Advocates are hopeful that the anticipated release of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office’s 450-page investigation of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore — along with changes in the makeup of a key Senate committee — mean that this time a bill will pass the General Assembly.
“If this isn’t the year, I don’t know what year is,” said David Lorenz, who heads the Maryland chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
The proposal, known as a “lookback window,” will be paired with legislation to abolish the statute of limitations for civil claims in childhood sexual abuse cases.
Statute of limitations reform promises to be one of the major civil issues for lawmakers when they gather in Annapolis for their 2023 legislative session in January.
“We’re taking this issue very seriously in the Senate,” said Sen. William C. Smith Jr., who chairs the powerful Judicial Proceedings Committee.
In years past, Smith’s committee has been a stumbling block for statute of limitations reform. Maryland lengthened the statute of limitations for lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse in 2017, granting abuse survivors until their 38th birthday to file claims.
But the law did not apply retroactively, so survivors whose claims were already past the statute of limitations did not get the chance to sue their abusers or the institutions that abetted them.
Lookback window legislation has passed in the House of Delegates repeatedly, but has sputtered in the Senate amid questions about its constitutionality. The 2017 law also included a “statute of repose” that may further insulate institutions from older lawsuits, though advocates for a lookback window say they should still have the chance to bring legal challenges in court.
Del. C.T. Wilson, a Charles County Democrat and childhood sexual abuse survivor, said he has already pre-filed a bill for the 2023 session...
The Maryland legislators
ReplyDeleteCan't score a single goal
They make great orators
And invent new loopholes.
"Legislators in Maryland have for years failed to pass legislation that would allow child sexual abuse survivors with out-of-date civil claims to have their day in court."