Estimated read time: minutes. In a case involving a local school board sued by three former students years after an ex-high school coach was convicted of crimes against team members, the state Supreme Court ruled the General Assembly was able to enact a key provision within the SAFE Child Act that was also signed by then-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 But the issue before the court in the Gaston County case was the provision that gave other child sex abuse victims whose time period to sue ended the ability to file valid lawsuits for damages from January through December Supporters of the provision 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.
At least child sex abuse lawsuits were filed in North Carolina under that one-time lookback period, according to a board legal brief. A divided state Court of Appeals panel in had already upheld the two-year window as constitutional.
The board's attorney had argued the lookback period violated the North Carolina Constitution by stripping away fundamental rights protected from retroactive alterations by the legislature. He also said that upholding the litigation window would make it impossible in some cases to mount vigorous defenses given the passage of time and destroyed records.
Writing Friday's majority opinion, Chief Justice Paul Newby said a review of previous versions of the state constitution showed that a current provision barring "retrospective laws" expressly applies only to retroactive criminal and certain tax laws. And another constitutional provision that can be used to strike down laws that violate a person's "vested right" does not apply here, he added. The coach, Gary Scott Goins, was convicted of 17 sex-related crimes in and sentenced to at least 34 years in prison.
