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New Maryland law stops statute of limitations for survivors to sue sex abusers

BALTIMORE - Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed dozens of bills into law Tuesday afternoon, hours after the 2023 legislative session ended.

One of those new Maryland laws will open the door to new lawsuits brought by survivors of child sex abuse.

Survivors of child abuse have been pushing lawmakers to pass the "Child Victims Act" for decades.
Finally, Senate Bill 686, House Bill 1 is now a law.

There is no longer a statute of limitations for survivors of child sex abuse in Maryland to sue their abusers.

"It doesn't feel real. It really doesn't," survivor Teresa Lancaster said. "We've been denied so many times."..

New Maryland law stops statute of limitations for survivors to sue sex abusers - CBS Baltimore (cbsnews.com)

Child sexual abuse survivors’ fight for expanded civil litigation could hinge on legal technicality

The movement to eliminate deadlines that prevent victims of child sexual abuse from suing could receive a major boost thanks to the support of Sen. William C. Smith Jr.

Smith, who chairs the Judicial Proceedings Committee, said he will cross-file legislation in the Senate to match a bill already filed by Del. C.T. Wilson (D-Charles), who long has pushed for legislation to eliminate the statute of limitations that stops some adults from suing institutions for sexual abuse they suffered when they were children.

“Sometimes people don’t understand or don’t fully realize the pain and the suffering they’ve gone through in terms of their abuse until they’re much more advanced in age,” Smith (D-Montgomery) said during an interview Thursday morning. “What we’re doing is giving them a shot [to] make their case in court.”

But he said the issue could land in court because the legislation, which has been introduced three times over the last four years, also would create “lookback window” to allow plaintiffs, who had been barred by the statute of limitations, two years to sue institutions that harbored predators once the legislation becomes law.

In 2017, Wilson negotiated with the Roman Catholic Church to increase the age a person can file a civil suit from age 25 to 38, and that change became law.

Wilson’s current proposal seeks to allow a person to file a suit “at any time” and would raise the limit on financial damages from $400,000 to $850,000...

Child sexual abuse survivors' fight for expanded civil litigation could hinge on legal technicality - Maryland Matters

Key Maryland Senate leader to co-sponsor bill to end time limit for filing child sex abuse lawsuits

The chair of a powerful state Senate committee will sponsor his chamber’s version of a bill to end a statute of limitations on child sex abuse lawsuits, giving a boost to legislation abuse survivors have been pushing for years.

The decision announced Tuesday by Democratic Sen. Will Smith of Montgomery County, chair of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, improves the legislation’s chance of getting passed this year in the General Assembly.

Senate President Bill Ferguson said Tuesday that he’s hopeful that Smith’s sponsorship is “an indication that there’s likely something moving this year.”..

..In three previous sessions, the House has passed a bill sponsored by Economic Matters Committee Chair C.T. Wilson, himself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. But the legislation has never made it to the Senate floor for a vote, faltering instead in the Judicial Proceedings Committee...

Key Maryland Senate leader to co-sponsor bill to end time limit for filing child sex abuse lawsuits – Baltimore Sun

Maryland Catholic Conference will support bill to eliminate statute of limitations, but only for future cases of abuse

The lobbying group that represents Maryland’s Catholic churches said Monday that it will support legislation in the upcoming state General Assembly session that would eliminate the statute of limitations in civil suits involving future cases of child sexual abuse.

While throwing its support behind the legislation, at least as it applies to future cases, the Maryland Catholic Conference at the same time indicated it would continue to oppose a provision that survivors and their advocates have long fought for — a “look back window” that would give survivors a two-year period in which to file lawsuits alleging abuse in the past, regardless of when the abuse occurred...

...The conference’s statement also comes after The Baltimore Sun reported that the church has spent more than $200,000 in recent years to prevent lawmakers from expanding the state’s statute of limitations arising from sexual abuse claims.

The legislation in question is a bill written by a group of survivors and their attorneys. Originally titled the “Hidden Predator Act,” it would establish the two-year window for past cases. Other states, including Arizona, California, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Washington, D.C., have established such look-back windows for civil suits...

