A federal appeals court must decide whether the case of a 14-year-old girl who was forced to live with a 37-year-old school security guard for 10 years should move forward.

Chief U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster last year dismissed the federal lawsuit filed by Tanya Kach. The McKeesport girl went missing in 1996 only to re-emerge 10 years later, claiming that she had been held against her will the entire time by Thomas Hose, who worked security at Cornell Middle School where Ms. Kach was then in eighth-grade.

Judge Lancaster granted summary judgment in the case, finding that while Ms. Kach may have only been 14 at the time, she voluntarily went to live with Mr. Hose. He also said that even though she may not have recognized the constitutional nature of the harm she sustained, she did know that she had been wronged.

Judge Lancaster agreed with the defendants, including the city of McKeesport, individual police officers there and the McKeesport Area School District.

He found that any claims made by Ms. Kach were required to be filed within two years of her reaching the age of 18.

That meant that the statute of limitations for her claims, he wrote, expired in October 2001.

Today, during argument before a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, an attorney for Ms. Kach asked the court to hand the case back down to Judge Lancaster to be decided on its merits.

Lawrence H. Fisher said his client could never have filed any claim at the time because not only was she still being held by Mr. Hose, but she was still mentally a child.

"She was 14 throughout the entire time," he said. "Her development was stilted, stunted."

Ms. Kach didn't recognize the entirety of what happened to her until after her release in March 2006.

"What is your client's injury here?" asked Judge D. Michael Fisher.

"He held her in total isolation beyond the years of her childhood," Lawrence Fisher answered. "He made her a sex slave."

Further, she was deprived of her education, liberty and freedom, he said.

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