Should the Calendar Protect Molesters? : Abuse: Legislative panel takes a regressive view of women’s testimony later in life.

Time and secrecy are both on the side of the sexual molester of children, and nowhere is this more true than in California.

The state’s current statute of limitations requires victims of child sexual abuse to bring criminal charges against their abusers within one to six years of the the abuse, depending upon the crime committed. After this time, the child molester can’t be criminally prosecuted, no matter how cruel or severe or damaging the attacks.

The more severe the abuse, the more likely it is that children will block it from memory in order to survive. Survivors may not discover the crime until they seek therapy later in life for the psychological injury the molestation has caused them. Sadly, for most victims in California, it is then too late to prosecute.

Ten states have no statute of limitation for criminal cases of child sexual abuse. The California Legislature is considering a bill, which will be heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee today that would also abolish the current limits here, effectively permitting a victim of child sexual abuse to press criminal charges at any time. But the Assembly’s Committee on Public Safety has added a shockingly regressive amendment that not only guts its purpose but insults and harms women.

The amendment, which is considered likely to pass, would permit victims to commence a criminal action later in life only if the charges were “corroborated by clear and independent evidence�--for example, another witness or a videotape of the molestation as it take place. The Legislature apparently understands nothing about child sexual abuse. Molesters generally take care to ensure the secrecy of their acts. It is this very aura of secrecy that is so damaging to the victims, who wonder if the abuse was their fault and fear no one will believe them. The proposed legislation sends a message that victims are not to be believed, and that their testimony alone is presumed to be fabricated.

Why is the California Legislature afraid to believe the victims themselves? Is it because the victims are overwhelmingly female, and the perpetrators are overwhelming male?

Feminists fought a long and successful battle to remove the corroboration requirement in rape cases. In these cases, the evidence almost always boils down to her word against his. Rape victims and women who have been sexually harassed are not prevented from bringing their cases if they have no “corroboration.� Neither should victims of child abuse be prevented from bringing their cases to court based upon their word alone.

Some are concerned that without corroboration there will be false claims. Women rarely lie about something as intimate and humiliating as child sexual abuse, and the legal system has devised elaborate fact-finding systems to determine who is telling the truth and who is not. In a criminal case, the prosecution already has the difficult burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the abuse occurred.

Only the child molester would benefit from this legislation in its current form. If it becomes law, the molester who was careful to commit his crime in secrecy now can rest safely, knowing that his criminal acts will never be punished.