The Use of Pseudonyms in Civil Suits over Sexual Abuse

By Daniel F. Monahan
Legal Intelligencer
April 14, 2015

http://www.thelegalintelligencer.com/id=1202723185674/The-Use-of-Pseudonyms-in-Civil-Suits-Over-Sexual-Abuse?slreturn=20150314031438

Survivors of childhood sexual abuse often lead lives in silence, secrecy and shame. Not only do they suffer from the traumatic effects of sexual abuse, which often causes depression, post-traumatic stress and addiction issues, but the fear of exposing that secret creates its own hosts of problems.

One of the more significant obstacles to recovery is survivors' reluctance to report the abuse to criminal authorities or pursue civil remedies against the perpetrators and the institutions that protect them. In my practice, I have spoken with dozens of survivors who either could not reveal their secrets or did not recognize the significant harms that the abuse inflicted until years, and sometimes decades, after the abuse occurred.

Although there are serious questions of when the statute of limitations should be imposed with respect to these cases, that is a debate that continues to rage in both the legislature and the courts in Pennsylvania. That is a discussion for another day. However, one of the other obstacles that inhibit survivors is the uncertainty in Pennsylvania of pursuing civil cases using a pseudonym to protect the identity of the survivors of sexual abuse. The time has come for an open discussion on uniform rules and procedures to deal with this issue.

Currently, the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure do not provide any option to handle this situation. In addition, over the past six years, in handling a variety of sexual-abuse matters, primarily in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, I have discovered that the procedure for dealing with the issue has been inconsistent at best.

In a series of childhood sexual-abuse cases filed between 2011 and 2013, the Philadelphia courts have dealt with the question of filing a complaint using a pseudonym in the following manner: (1) the prothonotary permitted the filing without objection; (2) the prothonotary required the filing of a precomplaint petition for permission to file using a pseudonym; and (3) after filing the complaint, the court required discovery and hearings after defendants' filing of preliminary objections. In the aftermath of numerous childhood sexual-abuse cases including not only those filed against organizations responsible for supervising young children, the time has come to adopt such a rule of civil procedure.