SOUTH DAKOTA
Rapid City Journal
Rep. Steve Hickey, R-Sioux Falls, calls his bill to rescind the statute of limitations in childhood sexual abuse civil lawsuits “a shot for the fence.”
HB1218 will get a hearing at 10 a.m. today in the House Judiciary Committee.
“I do think we’ll be able to move the ball down the field and seek to rescind what was done in 2010,” said Hickey, pastor of an evangelical Christian church in Sioux Falls.
His bill would repeal a 2010 law that changed South Dakota’s law on who could file a lawsuit against a third-party alleging sexual abuse. In addition to the standard limits of filing a civil suit within three years of the abuse occurring, or of discovering that it occurred, the 2010 Legislature put an age limit of 40 on anyone bringing a lawsuit against a church, school, religious order or other entity that was not the individual perpetrator of the abuse. That legislation is seen by Hickey and others as an attempt to protect religious entities against lawsuits brought by Native American plaintiffs alleging abuse at Catholic-affiliated boarding schools that occurred decades ago.
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