Marci A. Hamilton: Time to open window for sex abuse survivors

Who takes their car to a mechanic, learns what repairs are needed and walks out without getting the actual work done?

Who goes to a doctor, gets a diagnosis and leaves without pain relievers, a prescription or a referral to physical therapy?

No one, right?

But isn’t this really what’s happening in Pennsylvania when it comes to the sexual abuse of children?

Child sexual abuse is of course horrific and traumatizing, whether it happens at home or in organizations — churches, camps, schools and others — that give perpetrators access to children despite ‘“red flags.”

But all of us in the Keystone State can rightly be proud that, when it comes to exposing heinous sexual abuse, our state is in the forefront.

In 2005, then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham’s office conducted a groundbreaking investigation into clergy sex abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese and published a 400-plus page report detailing the stunning abuse of hundreds of children by more than 60 priests.

In 2011, brave men in and around Penn State University told the world about coach Jerry Sandusky’s long-buried abuse of young athletes and the deceit of college officials. The attorney general ordered a report which resulted in 339 pages of searing facts about Sandusky’s elaborate scheme to find, groom and violate boys through his nonprofit, the university and local schools.

In 2016, a 147-page “blistering” document outlined “at least six decades of persistent and concealed sexual abuse of hundreds of children by at least 50 priests” in the Altoona-Johnstown diocese, thanks to another grand jury.

Then, in 2017, a Bucks County district attorney’s grand jury report revealed decades of abuse at a private boarding school near New Hope. “It is important to expose how these crimes were allowed to occur and how they were concealed for so long,” said DA Matt Weintraub.

In 2018, then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro released the blockbuster 1,356-page grand jury report on child sex crimes and coverups in the state’s remaining six Catholic dioceses. No other report in the country is remotely comparable.

If that’s not enough, right now, the attorney general is conducting an investigation of the abuses of Jehovah’s Witness youngsters, which has already netted criminal charges against five individuals.

So Pennsylvania has sponsored and now houses the most comprehensive library of investigative reports about systemic child sex abuse disasters in the nation, even the world. This collection brilliantly diagnoses the disease: unchecked child sex abuse.

Fortunately, it also brilliantly offers the best possible treatment and prevention plan: the elimination of archaic, predator-friendly statutes of limitations through a civil abuse “window.”

“Window” legislation achieves three overriding goals: exposing hidden child predators, shifting the enormous costs of abuse from those who suffer it to those who caused it and educating the public on preventing future child sex crimes.

There are no doubt organizations and institutions in Pennsylvania that still hurt kids but fly under the radar. They have yet to be publicly revealed, investigated or held accountable for endangering the commonwealth’s kids. This is literally an emergency.

Which lawmakers will be blamed for slow-walking these child-saving provisions? We will know once survivors are permitted to go to court and name their abusers and enabling institutions.

We will find out because a window is inevitable in Pennsylvania. You can’t push all that knowledge back into the bottle. It’s out there, and the moral obligation to treat the disease is as plain as the black and white cover pages on report after report.

Many other states have chosen their children over the institutions lobbying against them, including our neighbors in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York.

For 12 years, a majority of caring, forward-thinking lawmakers have fought for a civil abuse window in our state. Legislative red tape continues to favor the perpetrators over our kids.

It’s time to move beyond diagnosis and into the treatment phase. It’s time to open a window that will put our collective knowledge to work stopping abuse now, preventing it in the future and bringing comfort and healing to thousands already wounded.

Marci A. Hamilton is a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and CEO and founder of CHILD USA, a nonprofit think tank for child protection.