CHARLESTON – A House of Delegates bill would change the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse civil lawsuits.
The West Virginia Democratic Party called the measure “a dangerous and callous attempt to roll back legal protections for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.”
House Bill 3516 would repeal key provisions of a 2020 law that passed with near-unanimous bipartisan support. It extended the statute of limitations for such cases to be filed against the state’s Board of Risk and Insurance Management.
Toriseva
| File photo
That means victims whose abusers are covered by BRIM would see the window to file a civil lawsuit cut from 18 years to just two years after they turn 18.
The bill was introduced March 31 and moved to the special calendar. It was read for the first time March 31, the second time April 1 and is set for floor vote April 2.
“HB 3516 is a slap in the face to victims,” state Democratic Party Vice Chairwoman Teresa Toriseva said. “It is well known that many victims are not able to come forward until well into adulthood because of the deep emotional trauma caused by their abuse.”
Toriseva is a Wheeling attorney who has represented many survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
“This bill re-victimizes them a second time and will go down in infamy,” she said. “This cruel and dangerous bill, championed by House Republicans, rips away the legal rights of child sexual abuse survivors.”
Democrats also call the timing of the bill “especially egregious” because issues at the Miracle Meadows religious boarding school in Salem first came to light less than two years ago.
Hundreds of former students there have reported sexual, physical and mental abuse by caretakers there. That includes being chained and shackled to beds, being kept in tiny isolation rooms for long periods, routine beatings, sexual assault and starvation.
The state could be responsible for millions of dollars in settlements from Miracle Meadows lawsuits.
“These are exactly the kinds of survivors who would be silenced under HB 3516,” the state Democratic Party said in a press release.
Delegate Kayla Young (D-Kanawha) called the bill “disgusting.”
“The reality is that the statute of limitations needs to be much for child sex abuse,” Young said in a social media post. “This trauma can corrupt the brains of these children and change it so drastically that they don’t even know these events have happened. It takes so much longer to heal from these traumas.
“This bill is in direct response to the Miracle Meadows cases … I’ve been working on a bill to protect children that were victims of places like Miracle Meadows. But instead of them running that bill that I’ve been working on with Paris Hilton for the last six months, they’re running bills to instead protect the state and to protect the child abusers themselves.”
“We just need to be doing everything we can to protect victims of child abuse rather than making it easier to protect the child abusers themselves, which is what this bill does. It’s disgusting … and we need to be doing literally everything we can to stop it.”
House Minority Whip Shawn Fluharty (D-Ohio) called the bill “disgusting” and “horrific.”
“They are treating our children like a car accident, saying you only get two years to bring a claim, because we have financial liabilities that we just can’t quite pay,” he said. “This legislation is a devastating blow to victims of childhood sexual abuse.
“We know how difficult it is for survivors to come forward, and how long it can take to process that trauma. Stripping away their right to seek justice based on an arbitrary timeline is unconscionable. Instead of protecting survivors, this bill protects the insurance industry and corporate America. We should be helping victims heal, not silencing them.”
West Virginia Democratic Party Chairman and Delegate Mike Pushkin (D-Kanawha) was a co-sponsor of the 2020 bipartisan bill that became law to give survivors more time to pursue civil action.
He calls House Bill 3516 “a betrayal of victims and a stunning example of political cowardice.”
“This bill is a cruel step backward for survivors of childhood sexual abuse,” Puskin said. “It sends the message that their pain doesn’t matter if their abuser happened to work for an institution insured by BRIM.
“Survivors deserve time, support, and access to justice — not a legal technicality that shuts the courthouse doors in their faces. HB 3516 protects institutions at the expense of real people who have suffered unimaginable harm. We should be standing with victims — not turning our backs on them.”
Delegate Matthew Rohrbach (R-Cabell) dismissed the Democrat’s claims, saying the bill is an effort to standardize state insurance claims. Rohrbach and House Speaker Roger Hanshaw (R-Clay)
“This bill has absolutely nothing, and I will repeat, nothing to do with criminal code,” Rohrbach said. “This is simply an insurance bill to standardize the state’s insurance policies with standard operating practice in the insurance industry and nothing more.”