OHIO
The Columbus Dispatch
By Jim Siegel
The Columbus Dispatch • Wednesday March 19, 2014
Eight years ago, Bob Spada stood on the Senate floor to discuss his church sex-abuse bill and told his colleagues: “To be honest with you, I’m just a little bit sick.”
After hearing from numerous victims of sex abuse by priests and seeing about 150 cases involving accusations against leaders in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, the North Royalton Republican struggled to tell his colleagues they should support the bill.
A year earlier, the Senate had unanimously approved a version of Spada’s bill containing a key provision: a one-year window for victims to file a lawsuit alleging child sex abuse that had occurred as long as 35 years earlier.
But the House, under then-Speaker Jon Husted and facing heavy pressure from Catholic leaders, stripped out the one-year window to file a lawsuit and replaced it with a civil registry.
Different from Ohio’s Sex Offender Notification Registry, which requires a criminal conviction, this listing gives victims the ability to place child-sex offenders on an online registry if a judge finds the offender liable in a civil judgment.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.