PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call
Bill White
In the continuum of bizarre episodes involving state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, her double-cross Monday of child sex abuse victims probably ranks pretty low. She has set a remarkably high standard for weirdness.
Still, Monday’s shocking turnabout — from powerful advocate to weaselly waffler — left a lot of people scratching their heads. “It’s very confusing to me,” said John Salveson, president of the Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse.
I’ve been writing about House Bill 1947, which easily passed the House in April and would eliminate the statute of limitations for criminal cases of child sexual abuse and extend the statute for civil cases until the victim reaches age 50, retroactively, from the present age 30. The state Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering the bill, held a hearing Monday to consider the constitutionality of retroactively changing the age for civil suits.
There are strong legal opinions on each side of that issue, and we heard both at Monday’s hearing, albeit much more heavily weighted toward those — some of whom were in the employ of chief opponents the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference and the Pennsylvania Insurance Federation — who think it would be ruled unconstitutional under Pennsylvania law. The only expert testifying that what they called the “revival” portion of HB 1947 is constitutional was constitutional lawyer and longtime statute of limitations reform advocate Marci Hamilton, the go-to expert on this subject around the country and even the world.
She was critical of committee Chair Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, for the lack of balance in the testimony, but she more than held her own. I learned afterward that a law firm representing abuse survivors in Delaware is saying Greenleaf should recuse himself because representatives of his law firm argued against similar legislation in Delaware. Greenleaf, who made no mention of his apparent conflict, said afterward that the Senate parliamentarian has ruled he needn’t recuse himself.
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