AUGUSTA (AP) – Money set aside to settle claims made by students abused at the Baxter School for the Deaf has run out, and the Maine Legislature will be asked this week for additional funds.

So far, compensation has been awarded to only one-third of the 240 registered claimants, but the Baxter Compensation Authority already has spent $6 million set aside by lawmakers in the past.

Former students and advocates for the deaf will ask the Appropriations Committee on Wednesday for another $6 million.

The funding request may face an uphill battle because of the state’s tight fiscal situation. Lawmakers last week approved a series of cuts to address a shortfall of more than $100 million in the current budget. And another budget hole is expected in the new fiscal year beginning July 1.

Still, state Sen. Beth Edmonds, D-Freeport, sponsor of the bill seeking the additional money to compensate the survivors of Baxter school abuse, said the state must come up with funding.

“We have to recognize that this is unfinished business the state has to take care of,” she said.

Gov. John Baldacci’s spokesman, Lee Umphrey, said there are a lot of valuable programs that the governor and lawmakers will try to find money for, and the compensation authority is one. “The governor is hopeful that this will be partially funded,” Umphrey said.

Former students for about a year have come before the three-member compensation panel set up by the authority to present their cases.

Their stories are horrific, according to Sara Treat, a therapist who works with many of the abused students. In addition to “everyday slapping, hitting and punching,” some students tell of being tied up, having their genitals whipped, and being hung naked from a tree, she said.

Some students and their parents complained to government authorities about the abuse when it was occurring. However, school officials denied it, and for years no one believed the youngsters until an investigation by the state attorney general’s office in 1982 finally determined that physical and sexual abuse had occurred.

Still, no administrators or staff members were ever prosecuted, in part because the statute of limitations had run out.

Of the $6 million allocated to the authority in 2001, $1.5 million was earmarked for setting up the authority, hiring and training staff and administering the program for four to five years. The remaining $4.5 million was for compensation and that has now been awarded, he says.

The panel so far has heard 84 out of the 240 claims currently filed by former students and deemed 82 are eligible for awards, said John Shattuck, director of the authority. Awards can be $25,000, $60,000 or $100,000.

Shattuck said it is gut-wrenching for the survivors to re-live their experiences as they tell them to the panel, whose members determine if they’re eligible for compensation, and then learn there’s no funding.

“It’s a horrible thing to have people go through the process of putting their stories out there and have the panel say, ‘You’ve been awarded an eligible amount’ and then for me to say, ‘We don’t have the money,”‘ Shattuck said.

AP-ES-02-02-04 0216EST