UNITED STATES
Verdict
Marci A. Hamilton
The Josh Duggar and Dennis Hastert cases highlight the need to reform criminal and civil statutes of limitations (SOL) so that victims of childhood sexual abuse can seek justice in the courts of law when they are ready, even if it is years after the abuse against them occurred. In fact, I dare anyone to name the never-ending list of perpetrators and institutions that have cheated justice and gotten a free pass from this legal technicality—Penn State, the Olympic swim team, Catholic and Latter-day Saints bishops, Jewish rabbis, the Horace Mann School in New York, and the Boy Scouts, among others. All these, and thousands of others show how perverse the current SOLs can be when it comes to this horrific crime. There is hope, though.
An SOL is nothing other than a deadline for going to court. And when it expires, a victim—regardless of the strength of the case—is shut out of the justice system. There are good reasons for SOLs in many contexts, like contract and property disputes, but no good reason for an SOL when the victim is a child. We know that the average age for victims to come forward is 42, which is several decades after the abuse occurred. So, the only beneficiaries of short SOLs are sex offenders themselves, and entities that aid and abet and cover up their crimes.
The criminal charges filed last week against the Minneapolis Archdiocese show the light that shines at the end of the SOL tunnel.
The SOLs Prevent Justice for Hastert’s Victims
Three of Dennis Hastert’s victims have come forward. So far, no one is remotely within the Illinois criminal or civil SOLs. When Hastert was a coach at Yorkville High School in Illinois from 1965 to 1981, the child sex abuse SOLs were cruelly short. The criminal SOL ran three years after the abuse, and the personal injury SOL ran two years after the event. That’s right; victims had to race to court to get justice.
But for these short SOLs, Hastert’s victims could have pressed charges or sued Hastert for the abuse when they were ready, which is more often than not in one’s 40s. According to the indictment, Hastert’s payments to one of his victims began in 2010. If that man was 15 in 1980 (to use round numbers), he was 45 in 2010.
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