NEW JERSEY
NJ.com
By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
For the third time in four years, our lawmakers will soon be required to pick a side: They can continue to give legal protection to child predators and their enablers against civil suits, or they can try to bring some comfort to sex abuse victims whose lives are forever shattered.
Some New Jersey legislators actually call this a dilemma, but we call it a conscience-cleansing, soul-searching no-brainer – you go to your church, we’ll go to ours – and it should be illuminating to learn how many make this choice with the care and compassion it demands.
Once again, Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex) is proposing legislation that would expand the statute of limitations for civil suits pertaining to childhood sex crimes from two years to 30, which provides more time for victims to sue their abusers and the institutions that harbored them – not only the Catholic Church, but all religious organizations, along with state and local governments and schools.
Throughout the country, this kind of legislation has faced rigorous opposition from the Church, which buttonholes lawmakers and uses powerful lobbyists to protect its interests, even as it has incurred $4 billion in costs related to the clergy sex crime crisis in the U.S.
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