BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe
October 8, 2026
By Chloe Craft
An overwhelming majority of Massachusetts voters believe the clock shouldn’t run out for child sex abuse survivors suing their alleged abusers, according to a poll released Thursday.
Eighty-four percent of voters said that there should be no expiration date for survivors to sue alleged offenders in civil court, according to the poll, published by survivor advocacy group Enough Abuse and conducted by the MassINC Polling Group.
The findings were published as a primary health care bill, that includes an amendment removing the time restriction for such lawsuits, and is making its way through the state Legislature. Under current state law, the time limit, frequently called the statute of limitations, for childhood sexual abuse requires survivors to file a civil lawsuit within 35 years of the alleged abuse or within seven years of the victim becoming aware the alleged crime had caused “an emotional or psychological injury or condition.”
At a virtual press conference announcing the poll’s findings Thursday afternoon, Jim Scanlan, an advocate and survivor of childhood sexual abuse, said he didn’t speak publicly about his story until his mid-50s.
“I’d like this [legislation] to be an opportunity for others to see me, and other survivors be open,” said Scanlan, who was abused by a priest at Boston College High School in the 1970s and was one of the subjects of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer-winning Spotlight investigation into priest sexual abuse in 2002.
For child victims, the 35-year countdown begins when they become a legal adult at 18, so they must file a lawsuit before they turn 53.
As of November 2025, twenty states and Washington, D.C., have already eliminated the civil statute of limitations for some or all child sexual abuse claims, according to Enough Abuse. On the national level, Senator Chuck Schumer introduced a bill that would eliminate civil statutes of limitations for sex trafficking and sexual abuse at a national level earlier this year.
That bill is currently pending in committee.
Advocates have found that child victims often don’t immediately report their abuse out of fear of not being believed or because they’ve been taught to obey adults. In comparison, many adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse take years to process the trauma and oftentimes deal with feelings of intense shame.
Research has found that around one in five adult survivors have never disclosed the abuse publicly, with men less likely to speak out than women.
Jetta Bernier, Enough Abuse’s executive director, said the organization knows that legislative leaders, survivors, and advocates all support eliminating the statute of limitations.
However, the group didn’t know how the electorate felt.
“Do they think that this is a serious problem, the problem of child sexual abuse in the Commonwealth?” Bernier said at the press conference.
The poll also showed that around two-thirds of respondents said the issue should be a high priority for elected officials.
Ninety-one percent of voters in the new poll agree that people who are sexually abused as children may need many years before they are ready to come forward about what happened to them.
And nearly all poll respondents – 93 percent – believe organizations such as schools, religious organizations, or youth programs that knowingly enabled sexual abuse to occur and failed to protect children from sexual abuse should be held accountable.
The amendment in the primary care bill would eliminate the civil statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse altogether, meaning survivors could file a lawsuit at any time without restriction.
It would also open a two-year window in which survivors whose legal claims expired under the current statute could bring them against perpetrators anyway. Additionally, it would eliminate a state rule that limits any damages against nonprofit institutions, such as churches, to $20,000.
Advocates called for state senators to ensure the amendment remains in the bill if it passes the House-Senate conference committee.
The survey also comes after a September report from Attorney General Andrea Campbell showed how the state’s Catholic church leadership systematically covered up decades of childhood sex abuse in parishes.
After the report was released, Campbell revealed that she was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and called for state laws to improve pathways for survivors to take legal action against abusers.
Campbell could not prosecute any of the abusers implicated in the report because the statute of limitations for the cases had expired.
“This legislation is really important for survivors, like many of us on this panel today, but most importantly, it is about protecting the children of the Commonwealth,” said Kathryn Robb, director of Enough Abuse’s child justice campaign, who is also a survivor of child sexual abuse.
“It is about protecting children that are in these institutions today and into the future.”