UNITED STATES
Verdict

Gov. Jerry Brown’s Recent Veto of Child Abuse Legislation and What It Tells Us About the Civil Rights Movement for Children

Marci A. Hamilton

No civil rights movement worth pursuing happens overnight or easily, because it is always a fight against the entrenched powers that resist and detest change. The ups and downs are sometimes steep, with the oppressed facing devastating losses and heady triumphs along the way. In the civil rights movement for children, which is transforming children from property into persons in the United States, a critical element is giving child sex abuse (CSA) victims meaningful access to justice.

Until relatively recently, most child sex abuse victims in the vast majority of states did not have access to justice, because the statutes of limitations (“SOLs”) cut off their claims before they could make it to the courthouse. A confluence of ignorance meant that…