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The Ticking Clock on Child Abuse May 31, 2013 Law and Justice
Marci Hamilton battles the deadline that cheats victims.
By Rebecca Webber
The Cleveland kidnapping case, the Sandusky scandal at Penn State and the revelations from prestigious private schools like New York’s Horace Mann remind us that child sex abuse can happen anywhere.
“Twenty to 25 percent of children are sexually abused,” says Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. But it often takes victims years to come to terms with what was done to them. “A survivor needs decades to come forward. They’re trying to deal with so much and they can’t put it all together,” she explains. In the meantime, their abusers are typically targeting other children. “Many perpetrators continue abusing into their elderly years,” she says.
That’s why Hamilton has been on a decade-long crusade to eliminate statute-of-limitation rules on sex abuse crimes. The rules vary by state but typically require the victim to file charges or a lawsuit within a specific time frame, sometimes within as little as one year after the abuse took place or after the victim reaches a certain age (usually between 18 and 21). These limitations, says Hamilton, keep many victims from outing their abusers.
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