Maryland Catholic Conference will support bill to eliminate statute of limitations, but only for future cases of abuse – Baltimore Sun

Zirkin turned his back on child abuse victims

I was sad — but certainly not surprised — to learn of former state Sen. Bobby Zirkin’s about-face on his original 2019 stance regarding the passage of the Hidden Predator’s Act (”Catholic Church paid Maryland lobbyists more than $200K to help limit, prevent abuse lawsuits,” Dec. 8). He had the courage then to stand up to the Archdiocese of Baltimore and push legislation that would eliminate the statute of limitations regarding child sex abuse. But for the past three years, he’s been paid by the church to lobby against it. 

 In 1976, I first heard the catch phrase, “follow the money,” in the movie, “All The President’s Men,” about the Watergate burglary during the Richard Nixon White House years. Here is another example of a former state politician more interested in collecting a fee than what he at one time passionately believed to be the right thing to do. Why is it that money continues to override the decent thinking of today’s leaders? Can’t Zirkin collect fees lobbying for causes he truly believes in? I hope the former senator comes to his senses and stops his lobbying for the Archdiocese of Baltimore trying to maintain the statute of limitations on child sex abuse. 

There is another movie title I would like Zirkin to recall. This one is entitled, “Do the Right Thing.” — Mac Kennedy, Baltimore

Zirkin turned his back on child abuse victims | READER COMMENTARY – Baltimore Sun

Baltimore judge seals case as attorneys fight over release of Catholic church sex abuse report

The legal fight will continue behind closed doors about whether a Baltimore judge should release a 456-page investigation into child sexual abuse within the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Anthony Vittoria ordered the case sealed on Friday. His order means all hearings will be closed to the public and all legal motions will be confidential...

Baltimore judge seals case as attorneys fight over release of Catholic church sex abuse report - The Baltimore Banner

Statute of limitations reform will top civil law reform in 2023 session

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.

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...

MD General Assembly: Statute of limitations reform will top civil law reform in 2023 (thedailyrecord.com)

Maryland, You're Up Next. Did Everyone See Netflix's The Keeper's? *** Report names 158 Catholic priests accused of abuse after investigation into Archdiocese of Baltimore

A 456-page report from the Maryland Attorney General’s Office identifies 158 Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse, including 43 that were never publicly identified by the Archdiocese of Baltimore, as part of a four-year investigation into the history of child sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

The investigation also identified more than 600 victims of sexual abuse, according to a new court filing.

The report itself, along with the names of the priests, is not yet public. The Attorney General’s Office disclosed some details in a court filing Thursday requesting permission to release documents that the Archdiocese provided in response to a grand jury subpoena...

...“The Attorney General’s investigation uncovered pervasive sexual abuse amongst the priesthood and repeated failures by the Archdiocese to protect the children of Baltimore,” the office wrote. “Time and again, the Archdiocese chose the abuser over the abused, the powerful over the weak, and the adult over the child. Hundreds of Marylanders have suffered mentally and physically for decades because of the Archdiocese’s decisions.

“Now is the time for reckoning,” the filing continues. “Publicly airing the transgressions of the Church is critical to holding people and institutions accountable and improving the way sexual abuse allegations are handled going forward.”

The filing describes pervasive sexual abuse and a church that tried to cover up the problem. One congregation was assigned 11 sexually abusive priests over a span of 40 years, the document claims. Victims sometimes ended up reporting sexual abuse to members of the clergy who were themselves perpetrators...

...“We need to see the names of the perpetrators.” he said. “We need to hear the stories of the survivors. … That’s the only way, sometimes, you come forward. You say ‘I’m not the only one.'”  

This story will be updated...

MD report names 158 Catholic priests accused of abuse after investigation into Archdiocese of Baltimore (thedailyrecord.com)

Bill eliminating statute of limitations for child sex abuse civil suits heads to Biden’s desk

The House on Tuesday passed a bill eliminating the statute of limitations for victims of child sex abuse who seek to file civil claims, sending the measure to President Biden’s desk for final approval.

The chamber cleared the bill, titled the Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act, by voice vote, a strategy reserved for noncontroversial, popular measures. The Senate passed the legislation by unanimous consent in March.

The measure calls for removing the statute of limitations for minors filing civil claims relating to a number of sex abuse crimes, including forced labor, sex trafficking, sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children.

Under current law, minors who experience sexual abuse are able to file federal civil claims until they turn 28 years old, or until 10 years after the violation or injury is discovered. The bill Congress passed seeks to eliminate those time restraints.

There is no statute of limitations in place for criminal offenses involving child sex abuse...

