Tanya Kach, the McKeesport girl who went missing in 1996 only to reappear 10 years later, should have known then how she'd been harmed by her city, her school district and its security firm, wrote a federal judge in dismissing her lawsuit.

It doesn't matter that she was only 14; allegedly being held against her will by a school security guard and threatened with harm.

"Each omission and commission which [Ms. Kach] contends violated her Constitutional rights was known to her in 1996," wrote U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster. "She knew the school did not prevent her relationship with defendant [Thomas] Hose; she knew the police did not find her and return her to her family; and she also knew defendant Hose was sexually abusing her while employed by St. Moritz [Security Systems]," the security firm for the McKeesport school district.

"While plaintiff may not have understood the unconstitutional nature of the . . . defendants' actions, and/or inaction, she was undeniably aware that they had taken place."

And that, the judge determined, was enough for him to find that Ms. Kach had failed to meet the statute of limitations in filing her federal civil rights lawsuit.

He dismissed the claims and granted the defendants' motions for summary judgment just three days after oral argument.

Lawrence H. Fisher, Ms. Kach's attorney, filed an appeal yesterday.

"This is a terribly unjust decision," he said.

In reaching his opinion, Judge Lancaster agreed that Ms. Kach was a victim, but he also found that she voluntarily went to live with Mr. Hose, who at the time was working as a security guard at Cornell Middle School, where she attended.

"Plaintiff was victimized not only by an adult who preyed on her, but by the many adults who failed her," the judge wrote. "Yet, these circumstances cannot overcome the strong legal precedent supporting the enforcement of statutes of limitations."

The three remaining defendants in Ms. Kach's lawsuit argued that she should have filed her complaint within two years of her turning 18. That meant the lawsuit would have had to been filed in October 2001 -- nearly five years before Ms. Kach was released.

Mr. Fisher argued to Judge Lancaster that something known as the tolling doctrine should apply, which states that a claim cannot be barred on time limitations if the plaintiff did not discover the injuries until later.

Ms. Kach could not have filed the lawsuit any earlier.

"It's difficult to understand how anyone could conclude how a 14-year-old girl who was psychologically tortured and threatened with her life would be able to assert federal claims under those circumstances," Mr. Fisher said.

But Judge Lancaster dismissed Mr. Fisher's argument that duress should stop the running of the statute of limitations because Ms. Kach had opportunities to remedy her situation and did not take them.

"Accepting the averments made by plaintiff as to her duress, there is no basis to reasonably conclude that she could not resort to McKeesport authorities for assistance," the judge said. "Indeed, again, the police came to the Hose home on two occasions looking for her and she hid from them.... Although she was not physically restrained or locked in the house and had access to a telephone, plaintiff never tried leave, or use the telephone to notify anyone of her whereabouts."

"Accepting the averments made by plaintiff as to her duress, there is no basis to reasonably conclude that she could not resort to McKeesport authorities for assistance," the judge said. "Indeed, again, the police came to the Hose home on two occasions looking for her and she hid from them.... Although she was not physically restrained or locked in the house and had access to a telephone, plaintiff never tried leave, or use the telephone to notify anyone of her whereabouts."

Throughout the opinion, Judge Lancaster cites one particular case related to the tolling of the statute of limitations. It is one on which he was reversed by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals twice. That lawsuit involved the forced sterilization of a 16-year-old girl in 1977. The girl was mildly retarded, and her father and step-mother authorized surgery preventing her from having children.

The woman didn't know what had happened to her until nearly 17 years later. She filed a lawsuit against her father and the physicians who operated, saying that they violated her civil rights and prevented her and her husband from having children.

Judge Lancaster dismissed the civil rights claims, saying that the woman filed them long past the expiration of the statute of limitations. But he was reversed when the Third Circuit found that the woman was the member of a protected class and that forced sterilization was a type of discrimination suffered by people with mental retardation.

The case later settled.

Mr. Fisher is not deterred by Judge Lancaster's opinion.

"My client has faced far worse injustices in her young life, and she will face this with the same resilience she has otherwise demonstrated," he said.