PENNSYLVANIA
Philly.com
by Maria Panaritis, Staff Writer @panaritism | mpanaritis@phillynews.com
HARRISBURG — Six months after seeing it collapse under pressure from both the pulpit and political lobbies, lawmakers are poised to revisit a controversial proposal to expand the statute of limitations for victims of child sex abuse.
On Tuesday, a House committee plans to consider a new bill passed by the Senate that would eliminate criminal and civil statutes of limitations for all future cases of child sex abuse — moves long sought by prosecutors and victims.
But that bill, sponsored by Senate Republican leader Joe Scarnati, the president pro tempore from Jefferson County, excludes what was at the core of the debate that raged for months last year in the Capitol: a provision that would let victims of abuse dating to roughly the 1980s sue their attackers and the institutions that oversaw them.
That clause was included in the original version of the bill that the House adopted by a 180-15 vote last year at the height of a clergy abuse scandal in the Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown. But it was removed from the legislation in the Senate, after an intense push by advocates for the church and insurance industry, who questioned its constitutionality and warned that it could unfairly punish struggling congregations for decades-old misconduct by long-gone clergy.
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