Bill eliminating statute of limitations for child sex abuse civil suits heads to Biden’s desk | The Hill

Survivors of abuse in Catholic Church demand @BrianFrosh attorney general release findings. [See Netflix series The Keepers on MD Legislature's Failure to Protect Children]

Rift Deepens Between Montgomery County Silver Spring Senator Will Smith and the ACLU

A blog post published earlier this month by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland has widened a growing rift between the venerable organization and Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chair William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery).

Dana Vickers Shelley, executive director of the ACLU of Maryland and author of the blog post, alleged that differences in opinion on legislative matters have prompted Smith to impose a “No ACLU Rule” — meaning he won’t meet with representatives of the civil rights organization.

“The goal of the ACLU of Maryland is to dismantle white supremacy and its systems that intentionally marginalize the needs and vision of people most impacted by injustice,” she wrote in the blog post, which carried the headline, “White supremacy is the foul soup we all swim in — and we’re done treading water.”..

https://www.marylandmatters.org/2022/03/24/rift-deepens-between-sen-smith-and-the-aclu/

How Maryland's statute of limitations undermines abuse survivors, including in Boy Scouts bankruptcy

...But if it weren’t for the bankruptcy case, which allowed for claims that fall outside of their state’s statute of limitations, Gillispie and other survivors in Maryland would stand virtually no chance of holding the Boy Scouts accountable in court.

That’s because lawmakers in Maryland have not provided a path for older survivors to sue, even as dozens of other states have reopened their statutes of limitations in child sexual abuse cases.

The Boy Scouts bankruptcy allows a rare chance to put numbers to how severely Maryland’s statute of limitations undercuts survivors’ legal options.

About 1,300 total claims against the Boy Scouts originated in Maryland, according to a group representing the survivors in court. (The exact number was still being tallied as of earlier this year.)

Of that number, only 13 claims fell within Maryland’s statute of limitations based on the survivor's age...

https://news.yahoo.com/marylands-statute-limitations-undermines-abuse-171818057.html

New York child sex abuse law let 9,000 sue

ALBANY, N.Y. — For two years, New York temporarily set aside its usual time limit on civil lawsuits in order to allow victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue churches, hospitals, schools, camps, scout groups and other institutions and people they hold responsible for enabling pedophiles or turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.

That window closes Saturday, after more than 9,000 lawsuits were filed, a deluge whose impact may be felt for many years.

Four of the state’s Roman Catholic dioceses have filed for bankruptcy partly as a result of litigation unleashed by the state’s Child Victims Act. Thousands of new allegations against priests, teachers, scout leaders and other authorities have intensified the already harsh light on institutions entrusted with caring for children.

And survivors of abuse have been given an outlet for their trauma and a chance at accountability once thought long lost.

“This has, ironically, been a very healing experience for me on a personal level,” said Carol DuPre, 74, who sued the Roman Catholic diocese in Rochester, saying she was molested by a priest as a teen in the early 1960s as she counted offerings and typed up bulletins after church services...

https://roanoke.com/ap/national/article_bb66fd24-b6ed-5d2e-ae8e-e0cd41d62fbd.html

Hidden Predator Act would end statute of limitations on filing lawsuits in future cases

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/hidden-predator-act-maryland-end-statute-of-limitations-lawsuits/31025704

Breaking: Maryland lawmakers use unusual maneuver to revive bill on child abuse lawsuits

An effort to give survivors of child sexual abuse more time to file lawsuits that failed in the Maryland Senate has been resurrected by the House of Delegates.

Democratic Del. C.T. Wilson’s bill to remove a statute of limitations for lawsuits rising from child sexual abuse had sailed through the House, but died in a deadlocked Senate committee.

The defeat frustrated Wilson and abuse survivors.

So, the House Judiciary Committee, in an unusual move, took many elements of Wilson’s bill and tacked them Saturday onto an unrelated bill from Sen. Justin Ready — a Carroll County Republican who is one of the senators who voted against the abuse lawsuit bill in committee.

...

The House adopted the amendments and moved the revised measure forward to a final vote on Monday — the final day of the 90-day General Assembly session. Any changes to the bill would need to be approved by the Senate in order to send the measure to the governor.

...

Ready was among five senators who voted against Wilson’s bill in the Judicial Proceedings Committee, citing questions about its constitutionality.

...

