PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal
January 23, 2019
By Katherine Gregg
Spurred by the molestation of her sister by their parish priest in West Warwick when they were both children, state Rep. Carol Hagan McEntee has lined up more than 50 co-sponsors for her reworked bill to extend the time that child victims have, after reaching adulthood, to lodge civil suits against their abusers.
The Rhode Island Catholic Diocese successfully blocked an earlier version of McEntee’s bill in 2018. The church insisted on limiting the application of the proposed law to “prospective” cases of alleged abuse, which McEntee deemed unacceptable. The bill died in the final hours of last year’s session, after hours-long hearings in both the House and the Senate that drew speaker after speaker to the Rhode Island State House with tales of abuse by their family priests and other trusted elders in positions of authority.
The reworked bill which McEntee, D-South Kingstown, introduced on Tuesday would extend Rhode Island’s seven-year statute of limitations on the filing of civil suits against the perpetrators of sex abuse of children to 35 years, to more closely mirror the law in Massachusetts.
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