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Scott Kerns

A convicted child molester can't keep suing his victim on unsupported allegations that he is the imprisoned victim of lies, a state Superior Court panel has ruled.



The state court ruling, issued this week in an opinion by Judge Robert Simpson, comes months after Scott Newton Kerns received an added prison term for his repeated attempts to sue the girl he pleaded guilty to sexually abusing.



Kerns appealed to the state court after a Berks County judge ordered him not to file any more lawsuits against the victim, who police said was a preteen when Kerns was arrested for molesting her in 2000.



Kerns is serving a 7 1/2 to 20-year state prison term after pleading guilty to indecent deviate sexual intercourse with a child under 13. He has been filing his suits from prison. Kerns, who has acted as his own lawyer, filed his first suit in 2007 and his second in 2015.



Kerns, now 43, claimed in the suits that the victim lied about the molestation as part of a conspiracy involving a relative and prosecutors to send him to prison. Those supposed lies violated his civil rights, he insisted. Both complaints were dismissed.



County Judge Madelyn S. Fudeman imposed the ban on further suits by Kerns when she tossed out his latest complaint. She concluded that "allowing Kerns to relitigate his claims would allow him to re-victimize the victim," Simpson noted.



Simpson likewise rejected Kerns' claim that Fudeman was biased when she dismissed his latest suit.



Kerns' propensity to sue resulted in the county DA's office filing new criminal charges against him last year. During a nonjury trial, county Judge Thomas G. Parisi found him guilty of barratry - the filing of vexatious lawsuits - and ordered him to serve another 6 to 12 months in prison consecutive to the sentence he is serving in the molestation case.