Zirkin said he supports both bills and hopes a conference committee will work out a compromise where both measures can be enacted.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-abuse-bill-revived-20190406-story.html

Md. Senate panel rejects effort to give childhood sex abuse victims more flexibility to sue

A Senate panel has voted down a bill that would have let childhood sex abuse victims of any age sue institutions that harbored their attackers.

The legislation, proposed amid a global clergy sex abuse scandal, had passed the House of Delegates overwhelmingly last month. But the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee declined to advance it on Wednesday, with one Democrat joining the committee’s four Republicans in voting it down.

The bill had become a heightened source of controversy in Annapolis after its lead sponsor accused the Catholic Church of swindling himinto a deal that may have granted the organization irreversible immunity from sex abuse cases that happened decades ago.

The deal, part of a 2017 law extending the civil statute of limitations, was a key reason cited by a senator who voted against this year’s proposal...

...Del. C.T. Wilson (D-Charles), the bill’s sponsor and himself a victim of childhood sex abuse at the hands of his adoptive father, was shaking in anger after the committee vote. He said the lawmakers who voted down the bill were complicit in helping institutions protect predators...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/maryland-panel-votes-down-effort-to-give-more-rights-to-childhood-sex-abuse-victims/2019/04/03/df60045e-565d-11e9-9136-f8e636f1f6df_story.html?utm_term=.747f9d7fde2c

Bill to lift limits on child sex abuse lawsuits in Maryland fails

A bill that would have enabled untold numbers of child sexual abuse survivors to file civil lawsuits in Maryland has been defeated.

The Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee on Wednesday deadlocked 5-5 on the measure, which would have eliminated the statute of limitations for civil claims related to child sexual abuse. The bill had already sailed through the House of Delegates.

The committee vote infuriated Del. C.T. Wilson, the bill’s sponsor and a survivor of child abuse himself. “They did their best to protect pedophiles,” an angry Wilson said in an interview after the vote.

Wilson observed the committee’s voting session, which he said featured a “tornado” of misinformation about the law and his bill.

Even though Wilson was present, he said none of the senators asked him questions about his bill. He said senators were “cowards” not to discuss the bill with him...

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-abuse-limits-bill-20190403-story.html

Delegate, Survivors Push to End Limitations on Child Sex Abuse Claims

Dozens of sexual assault survivors filled the seats of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee on Thursday afternoon as the panel considered a measure to get rid of the statute of limitations for filing civil lawsuits. And after emotional testimony from Del. C.T. Wilson (D-Charles), a survivor of abuse himself, they stood up behind him in silent solidarity.

Some of the survivors, wearing all white, carried pictures of their younger selves. Jena Cochrane held a photo of herself, at 12 years old, wearing a red dress with white lace trim and a flower in her hair. Six months later she would be raped, changing her life forever.

Though she has testified on bills as an advocate for children in the past, this year is the first time Cochrane shared her own story with lawmakers. She wants them to understand why abuse victims may take years to come to terms with what happened before seeking justice in civil courts.

“You as a victim sometimes get a life sentence, while the law protects perpetrators with a statute of limitations,” Cochrane said. “That’s not fair. We want an opportunity so that when we’re brave enough to come forward, we have a platform to speak.”

Wilson has sponsored House Bill 687, or the Hidden Predator Act of 2019. The bill would get rid of the state’s statute of limitations for civil claims against perpetrators of child sex abuse – and would also include a two-year look-back window, a time in which victims could bring claims in cases where the previous statute of limitations has expired...

https://www.marylandmatters.org/2019/03/29/delegate-survivors-push-to-end-limitations-on-child-sex-abuse-claims/

Delegate C.T. Wilson Before Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Presenting Hidden Predator Act of 2019

Listen to Delegate C.T. Wilson's advocacy on behalf of children who have been sexually abused.

Delegate Wilson is attempting to have Maryland eliminate the Statute of Limitations in civil cases involving the sexual abuse of children, and to allow for a two year "look back" window for these victims.

If you watched the Netflix documentary "The Keepers" you will recognize Delegate Wilson.  He was the Maryland legislator in the final episodes of "The Keepers" who exposed that the Maryland legislature has been covering for the crimes of the Catholic Church for decades by preventing legislation that would aid victims from even being heard or voted on.

Will the Maryland legislature continue to cover for the Catholic Church in 2019?

Delegate C.T. Wilson speaking today before the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.