A standard for sex abuse liabilities

Standard Speaker
April 9, 2017

http://standardspeaker.com/opinion/a-standard-for-sex-abuse-liabilities-1.2178035

Enabling victims of child sexual abuse to seek damages after they become adults is a no-brainer in concept. But the tortured path of a bill in the state Legislature to expand that opportunity demonstrates that the matter is far more complex in practice.

State law gives child sexual abuse victims until they are 30, or 12 years after they become adults at 18, to sue alleged perpetrators for damages. Victims’ advocates argue that the window is too narrow because of the psychological damage that many victims suffer. They contend that it takes longer than the allowed time period for many victims to fully realize the implications of the abuse they suffered as children.

Legislators generally are sympathetic. Last year the House passed a bill, 180-15, to vastly expand that window to age 50, and to make it retroactive. It exempted public institutions such as school districts and maintained liability caps under sovereign immunity law, meaning that the change mostly would affect private institutions, especially the Catholic Church. The bill passed the House amid revelations of sex abuse charges in the Johnstown-Altoona Diocese.

The legislation died amid powerful push-back from the church and the insurance industry.

Earlier this year the Senate passed a bill eliminating any time limit to sue and reducing the threshold from “gross negligence” to negligence. On Tuesday, a House committee amended it to include what victims’ advocates called a “poison pill,” a provision to ensure its failure.

The amendment vastly would diminish sovereign immunity protection for school districts and other public bodies, potentially exposing taxpayers to the same levels of liability to which last year’s bill would have exposed the Catholic dioceses and other private entities.

As noted by the Philadelphia Inquirer, such a “poison pill” killed a similar bill in Colorado when Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput was the archbishop of Denver and actively opposed the legislation. Last year dioceses in Pennsylvania asked parishioners to oppose the bill, partially on grounds that it applied only to private, rather than public institutions.

This year the House retained a Senate provision eliminating any criminal statute of limitations for child sexual abuse, which should become law regardless of the civil issue. The civil liability scope raises multiple issues. Abuse at the hands of a public employee, a teacher or coach is no less damaging than that at the hands of a priest.

The defining issue should be whether the institution, public or private, knowingly concealed or facilitated that conduct. Any cap, or elimination of any cap, should be applied uniformly rather than selectively.

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