Bobby Zirkin Returns as Representative of Maryland Catholic Conference to Old Committee to Testify Against Delegate CT Wilson’s Child Sex Abuse Bill

Former Senate Judicial Proceedings chairman Robert A. Zirkin (D-Baltimore County) returned to his former committee this week to testify against a high-profile bill that’s a follow-up to a measure he once championed.

The woman who replaced Zirkin in the Senate last year, Sen. Shelly L. Hettleman (D-Baltimore County), has joined Del. CT Wilson (D-Charles) in his fight to eliminate the statute of limitations for child sex abuse survivors to launch civil suits. The bill was up in the Judicial Proceedings Committee, where Hettleman serves, on Tuesday. 

But in lieu of a packed room full of survivors comforting each other and crying as they waited to testify, almost 200 pages of testimony were submitted to the panel, detailing heartbreaking stories of childhood shame, abuse, molestation and rape...

...Zirkin appeared before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee representing the Maryland Catholic Conference, arguing that the bill has “problems on its policy, not in its focus on trying to get justice for victims.”..

...For example, if an individual were to sue a local public school under this bill’s two-year lookback window for an incident alleged to have happened before 1971, they wouldn’t be eligible to receive any damages because sovereign immunity protected those institutions from lawsuits completely during that time. 

Should someone sue the same school for something that happened between 1971 and 2016, they would be eligible to receive up to $100,000 in damages. If they were to sue for alleged crimes that occurred between 2016 and the present, the current sovereign immunity cap rests at $400,000...

https://www.marylandmatters.org/2021/02/05/zirkin-returns-to-old-committee-to-testify-against-wilsons-child-sex-abuse-bill/