OUR VIEW: Lift time limits on sex abuse cases

By The Patriot Ledger

The hurdles confronting victims of sex abuse crimes who want to bring their perpetrators to justice are many: financial, emotional, psychological, legal.

One of the biggest barriers is the statute of limitations, the time limit on when a person can be charged with rape or other abuse crimes, including incest, using children for pornography, indecent assault on a retarded person. It’s a long list.

As was demonstrated repeatedly in recent sex abuse cases involving Catholic priests, it can take decades for a person to acknowledge what happened to them as a child or adolescent and then try to have the perpetrator answer for the crime.

A set of bills before the Legislature would eliminate the statute of limitations for bringing either a criminal or civil case against a person accused of rape or other, specific sex abuse crimes. The current statute of limitations is 15 years for rape, 10 years for incest, and six years for indecent assault and other sex abuse crimes.

Removing the statute of limitations is the right thing to do. These crimes are among society’s worst, and what sets them apart from other crimes is that they are usually committed by a person close to the victim - a parent, uncle, cousin, a camp counselor, scout leader, a priest. The perpetrators are almost always authority figures and the crimes still have a stigma attached to them, which is why it is easy, or necessary, for so many victims to erase them from memory. It’s a survival mechanism.

The incident can be buried, but not its effects. And the evidence is incontrovertible: Victims of sex abuse crimes suffer in varying degrees from the inability to trust or to have satisfying relationships, guilt, addiction, and worse. Imagine the moment of awakening and then learning that the monster who abused you two decades ago is beyond the reach of the law. The damage is then compounded.

The principal opposition to removing the statute is the fear that men and women will falsely accuse a person of doing something decades ago that may be impossible to prove. In reality, law enforcement proceeds with just 20 percent of sex abuse allegations; that’s the number in which district attorneys believe a conviction can be obtained. In other words, the bar is high. District attorneys cannot waste precious time on cases that have little chance of succeeding.

Despite all the publicity around the priest sex abuse scandal, abuse by clergy represents just a fraction of sex abuse cases in Massachusetts and nationwide. The church scandal has helped to bring this subject into the open, where it belongs. Changing the statute of limitations is one aspect of reform. But education is the first step in addressing this scourge. Children must be taught to know when touching is inappropriate and to tell an adult about it. Adults must emphasize that the victim has no reason to be ashamed.

When this crime in no longer kept secret, it will be easier to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Copyright 2006 The Patriot Ledger
Transmitted Monday, March 27, 2006