BALTIMORE — A Baltimore County judge on Monday released a former Baltimore teacher accused of second-degree rape of his 12-year-old neighbor to home detention.

Lewis M. Laury Jr., 24, taught U.S. history at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School until this summer, when he was arrested in July after authorities found a 12-year-old girl missing from his home of Pikesville. A grand jury indicted him on 24 counts, including 12 counts of second-degree rape and other sex crime charges.

Assistant State’s Attorney Jessica Borits said during Monday’s bail review hearing that another girl — a 16-year-old Mervo student — had previously complained that Laury had acted inappropriately toward her.

The teenager, whom Borits described as one of Laury’s U.S. history students, reported that Laury discussed sex with her and then gave her a ride home while asking her if she liked them “older boys” and about her “inclinations”. Laury asked her if she wanted to have sex with him and she said no, Borits said.

“The accused is a predator,” Borits said. No charges have been filed related to that allegation, she said.

Laury’s attorney, Jerome Bivens, said the school’s principal and school resource officer investigated the student’s allegation and took no action.

Baltimore City Public Schools spokeswoman Sherry Christian could not immediately respond to questions about the student’s complaint Monday afternoon.

Borits said the US Marshals Service discovered the missing girl, who had left a note with her parents saying she was visiting a friend in Pennsylvania in June, had used a friend’s phone to call Laury, allowing authorities to track her to at his house. She wasn’t home when they found her.

The girl reported sexual activity to a nurse at Greater Baltimore Medical Center when she was at the hospital for a forensic sexual assault exam, Borits said. She was 12 at the time, meaning the activity was charged as second-degree rape. Under Maryland law, it is a crime for a person to have sexual relations with a person under the age of 14 if they are four years or older than the victim.

DNA results and cell phone data records are still pending.

Borits said Laury told detectives that the girl slept in his bed while he slept in the living room and that his memory may be impaired by alcohol and marijuana. Laury also gave investigators a piece of paper he tried to use to verify the girl’s age, in a written contract she signed that listed her “expectations and needs,” Borits said.

Laury’s attorney, Jerome Bivens, said his client did not rape the girl and argued that the girl did not tell detectives he did it during their “run.”

“There was no sex,” Bivens said. He told Circuit Court Judge Robert E. Cahill Jr. that the girl knocked on his client’s door carrying luggage and $200 and told him she was getting away from her abusive boyfriend. Bivens said Laury told him he could stay temporarily.

Cahill granted Biven’s request to release Laury from the Baltimore County Detention Center on home monitoring, adding that while the facts of the case are “terribly serious, terribly troubling,” the law requires him to oppose the less onerous pretrial detention conditions, while ensuring the safety of the public and any victims.

He also expressed concern that the trial could drag on indefinitely while prosecutors wait for DNA and cell phone records to be retrieved from state-backed labs and the FBI. Cahill ordered Laury to stay home at all times, not go to work or school, and not to contact the girl or her family members.

“I have to repeat, I’m following the law here,” the judge said. A court date has not yet been set for this case.

Before asking for his client’s release, Bivens asked six people filling a row in the courtroom to stand to illustrate Laury’s strong ties to the community. He introduced Laury’s parents and attorney Nicholas McDaniels, who acted as Laury’s mentor.

Bivens said Laury was away in Frederick working for McDaniels’ law firm when police found the girl.

Laury attended Mervo as an undergraduate and then graduated from Towson University, where Bivens said he gave the commencement speech and made the dean’s list every semester. He was previously a law student at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.

Bivens said Laury attended law school for a year, “took a break from her legal studies to raise a family” and worked for Baltimore City Schools for two years.

“Teachers are heroes,” Bivens told Cahill. “Look at me, your honor, I’m a Negro, born in Baltimore, and so is he.”

In July, a law school spokesman said Laury had not been enrolled for “some time.” A spokesman did not respond Monday to a question about the circumstances of his departure.

Court records show Laury married a woman in 2021 who later claimed in divorce proceedings that he forced her into the marriage and committed adultery. A judge granted the couple a divorce in July 2023 after more than a year of separation.

Laury’s ex-brother-in-law and mother-in-law both claimed he attacked them in their Montgomery County home in December 2021 after he forced his way inside. A judge granted permanent protective orders in both cases, which are not criminal cases and require a lower barrier to evidence.

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