Judge Ponders Sexual Abuse Statute of Limitations

By Greg Bolt
The Register-Guard
October 20, 2013

http://www.registerguard.com/rg/news/local/30612615-75/abuse-victim-claims-lawsuit-victims.html.csp

A judge will decide next month whether time has run out for a $5.25 million sexual abuse lawsuit against the Boy Scouts filed by a former Scout from Eugene.

At issue is whether the statute of limitations has expired for claims raised by the plaintiff in the case, who is known only by the initials F.D. A Lane County judge heard arguments on the issue last week and set another court date for mid-November.

The case is unusual because it involves allegations of child sexual abuse that took place almost 50 years ago, starting in 1964. Even more unusual is the fact that the alleged abuser, a one-time Scoutmaster named Ed Dyer, was shot dead by one of his teenage victims in 1986.

The lawsuit claims that the national, state and local Scout organizations should pay damages to the unnamed victim because they failed to protect him from Dyer’s abuse. But because so much time has passed since the abuse took place, the two sides are first arguing whether the statute of limitations has expired.

It’s a more complicated issue than it at first appears. Oregon law allows victims of child abuse to file suit against alleged abusers — and, by extension, any organizations that employed the abusers and knew or should have known about the abuse and failed to take action — at any time before the victim reaches age 40, no matter how much time has elapsed since the abuse occurred.

After age 40, victims can file suit only if they show that the connection between the past abuse and any current illness or injury only recently was discovered. In such cases, victims have five years from the time they make that connection to file a lawsuit.

The law is written to protect victims who are abused as children and because of the traumatic nature of the abuse don’t realize until they are much older the harm that was done to them.

In the F.D. case, the victim claims that he suffered debilitating mental and emotional injury, trauma and permanent psychological damage. He admits that he has known for some time that the abuse caused the injury and that his abuser was a Scout leader.

But he claims that he didn’t know until recently that the Scouting organizations allegedly share some blame for the abuse. That claim appears to relate in part to the more recent discovery of documents kept by the Scouting organizations about Scout leaders accused or suspected of having sexually abused boys in their troops.

Attorneys for the victims argue that the clock on the statute of limitations didn’t start ticking until their client realized the Scouting organizations knew about abuse by some Scout leaders and failed to take action to protect their victims. They say the suit was filed within the five-year limitation following that realization.

But attorneys for the Scouting organizations say the victim was aware long ago, or reasonably should have been aware, that there was a connection between those groups and the victim’s abuse-related injuries. They also argue that the language of the state laws governing statutes of limitation bar the lawsuit this long after the victim became aware of his injuries and their connection to the Scouts.

Lane County Circuit Judge Karsten Rasmussen, who is hearing the case, appeared to be struggling with the argument presented by the victim’s attorneys, Stephen Crew and Peter Janci. He said it appeared that under their reasoning there is effectively no statute of limitations for such claims.

He gave Crew and Janci until Nov. 1 to submit additional written arguments. Attorneys for the Scouts will have until Nov. 8 to reply, with oral arguments set for Nov. 15.