church or the Boy Scouts or some other private entity, you have until you’re 40 years old to bring the claim, but if you’re abused by a public entity, you have this very short window to file,” he said. “And if you’re 5 years old, you may not even realize that you were abused until you’re 30.”

The second issue concerned differences between Oregon and U.S. case law in regard to a federal statute commonly used to bring claims of alleged civil and constitutional rights violations.

Steinman said that federal case law has established a tighter window for when a plaintiff discovers the claims, but he and his firm had argued the court should use a different discovery standard that was established by the Oregon Supreme Court.

But Burton decided that her decision was bound by federal case law. That means J.M. had only until his 19th birthday, in 2002, to file his claim.

Steinman said he could not comment on whether they would appeal, citing attorney-client privilege.

The initial complaint alleged that, on two separate occasions during the plaintiff’s first month at MacLaren, Milligan ordered J.M. to accompany him to the laundry room. Once there, Milligan forced the plaintiff to perform a sex act on him and sexually assaulted him, the complaint alleged.

The complaint also said Milligan grabbed J.M.’s throat, told him to keep his mouth shut because no one would believe him and threatened to break his neck.

“Plaintiff lived in fear that Milligan would sexually assault him again during the time that plaintiff was at MacLaren,” the complaint read in part. J.M. was released from MacLaren in September 1999.

The petition said J.M. blocked out the abuse after being released, and the memories did not begin to resurface until 2012, when news broke of the sex abuse scandal at Penn State University involving Jerry Sandusky.

Milligan is currently in custody at the medium-security Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla.