CHARLOTTE, N.C. — With just a few days left for many child sex abuse survivors to file lawsuits in North Carolina, state judges dealt a blow to survivors and activists who had fought for the two-year reprieve from the state’s usual statute of limitations.
The provision, they said, violated constitutional law that prevents legislators from retroactively changing legal standards.
The ruling, if upheld, could hamper dozens of lawsuits. But lawyers are urging their clients to keep their heads up.
Defendants in unresolved cases include several schools, among them the University of North Carolina School of the Arts; the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte and several protestant institutions — and a few private citizens.
Experts describe the 2-1 decision — in which judges granted dismissal motions from two institutions whose workers were convicted of preying on children — as a bump in the procedural road. The judges came down against a provision of the 2019 SAFE Child Act that temporarily nullified the usual statute of limitations in lawsuits over child sexual abuse, saying the muddled case law would be better interpreted by a higher court.
“We’ve seen this in other states with windows where the state had not really revisited the correct analysis for due process for a century,” said CHILD USA founder Marci Hamilton, who’s advocated for statute of limitation reform across the country. “This is a setback, but it’s definitely not the final word on this law.”
Bobby Jenkins, an attorney who argued for the plaintiffs in both cases that the panel ruled on, said he wasn’t phased by the judges’ decision. He’d always expected that the three-judge panel would be the first of several steps to finalizing the law’s validity.
“It was going to go to the Supreme Court anyway ... there was no question about that,” Jenkins said. “I would rather go up having won, but we’ll get it.”
His firm, Lanier Law Group, hasn’t yet decided how it will handle the appeal. But it is rushing to file all its client’s complaints by the end of the year, in hopes of a Supreme Court decision that will allow the firm to try cases against institutions including the Gaston County Board of Education and University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
With the cases pending on appeal, Jenkins doesn’t expect that judges will dismiss other cases — or, if they do, judges aren’t expected to prohibit the parties from resurrecting their claims. Most of the cases they’ve filed over the last two years have already been stayed, Jenkins said, pausing arguments until higher courts decide the constitutionality of North Carolina’s law, which altered the filing window.
“The one thing it does is it delays the process several more months,” Jenkins said. “I don’t think this will stop anyone who’s handling these cases from filing these cases and then just waiting for this to work its way through the appellate process.”
While lawyers emphasized that the three-judge panel isn’t the ultimate authority, the finding came as a blow to survivors and people who had championed the groundbreaking law.
“It’s a very disappointing day for those thousands of people in North Carolina who are victims of child sexual abuse, and I’d think the only people rejoicing would be the predators who continue to be protected by an archaic law,” said state Rep. Dennis Riddell, who fought for giving victims longer to bring cases in the 2019 SAFE Child Act. “Somebody who has been wronged should not have the doors of justice closed upon them because of a statute (that was) put in place decades ago, when this subject was not even discussed in polite company.”
By the time Kendall Wolz saw the ruling, she had already agreed to a private settlement with the person who sexually abused her as a child. Wolz, who has since moved from North Carolina to Louisiana, said she had been determined to fight for more accountability after her abuser’s 2006 criminal conviction, but was relieved to find an avenue that didn’t force her to rely on a judgment call from the courts.
But even though the judge’s decision couldn’t affect her case, it felt like a slap in the face to hear judges shut down the law that survivors had fought for.
“The backs are being turned on victims again,” Wolz said. “My initial reaction was just shock and dismay.”
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