CALIFORNIA
National Catholic Reporter
Michael Sean Winters | Oct. 14, 2013 Distinctly Catholic
Governor Jerry Brown of California vetoed a bill that would have lifted the statute of limitations on charges related to the sexual abuse of children. This is a good thing, certainly, but more needs to be done.
Gov. Brown rightly noted that SB 131, as the bill was known, treated private and public institutions differently and that such a difference was fundamentally unjust and probably unconstitutional. It is not just that private institutions were singled out for disparate treatment. The law had the, presumably, unintended effect of denying redress to child victims who happened to have been abused in a public school as opposed to a parochial school. The proposed bill was unfair to victims, not just to private institutions.
It is doubtful the California legislature will re-draft the bill so that it includes public institutions, but logically, that would be one way to respond to the veto. After all, we now know that the crime of sex abuse is not like other crimes insofar as it often takes a victim years to admit what happened. I am deeply ambivalent about the current state of affairs which prevents a victim past the age of 26 from bringing suit. It is not hard for me to imagine someone who might require more time to wrestle with his or her internal wounds before summoning the courage to go public.
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