North Carolina's highest court hears challenge to law allowing more time for child sex abuse suits

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Challenges to a portion of a state law that gave adult victims of child sexual abuse two additional years to seek civil damages dominated oral arguments in lawsuits heard Wednesday by North Carolina's highest court.

The state Supreme Court in one day considered five cases involving individuals who have sued based on changes approved by the General Assembly through the 2019 SAFE Child Act and signed by Gov. Roy Cooper.

Before the law, victims of sexual abuse before age 18 effectively had until turning 21 to file such civil claims against perpetrators. Now such victims have until they're age 28.

Front and center in most of the cases heard Wednesday was another section of the law that gave other victims whose period to sue ended the ability to file lawsuits seeking damages for child sex abuse. They were allowed to file lawsuits from January 2020 through December 2021.

Supporters of the two-year provision have said it allowed victims to ensure their abusers and institutions that allowed abuse to happen pay for the damage, and that abusers are called out publicly.

In Wednesday's opening case, a lawyer for the Gaston County Board of Education argued the lookback period violates the North Carolina Constitution by stripping away fundamental rights protected from retroactive alterations by the legislature. The board wants the provision declared unconstitutional and the lawsuit dismissed.

The school board is a defendant in a 2020 lawsuit filed by three former Gaston County student-athletes who also sued a high school coach convicted of crimes against team members. In this case, a divided state Court of Appeals panel last year upheld the two-year window as constitutional.

At least 250 child sex abuse lawsuits were filed in North Carolina under the two-year window, with many of them going back to allegations from 40 or 50 years ago, according to a board legal brief.

Attorneys for the ex-students and the state — which intervened in the lawsuit and is defending the two-year window — said nothing in the state constitution prevented the General Assembly from offering victims this chance to sue for damages.

"It is inconceivable to me that the good people of North Carolina, in adopting any version of their constitution, would have ever intended to prevent the General Assembly from implementing a public policy that recognizes the profound harm that children who are sexually abused have suffered and decided to give them a limited period of time to bring a claim and seek justice," Bobby Jenkins, the former students' attorney, told the court.

The Gaston County coach, Gary Scott Goins, was convicted of 17 sex-related crimes in 2014 and sentenced to at least 34 years in prison. Goins was previously dismissed as a defendant in this current lawsuit, according to a court opinion.

School board lawyer Robert King told the justices that children must be protected, and the General Assembly has helped with other provisions in the 2019 law.

But upholding the window would make it impossible for some institutions to mount vigorous defenses given the passage of time and long-destroyed records, King said, and open the door for the revival of other types of civil claims. Felony child abuse charges have no statute of limitations and can come with long sentences.

"If a person is going to be dissuaded from abusing children, if that is possible, it is by threat of spending the rest of their lives in prison," King said. "It is not by reviving a 50-year-old civil claim that is typically going to be against the bad actor's former employer."

The court gave no indication when it would rule. At least three of the six justices hearing the case — not Associate Justice Allison Riggs, who recused herself, as she wrote the Court of Appeals opinion while on the lower court — questioned King's arguments.

Since 2002, 30 states and the District of Columbia revived previously expired child sex abuse claims with limited or permanent expansions of claim periods, according to CHILD USA, a think tank advocating for the civil rights of children and prevention of sex abuse.

The Supreme Court also heard arguments Wednesday in a case involving a man who sued alleging a Catholic layperson sexually abused him during the early 1980s. The lawsuit seeks damages from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte and the Glenmary Home Missioners, a group of priests and laypersons who serve primarily in rural areas.

A trial judge dismissed claims against the Catholic groups, saying the language in the law permitting a two-year claim window for "any civil action for child sexual abuse" only included claims against the perpetrator of the sexual abuse — not institutions. But the Court of Appeals reversed that decision.