UNITED STATES
The Salt Lake Tribune
By DeAnn Tilton and Ken Ivory
For every legal action, lawmakers decide how long a victim has to take the offender to court. Historically, the state of Utah has given survivors of childhood sexual abuse just a few years to get to civil court to seek redress for the harm done to them by those who have abused them.
While short time limits, also called statutes of limitation, can be appropriate for some legal actions, such as property disputes, where it’s in both parties’ best interest to get to court quickly and sort out who owns what, decades of research into the experiences of survivors of childhood sexual abuse tell us that traditional statutes of limitation are inappropriate in these cases.
We now understand, better than ever before, that there are many significant barriers survivors face in going public with the abuse inflicted upon them, not the least of which includes disclosing it to their loved ones. Other barriers include intimidation, shame, fear of losing important family relationships and the distortion that child sexual abuse causes to the mental and emotional ability of a survivor to comprehend the nature and damage caused by the exploitation and abuse. Research now shows that survivors are into their 40s, on average, before they are able to publicly disclose the abuse.
Despite these barriers, some survivors eventually heal enough to find the courage to knock on the courthouse doors seeking justice for the harm done to them. Tragically, they have found those doors were locked years ago by unrealistically short statutes of limitation. This injustice not only prevents survivors from seeking civil damages to recover some of the financial costs for the physical and mental harm done, it also prevents them from publicly informing the rest of society about those who are still free to abuse others.
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