CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary
Posted by Joelle Casteix on July 30, 2013
In 1955, a woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her Montgomery, Alabama bus seat to a white man.
But on that day, she did not stand up and shout, “If ALL African Americans can’t have complete and equal rights and access, then NO ONE should get anything!”
Why? Because civil rights movements are intellectual, emotional and legislative wars, fought battle by battle. Rosa Parks could not win the war in one fell swoop. But she could win a battle.
Which brings us to California’s SB 131, the Child Victims’ Act. SB 131 opens a one-year civil window for victims to come forward in the civil courts to expose their abuser, get justice, and punish wrongdoers. The state had a similar bill in 2003, but because of last year’s California Supreme Court decision in the Quarry case, many victims were excluded, even if they had mountains of evidence.
This bill fixes that.
According to today’s editorial in the San Jose Mercury News:
Why should [a civil window] ever end? Why should those responsible for abuse get a pass if enough time goes by?
Yet opponents of the bill, including the California Catholic Conference, US Swimming, and CAPSO call the bill a “mockery of legal protection.” They claim that the bill creates two classes of victims, those abused in public institutions and those abused in private schools. And they are terribly wrong.
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