NEW ORLEANS — In a split ruling that has major implications for hundreds of child sex abuse victims, the Louisiana Supreme Court has struck down a law that allowed victims to file civil lawsuits over abuse that happened decades ago.
Child molestation victims and their advocates were devastated by the 4-3 ruling.
"Once more the victims and survivors of childhood sex abuse have been denied justice,” said Richard Windmann, president of Survivors of Childhood Sex Abuse. “The institutionalized, systematic, and wholesale rape of our children by these organizations is self-evident. Now we move on to the United States Supreme Court. The final stop is to see if we, as human beings, are going to let these atrocities stand and continue to happen."
“Predators and institutions that protect predators are going to continue with their bad practices,” said Kathryn Robb of ChildUSA, an advocacy group that helped pass lookback or revival windows across the country. “They're going to continue with their cover-up. They're going to continue with putting children in harm's way. And so I'm saddened. I'm saddened by this decision.”
The laws were upheld as constitutional in 24 states and the District of Columbia. Louisiana now joins Utah as the only state to find them unconstitutional, Robb said.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in January involving cases filed against the Diocese of Lafayette over allegations that a Catholic priest there molested several children between 1971 and 1979.
The lawsuits were filed under a “lookback window” law the Legislature passed unanimously in 2021, which eliminated deadlines for old claims in recognition of scientific research that found the average male victim doesn’t come forward until he’s 52 years old.
Four justices – James Genovese, Scott Crichton, Jeff Hughes, and Piper Griffin – concurred that the “lookback window” law is unconstitutional. The majority opinion written by Genovese said reviving old sexual abuse claims violated the due-process rights of alleged abusers and their enablers to no longer be sued for damages once the original deadline to do so had passed.
The deadlines for filing such lawsuits have changed over the years. In the 1960s and 70s, victims – even children -- had a year to come forward. Those deadlines were extended in the 1980s and 90s to allow child victims to file suit after turning 18. In 2021, the deadline was eliminated entirely.
Lawyers Richard Trahant, Soren Giselson, and John Denenea, who represented the plaintiff in the case at the center of Friday’s ruling, said: “Today, four of the seven Louisiana Supreme Court justices overruled a law passed by a unanimous Louisiana legislature, signed by then-Gov. [John Bel Edwards], supported by then-Attorney General (and current Gov.) Jeff Landry and current Attorney General Liz Murrill. That’s nearly 200 elected officials who viewed this law as being constitutional. Four elected officials just obliterated that. They cannot fathom the excruciating pain this decision has heaped upon adults who were raped as children and already suffer a life sentence.”
Several justices said from the bench, regardless of how horrendous the harm caused by child molestation, applying the law retroactively raised constitutional concerns. But in his dissent Friday, Justice William Crain said the Legislature should have had the power to give that right to victims.
“Absent a constitutional violation, which defendants have not established, the forum for this debate is the legislature, not this court,” Crain wrote. “The legislature had that debate and — without a single dissenting vote — abolished the procedural bar and restored plaintiffs’ right to sue.”
Crain was joined in dissent by Chief Justice John Weimer and Justice Jay McCallum.
Friday’s ruling does not affect measures of the law eliminating filing deadlines for cases of abuse that occurred after the statute took effect.
The lookback window struck from the books Friday wasn’t exclusively for clergy abuse claimants. But it prompted many new cases of that nature against Louisiana’s Catholic institutions and clerics who worked for them.
Among the organizations standing to gain most from Friday’s ruling is the Archdiocese of New Orleans, which declared bankruptcy in 2020 in an attempt to dispense of a mound of litigation related to a decades-old clerical molestation scandal there. The lookback window was the strongest legal weapon which clergy abuse accusers seeking damages from the archdiocese had in their efforts to drive the value of their claims up.
With the lookback window no longer a factor, the archdiocese’s efforts to settle those claims as cheaply as possible received a significant boost.
“The organizations that enable and protect child molesters are rejoicing over this ruling,” said attorney Kristi Schubert, who represents a number of clerical abuse claimants caught up in the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy. “The ruling shields wrongdoers from the consequences of their evil actions.”
Neither the Archdiocese of New Orleans nor the Diocese of Lafayette immediately commented on Friday’s court decision when asked.
Ramon Antonio Vargas of the Guardian contributed reporting.
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