[T]hree lawsuits filed against a Bennington child care center will be among the first to test a newly-minted law that eliminates the six-year statute of limitations for victims of child sexual abuse to bring civil claims in court.
The lawsuits against the center were filed in 2017 and 2018, by three people who say they were sexually abused by a former of employee of the Sunrise Family Resource Center in the 1980s.
The cases had stalled in court until recently, but this week a judge ruled that two of the lawsuits can proceed to trial, after the center had moved to dismiss them.
In the lawsuits, the individuals, who attended pre-school at the center in 1988, allege that a teacher took them to her home where she sexually abused them.
At the time, the center allowed teachers to take students home without their parents’ permission, according to Christopher Larson, the attorney representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuits.
In complaints filed in Bennington Superior Court, the plaintiffs argue that the center failed to screen its employees and that they suffered abuse at the hands of the teacher because of the nonprofit facility’s “negligence.” They are seeking unspecified monetary damages.
The Sunrise Family Resource Center has sought to dismiss the lawsuits, and has argued that the claims filed against it have expired under Vermont’s statute of limitations for child sexual abuse cases.
The current statute of limitations gives victims of child sexual abuse six years from when they realize the injuries that were caused by their abuse—not from when the abuse actually occurred— to file civil claims against abusers or institutions they believe played a role.
The law the governor signed last week, H.330, which will go into effect July 1, law removes the time limit for victims to file complaints.
It applies retroactively to any cases from the past—even in cases from years ago where previously, the statute of limitations had expired.
Larson maintains that although the alleged abuse happened decades ago his clients didn’t realize until recently that it caused long-term psychological damage.
“I think the new law recognizes that for this particular kind of harm, it’s really really hard for someone to come to the kind of understanding in their bones that it’s important for them to tell their story and risk putting themselves out there in that way,” Larson said.
The Sunrise Family Resource Center opposed the new law when it was pitched in the Legislature earlier this year, calling into question its constitutionality, and warning that it could cause the center to quickly close it doors.
In court proceedings, the center has pointed to the plaintiffs’ medical and psychological records to argue that their claims violated the statute of limitations and that they were aware of the alleged sexual assault for years before they filed suit.
Although the new law has yet to take effect, a Bennington judge decided this week that two of victims’ cases could go to trial. The other case is still pending.
Because of the new law, Larson said that going forward, juries in his cases and others like it will no longer have to decide whether victims claims have expired under the state law— only whether an individual or institution is guilty of the allegations.
“When we get to a jury, the moment in time when in Darrell’s head his PTSD and anxiety is connected to abuse that happened to him as a child is not the critical thing for the jury to focus on,” Larson said, referring to one of the plaintiffs, Darrell Radcliffe, whose suit is moving forward.
“What the jury needs to focus on is, did this happen and is Sunrise responsible for allowing it to happen,” he said.
Rebuking the claims, the Sunrise Family Center points to a state investigation of the abuse allegations by the Human Services Board that was conducted in the late 1980s, which found that none had taken place.
“When these particular individuals brought their allegations the first time in the 1980s there was a hearing and there was a finding by a state agency that no abuse had occurred and all of those documents were lost in a fire,” said Merrill Bent, an attorney for the Sunrise Family Resource Center.
“We know that evidence existed that would support a finding that no abuse had occurred but now we don’t have that evidence,” she said.
Bent also said that the constitutionality of the law is “contested” because it will revive claims that under previous law had expired under the statute of limitations. She said that it’s not “entirely unlikely” that the law will itself face a soon face a court challenge.
“There is case law in Vermont that would suggest that where a new legislation revives an already time-barred claim, that as a matter of due process and fundamental fairness that it’s not constitutionally valid,” Bent said.
In the Statehouse this year, the center also told lawmakers that the legislation would likely cause it and other institutions that provide services to children and families serious financial damage.
“We are here to emphasize that without a statute of limitations, Sunrise will be required to defend against 30-year-old allegations without the benefit of the contemporaneous evidence that we know based on the Board’s findings would have been exculpatory,” Bent told lawmakers in April, referring to the state’s investigation of the allegations.
Supporters of the law have championed it as one of the strongest reforms of statute of limitations laws for victims in the country.
“This law is really going to open up the avenues for victims to seek justice on a timeline that is related to their healing,” Sarah Robinson, the deputy director of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence said in an interview last week.
