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	Sex Abuse Bill Goes to Owens By April M. Washington Rocky Mountain News [Colorado] March 24, 2006 http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4568229,00.html A bill that eliminates the statue of limitations for prosecuting felony sex crimes against children some 10 to 20 years ago is on its way to the governor. The Senate gave House Bill 1088 its final stamp approval Friday with only one Republican casting a no vote, contending the measure could lead to the conviction of innocent people based on childhood memories of alleged sexual abuse. "With this bill we're saying that if the burden of proof is there, then we'll have a tool take the perpetrator off the streets no matter when they committed the crime," said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Paula Sandoval, D-Denver. "They leave a trail of victims. This will allow those victims to come forward when they're ready. Often it takes victims of sexual assault years to come to terms with what has happened to them." Gov. Bill Owens said Friday that he will make a decision on whether to sign the bill into law once he has a chance to review it. If it signed into law, the measure will take effect July 1. Under the bill, the 10-year statute of limitations for prosecuting felony sexual abuse crimes would be eliminated, including crimes that date back to July 1, 1996. Sen. Jim Dyer, R-Centennial, cast the lone dissenting vote against the measure. He argued that the intentions of the bill are admirable, but that it could target innocent people because evidence is virtually impossible to warehouse in cases of sexual abuse that may have occurred 10 to 30 years ago. "This is a piece of due process we can not ignore," Dyer said. "At the end of the day, a decade-old alleged assault can't be proven, and it would come down to the so-called victim's word against the alleged perpetrator's word." Sandoval said she was confident that prosecutors would not to prosecute decade-old allegations if they didn't think they had the evidence. HB 1088 is the least controversial of three proposed sex abuse bills. The bill passed the House in February, and the Senate gave its initial approval earlier this week after agreeing with the House version. Earlier this week, Archbishop Charles Chaput renewed his call to defeat SB 143, a more controversial sex abuse measure that would lift the statute of limitations for civil claims. It would allow victims of childhood sex abuse to seek hefty monetary damaged against alleged perpetrators and also the institutions which employed them. In a column in the "Denver Catholic Register," Chaput charged that the measure exists "for one reason only: to target the Catholic community." In his column, Chaput praised Sandoval's HB 1088, which addresses crimes, not civil lawsuits, as a bill "reasonable people can support." The Denver archdiocese faces 24 civil clergy abuse lawsuits filed since last summer. State lawmakers backing SB 143 by Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, D- Coal Creek Canyon, have argued the church bears some liability for systematically shifting priests alleged to have sexually abused multiple children from one parish to another in an effort to cover up the crime. SB 143 remains on the Senate's calendar for debate and action.
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