Maryland Childhood Sexual Abuse Lawsuits Cleared To Move Forward by State Supreme Court

State’s high court upheld constitutionality of the Maryland Child Victim’s Act, which allows survivors of childhood sexual abuse to bring claims, no matter how long ago the assault occurred.

The Maryland State Supreme Court has voted to uphold the constitutionality of a recent state law, which removed the statute of limitations on all childhood sexual abuse lawsuits in the state, allowing survivors to hold perpetrators and the institutions that enable the conduct responsible, no matter how many years have passed since the incident.

The state legislature and governor passed the Maryland Child Victims Act in April 2023,  just days after a long-awaited Baltimore Archdiocese child sex abuse report was released by the Maryland Attorney General, which detailed information about Catholic priests that abused children in Maryland over the last 60 years. The report included the names of 146 priests, deacons, seminarians and others who have been credibly accused by more than 300 victims and witnesses who came forward during the investigation.

The state law removes the Maryland childhood sexual abuse statute of limitations, allowing lawsuits to be filed, even decades after the acts occurred.

The legislation has been hailed as a landmark achievement for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, since many individuals are unable to reach a point where they seek justice until long after the typical statute of limitations has expired.

Maryland lawmakers knew the law would face legal challenges over the constitutionality of retroactively eliminating the statute of limitations, so they included a provision that allowed an interlocutory appeal to be immediately pursued, so that the Maryland Supreme Court could consider the case before any individual lawsuits result in a final judgment.

In September 2024, the state’s Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the Maryland Child Victims Act constitutionality, in an appeal brought by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. State officials, plaintiffs and defendants have been awaiting a final decision since then, to determine whether hundreds of other Maryland childhood sexual abuse lawsuits will be able to move forward.

In an opinion (PDF) issued on February 3, the Maryland Supreme Court voted 4-3 to affirm the Maryland Child Victim’s Act’s constitutionality, allowing claims to be brought over abuse that is decades-old.

The court dismissed the concerns of the Mormon church, who challenged a lawsuit alleging that the church did nothing to stop a minister from sexually assaulting a young girl, even after a probation officer warned the organization that the minister, Frederick Edvalson, should not be left alone with children. Edvalson pled guilty to felony sex charges in 1985 and is now deceased. However, the civil lawsuit filed against the Mormon church said the organization failed to take minimal steps to keep the girl safe.

The church’s representatives argued that the underlying claim should be time-barred, since the removal of the Maryland statute of limitations on child sexual abuse lawsuits violates due process protections of the state constitution.

Most of their arguments focused on a 2017 state law, which previously extended the deadline for filing child sexual assault lawsuits in the state until the victim turned 38 years old. Attorneys for the Mormon church argued that the law could not be modified to make defendants more vulnerable to liability after-the-fact.

Attorneys representing child abuse victims statewide countered that the Maryland General Assembly never intended the 2017 law to be immutable.

The state Supreme Court’s majority ruled that the expiration of the statute of limitations did not give defendants a right to be free of liability.

“Perpetrators use many tactics to prevent their victims from disclosing abuse. These range from threats against the victim or loved ones, manipulating the victim, convincing the victim nothing is wrong, and exploiting the victim’s desire to keep a family together,” the court’s opinion states. “Some victims remain financially and emotionally depend[e]nt on the perpetrator well into their early adulthood.”

The decision not only allows thousands of claims filed after the law was passed to proceed, but also clears the way for new claims in perpetuity against alleged child sex abusers.