When Statutes of Limitations Limit Too Much
It may be hard to imagine that any good could come from the recent scandals involving the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, but, slowly and quietly, there has been some change for the better. That change is that many state legislatures are recognizing that the statutes of limitations for civil and criminal action in these cases need to be extended. Or, in my opinion, eliminated altogether.
Statutes of limitations, which are rarely discussed outside episodes of Law and Order, determine the length of time a state or an individual has to bring criminal or civil charges against someone else for a crime or damaging act. These statues often vary from state to state for every nearly every crime (except murder) and they vary widely in sexual abuse and molestation cases. For example, New Jersey has no statues of limitations on child abuse cases while Massachusetts, ground zero of the recent scandal, has a 15-year limit for child rape and a six-year limit for “sexual touching�. There are now twelve states with no time limits on prosecuting sexual offenses against children. More states, including Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and California have several bills in their legislatures to or extend or eliminate their statutes. Hopefully, before the scandal fades from public memory, there will be many more states that do the same.
The question I ask in all this is: Why do we need statutes on these crimes at all? I do understand the need for statues of limitations in theory. Former Massachusetts Assistant District Attorney Barton Aronson writes:
[S]tatutes . . . ensure that prosecutorial resources are well used. Prosecutions are not like wine: they generally get worse, not better, with age. When a prosecutor first learns of a crime is when he or she is in the best position to investigate and decide whether to prosecute. That is the moment when memories are freshest and evidence most accessible. If the case isn’t worth prosecuting right away, it usually isn’t worth prosecuting at all.
But Aronson is also quick to point out that this is precisely why statues of limitations don’t work in child abuse cases. Prosecutors often don’t learn of child sex abuse cases right away. Most children who have been abused often do not fully realize that what has been done to them is a crime. In other cases, the children are threatened so that they do not reveal the abuse. In still other cases, the children block out the memories of abuse only to “recover� these memories years or even decades later. These frequent delays make it difficult to pinpoint exactly when the “clock� on a statute starts running. In some states, the clock starts with the crime itself; in others it starts with the discovery of the crime, or when the child in question tells another adult what has happened.
In the recent clergy abuse scandal, the Catholic Church was instrumental in hiding evidence of sexual abuse with a tangled web of payouts to families, clergy transfers, hidden files and other acts of deceit. A strict interpretation of the law means the statues have run out on hundreds of these cases. But victims and their families argue that the abusers shouldn’t benefit from the church’s deceit. And, due in part to the public pressure surrounding this case, legislators are listening to their arguments. They are recognizing that the lengths of the original statutes in child abuse cases had little to do with the actual length of a victim’s pain and suffering.
What the writers of those statues and, evidently, many church officials did not realize is that abusing a child robs him of the innocence and trust he desperately needs in his formative years. A child abuser takes what is wonderful about being a child and, in effect, murders it. And, as we all know, there is no statute of limitations on murder.
