WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post
April 3, 2019
By Erin Cox
A Senate panel on Wednesday voted down a bill that would have let childhood sex abuse victims of any age sue institutions that harbored their attackers.
The legislation, proposed amid a global clergy sex abuse scandal, had passed the House of Delegates overwhelmingly last month. But the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee declined to advance it, with one Democrat joining the committee’s four Republicans in voting it down.
The bill had become a heightened source of controversy in Annapolis after its lead sponsor accused the Catholic Church of swindling him into deal that may have granted the organization irreversible immunity from sex abuse cases that happened decades ago.
That deal, part of a 2017 law extending the civil statute of limitations, was a key reason cited by a senator who voted against this year’s proposal.
“It wiped out the compromise from two years ago,” Sen. Michael Hough (R-Frederick) said after the vote. The 2017 law raised the statute of limitations for civil sex abuse cases, increasing the age victims can file from 25 to 38 years old. It also included language some legal experts say makes it unconstitutional by increasing the statute of limitations again.
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