Democratic Gov. Wes Moore paused his first bill signing after two bills. The third was special and, to him, deserved recognition.
The Child Victims Act, which had been sponsored by House Economic Matters Chair C.T. Wilson throughout four legislative sessions, had wet ink from the governor’s, House speaker’s and Senate president’s pens on paper, and, as of Oct. 1, it will be legal for adults who were sexually abused in childhood to sue their abusers.
“The only reason that we are here today is because there are people who had the strength to tell their stories,” Moore said. “Telling these stories is not easy, but luckily, we have people who have the courage to tell theirs and may have changed the world.”
“And Del. C.T. Wilson is one of those people,” Moore said as Wilson, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, stood by his side. “When the history of this moment is written, Del. Wilson will be front and center.”
Wilson rose to the podium in the governor’s reception room, eyes pointed toward his feet and head shaking.
“I never thought God would let me see this moment,” he said, flanked by Moore and his fellow champions of the bill during the 2023 legislative session, House Judiciary Committee Chair Luke Clippinger and Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chair Will Smith.
“I am not speaking for all of the survivors, but I am speaking for quite a few of them who unintentionally left a trail of misery and sadness in their wake as we struggle every day just to make it to the next day,” Wilson said. “So for those I have hurt, I wish you could be here. I’m not brazen enough to ask for forgiveness, but I beg you would understand because this bill, at the end, will not undo the years of suffering, but maybe it’ll give us hope, make us better people.”
“But I want you to know that I’ve tried,” Wilson said.
The report’s only actionable recommendation: to pass the Child Victims Act.
“This attorney general’s report is harrowing. It is sickening, and it is heartbreaking,” Moore said Tuesday ahead of signing the bill. “But I also learned that truth is a prerequisite for healing and that healing has already started.”
Moore said the bill will address “the big gap between justice and our legal system because there is no statute of limitations on the pain that these victims continue to feel.”
Every victim has their own experience coming to terms with what happened to them and the lifelong trauma that affects them in unique ways, the report says. The common threads shared among many of them is the amount of time that passed between their abuse and when they reported it to authorities.
The data is limited, the report says, but studies have shown more than half of child abuse victims do not report what happened to them until they are well into adulthood. According to CHILD USA, a national think tank focusing on child protection and civil statute reform, victims are, on average, 52 years old when they report their abuse.
“Our judicial system should provide a means for victims who have suffered these harms to seek damages from the people and institutions responsible for them,” the report’s authors wrote. “They should also have access to the discovery afforded parties in civil litigation in order to learn what the Church knew about their abuse and what might have been done to protect them.”
Twenty-four other states have created a window for previously expired lawsuits to be filed. Maryland’s law would not create a time-limited window and would permanently revive all claims.
The Maryland Catholic Conference, the public policy arm for the three dioceses operating in Maryland, has opposed the Child Victims Act at every turn. It spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years to lobby against it, claiming the bill is unconstitutional because it would revive those old lawsuits.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown wrote a letter earlier this year to Senate Judicial Proceedings Chairman Will Smith in which Brown said the bill is “not clearly unconstitutional” and that he is comfortable directing his office to defend it in court.
The legislation was amended in the Senate earlier this month to allow the Maryland Supreme Court to determine the law’s constitutionality before cases are heard in a lower court and to cap awards from lawsuits.
Asked whether the Archdiocese of Baltimore planned to challenge its constitutionality, Christian Kendzierski, the archdiocese spokesperson, said Tuesday that it “has not determined steps forward.”
Maryland Catholic Conference spokesperson Susan Gibbs said Tuesday that the concerns the conference raised during the legislative session remain, “including questions about constitutionality and the disparate treatment between public and private organizations in Maryland.”
Previously, Gibbs had said the bill provided “false hope” for survivors.
The bill sets different limits for damages that can be awarded to plaintiffs in lawsuits against public and private entities. Sovereign immunity limits financial risk for government organizations in all Maryland lawsuits.
Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun last week that he believes the bill is unfair to victims of public employees, who could receive lower settlements than people harmed by employees of private institutions.
Kathleen Hoke, a University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law professor and longtime advocate of the bill, said she knows survivors still “have some hills to climb” and the law likely will be challenged in court, but the access to justice it represents “is incredibly important.”
After Moore signed the bill, survivors, advocates and champions of the bill gathered in the House chamber for a picture to commemorate the day.
“I know tomorrow’s not going to be an easy day for any of us, but it’s a better day,” Wilson said to the dozens of survivors and advocates who swarmed around him in the House chamber.
David Lorenz, director of the Maryland chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, was nearly speechless in the House chamber Tuesday.
“I was overwhelmed, I mean it’s just … overwhelming — it’s overwhelming,” Lorenz said. “Kids are safer today; survivors get justice. I’m sorry, it’s overwhelming.”
In an interview with the news media after the bill signing, Wilson said that it’s “cool” and “a relief” to know the legislative process is over for the survivors who have rallied around him.
“It’s an uphill battle, but you’ve got to give them hope, and I’m finally able to give them hope,” he said.
