Victims of child sex abuse or sexual assault would have unlimited time to sue their abusers — or institutions that enabled the abuse — under a bill that passed the Oregon House with overwhelming, often emotional, support Thursday.
House Bill 3582 would put Oregon in league with a growing number of states expanding or eliminating statutes of limitations on civil actions for sexual assault or child sex abuse.
“[The bill] says that from here forward, no one will be denied justice just because their healing took time,” said state Rep. Annessa Hartman, D-Gladstone, a sexual assault survivor and the driving force behind the bill. “It sends a powerful message to survivors: You don’t have to justify how long it took to come forward.”
Under current law, people who suffered sexual abuse as children must make claims by the time they are 40, or within five years of the moment they connect the abuse to harms they’ve experienced — whichever is later. Victims of sexual assault as adults have five years from the time they discover a connection between that assault and the harms they’ve suffered.
“To some that might seem reasonable, but it completely misses the mark on what we now know about trauma, and how it shows up in our lives,” Hartman said on the House floor.
She went on to describe how, after being assaulted, she felt she’d developed a superpower of always being hypervigilant about her surroundings and planning for the worst. Not until much later, she said, did she recognize the supposed power was actually trauma.
While eliminating some statutes of limitations, HB 3582 does not affect existing time limits for nonsexual child abuse cases.
But the legislation also seeks to close what advocates say is a loophole in Oregon law that allows some institutions that enable abusers to escape without consequence. It removes a requirement that such entities had to “knowingly” allow, permit or encourage abuse.
“That single word — ‘knowingly’ — has been used by schools, churches, hospitals, and youth organizations to shield themselves from responsibility,” Hartman said. “Even when red flags were everywhere, even when patterns were undeniable.”
HB 3582 saw unanimous support in the House, with Republicans and Democrats alike rising to say the change was overdue.
State Rep. Cyrus Javadi, R-Tillamook, described being abused by a babysitter when he was 12 – a disclosure he said he’d previously only made to a handful of people.
“I thought it was my fault for a long time,” Javadi said. “In fact, even standing up today there’s a lot of shame that comes back as you think about it because you were a victim.”
“This bill is long overdue,” Javadi said. “I think that whenever you figure it out in your life that it wasn’t your fault, that it’s okay to come forward.”
House Minority Leader Christine Drazan, R-Canby, said the Legislature too often seeks to balance the interests of moneyed institutions when it passes laws. She said HB 3582 correctly emphasizes victims over the entities that allowed them to be abused.
“I don’t want to hear complaints about that from any of these organizations. I’ve got no interest in that concern,” she said. “This is the right thing to do and we are doing it today.”
But the bill has limits. It does not apply to survivors whose right to sue has already lapsed under current law. Hartman has said that “painful concession” was a compromise — she’d heard concerns that courts would be overwhelmed if the law was made retroactive.
“It is an important concession to acknowledge because even though this bill will not help [past victims], it is a step forward for those who come after us,” Hartman said. “And there will be more that come after us.”
The bill now heads to the state Senate. If it passes there, Oregon would become just the latest jurisdiction taking up the question of whether abuse cases should have time limits.
In 2022, then-President Joe Biden signed a bill eliminating the federal statute of limitations on injury suits for child sexual abuse. In 2023, California did the same. According to Hartman, Oregon would join 19 states that have taken action to give victims more ability to sue.
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.