UNITED STATES
Verdict
13 OCT 2016
MARCI A. HAMILTON
Herculean efforts across the United States have been undertaken to eliminate the threshold legal barrier for most sex abuse victims: the statute of limitations. Some states have been very successful like Delaware and Minnesota while others remain mired in a system that blocks the vast majority of survivors like New York. To their credit, advocates, survivors, and their supporters continue to press even in the most backward states.
While a legislative push can be empowering for many survivors, it can also be traumatic when legislators irrationally reject the survivors’ pleas for justice. For example, Pennsylvania senators have professed allegiance to a non-existent Pennsylvania constitutional doctrine to avoid passing a bill that would revive expired SOLs for those who were shut out of the system. It is a cruel position that was captured beautifully in this political cartoon.
The bad news—or at least the news that is needed to put the SOL reform movement in context—is that once the SOLs are pushed back and a survivor is permitted to cross the moat surrounding the courthouse, there are too many other laws that, like short SOLs, make access to justice difficult. They are in effect predator friendly and child-endangering.
What is needed is a child-centered approach in the legal system, which takes into account the science of child sex abuse that is being built by pediatricians, child psychiatrists, psychologists, and sociologists, and traumatologists. Ignorance fueled by denial has been responsible for crafting a predator-friendly system, but we now have enough science to intelligently craft public policy so that it no longer actively aids and abets the wrong side in this war. The current gauntlet sex abuse victims face needs to be de-constructed, and reforms are needed in numerous contexts. In other words, if our children are to be protected, the SOLs are just the beginning.
SOL Reform for Two Distinct Populations
The SOL reform movement has progressed to the point where it is quite clear that there are two distinct groups of survivors in need of legal reform. First, there are those who were unintentionally, but definitely, deprived of justice: the ones who were abused in the past, failed to meet the short SOLs, and who need a legislative fix now. The legal system has frozen them in their pain. This is a finite set of individuals, and for those who seek justice, the only legal solution is to revive their expired civil SOLs. They typically have no options to press charges (although it is in their interest to report their abuser to the authorities so that serial predators can be identified).
Second, there are the children abused now and those victims not yet beyond the state’s SOL. For this group, the good news is that roughly two-thirds of the states have eliminated the criminal SOL, at least for felonies. (http://sol-reform.com/silos.pdf ) The bad news is that in many states, civil SOLs remain short, and so they cannot sue for damages. They need the elimination or at least extension of the civil SOLs to shift the cost of their abuse onto those who caused it.
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