Vitale Delivers Justice for Victims of Sexual Abuse

Star-Ledger
March 28, 2019

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2019/03/vitale-delivers-justice-for-victims-of-sexual-abuse-editorial.html

Contrary to legal doctrine, justice delayed is not justice denied – at least not in perpetuity – as long as you have a righteous cause and one indomitable lawmaker.

This instructive lesson in governance comes from a bill that extends the statute of limitations in civil actions for children who were victims of sexual abuse, which is now headed for the governor’s desk after passing the Assembly by a unanimous vote Monday.

The bill affirms that access to justice is a civil right, and that an arbitrary statute of limitations prevents it. It took 17 years for Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, to convince his colleagues that this was the moral calling of our age, and that it was inexcusable to look the other way while the Catholic Church shielded clergy who raped children.

Changing the statute was crucial. The existing window for civil action in New Jersey was ludicrously short, as victims had to bring a civil case before they turned 20, or within two years from the time they connected their trauma to the abuse.

The reality is that the vast majority of victims, if they disclose anything at all, do it during adulthood. The average age of such disclosure is 52. Roughly one-third of child sexual abuse cases are never reported at all.

Vitale’s bill, which Gov. Murphy endorses, allows child victims to sue until age 55, or from 7 years of the discovery of their abuse. It also gives those who have been time-barred another two-year window to pursue their civil case. And critically, it allows victims to hold both the abusers and the institutions who protected them accountable.

The impact is clear: “New Jersey will now be a national leader for identifying hidden child predators, shifting the costs of abuse from the victims and the state to the ones who caused it, and educating the public about this pandemic,” says Marci Hamilton, the leading expert on child protection legislation as CEO of CHILD USA.

“Every state to pass meaningful statute of limitations reform for sex abuse victims needed a champion with determination, patience, and leadership. That has been Senator Vitale in New Jersey. I would rank him as one of the most effective and caring Senators on this issue in the United States.”

That cannot be emphasized enough.

Sometimes legislation moves like a pregnant sloth dipped in molasses. Vitale has pursued this since 2002 – the year of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight magnum opus — and each time was stonewalled by the monolithic power of the Church or by peers with feet of clay. Consider: One day in 2012, he had bipartisan support the day his bill was up for a vote, but four allies somehow forgot to show up for it.

By the time a grand jury uncovered rampant clergy sex abuse in Pennsylvania last year, however, the political momentum was irreversible. Suddenly, Vitale had 20-plus cosponsors for this bill.

“Joe could have said long ago that we’re not going to get this done, but he never wavered,” said Mark Crawford, the state director of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP). “He knew what survivors needed, he refused to back down from the Catholic Conference, and he never compromised. He had the fortitude to say, ‘There’s a line here, it’s been trampled, and this is what is right.’ This couldn’t have happened without Joe.”

Vitale – direct, tenacious, and uncommonly wise when it counts - shuns the praise. He responded with similar modesty after extraordinary legislative successes that include needle exchanges, gun control measures, medical marijuana, restoring the Obamacare individual mandate, and many more.

In this case, he said, “If you just watched the victims testify through their tears, you knew there could only be one ending.”

It is the ending of a long journey for justice, now accessible to all sexual abuse victims for the first time in the history of our state. This is how government should work.