CALIFORNIA
SF Gate
By Bob Egelko
The law treats child abuse differently than most other crimes, because of the age of the victims and their natural inclination to put their nightmares behind them. So the legal deadline, or statute of limitations, for filing criminal charges of child abuse is the victim’s 28th birthday, or even later if the victim hasn’t yet realized that the cause of his or her current emotional trauma was a long-forgotten sexual assault.
When state Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, sponsored legislation this year to lengthen the statute of limitations until the victim turns 40, he cited the same rationale — that traumatized victims often suppress painful memories, sometimes with their therapists’ encouragement — and the bill, SB926, sailed through both houses without an opposing vote. On Tuesday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law, effective next year.
Beall carried another bill, SB924, to extend the filing deadline for civil damage suits over child abuse from the victim’s 26th birthday to age 40. It passed both houses, with some dissent, and reached the governor’s desk. On Tuesday, Brown vetoed it.
“Statutes of limitations exist as a matter of fundamental fairness,” Brown wrote in his veto message. “As I wrote last year (when he vetoed another Beall measure on child abuse lawsuits), there comes a time when an individual or organization should be secure in the reasonable expectation that past acts are indeed in the past and not subject to further lawsuits. With the passage of time, evidence may be lost or disposed of, memories fade and witnesses move away or die.”
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