$3.65 Million Verdict for Teen Sexual Abuse Victim Against Ohio Church

In March 2008, a 15-year-old girl was raped by Brian Williams during what was framed as a counseling session at Sunbury Grace Brethren Church in Ohio. Williams had previously served as youth pastor at Grace Brethren Church of Delaware, where church leadership had documented his inappropriate sexual conduct with minors in the early 1990s and again in 2002. Rather than acting to protect future victims, the church supported Williams' placement as senior pastor at Sunbury.

The victim's family retained John K. Fitch and his colleagues at The Fitch Law Firm. The central theory at trial was institutional negligence: the church knew about Williams' history and did nothing. Counsel put the prior incidents before the jury and argued that the church's failure to investigate or report created the conditions for the 2008 assault.

After deliberation, the Delaware County Common Pleas Court jury returned a verdict of $3,651,378.85. That figure included $1.5 million in past noneconomic damages, $2 million in future noneconomic damages, $151,378.85 in economic damages, and $75,000 in loss-of-consortium damages for the victim's father, Gene Simpkins.

The verdict did not survive Ohio's damage cap statute intact. Under a 2005 tort reform law, noneconomic damages for a single occurrence are capped at $350,000 per plaintiff. The church appealed, and the Fifth District Court of Appeals upheld the jury's liability finding while applying the statutory reduction. The Ohio Supreme Court affirmed the cap in December 2016, holding that multiple acts of penetration during the same assault constituted a single occurrence under the statute. The final award was reduced to approximately $575,000: $500,000 to the plaintiff (her $3.5 million in noneconomic damages capped at $350,000, plus her economic damages) and $75,000 to her father.

Justice Bill O'Neill dissented, writing: "This child was raped in a church office by a minister, and a duly empaneled jury established an appropriate level of compensation for the loss of her childhood innocence." The case became a reference point in Ohio debates over whether the 2005 tort reform law disproportionately harms child sexual abuse survivors by treating repeated acts of violence as a single capped event.