Lawsuit alleges sexual abuse of teen at Bladensburg fire house

Following his parents’ divorce, a teenage Anthony Shade moved into the bunkroom of the Bladensburg Volunteer Fire Department. He was looking for stability and hoping to follow in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, who served as the department’s first chief, according to his attorney.

Instead, the station house on Edmonston Road became the site of repeated sexual abuse by a senior fire official, Shade alleges in court filings.

According to a lawsuit filed in May 2025, then-Assistant Chief Randy Kuenzli groomed and sexually abused Shade from 2000 to 2003, while other firefighters subjected him to hazing and bullying.

When Shade reported the abuse, his bunk was moved to a lower floor away from Kuenzli but station leadership didn’t contact law enforcement or open an investigation, according to a sworn affidavit from a former chief officer at the fire station.

The case was slated to be one of the first instances when a jury would weigh in on a claim brought under Maryland’s Child Victims Act of 2023, which eliminated the statute of limitations for civil child sex abuse claims.

The trial was scheduled to begin Monday in Prince George’s County Circuit Court. But over the weekend the attorneys for the Bladensburg Volunteer Department asked to postpone, a request Shade’s attorney expects the judge to grant.

The lawsuit originally named Prince George’s County and the Bladensburg Volunteer Fire Department and Rescue Squad as defendants. But the county agreed to a settlement Friday evening.

If the case against the volunteer fire department goes to trial, jurors will be asked to determine whether Shade was a minor during the time of the alleged abuse and whether the department can be held liable for failing to protect young volunteers.

Tonya Sweat, the attorney for the Bladensburg Volunteer Fire Department, has argued there is no documentation showing the teen volunteered with the department before his 18th birthday.

“His application was filed in July of 2001, after his 18th birthday,” Sweat said. “The question then becomes where and how was he affiliated with the department before his 18th birthday. And there are no records to show that he was affiliated.”

Shade’s attorney and other lawyers who handle similar claims said this case could represent a test for jurors weighing accusations of abuse that occurred decades ago and for the new law that aims to hold institutions accountable.

“If the jury finds that he was 17, finds that these defendants were negligent and awards Mr. Shade a substantial amount to compensate him for a quarter century of pain and suffering, then I think a lot of defendants, a lot of institutions are going to take notice,” Shade’s attorney Kevin Docherty said.

Allegations of unchecked abuse

Shade began volunteering on weekends with the Bladensburg Volunteer Fire Department in 2000, just before his 17th birthday, according to his attorneys. He rode in the truck to emergency calls, laid out the hose and wore a red helmet. He also got to know Kuenzli.

Within weeks, the teen’s conversations with the then-assistant chief turned inappropriate as Kuenzli began asking him sexually explicit questions, according to the lawsuit.

When Shade moved into the firehouse, Kuenzli’s abuse turned physical.

(The Banner typically does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault, but Shade granted permission for his name to be used in this report.)

Court filings allege Kuenzli repeatedly sexually abused and raped Shade in the bunkhouse where they both slept. On some occasions, the teen was awoken by the abuse.

“Sometimes, Mr. Shade was too shocked to react. Other times, Mr. Shade urged Mr. Kuenzli to stop. But despite those pleas, Mr. Kuenzli persisted,” the lawsuit says.

Other firefighters allegedly taunted Shade with homophobic slurs, according to the complaint, and put him through an initiation ritual in which they tied him to a flagpole, hit him with socks stuffed with bars of soap and sprayed him with a fire hose.

The final straw came after Shade was riding in a BVFD vehicle that was involved in a collision. While other firefighters went out drinking after the incident, according to the lawsuit, Kuenzli stayed behind at the station. “Mr. Shade was still in pain from the accident and did not have the same strength to fight off Mr. Kuenzli,” the lawsuit says.

Shade later left the firehouse on foot, “intending to take his own life by walking into traffic,” the lawsuit says. But he changed his mind after a phone call with his sister.

Shade and his sister separately reported the abuse to then-Chief Officer Bob Wells, the lawsuit says.

In a sworn affidavit from July, Wells acknowledged that Shade reported the abuse. He said Shade asked him not to contact police or the board of directors out of fear of retaliation. Wells also said he suggested the teenager move his bed away from Kuenzli’s, which happened the following day.

“In the early 2000s, Bladensburg VFD did not have formal procedures for handling reports like Anthony’s,” Wells said in his affidavit. “I was a young officer in the volunteer department. EEO [equal employment opportunity], harassment and sexual misconduct was not in regular training as it is today. Anthony wanted to keep the allegation out of the station.”

Kuenzli later became chief of the department and died in 2022. He was never criminally charged for the alleged abuse.

Sweat, the fire department attorney, said she hasn’t investigated what happened after Shade turned 18 because those allegations would not fall under the Child Victims Act.

“We don’t know whether it happened, and because the party who is accused is now deceased, we’ll never know what happened,” Sweat said. (Sweat is separately running a write-in campaign for county executive.)

Shade has spent years trying to cope with the alleged trauma. He has had suicidal thoughts, according to the complaint, and served multiple stints in jail. Shade’s attorney told The Banner his client is not ready to talk outside of court about the alleged abuse. His personal and family relationships have suffered, according to the lawsuit.

“He struggles to trust people because of the ways Mr. Kuenzli and BVFD betrayed him,” according to the lawsuit.

Statewide reckoning

About 12,000 claims across Maryland have been filed under the Child Victims Act. The law reopened courthouse doors to child survivors of abuse within churches, school districts, youth detention centers and local government agencies.

Some cases have been settled or were dismissed. Many others are tangled in delays or have outlasted the survivors who brought them.

State legislators revised the law in 2025 to reduce maximum payouts against public entities, from $890,000 to $400,000 per claimant; the cap for claims against private institutions is $700,000, down from $1.5 million.

Potential payouts were capped out of concern that thousands of claims could trigger devastating financial liability for the state, which was grappling with a budget shortfall.

Prince George’s County’s legal office declined to say how many Child Victims Act claims it’s facing and referred questions to the county executive’s office. A spokesperson for County Executive Aisha Braveboy acknowledged The Banner’s request but did not respond by publication.

Child safety advocates emphasize that the Child Victims Act remains one of the few mechanisms capable of forcing institutional accountability.

“We live in a society where money talks, and that’s what causes organizations to have to pay attention,” said Adam Rosenberg, vice president of violence intervention and prevention at LifeBridge Health and executive director of the Center for Hope. “And, if not, then they have to pay the penalty.”

Rosenberg said delayed disclosure of abuse is common, especially in cases involving minors and authority figures. In his view, laws removing civil statutes of limitations are critical.

“A lot of kids had come forward, and no one did anything,” Rosenberg said. “There are a lot of kids who are afraid to come forward with the fact that someone who is well respected and beloved did something terrible to them, and they end up feeling like they’re going to be in trouble too.”

Who’s liable?

Before Prince George’s County reached a last-minute settlement, a central question in the plaintiff’s lawsuit was whether the county could be held liable for abuse that occurred inside a volunteer department.

Although volunteer stations operate as independent entities, Docherty argued the county maintains administrative authority over emergency personnel.

“The abuser in this case was not an employee of the county, but the county regulates all of its volunteer fire departments and volunteer firefighters through a set of orders or regulations called general orders,” Docherty said. “So, even though he wasn’t an employee, he was still subject to and under the control of the county fire department.”

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