PENNSYLVANIA
Daily Times
By Kathleen E. Carey, Delaware County Daily Times
POSTED: 06/25/16
As a bill that extends the time childhood sexual abuse victims could file a suit against organizations that harbored their abusers sits in the state Senate Judiciary Committee, victim advocates, including former Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham, say the entirety of the bill should be law.
Describing herself as the first prosecutor in the United States to “name names” in a priest-related childhood sexual abuse case, Abraham was Philadelphia’s lead prosecutor when the 2005 grand jury was convened against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Their findings, combined with another grand jury in 2011, found more than 60 priests in the diocese with evidence of abusing dozens of victims. Many of them had ties to Delaware County.
The bill, passed in the House by a 180-15 vote in April, removes the criminal statue of limitations for childhood sexual abuse cases; increases the statute of limitations from 30 years to 50 years for the filing of civil lawsuits for plaintiffs; and removes immunity for organizations found to be grossly negligent.
“I am very concerned because they are going to strip it of the retroactivity,” Abraham said of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It’s not unconstitutional to have it back to 30 now. What’s the difference? Somebody has to tell me that.”
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